Before being elected, Barack Obama said that he’d rather give up smoking than his BlackBerry. He’s addicted to it. Uses it all the time to keep up on news, e-mail his friends and family, and make phone calls. You know, the way a lot of people use them. And he loves it. They aren’t called “CrackBerries” by their devoted users for nothing.
But the Secret Service and the various national security folks (CIA, NSA, NSC, etc.) are all terrified that someone is going to figure out how to hack into the President’s BlackBerry and get at all of his information. And his political advisers are all terrified that someone is going to hack into the BlackBerry and forge fake e-mails from the President doing who knows what kinds of mischief. Or who knows what else could go wrong?
These are the reasons why both Presidents Clinton and Bush did not use e-mail while they were serving. It wasn’t that they didn’t know how to use e-mail; both gave up e-mail accounts they had formerly used upon assuming office.
So, it was a struggle — the President wants to keep his BlackBerry, all his people don’t want him to have one. Well, today, they “compromised” and the President got his way. The only concession he made was a special security chip made by some NSA/CIA wizards being implanted into the Presidential BlackBerry. I’m not entirely sure I like the idea; I fear that hackers are far more clever than they’re being given credit for — this had better be some super-amazing technology to keep BlackBerry One secure.
I’m hoping Mr. Obama’s not in touch with Nigerians with extra millions they’d like him to help out with.