Ex-Bush official makes case for no Obama BlackBerry

By Jon Ward on Jan. 21, 2009 into POTUS Notes

Marc Ambinder is reporting that President Obama will be allowed to keep his BlackBerry, over the concerns of the Secret Service. I spoke last week with Joe Hagin, former deputy chief of staff to President Bush, about why he thinks that is not a good idea.

The high vulnerability of BlackBerrys, along with all other smart phones, to hacking is the least of Mr. Hagin's concerns, even though when he was in charge of operations at the White House, White House staffers were not allowed to carry BlackBerrys on foreign trips to protect them from being hacked.

“You can solve the security and technical isues. It really boils down to a political and legal issue, and human nature," he said.

Mr. Hagin said that with all of the friends that Mr. Obama will be trying to keep in touch with, "how long until one of those friends forwards something he sent them, to show off?"

"It would play right into the hands of people who want to play the 'gotcha' game," Mr. Hagin said.

Mr. Hagin happens to be one of the men who pushed the Secret Service to give BlackBerrys to White House staffers after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

"On September 11 most executive branch officials were not capable of communicating effectively at all," he said. "Our colleagues on the Hill were raving about how they were able to keep in touch with colleagues, family and friends."

“Several weeks after September 11 we put our foot down and said: 'We're getting BlackBerrys. We've got to be able to do our job.'"

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IMS1

President Obama should obtain a device called a SMEPED, read the specs below: September 16, 2005 The United States National Security Agency (NSA) is planning to build its own secure wireless handset capable of voice and data communications over public networks, including CDMA, GSM and Wi-Fi. The handset which is currently going under the name of "secure mobile environment - portable electronic device," (SME-PED) is a secure wireless product that will provide users with voice and data communications supporting security levels up to Top Secret, as well as e-mail communications supporting security levels up to Secret. The SME-PED also provides Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) functionality. The SME-PED will provide the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) and other U.S. Government users with a converged voice and e-mail communications device similar to commercially available devices such as BlackBerry, SideKick and Treo 650. Two companies have been awarded US$18 million dollar multi-year contracts to develop the SME-PED. One of the companies awarded the contract (the name of the other company has not yet been released) is L-3 Communications via its subsidiary, L-3 CS-East, an industry leader in designing, developing and manufacturing Type 1 Secure Telephony terminals for the U.S. DoD. "We are thrilled to have been selected by the NSA to develop the SME-PED," said Greg Roberts, president of L-3 CS-East. "SME-PED continues L-3's legacy of developing leading-edge, high assurance communications products for use by the U.S. Government. L-3 CS-East will leverage recent investments in cryptographic technology as well as our experience and expertise in applying the U.S. Government's Future Narrow Band Digital Terminal (FNBDT) and High Assurance Internet Protocol Interoperability Specification (HAIPIS) protocols while executing this critical program." http://www.gizmag.com/go/4601/

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Ex-Bush official makes case for no Obama BlackBerry

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