Thursday, January 22, 2009

Obama Gets to Hold onto His Blackberry! You are Kidding!

It seems Obama wants to potentially jeopardize national security by holding onto his Blackberry.

Obama plans to use his BlackBerry to communicate with "senior staff and a small group of personal friends. It's a pretty small group of people," Gibbs said in the first White House press briefing held by the new administration. He declined to say who would be allowed to email the president.

Although emails sent by Obama for official government business would be part of the official White House record, Gibbs pointed out that U.S. law allows limited exemptions for strictly personal communications.

What the hell? This thing better have the mother-of-all-security measures on it or it just opened a massive hole in the security net surrounding the President. Forget about the fact that his emails could be used against him in court but a man-in-the-middle attack against this thing could allow access to the email of the most powerful man in the world.

I would bet you that a details-oriented guy like Obama will probably keep just about any email he receives so one hacked Blackberry could lead to a treasure trove of national security information. He now carries a device that every Intelligence organization in the world would love to get a peek at just to see the top secret stuff it contains.

I mean Obama isn't some CEO but the head of the most powerful nation in the world. A guy follows him around with the nuclear football that can wipe out humanity for Pete's sake. I hope his network security people are up to the challenge because a hacked (or lost!) Blackberry could be this nations worst nightmare.

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