David Flynn26 April 2009, 11:00 AM
The US President will soon get a new high-security BlackBerry, but it still won’t let him stay in touch with the people...
On the campaign trail and during the transition into government, President Obama became the BlackBerry’s biggest unpaid advocate.
The gadget-loving Geek-in-Chief – who listed one of his own worst habits as constantly checking his BlackBerry and admits to being a fan of Spiderman and Star Trek – saw the smartphone as one way “to break through the isolation and the bubble that exists around the President” and keep in touch with the world beyond the Oval Office. “They’re going to pry it out of my hands” Obama said of his BlackBerry.
Obama became a famously constant user of his BlackBerry while on the campaign trail
While Obama got to hang onto his BlackBerry despite concerns of the National Security Agency and White House legal counsel, it wasn’t quite the solution he’d hoped for. While the NSA boffins worked with RIM on securing the Presidential smartphone, Obama had to make do with the cumbersome workaround of hooking up his BlackBerry to a chunky NSA-supplied smartphone known as the Sectera Edge.
That’s set to change, according to
The Washington Times, with Obama soon to take delivery of a customised BlackBerry 8830 running special encryption software developed by a Washington DC company in concert with RIM. The software apparently scrambles phone calls, emails and text messages to the highest possible level required by the NSA.
But there’s a downside – the Presidential BlackBerry can be used only to communicate with other BlackBerrys running the same encryption software. That circle is likely to include Obama’s most senior West Wing advisors as well as the first family, but it will still prevent Obama from keeping in touch with the masses.
“It's not just the flow of information,” Obama said in the recent interview. “I can get somebody to print out clips for me, and I can read newspapers. What it has to do with is having mechanisms where you are interacting with people who are outside of the White House in a meaningful way.”
“And I've got to look for every opportunity to do that – ways that aren't scripted, ways that aren't controlled, ways where, you know, people aren't just complimenting you or standing up when you enter into a room, ways of staying grounded.”