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Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Obama's new BlackBerry: The NSA's secure PDA? | Tech News on ZDNet

Obama's new BlackBerry: The NSA's secure PDA?
Bill Clinton sent only two e-mail messages as president and has yet to
pick up the habit. George W. Bush ceased using e-mail in January 2001
but has said he's looking forward to e-mailing "my buddies" after
leaving Washington, D.C.

Barack Obama, though, is a serious e-mail addict. "I'm still clinging to
my BlackBerry," he said in a recent interview with CNBC. "They're going
to pry it out of my hands."

One reason to curb presidential BlackBerrying is the possibility of
eavesdropping by hackers and other digital snoops. While Research In
Motion offers encryption, the U.S. government has stricter requirements
for communications security.

"Without more details I would have to say that putting sensitive or
classified information on a BlackBerry is a risky proposition," said
Greg Shipley, chief technology officer at Neohapsis, a governance, risk,
and compliance consultancy.

Fortunately for an enthusiastic e-mailer-in-chief, some handheld devices
have been officially blessed as secure enough to handle even classified
documents, e-mail, and Web browsing. (Read More)...

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9595_22-262060.html

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