Obama BlackBerry fuss finally at an end

 

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By Stuart Turton

Posted on 23 Jan 2009 at 09:09

Everyone can rest easy as the White House confirms that President Obama will be allowed to keep his BlackBerry while in office.

"The President has a BlackBerry through a compromise that allows him to stay in touch with senior staff and a small group of personal friends in a way that use will be limited and the security is enhanced to ensure his ability to communicate, but to do so effectively and to do so in a way that's protected," announced the president's press secretary Robert Gibbs.

The will he/won't he saga has been rolling on ever since it was noted that Obama's beloved BlackBerry wasn't on the Secret Service's approved handset list.

This led to some consternation in the intelligence community that the device might become an information leak for nefarious parties.

Among the compromises mentioned by Gibb, the BlackBerry will be fitted out with a "super encryption" package from one of the US's shady intelligence agencies. The data on it will also become subject to the Presidential Records Act.

The BlackBerry compromise is seen as yet another part of Obama's technology revolution, which has seen him promise to make the business of government more transparent through greater use of the White House website. This first stage of this has seen staffers reduce the list of non-searchable terms on the White House website from 2377 lines to two.

The team's also created a Whitehouse.gov blog that will act as a record of events, speeches and decisions.

Xbox to Atari

Obama's staff were reportedly appalled to discover the state of the White House's technology upon taking residence, with spokesman Bill Burton describing it as "like going from an Xbox to an Atari." Chief among their complaints were an absence of Macs, and PCs running six-year-old versions of Microsoft software.

Staff were also surprised they couldn't access Facebook or instant messaging programs, though given the state of the global economy, a little focus probably isn't a bad thing.