President Obama will hold onto his Blackberry for personal communication but anything government related that is considered classified will probably be handled on the Sectera Edge. We published some pictures of the General Dynamics device when we broke the news ’bout Obama’s Blackberry plans last week, but CNN got a short video demo explaining the devices capabilities; yes, they do demo the classified button. Only time will tell if Obama actually carries both devices though.
via textually
Honestly, I can see this blackberry become troublesome. It’s bound to get hacked one day.
If you want to see a cool inauguration photo check this out… Not spam, just really cool – http://www.davidbergman.net/blog/2009/01/22/how-i-made-a-1474-megapixel-photo-during-president-obamas-inaugural-address/
EVERYONE needs a Blackberry OR Smart Phone nowadays, no question about that.
he doesn’t need that thing. he’s got like hundreds of assistant around him. snapping finger is all he needs!
is this what my taxes pay for?
And to bail out banks!
You are worried about $3,300 device?
It is definitely better than Laura Bush’s $550,000 china that she bought 3 weeks ago.
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Politics/Story?id=6593323&page=1
The china was paid for by a private foundation, just like Hillary Clinton’s paid by the same foundation. Don’t do a drive-by, get the facts right next time. Government spending should not be a partisan issue. For those who work, who grow tired of seeing %30+ of their hard earned money should join together and hold our elected officials accountable for domestic and international spending. We need another party people!!!
Yes, that is exactly what it pays for. Don’t start a useless rant about how you don’t want to pay taxes for that bla bla bla. You have to pay taxes regardless of what it is spent on and quite frankly, this isn’t a bad investment. Smartphones are extremely useful and its good to see a president that is keeping up with technology. He is setting the path for his predecessors to follow, engaging technology and leveraging it to better perform his duties.
yes, your taxes pay for it. and your contribution is about .00000000001 cents. quit whining.
Hrm, compared to bailing out the financial and auto industries plus footing the bill for Iraq… this gadget is a bargain.
twit
its called the barackberry!!!!
I completely agree with Adrian
I think it’s great to have a president who is tech-savvy, but it’s true, any device is bound to get hacked eventually.
I think it is irresponsible for government at the president level to use any such devices. Not only the actual device can get hacked, but it provides a way to track the individual carrying it.
Right. Very Irresponsible. I think they should return to using telegrams and typewriters.
You might still be able to find some if you go to White House now.
It is the President for goodness sake. If we can build satellite guiding missiles and unmanned planes, I am pretty sure they have figured out how to build secure portable devices.
Most likely the previous President didn’t even know such devices existed and that could be the reason why no one even tried introducing these devices to him.
Sure, i believe you that any device can be hacked, but since I’m not the president, how much should any one of us worry about it. do we all need to demand better security on our smartphones. I don’t even know what security is in place. The new http://www.justaskgemalto.com site puts some of it in perspective … what do you think?
the messiah phone!
Why is everyone calling this a blackberry when it clearly isn’t?
From what I saw, the president wasn’t able to keep his blackberry, but he is allowed to use a smartphone pda.
No one is calling the “secure” device from General Dynamics a blackberry. If you read the article properly, you’ll see that they are talking about him having two devices.
1. A blackberry that has been updated with security features and an address only known by a few people.
2. And a secure “NSA Approved” device for dealing with Secret and Top Secret level information.
actually, in the news report they said the “blackberry” brand many times billy.
I was wondering the same thing. Has General Dynamics licensed blackberry’s encryption technology and OS? or what is this running?
I found this video of Jim Cramer interviewing Eric Schmidt about the economy and the job market, pretty good interview:
http://equedia.com/blog/view.php/Jim-Cramer-Talks-to-Eric-Schmidt-about-the-Skyrocketing-Rate-of-Unemployment-and-Our-Economy
It’s a win moble phone…
I’m glad he gets to keep his device. I think he should be able to as long as they are just private conversations that aren’t too serious, just in case it gets hacked.
I mean why not, after all we are still supporting all these living Presidents. Like paying Clinton’s cable bill!
To people’s objections,
Most information is supposed to be able to had by the people according to the Presidential Records Act of 1978. And truthfully I think that some things the people in the Bush administration did was in violation of that act. So it really wouldn’t be a big deal if most of the information got out, just potentially embarrassing depending on what it is. But most of this stuff should be known to the public. Especially with Obama’s promise of a transparent government.
But I’m also assuming most important actual classified things would still be conducted through the usual channels of meetings, phone calls, and paper (which then would still be archived). I don’t think Obama will be texting, “Busy planning secret plan to bomb Iran, BRB :-D”
Everyone seems to be going crazy assuming he will lay in bed and write his documents on the PDA or updating twitter with his current strategy against terrorism down to the T. He is the President of the United States. I am confident that he is intelligent enough to 1. Know what he shouldn’t do on a mobile phone and 2. Still use the traditional ways of conducting his presidential tasks (meetings, calls, top-secret mail, etc). Stop the useless and unjustified complaints already.
I love the twitter part :))
The first website to get his email device sniped by the dev team.
can anyone pls tell me, why i cant see / watch (actually see) the videos on TC?
I was actually wondering why BlackBerry didn’t spend some time putting together a special device just for the president. Make some changes to the OS, add an extra security layer, or maybe even some hardware changes, etc.
One of the problems with any solution is that if somebody can buy the same device, then they can learn about the functionality and figure out how to hack it.
I can’t imagine trying to hack something when I can’t get any sort of I/O from it.
RIM has its headquarters in Canada.
why would there be a “top secret” section to the phone…whats he trying to hide?
Jesus, what a grouping of bitchesk like whinners. Give the man a week before judging. He can’t possibly fuck the world up as badly as Bush did. Shit, even if he tried he couldn’t pull it off.
*Yes we can – yes we did ;-) suckit
The Chosen One won’t be so Shiny & Messianic about 4 years from now. Infact, I’m sure he’ll start to resemble Bush more and more as he’s forced to make hard decisions, and realizes Campaign Promises made to appease hard-line liberal bloggers aren’t always so easy to keep.
If given an absolute Carte Blanche, he could inflict every bit the same damage, Robert.
*Yes he could – Yes he will >_<
Oh, and as much as I didn’t, nor could ever vote for Obama, I say let him have his Suped up Gadgets. So long as those upstanding citizens he releases from Gitmo don’t end up being my next door neighbors. Perhaps you’d prefer them.
Yes, because the first thing a person released from gitmo will undoubtedly do is move into your neighborhood and attempt to kill you.
Honestly, some people’s kids…
Secret websites?? Like pron?
Totally ridiculous!!!! Risking top secret info so he can ‘be in touch’! He is the fucking president, use secure land lines and aids. Fuck Obama.
It’s good that he’s keeping the blackberry for personal communication. I mean, c’mon, just cause he’s the president doesn’t mean he can’t keep in touch with his friends.
All of you whiners just shut up already. Seriously.
Why are most people so stupid? And they all blab there effing heads off about things they know nothing about.
Do you really think his PDA isn’t secure? Or that a landline is more secure? The NSA has stuff we’ll never know about, and I’m sure the encryption on the top dogs PDA is basically unhackable.
Saying that anything is hackable is like saying, put an infinite number of monkeys at an infinite number of keyboards for an infinite amount of time and one of them will eventually type “War and Peace”.
Get real…..
Unhackable. Yeah right. That is impossible. Maybe you all haven’t heard about the sum of security breaches we have had over the past decade from other countries hacking groups. China even allows hackers to be put on the government payroll if they will go try against us. so this system probably will be hackable by April.