Barack Obama has won the battle of the BlackBerry.
The president will be allowed to use his BlackBerry “to stay in touch with senior staff and a small group of personal friends,” White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said. “The use will be limited and the security enhanced.”
The decision was a compromise between Obama – who earlier this month told the New York Times “I’m still fighting” to hold on to the BlackBerry – and Secret Service protectors and government lawyers who voiced security concerns, Gibbs said. The spokesman declined to discuss specific security features or outline usage constraints.
Research In Motion Ltd., which has long dominated the mobile e-mail space, is widely praised for the security features of its BlackBerry, which uses RIM’s Elliptic Curve Cyptography encryption technology. Government personnel had expressed concerns not just about messaging security, though, but also about GPS information that can pinpoint the location of the device within feet.
Legal, political concerns
Just as importantly, the president must deal with a tangle of issues CEOs never have to worry about, according to Joe Hagin, who as George W. Bush’s deputy chief of staff helped craft White House policies regarding the use of wireless devices.
“The president’s particular issue goes beyond a technical issue,” explained Hagin, who now serves on the board of SMobile Systems, a Columbus, Ohio-based developer of mobile security software. “In addition to the technical challenges, you have a legal and political issue, which are tougher to solve. On the legal side you have records-management policies in place. Every one of those e-mails he sends on that BlackBerry becomes a presidential record.”
Which can be especially problematic, Hagin said, if Obama receives those e-mails directly. Even an unsolicited message can become subject to those policies once it hits the president’s eyes under the Presidential Records Act, meaning an e-mail from a lunatic can easily become a legal headache – and, potentially, a public-relations nightmare.
“That stuff is usually weeded out by the staff; the controversial stuff is not winding up on the president’s desk,” Hagin continued. “But when the president is sitting there with a BlackBerry, there is no filter. It goes right to his eyes. And that’s when it goes from a technical issue to a legal issue.”
And while there are “narrow exceptions” for personal communications, Gibbs said, “the presumption from (White House Counsel Gregory Craig) is that they will be subject to the Presidential Records Act.”
$3,350 alternative
Sectera Edge
Given the constraints placed on his BlackBerry, it’s possible Obama will also carry one of the very few mobile devices cleared by the National Security Agency. Industry insiders have predicted he may use the Sectera Edge, a $3,350 smartphone manufactured by government contractor General Dynamics.
Regardless of the ultra-high-level ramifications, though, the tug-of-war over Obama’s beloved BlackBerry highlights a mobile security space that is sure to heat up as smartphones gain market-share. While the industry has long been overhyped by companies looking to use scare tactics to sell their wares, hackers and other nefarious types are sure to expand their focus beyond PCs as phones are increasingly used as on-the-go computers.
The problem, according to those in the mobile-security segment, is one of education on the part of the user and IT departments. The tools are there to address the overwhelming number of security threats, some developers say, but most people don’t know they exist – or that they may be necessary. And the answer isn’t for business types to limit the use of their smartphones, SMobile CTO Dan Hoffman said.
“It’s the balance between productivity and security, and that very much is a balance,” Hoffman opined regarding Obama’s struggle to hold on to his BlackBerry. “People run across it every day, and this is not different. It’s just a little bit more high-profile.”
Washington bureau chief Jeffrey Silva contributed to this article.
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Transcript of the BlackBerry discussion during the White House press conference
(Click here for a video of the full press conference)
MR. GIBBS: 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 that the security is enhanced to ensure his ability to communicate, but to do so effectively and to do so in a way that is protected.
Q Are records kept?
Q Will the records be kept?
MR. GIBBS: The presumption regarding those emails are that they’re all subject to the Presidential Records Act. There are, as you know, some narrow exemptions in the Presidential Records Act to afford for strictly personal communications. But, again, the presumption from the Counsel’s Office is that they will be subject to the Presidential Records Act —
Q — hacker in Russia and China is already at work. (Laughter.)
MR. GIBBS: That’s why I didn’t give the email address.
Q Are you trying to wean him off of it? (Laughter.)
MR. GIBBS: Nobody can do that. I think he believes that — he believes it’s a way of keeping in touch with folks, a way of doing it outside of getting stuck in a bubble.
I’ve gotten emails from him — not recently, or not in a few days, I should say — that go from anywhere from something that’s very strictly business to “Why did my football team perform so miserably” on either any given Saturday or any given Sunday.
So I think he finds it as an important way to continue to communicate. There’s a process by which people that have access to the email will be briefed before anything like that can happen.
Q How specifically will this be allowed to be used? I mean, will all members of his senior staff be able to email him? And how will you keep a proper chain of command and chain of communication with him? Who can email him and who can’t?
MR. GIBBS: Well, I’m not going to get into all those specifics, for obvious reasons. But a limited group of senior staffers and some personal friends — it’s a pretty small group of people —
Q Can you put a rough number on it?
MR. GIBBS: Let me get some guidance from the Counsel’s Office before I do something like that, so that the hackers that Bill has instructed won’t start. (Laughter.)
