I will be amused if he has to give up his Blackberry. Bush used his power to indefinitely detain and torture people he didn't like -- in a military base in another country... then we complain about Obama wanting to be more productive and send e-mail?
Anyway, I assume Windows Mobile (or Android) will be just as good for him? The government can setup their monitoring server, and he can IMAP from that. In fact, I will set this up and maintain it for free, just because I'm such a nice guy. (I should tweet this -- he follows me on Twitter ;)
1 All his private mail exchanges will be archived.
2 Third parties listening on the wire (security breach or PR scandal.)
3 Potential PR disclosure scandal by someone who had a conversation with him (Lewinsky, anyone?)
He can diminish the amount of personal talks to deal with problem 1 (e.g. something he'd say to his wife.) Having encrypted client server conversation doesn't completely fix 2, doing PGP-style encryption mostly would do (there is still the issue of PDA security, usually it's not good.) But that would make problem 3 even worse as the valid 3rd party can now show the message(s) cryptographically signed by Obama.
This last bit can be addressed with Off-the-Record cryptography as it offers plausible deniability. http://www.cypherpunks.ca/otr/ But the third parties should have to have a compatible client (that could be a nice filter for randoms :)
Anyway, the NSA can sure give him a PDA-based system better than Blackberry + Exchange, with all that and maybe more.
"Bush used his power to indefinitely detain and torture people he didn't like"
That is not true. Bush himself neither detained nor tortured anyone. Bush is not The Bush Administration, so that example is invalid as it pertains to Obama and him being forced to give up email.
Comments
I will be amused if he has to give up his Blackberry. Bush used his power to indefinitely detain and torture people he didn't like -- in a military base in another country... then we complain about Obama wanting to be more productive and send e-mail?
Anyway, I assume Windows Mobile (or Android) will be just as good for him? The government can setup their monitoring server, and he can IMAP from that. In fact, I will set this up and maintain it for free, just because I'm such a nice guy. (I should tweet this -- he follows me on Twitter ;)
Don't Blackberries typically connect to an Exchange server? It's trivial to document/archive them, I think its more the invasion of privacy.
From TA, Obama faces three problems.
He can diminish the amount of personal talks to deal with problem 1 (e.g. something he'd say to his wife.) Having encrypted client server conversation doesn't completely fix 2, doing PGP-style encryption mostly would do (there is still the issue of PDA security, usually it's not good.) But that would make problem 3 even worse as the valid 3rd party can now show the message(s) cryptographically signed by Obama.This last bit can be addressed with Off-the-Record cryptography as it offers plausible deniability. http://www.cypherpunks.ca/otr/ But the third parties should have to have a compatible client (that could be a nice filter for randoms :)
Anyway, the NSA can sure give him a PDA-based system better than Blackberry + Exchange, with all that and maybe more.
"Bush used his power to indefinitely detain and torture people he didn't like"
That is not true. Bush himself neither detained nor tortured anyone. Bush is not The Bush Administration, so that example is invalid as it pertains to Obama and him being forced to give up email.