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Obama’s Inevitable Crackberry Withdrawal
Painful as it may be, Obama's going to have to kick this habit along with his cigarettes.
Let’s just agree that comparing the Obama campaign, and now the Obama transition, to Michael Ritchie’s 1972 film The Candidate is already a cliché, to be avoided in serious political commentary. But let’s make that agreement starting tomorrow, because, frankly, the comparison is just too delicious. Reading the coverage of the campaign, and the way the Obama team is now dropping back to Clinton veterans for the transition, you can just hear Obama’s mellifluous voice saying “But what do we do now?”
The most recent of those comes in the recent New York Times article “Lose the BlackBerry? Yes He Can, Maybe”. It seems that Obama, as well as having his documented issues with getting off tobacco, is a Blackberry addict. I sympathize: I’ve watched friends dealing with the “crackberry” problem — the sniveling, the nervous thumbs, the haunted look.
The problem? It’s not clear that email is consistent with the job and legal requirements of the commander in chief. One important reason is security: it is extremely difficult to securely transmit email, making sure it’s only received by the intended recipient, and it only gets worse when the email is transmitted over the air as it would be to a BlackBerry. There are encrypted military networks that are considered relatively secure, but the president, by definition, pretty well has “need to know” for anything, and constantly is synthesizing and deciding issues that may affect many different topics and areas. The technical term for this kind of message traffic, from the security standpoint, is “a nightmare.”
What’s more, it’s not just the content of his emails that can be revealing: as I discussed in my recent article about the security risks of using Twitter, there is another kind of intelligence gathering, called traffic analysis, in which the mere fact that a message is being transmitted can provide information to an adversary. (There is a famous example of traffic analysis that came out of Desert Storm, the first Iraqi campaign. It seems that as planning for the initial attack began, there were many late nights worked in the Pentagon. People forced to work late need food, and a common practice at the Pentagon was to order out for pizza. Some smart reporter realized this, and started paying the local Domino’s for information; when the demand for late night pizza surged, they had good reason to think that something was up.)
An interested foreign power might very well be able to tell a lot about what was happening, just by observing the number of messages the president sent during the course of a day.
What’s more, while BlackBerries do have encryption, the truth is they are not really very secure.
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Charlie Martin is a Colorado computer scientist and freelance writer. He holds an MS in Computer Science from Duke University, where he spent six years with the National Biomedical Simulation Resource, Duke University Medical Center. Find him at http://chasrmartin.com, and on his blog at http://explorations.chasrmartin.com.
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18 Comments
1. William Briggs:Charlie, the best thing I did in recent times was to give up my Blackberry. A more complete time waster does not exist. When it wasn’t buzzing, I was checking it to see why it wasn’t buzzing.
I now have a very dumb, plain cell phone. I also refuse now to use or pay for text messages. I have found actual phone calls are faster than texting, because sending or reading just one text is like trying to eat just one peanut.
Incidentally, as you know, in order to deny one aspect of traffic analysis, many crypto systems will send out a steady stream of traffic so that no down or up times can be discerned.
Just as one of the nurses in my office does, whose face I haven’t seen in a year, since it’s always bent over her Blackberry. Tap, tap, tap…
Nov 17, 2008 - 3:12 am 2. EA:Plus the Blackberry system relies on servers in a foreign country (Canada). All traffic passes through them.
Nov 17, 2008 - 3:58 am 3. Mike T:A lot of people in the military use them. They’re very popular among senior officers. I don’t see why Obama couldn’t use one for unclassified emails. I bet RIM would be more than happy to securely store copies of all White House unclassified emails and turn them over periodically to the federal government.
Nov 17, 2008 - 5:42 am 4. G-Ma:I hope he has serious withdrawal symtoms from the Blackberry and cigerettes.
Nov 17, 2008 - 6:02 am 5. Inevitable Withdrawal | Explorations:[...] new piece up at Pajamas Media. Posted by Charlie on Monday, November 17, 2008, at 07:05 (@670). Filed under [...]
Nov 17, 2008 - 6:05 am 6. Barsinister:Back in the 1960’s, I was part of an M.I. unit that specialized in communications intelligence. It is amazing how much can be learned from traffic even before cracking any encryption systems.
Nov 17, 2008 - 6:22 am 7. Ms. Attitude:As President of the United States won’t he be “connected” at all times in one way or another? I’ve never heard a news report about a president not being “found” or “informed”. He’s gonna have people for that!! He won’t have a use for a blackberry and he’ll be fine…I think he’s going to be busy…
Nov 17, 2008 - 7:11 am 8. Ratatosk:All of this is true to some extent. However, the Blackberry is one of the few systems which are considered ’secure’ by the US Government. Beyond the basic RIM network security, there are additional third party options, like PGP which would implement additional layers of message encryption from, say, a White House email server to the Blackberry RIM server on their network. Depending on the configuration Blackberries can be among the most secure mobile devices available on the market.
In addition, for anyone to monitor email traffic to a subscribed Blackberry, would require a major compromise of one of two networks, either the secured private network (in this case the White House likely), or compromise of the RIM network (which currently meets or exceeds all security requirements set forth by the DoD).
However, no one in their right mind needs access to email 24/7… now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to check my Blackberry.
Nov 17, 2008 - 7:18 am 9. Charlie (Colorado):… which currently meets or exceeds all security requirements set forth by the DoD.
Ratatosk, as someone who has architected secure systems for DoD, I’m quite positive this isn’t true. From looking at the RIM site, it appears the server is certified as FIPS 140-2, which is sufficient for “sensitive but unclassified” only.
Nov 17, 2008 - 7:55 am 10. doppelganglander:Maybe Obama could get a Fischer-Price toy Blackberry to keep his hands busy. I also know a site where you can order candy cigarettes. He’ll be just fine.
Nov 17, 2008 - 8:03 am 11. Ratatosk:Charlie,
Oh, yes… I should have made it clear that it was not secure for classified data! I’m speaking solely about sensitive data, or personal data (the sort of stuff that he would probably communicate via email). Sorry that my comment wasn’t as clear as it should have been
Nov 17, 2008 - 8:16 am 12. Ratatosk:Also, IIRC FIPS-140 is the encryption standard, rather than an overall assessment of their security posture. So FIPS-140 doesn’t discuss the security of RIM’s netowrk, but rather the encryption implementation that comes shipped with the Blackberry. RIM via 3rd party software can utilize higher grade encryption and additional security measures (like Kill Pills etc). The overall security posture of the RIM network, the RIM server etc. has been audited by the government and considered acceptable for non-classified information.
It’s been a minute since I reviewed the full standard for classified data, but I think as of 2003, any data that would be classified as Secret or higher can only exist on approved Trusted Systems, which exist on completely segregated networks. So there’s no way that RIM would meet those requirements.
So for anything that Obama COULD communicate via a non Trusted System, the Blackberry meets the criteria set forth.
Sorry if my first comment was a bit unclear.
Nov 17, 2008 - 8:28 am 13. glenn:Some years ago the company I worked for gave all the managers and supervisors pagers (remember those?)One of the senior managers, a wonderful old timer who knew just about everything about the company and was meticulous about communications with customers and other managers, when given his pager looked at it, said “Thats nice” put it in the top drawer of his desk and forgot about it. Same deal with cell phones. He finally got one, carried it around switched off and when asked why he couldn’t be reached said “I got this so I could call people, not so people could call me” He wasted no time on idle chatter and could do more work in an hour than most folks can do in a day.
Nov 17, 2008 - 9:49 am 14. Ms. Attitude:10. doppelganglander: You made me laugh…your comment reminded me of my oldest son when he wanted a pager. I told him no so he took the garage door opener and clipped it to his waist band!!
Nov 17, 2008 - 11:02 am 15. Susan Says:I say Obama should keep on keeping on with his Blackberry. All of the info that’ll be passing through it will come in handy when Obama is subpoenaed someday after the general population realizes it’s been duped by The One.
Nov 17, 2008 - 2:23 pm 16. Paul_Unalaska:I’m glad you’d mentioned PE Obama’s smoking.
Men’s Health magazine had PE Obama on their November cover. A magazine which shows individuals epitomizing health, fitness, etc., on their cover has PE Obama!
I’d written my displeasure in this magazine, pandering to politics and playing up a candidate. Below is my displeasure and less-than-impressive response.
Miss or Sir,
Hello. Being a dedicated reader to your magazine I was offended by your Sen. Barack Obama cover.
Your other covers show individuals who epitomize healthy lifestyles/living.
What WAS nice about Men’s Health is you steered away from political leanings, agendas.
Sen. Obama is a 47 year old politician. A smoker, an individual who was never a stand out or part of organized team sports for that matter. I spent half my 33 years in Colorado and am still a decent surfer.
Sen. Obama spent a majority of his life in Indonesia, Hawaii. He was recently photographed “Body surfing”. The same things 10 year old kids from the Midwest do when on vacation at the beach. A real “talent”.
Furthermore, Sen. Obama is a former cocaine addict.
George W. Bush is also a former cocaine addict though is still able to run a 7 minute mile. Perhaps he should be on your next front cover (insert sarc).
Again, your breaking your own rules for political
pandering is very disappointing. I’ll no longer be a reader/subscriber to your magazine.
Thank you.
On Mon, 11/3/08, ReaderService wrote:
From: ReaderService
Subject: Men’s Health: Obama cover
To:
Date: Monday, November 3, 2008, 7:45 PM
To our readers:
In the weeks since the November issue of Men’s Health hit mailboxes and newsstands, there has been an extraordinary outpouring of mail concerning our choice for the cover: Barack Obama. Some of you were excited to see a man you admired, some were grateful to learn about the presidential candidate from an MH perspective, and some of you felt betrayed by what you saw as a politically charged choice for the cover of your generally a-political magazine. Our selection of Senator Obama for the cover was based on two things:
1) he’s a man in the public eye, and worthy of a profile in Men’s Health, and
2) he’s a man squarely in our readers’ demographic who embodies many of the health, fitness, and success practices this magazine espouses.
So, in placing him on our cover, we were endorsing a lifestyle, and a record of achievement, not necessarily a candidate. That choice, ultimately, is every voter’s, alone. But as the profile clearly states, you don’t have to vote for Barack Obama the politician to learn something from Barack Obama the man. If you don’t agree with that choice, we invite you to enjoy the other 206 pages in the magazine, and take the usual measure of “useful stuff” from them. If we’ve caused you grief, our apologies. That’s not our usual approach to reader service. The December issue, we pledge, will be quite Obama-free.
Best regards,
The Editors of Men’s Health
I do appreciate your response though I still will not be reading Men’s Health in the future.
Your piece on Obama is a fluff piece. It’s too bad you didn’t inquire as to why Sen. Obama chose to go back to his hotel and work out rather than meeting/shaking hands with Iraqi troops. I believe that’s “45 minutes” he could’ve put to better use!
You went as far as to put in bold, “20 Heroes of Health & Fitness”. Mentioning Sen. Obama in the same sentence as Tiger Woods, Lance Armstrong. Uhmmm, yeah. O.K.
Sen. Obama is “worthy” of a profile in Men’s Health. Why? How? The guy can’t even bowl!
1 of the reasons you’ve stated below in having Sen. Obama as your cover was for “Endorsing a candidate”, err, I meant his, “lifestyle”.
In endorsing “the man”, why hadn’t the picture been of Sen. Obama in workout clothing? Doing reps. Running. Something. Instead the guy was in a shirt & tie. Hmmm. Interesting look for a cover person of a health and fitness magazine.
Men’s Health has been around for 20 years now. Why hadn’t you approached more worthy faces in the spotlight? Television actor, now deceased Eddie Albert. Mr. Albert had an incredible workout regimen well into his late 80’s.
If wanting the “Presidential” treatment, the late Pres. Gerald Ford was in phenomenal shape into his latter years. He’d been a fantastic high school and college multi-sport athlete who was pirsued by a couple professional sports organizations.
What about JC Watts? A businessman, former Oklahoma politician and CFL player. His resume reads A LOT thicker than Sen. Obama’s and has been able to keep the same job for greater than 4 years, again surpassing Sen. Obama’s ‘accomplishments’.
Barack Obama is a smoker. Former cocaine addict. Either one of these addiction’s shouldn’t “Embody” your cover. Then again, Men’s Health is apparently buying into the “Change” mantra as well..
Nov 17, 2008 - 3:03 pm 17. somercet:Paul_Unalaska: Good points, but lest we forget: George H.W. Bush golfs, jogged well into his sixties, tandem skydived from 13,000′ at the age of 80, and caught a 134-lb. tarpon at 83!
Coverboy, my butt: he deserves his own special issue!
Nov 18, 2008 - 5:04 am 18. Paul_Unalaska:somercet: Off topic, one of my favorite books is Maugham’s, ‘The Razor’s Edge’. For an odd reason I prefer Bill Murray’s take on the big screen rather than the earlier released movie. I digress.
George H.W. Bush is a phenomenal person. What a life he’s leading. Nonetheless, Men’s Health stunned me. It’s similiar to having ‘Erkyl’ on the cover.
I’m a reading junkie and am most disappointed to see hype overcome substance, even in that arena.
Nov 19, 2008 - 12:03 pm