5 ms·
Check your timelines. Obama was elected in 2008, and BlackBerry was the dominant player in the market at that point. Also, he DID swap out his phone for a secu
by zacharycohn 8y ago
Check your timelines. Obama was elected in 2008, and BlackBerry was the dominant player in the market at that point.
Also, he DID swap out his phone for a secured one, and his staff instituted a number of security protocols to keep it secure.
- warent 8y agoAs an aside: wow that timeline makes me feel really old
- scruple 8y agoYeah, I had the same reaction. This sort of stuff makes me _feel old_. But I'm not actually "old," so what gives?
- fapjacks 8y agoThat's the trap, and Seneca wrote some compelling stuff about recognizing the trap and avoiding it. It is aptly titled "On the Shortness of Life"...
- scruple 8y agoThanks for that. I had come across some of Seneca's writing before, while researching / reading about Stoicism, but hadn't come across this specific text, that I recall.
- int_19h 8y agoHow about the part where we're further away from Win7 in time, than Win7 was from WinXP? It'll be 10 years since Win7 RTM next year!
- boomboomsubban 8y agoA dominant player, yet Obama needed a special highly modified version to securely access the White House network. A huge amount of work to keep using what he was comfortable with.
- steve_musk 8y agoWas there another smartphone platform he could have used at the time that would have been less work to secure? A secure smartphone for the President seems well worth the effort.
- beojan 8y agoBlackBerry was probably the closest, and I expect they already knew what modifications to make.
- boomboomsubban 8y agoI don't know what their preferred phone was at the time, but they were unwilling to go through the same effort for the Secretary of State, instead offering her a choice of non-BlackBerry phones.
- akhilcacharya 8y agoWhich is absurd, a SOS is mobile far more than a President by nature.
- fapjacks 8y agoI think the importance of this cannot be understated. The Secretary of State is a nexus of not only extremely sensitive information, but of extremely sensitive information in motion which is also in overseas locations more often than not. If I were into tradecraft, I'd be much more likely to target the Secretary of State than the President for access to (relevant, valuable) sensitive information.
- willstrafach 8y agoThis is likely because his modified BlackBerry was a one-off project suited to his security requirements. My understanding is that internal hardware was removed/shielded, and I assume software modifications were made as well, like only connecting to specific cellular base stations (such as the one in his official vehicle).