Why is President Obama's Blackberry such a big deal?

Chris Polette. I'm an editor at How Stuff Works, and sitting next to me has always his senior writer, Jonathan Strickland. Hey there, Yeah, did you uh did you get that message I sent you? Uh? You know, Um, I would have received it, but my smartphone was confiscated. I'm not allowed to have it anymore. Yeah, that was almost true of somebody else that Actually, everybody knows what we're talking about. Yeah, this cute segue stuff doesn't work well for us, does it.

So we're talking about our newly elected president in the United States, Barack Obama, who, as you may know, is something of a BlackBerry fan. Yeah. Okay. Admittedly, critics of President Obama and have talked about his celebrity status and how the media spends a lot of attention to it. And I admit I'm a little surprised by how many BlackBerry stories there have banned about whether or not he will be able to uh to keep the little machine that he has fallen so obsessively in love with, apparently

that he cannot leave it alone. Um but and and so when I was talking to Jonathan about what we wanted to do for the podcast, I thought, you know, we should talk about why this is actually a big deal, and you know why it matters whether or not he's allowed to keep the BlackBerry, right, you know, the times they are a changing. So we're talking right now about a president who was growing up around the whole technological revolution, to the point where you know, a lot of these

things are are things that he's very familiar with. That's that's new to us. You know, the presidents we've had in the past, you know, of course they were aware of the technology, but they didn't depend upon it while they were you know, rising up the ranks in the political system, so it wasn't so relevant to them personally. Obama,

it's a different story. So we're starting to see, we're already starting to see some clashes between Obama's new administration and the way things are traditionally run in d C. And the BlackBerry is a good example of that. So why would Obama have a problem keeping his BlackBerry as president? Well, this one actually is a lot less uh, technologically related as you might think. Um, it's actually more of a

national security matter. Yeah. And and when you think about it, if you know anything about how email works, um, you know that in general most of us send, you know, plain unencrypted emails from place to place, and they go from machine to machine, and anybody can get hold of him technically. I mean, if you're really trying to it's it's not easy to get hold of it. But if

you know what you're doing it, you can do it. Um. So the you know, the government agents are concerned that for in for an espionage experts might be able to get their hands on unencrypted emails until type scenario, and we'd have to call on Jack Bauer and he's definitely not the liberal type. And then there's that whole oh man, I just hit reply to all. Yeah, that would not be good if you're president of the United States and you're replying to you know, you don't. You don't want

something like that going out to everyone. But but even beyond that, there's an actual act that we have to keep in mind, which is the Presidential Records Act of nine. Now, this act says that that correspondence, official correspondence uh from the president that has to do with government matters is public record. You you know, anything you send out as president that involves the policy or government, that's public record, and it has to be uh. You know, the public

has to have access to it. The Freedom of Information Act also plays into this. So with that in mind, you can't you know, having an email if you send out a sensitive email to someone, you know, where's the line between the personal email and the this is in your capacity as president of the United States. Does this mean that someone has to read over every single email message you send and receive to determine whether or not

this is a matter of public record. Um. The answer to that, by the way, is yes, someone does have to look that over. Um and uh. And it's interesting because that was that was one of the reasons why actually that was the main reason why our our previous president w why he gave up email. In fact, it was actually and made the news that he gave up email.

He sent an email message out to his friends and said that essentially I'm paraphrasing here, but that he enjoyed having these uh conversations in cyberspace with everyone, but out of concern for this act, the Presidential Records Act, he had to quit using email because he didn't want anything to come to light that might be embarrassing for someone. Because he felt that the media were kind of uh scrutinizing him to a level where that would just be

a matter of time. It would just take you know, sooner or later there's gonna be some email message that would be shown to everyone in the world, and you know it could potentially be embarrassing, whether it was intentional or not. So uh, he famously gave up email. Now Obama seems to be of a different mind. He he really has embraced um cyberspace in a way that no other president has. That's true. Um, there was a lot of online marketing as far as his campaign strategy was concerned.

You know, he used Twitter or his campaign I should say. Obviously he was a little busy, Uh, I needed a little help with all these different media. But he had Twitter and email and all kinds of SMS, phone apps exactly. Um, so that that was sort of unprecedented to using uh new media to reach out to so many people during a campaign. And I think we'll probably see that from virtually every campaign at virtually every level going forward. Um and at least in the next few years, and maybe

not immediately. But and of course he he depends on his BlackBerry for more than just email. He uses it to stay connected to the outside world through things like reading up news articles and getting news in an unfiltered way. Um. I've heard it said that, you know, he he uses it so that he prevents himself from being caught in above where you know, information that gets to him just you know, it's just the information people want to get

to him. This way, he has a more direct connection to the outside world to to maintain that kind of uh perspective. And that that was interesting to me. So here we are, what's the status now, Well, it's kind of influx. We According to Robert Gibbs, who's the Press secretary, he says that Obama will get to keep his BlackBerry. Well maybe not his BlackBerry actually from what I from what I have read that it seems like there may be a possibility that he'll get to this is true.

There is his personal BlackBerry, which he uses basically to keep in touch with his friends and many senior staffers. UM and UH, you know that would probably be his BlackBerry. And then there's another machine that he mights to communicate more sensitive matters. But this can't be a standard BlackBerry, and there's a couple of reasons for that. Um. UH. The company that makes the BlackBerry Research in motion UH is located in Canada, which goes back to the national

security thing. A lot of their their servers, a lot of the messages go through their servers. Actually, I think all their messages go through the service, and that means if it's leaving the United States borders, um, that's a matter of some concern. But they don't know when those Canadians could have made but they do. They do offer a two fifty six bit encryption model some of their their their machines, and UM, I think there it's possible that they may be creating a custom UH encryption scheme

just for the president. However, there is another option too that he might get. Yes, actually there's a couple, but the one that the one that most people are I think more people have heard of than the other is the Sectara Edge from General from General Dynamics, and they make a lot of stuff on government contracts and really high tech you know technology stuff from from a lot of different kinds of environments, not just you know handheld

technology times. But the Sectara Edge is one of those that has been rated as being acceptable for top secret voice communications and uh SO and secret email and web browsing. So that would be very important from a national security standpoint. Um, it's if you've never seen a picture of this thing. It's not the sleekest handheld device you've ever seen. It's actually kind of chunky looking. Um not. The the aesthetics are not We're not as important as the how it worked.

I guess, well, you know, it doesn't have to be as long as it's secure, that's the word. But I mean, come on, have you seen Obama. The man has style. I'm just saying, all right, I'm just saying now, granted, okay, that limo little chunky, well true, but it's also an armored truck underneath there. You have a fair point. Um whatever machine ends up being the official handheld communication device that the President uses, Um, it's going to have to Anybody who receives an email from it is going to

have to have some kind of compatible encryption technology. And UH by that I mean, um, if you've read our article how encryption works. Uh, there will be a public key and a private key involved. So whoever uh President Obama sends a message to, he'll have to have the appropriate encryption key to send to them. Otherwise it's going to show up as gibberish on whatever device they used

to read it. Um, So it's going to be very thoroughly encrypted, and they will have to be the UM appropriate software installed on the receiving end in order to receive and decrypt it properly. Yeah, this is another good point. Um. One of the concerns people might have about any kind of portable device that connects to the Internet is that theoretically you could set it down and someone else could pick it up, and then they have access to everything

you've sent and everything that was sent to you. Now with the President, that's not as big a concern because he happens to have all these big burly secret service guys around him all the time, and they don't tend to let that happen, and he probably wouldn't, you know, say, leave it on the bus or it would not be likely, especially with the way he's treated his BlackBerry so far. I mean, if you've seen pictures, that thing seems to be in his hands pretty often. But beyond that, so yeah,

he he wouldn't. You wouldn't have to worry about him setting it down. But what about the people he sends messages to? So if he emails, you know, Joe Bob, and Joe Bob happens to put his phone down for five minutes, then turn around and it's gone. Well, now you've got a whole new issue on your hands. You can't put secret service agents around every single person that Obama may or may not send email messages to. That was one of the big, big barriers to the whole

BlackBerry issue in the first place. That's true, but um, you know that could that could go for virtually anyone else. I mean any other White House staffer or uh C i A or FBI agent you know there, or even someone who carries around a briefcase. I mean, we've had issues where uh government information has been taken the Los Alamos National Laboratory a few years ago when they had that laptop computer go missing. Um, you know, any anything like that, any form of information that can be actually

recorded in some way. Yeah, that's actually taken out of the building. That's a good into into what another thing I just wanted to touch on briefly, which was the state of technology in the White House when the Obama administration. That's right, that's right, because that was that also made the news again Obama's administration that the campaigners and everyone involved were used to this sort of high tech kind of approach to making contact with the public and keeping

in touch with each other. And so they come to the White House and then they find out there hardly any laptops in the White House. And again part of that is because it's easy too or fairly easy to abscond with a laptop, at least it's easier than a desktop. So hardly any laptops, No, Max Boy, that got a big response. Yeah, Apparently the the Obama campaign used Macintosh computers. And then they ended up you're trying to perpetuate that, aren't kinda um? And uh, they ended up on what

was it, Windows two thousand machines. They said that the Windows machines everything was running software that was at least six years out of date. One aid said that it was like going from an Xbox to an Atari. Well, you know, in their defense, I understand a little bit about where that's coming from, because, um, I worked for a very large company before I came to the house Stuff works, and we were using Even years after XP

came out, we were still using Windows two thousand. And the reason they were doing that was because everybody in this very large company was using Windows two thousand. It was running smoothly, They had the package exactly the way they wanted it, and there weren't any big hang ups with it. And I would imagine, especially in an environment where security is an issue and you have everything pretty much stabilized the way you like it, you know, kind

of loath to change the technology. You know, it totally makes sense because again, think about it this way. Hard copy information can be stolen, can be copied, all that kind of stuff, but you have to get into the physical location where that stuff is in order to do that. Right, So with electric communication you don't have to do that. You know, you can be you could be on the other side of the world and find a way into

an electronics system and intercept messages and things of that nature. So, you know, on the one hand, you're like, how can the United States of America, argue, would be the one of the most advanced countries on the face of the planet, how can it run its government using this old, out of date software. But on the other hand, you think, well, how safe would it be if they were using you know, brand new technology, would it? Would it really be prudent

to use that? Uh, considering that there are people out there who might be a little interested to know what's going on in the White House at any given time. But I do understand that they had, you know, all the ws on the keyboards, but they did have eight years to replace them after the Clinton White House staff removed all the WS when w got into the office. Yeah, wacky politicians. So yeah, I mean, it'll be interesting to see.

I'm kind of curious to see what the White House looks like from a technological point of view at the end of Obama's administration. I mean, will we see major updates to the software and the hardware, or will they choose to keep these what some people would call antiquated systems. Because there's a measure of security involved just by using those. Um, I don't, honestly, I don't know the answer to that. I would I would expect there'd be some kind of,

you know, area in between. I would imagine that, given what we've read about about the administration and the needs of the White House going forward, I would imagine that if you were are a security and electronic security expert at the n s A, your job is pretty safe. Probably. Yeah. I also don't think we'll be seeing Microsoft surfaces on

all the tables or anything like that anytime soon. So it's not heavily unless they're heavily encrypted, right, Yeah, So that you know, essentially you're just looking at blocks and you're like, I don't know what any of this is. Um, yeah, it'll be interesting. It'll be interesting. So, but it's a brand new world. I mean, we've got a president who, for the moment at least appears to to have the go ahead to use an electronic device to send email. Um,

that's new. We'll have to see how that plays out. Uh. You know, it might help Obama in the long run, because he'll be seen as someone who is very responsive and can stay in touch with the outside world and is not just kind of sequestered away, or it could come back to haunt all of us if the worst should happen. So time we'll have to tell. But uh, you know what, I've got something else we can talk about. I've got some listener mail. Really before we go into it,

I think we should thank our sponsor. Our sponsor that would be Audible, Yes, it would be so www dot audible podcast dot com slash tech stuff. If you sign up there, you get a free download. They have thousands and thousands of audio books in their in their library, and uh, there's some great stuff in there. So we thought we would recommend a couple of books. Chris, why

don't you recommend one that's true? Um, you know, no telling whether or not President Obama will be listening to audio books on his uh N S, a security enabled portable. I'm sure it's kind of the acronym, right, Um, But if you were going to use your free download and you were interested in finding out what makes President Obama tick, you might check out Dreams from My Father, a story

of race and inheritance. You know, it's it tells a lot about him growing up, and it's narrated by the President of the United States, so that that would be a good choice if you're interested in learning more about the person using the black period. Excellent, And I have a recommendation for what could go Seriously Seriously wrong with Technology? Okay, um, okay. So it's a horror novel. It's not real, but it's

sell by Stephen Keing narrated by Campbell Scott. So Cell is a story about a computer virus that people UH encounter on their cell phones that then causes them to go bunkers and start chopping each other up into tiny bits. So, um, hey, you know there's a there's a worst case scenario for you that would be interesting if that happened to the

com Yeah. Well, you could get either of these or one of fifty thousand more books for free by signing up at www dot Audible, podcast dot com, slash tech Stuff, and now listener mail. So this listener mail comes to us from Benjamin ivy Uh. In the interest of full disclosure, he and I have a Facebook past. Benjamin writes to us and says, last Christmas, I bought my brother several small gifts, a T shirt, used sci fi books, and his favorite snacks, rather than simply placing these items under

the tree. I took his GPS device and hid them all around our town. I gave him the coordinates to find the first gift. Each gift was placed in a bag along with the coordinates to find the next gift. It was super fun and made for a very memorable Christmas. To do this, I would recommend hiding them in not too public places yet still accessible from a car. Also, to keep track of the coordinates, you have to hide the last gift first and work backwards as you cash them. Um,

that's a great idea. It's very fun, very entertaining a couple of just tiny reminders. Um, if you're hiding them in a city, make sure you're not gonna put it someplace where people are going to freak out and think that you're putting a bomb there. Uh. You may need to get permission from someone to hide something someplace, And as he points out, don't put it into public a place or anyone could come by and pick it up. But I don't know what happened at make a pixel

digital camera back in the trash can over there. Yeah, you know it's funny because of scorn they picked up trash on Thursdays you have Wednesdays. Yeah, but thank you very much Benjamin for the email and for the suggestion. That's a great idea. I love the whole scavenger hunt thing. Very cool. Yeah, so if you guys want to write into us, you should definitely give it a give it

a go. We love getting that email. It's a podcast at how stuff works dot com And if you want to learn more about anything we've talked about, you can check out how stuff works dot com and we will talk to you again really soon. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com. Let us know what you think. Send an email to podcast at how stuff works dot com. Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you