Obama will get an NSA enhanced blackberry
marcambinder.theatlantic.com
marcambinder.theatlantic.com
Whoa. Someone needs coffee before writing their blog posts. Does not parse.
At least some people are writing papers about them.
Here are some considerations to pull inter-government communication out of the last century:
http://www.jabber.org/web/Main_Page
as for the super secret nsa approved barakberry - me wants one, precious!
Oh, and they sell for something like $10,000.
As far as maintaining proper records of who has which device, I say "bravo!" Just like stolen and lost laptops fueled much of the last 5-6 years' ID theft fears, I think mis-appropriated mobile devices will cause a whole lot of people a whole lot of stress as more and more critical information finds its way into pockets and purses.
BTW, as I recall, most of Uncle Sam's krypto is 40-bit symmetric based on algorithms that predate Diffie-Hellman. They still have couriers carry the keys on specially made (aka, archaic) tape drives from point to point under two-man integrity and hand-cuff the briefcase to the courier. So Dr Strangelove. Skype is be better than that. A lot better. Here's a starting point if you want to find out about mil crypto. Check out the KY series, especially KY-58, 68, and 90, as I recall. A more complete listing here http://hereford.ampr.org/millist/m25.html
As to Niels, I wish I was sarcastic, but I wasn't making any of it up. They are 'considered' munitions, and are treated as such, but really, it's just a matter of what happens if the phone got into the wrong hands. They do have a remote kill feature, but that incurs delay, and isn't foolproof.
As for the proprietary tapes, that may be true at some agencies, but I've only seen Travan tapes in use in practice.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=365948 (one of many)
Spy Master http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/01/21/080121fa_fact_... A worthwhile long read.
From 1992 to 1996, McConnell served as Director of the National Security Agency (NSA). He
led NSA as it adapted to the multi-polar threats brought about by the end of the Cold War.I wouldn't be surprised if it's a regular BlackBerry with modified software.