BlackBerry BoldLike most folks in the beltway, President-elect Barack Obama is a Blackberry addict. Obama lives on his handheld, using the device to stay in touch with the “outside” world. With all the idle time sitting in a vehicle, transiting in helicopters and airplanes, a Blackberry is an essential device for staying in touch with everything from information to important people. Unfortunately for the President-elect, government lawyers are poised to issue an opinion may ultimately force Obama to give up the one habit he should be allowed to keep, even if such a policy is completely asinine!

Fortunately, Obama is fighting tooth and nail for the capability to continue mobile computing with his Blackberry. Visionaries like Obama often-times have to parlay these types of fights in an attempt to move forward – in this case, allowing a sitting president to do what has become all but commonplace today.

President-elect Barack Obama has yet to relent, but he conceded that he might be losing the battle to keep his independent lifeline to the outside world.

“I’m still clinging to my BlackBerry,” Mr. Obama said Wednesday. “They’re going to pry it out of my hands.”

According to government lawyers, allowing a sitting President to wield a Blackberry is problematic for a couple reasons. The first, and what should be the most important, is information security – email is a huge vulnerability and subject to far too many exploits, many of which the president is likely not aware. The second concern is the Presidential Records Act (PRA), which states all official White House correspondence will be available for public review – the public, not the president, owns these records. NY Times wrote the following in an article late last year:

But before he arrives at the White House, he will probably be forced to sign off. In addition to concerns about e-mail security, he faces the Presidential Records Act, which puts his correspondence in the official record and ultimately up for public review, and the threat of subpoenas. A decision has not been made on whether he could become the first e-mailing president, but aides said that seemed doubtful.

The PRA apprehension appears to stem from government lawyers apparent misunderstanding of how a Blackberry functions. A Blackberry is merely an extension of a Microsoft Outlook Inbox – in fact, the Blackberry Enterprise Server ties in to a corporate Exchange server. Email is stored on the server, which allows for it to be properly catalogued in accordance with the rules set forth in the PRA.

Forcing the President-elect to hand over his Blackberry is just plain asinine. While Blackberry’s are not free from hacking, they are very secure devices when security is not an afterthought – so long as security is implemented from the inception of the effort to add a Blackberry Enterprise Server, the risk can be low and manageable, rather than forcing users to give up devices they rely upon.

RIM has built a number of security mechanisms in to Blackberry’s, making it increasingly more difficult to retrieve data from a lost device. Implementing a strong password policy and screen-locking policy facilitates ensuring prying eyes will have to work pretty damn hard to get to the goods if the device is lost.

Turning on the built-in “content protection” is an additional security measure which can be used to protect the data on the handheld. This feature encrypts email, address book entries and other similarly sensitive data. Mere connecting a lost device to a hard drive for simple forensics is not so cut and dry – the data must be decrypted to be read.

Obama is fairly tech savvy, and definitely the most technically competent of any president the US has seen to-date. If it meant allowing him to keep his Blackberry, I am certain he would be willing to deal with the many security mechanisms designed to protect both the handheld and the president. After all, the governments top information technologists should be working in the White House, ensuring the Office of the President of the United States has the most secure network of any government network installed today. Certainly these people can dream up a viable solution for the President-elect!

Unfortunately, this is what our government has come to – we are more interested in cover your ass than providing solutions to tough problems. These lawyers should be looking for ways to allow Obama to keep his Blackberry rather than telling him he will not keep the handheld. Our government has turned soft and here we are, thank you very much.

I can only hope that Obama continues to fight the good fight. We are continually migrating to a mobile computing world, and it is increasingly more important that our government stay in-touch while mobile. This fight is for future presidents, to ensure they can continue to compute while away from the office.

And as an aside, we can hope that since Obama is an Apple fan the government will finally realize the utility Mac’s offer!