

Obama will get an NSA enhanced blackberry - vaksel
http://marcambinder.theatlantic.com/archives/2009/01/obama_will_get_his_blackberry.php

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eli
_On Monday, a government agency that the Obama administration -- but that is
probably the National Security Agency -- added to a standard blackberry a
super-encryption package.... and Obama WILL be able to use it ... still for
routine and personal messages._

Whoa. Someone needs coffee before writing their blog posts. Does not parse.

~~~
Hexstream
You should apt-get install probabilistic-parser. (do probabilistic parsers
exist by the way?)

~~~
gecko
Yes, actually. Perl uses one to handle cases of ambiguous syntax, where it's
possible to "guess" the correct parse quite reliably from the surrounding
context, but it's impossible to infer the true meaning simply by looking at
the line by itself. (Thankfully, this technique is rare if you're writing
clean code, and as far as I know, it's gone from Perl 6.)

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siculars
"Obama and other officials won't be able to use Instant Messaging in the White
House."

Here are some considerations to pull inter-government communication out of the
last century:

<https://www.yammer.com/>

<http://www.adiumx.com/>

<http://www.jabber.org/web/Main_Page>

as for the super secret nsa approved barakberry - me wants one, precious!

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bmelton
They're considered munitions by government employees, because of the
encryption keys they're loaded with. Government employees have to 'check them
in' and out like their service weapon, and aside from the encryption, don't
really do anything special.

Oh, and they sell for something like $10,000.

~~~
rcoder
Do you have a source for this? I'm genuinely curious, since I thought the
"crypto == munitions" policies all died off years ago.

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.

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niels_olson
let me help you with that, I think he was missing one of these: </sarcasm>

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>

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alecco
Yeah, it was coming. I hope the Obama administration changes NSA from being
the cradle of evil to something useful.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=365948> (one of many)

Spy Master
[http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/01/21/080121fa_fact_...](http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/01/21/080121fa_fact_wright?currentPage=all)
A worthwhile long read.

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graywh
I think you've got the NSA confused with the TSA or CIA.

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alecco
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Michael_McConnell>

    
    
      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.

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teehee
I'm surprised I haven't seen blackberry capitalizing on such a prominent
spokesman in their advertising.

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paulgb
Is Blackberry being genericized to mean a smart-phone? The General Dynamics
device doesn't look like a modified RIM product.

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blogimus
Only if RIM is unsuccessful at preventing trademark dilution (like Kleenex and
Walkman). If you're interested in reading on trademark dilution, I found that
Wikipedia has a link to this source at Boston University School of Law:
[http://www.bu.edu/law/central/jd/organizations/journals/scit...](http://www.bu.edu/law/central/jd/organizations/journals/scitech/volume122/documents/Simon_WEB_000.pdf)

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mhartl
I can't tell if the source is credible. It doesn't help that the article fails
to spell "BlackBerry" correctly even once.

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andr
But... will it blend?

~~~
siculars
yes.

