The Barackberry

Obama plans to make government "open". Even though he's populated his cabinet with insiders and people who are commonly believed to be tied to the lobbyist industry. In fact, the director of the CIA is well known in DC as the lobbyist's pal. Thats an acronym, by the way. And it doesn't mean "Personal Antelope Licker" either.

What doesn't come as a surprise is that President Barack Obama wants to get more work done out of the office. Thus. He's going to get a cellphone. Wow. Imagine. Government actually using something that helps you work.

What could possibly be a part of that phone, to warrant its pricetage of $3,350..? expense? First, I don't know I am just going to guess. Here's my idea of how the thing could work.

First, you have to have solid encryption. That means dual key. This won't be a phone that any local yokle can call. It will be a phone that encrypts and decrypts on the fly, with NSA level encryption standards (and we won't know what they are, but lets bet they are 512 bit keys). If you pick up a cellphone from your local provider, and try to call this phone, you won't get the endpoint answering. It will answer to a midstation and the call will be processed forward. Your endpoint will never connect to his because you don't have the key.

Then, it will have to be outside of the public Antenna footprint. That is, he won't be roaming on the network that we use (or complain about). He'll be out there on the closed military satellite networks that probably don't get as good of a reception (thus, you have signal hardware in this thing - probably the most expensive part of the phone). This is not a cellphone, its a satellite phone.

There will be no GPS transponder in the phone, no way to triangulate position. A president has sixteen different GPS networks overlaid on him. The Secret Service will carry the GPS dialtone. Not him.

And as far as email goes. Well, blackberries send all their messages through a bunker somewhere at an undisclosed location - probably just behind that starbucks over there on the corner. The president's email will use a similiar setup, one that we'll never get to see. But it will be proxy email that he will receive. Not the original message. Any reply to anyone that gets one, will be forged headers.

The pearl.