Dear President Elect Obama, Yes - Keep your BlackBerry

Written by vlw on January 12, 2009

I believe that you should be able to be able to keep using a BlackBerry while President and I am hoping you will leverage the business and technical points here in my first DipDive Blog entry.  Just in case these specific ideas are not yet at your disposal, I want to give you, or your relevant staff members more distinctions about wireless, and desktop technology that you might use as the President.

To frame my explanations, I will start by saying that I was even surprised eight years ago when I read that George Bush had to give up Email. This period coincided with the crest of the internet bubble, so it seemed obvious that everyone was adopting internet technology. However, there were newspaper articles describing how the President Elect had sent a final message to his friends, family and associates.  Also at that time, AOL was carpet bombing the US population with free trial CD’s. I was getting five or six per month. I reluctantly concluded that there wasn’t too much of a presidential aura with this mass dial up email service. I was however imagining that President Bush would have an enterprise mailbox with a Whitehouse.GOV address, or perhaps W@US.Gov?  Eight years later, we find out the personal computing power on W’s desk was probably about the same as George Washington had.

In many respects, President Bush lived in a homogenized bubble. It is unfortunate that he did not make more frequent use of the incredible US innovation in information technology that matured during his time in office. It might have diversified his horizons had he been an active web surfer. At the breakneck speed that technology is progressing, internet and wireless computing power will be even more astonishing over the next decade. How long can we justify excluding any president from 21^st century technology? This legacy is not serving the American people and it will hinder your ability to do your job.

Yes, you will have ample staff to do internet research for you. We also understand that you have voracious appetite for information and desire many diverse perspectives. According to the press, the naysayers are proposing that you have both hands tied behind your back because if you touch a computer or BlackBerry, it could bring down your presidency.

This debate is very near to me. As someone who has used BlackBerry for 10 years, develops wireless applications and advises companies of all sizes, I find it amusing that there have been so many articles and blog entries on why you won’t be able to use a BlackBerry. The discussion seems absurd for many reasons.

I have consulted at Fortune 1000 companies where the CEO’s inner circle invoked great acts of courage to transport their leader in to the 21^st century. Once upon a time, an executive admin read and printed every mail message for the CEO and placed it on his desk. Days or weeks could pass before he annotated an email and returned it to his EA. The irony here is that senior staff members would clearly have resorted to human sacrifice if it got the CEO to do his own Email. Based on the media, there is some portion of your new West Wing Staff is trying to downgrade your personal technology to an 18^th century presidential equivalent. 

Risk vs. Reward

The rewards of continuing to use the technology you already have is significant. However, I propose that the risk is minimal. It is the FUD ( surrounding the Risk that we need to sort out.  People with good intentions are trying to protect you. Let’s start with the players:

> The Auditors – Although the previous administration has conveniently lost entire years of email, this isn’t your style. Are you comfortable with every email you send or receive being archived for all of eternity?

> The Lawyers – The job of your in house counsel is to help you manage risk.  What if the timing of an email message you send to someone coincides with the crime of another individual somewhere in the Milky Way galaxy? What if you make a typo and the ambiguity leads to a compromising legal question? You possibly know some lawyers that think this way.

> The Press Secretary – You are not even president yet and the press is spending massive amounts of airtime on Rod Blagojevich. It doesn’t matter how professional, appropriate, or well intentioned an email message is. If you have sent an email to someone under investigation like the Illinois Governor, there is a perception that readers or viewers of the media want to hear all possible angles to a story. Even when there is no angle, and there really is no story, it now seems commonly acceptable that the media will speculate endlessly that maybe there was an association and that you are involved in the scandal. If someone can print the email, it must be true.

> The Secret Service – I have heard warnings that if you carry a wireless device, some evildoer could track your whereabouts. This might have challenges for the people that protect you.

> The IT Security Wonks – Sometimes this is my role. We are wonks because we know all of the hacks that have been done. It is our job to defend against each and every hack. We are not happy until we lock things down so tight, no one can possibly use the technology anymore. If the President is routinely using wireless email, it doesn’t get much better than cracking email of POTUS.

> The Historians – What will the historians say if there are questionable Email threads?

If we talk to any of these team members, they will have a variety of concerns. My strategy is to introduce general solutions to mitigate risk. It will be up to you to see if the remaining risk is acceptable.

The Three Tiered Solution

When we want to build secure internet applications, we sometimes use a three tiered model:

1) The Security Tier which faces the internet and keeps the riff raff out.

2) The Business Engine (or sometimes called the rules engine) that takes all requests from the Security Tier and decides what to do with it.  The rules engine enforces integrity of information written to the Data Tier and prevents unauthorized access to private information.

3) The Data Tier virtualizes all of the requests to save and retrieve data. This is what we most need to protect.

If the security tier is compromised, we need to shutdown the website immediately. Just as if the Secret Service feels that a particular location is compromised, they assess the threat, lock down the location and/or move you away as fast as possible. If a particular location has horrible security risks, they don’t want you to go there to begin with. With respect to presidential use of a wireless handheld, or even a desktop computer, if we can’t provide a secure platform, forget the whole thing; fall back to Abe Lincoln’s wireless technology.

Let’s start with some examples of what isn’t a secure solution.  A standard cell phone can easily be tracked. If any of your staff members send or receive SMS text messages on a standard cell phone, the data they send and receive is practically in the public domain. The cost to hack and view SMS text messages is affordable to any class of criminal.  Email on an iPhone or another smart phone isn’t much more challenging to intercept.

There is irony in seeing media clips of the president being handed a message on a piece of paper which possibly came from a staffer using an insecure cell phone.  This is where a BlackBerry does make a huge amount of sense. Without even purchasing additional security features, you can have AES  enabled on a BlackBerry Server.  The cost to intercept an AES encrypted message is significant and it could take days, weeks, or even months to decipher with a super computer. Still, I don’t think this is acceptable in your case.

Consider if you (and your staff) use PKI encryption with two factor authentication. In some DOD agencies, this is standard issue.  A Common Access Card (a physical object you possess) and a password (something you know) will allow you to encrypt and decrypt messages. This is a good solution that can provide an acceptable level of risk. Very few security wonks are going to have a problem with a high grade PKI encryption. However, we may still have one additional security concern with respect to the Secret Service.

Although your schedule has some elements that are publicly shared, it really is true that if someone can eventually identify your wireless device, they would be able to have tracking abilities.  My solution to this is simplistic but we can mitigate this risk by having you randomly switch devices several times per month.  The Executive Office the President probably purchases dozens of new wireless handhelds each month.  At any moment, a random device is unboxed and it is activated for your use. After which, your old device can be securely wiped clean of any confidential data and reassigned to someone else. This is a simple item on a checklist that the Secret Service could easily request each time you travel. It could even be done while on the road.

The Middle Tier

Possibly the most common use of wireless email is to view incoming messages. As president, let’s assume you never once compose, or reply to an email. With only the ability to read secure confidential messages, you could argue that the risk is now so small that both the auditors, press secretary and the lawyers could be persuaded to sign off on this.  I am not exactly proposing that we eliminate your ability to send messages. I am just trying to separate fact and FUD. We will address the FUD of sending email in the final tier.

Inbound Email is the reason the middle tier is important. In this case, the business rules engine would in essence be a spam filter. Although today’s filters are amazingly effective, they can still quarantine important messages and also allow bogus messages. Remember that you must have an email address on the Internet. Your cabinet and many of the key people that need to send you information are actually all on separate email systems that in most cases send email to the Whitehouse via the internet.

Even if it is kept confidential, an internet Email address can eventually be discovered.  My suggested solution is easy to implement with Commercial off the Shelf (COTS) Software.  Step one is to pre-authorize all senders in advance, and instantly reject email from all others.  Since it is easy to fraudulently fabricate a FROM address on internet mail messages, we require a second step.

Step 2 is leveraging the PKI capabilities from the security tier. If someone wishes to send you Email, they must sign and encrypt each Email message.

With these simple requirements, the new guy at the mailroom in the Whitehouse can’t accidentally (or foolishly) send you a message.  Another positive side effect is that you could securely exchange email with other heads of state. For example, being able to exchange brief emails with the president of the UN, or the Prime Minister of England could potentially give you a political intimacy with world leaders that no other president has ever had.

Another objection that lawyers might have for the President is getting blamed for knowing some piece of information that something illegal had happened. Unless you actually acknowledge, reply, or forward a message, we should expect that you have not read the content.  Requests for read receipts should always be ignored.

The Final Tier

In my analogy of internet application design, the database is actually the final tier. In this case, I am stretching the metaphor a bit to indicate that you are the final tier. When it comes to sending email messages, it is ultimately up to you insure that outbound email is appropriate. However, it does seem likely there will be a Presidential driven change in your wireless email patterns. For starters, you don’t seem like the type of individual to be meeting with a head of state, only to whip out your handheld and get into BlackBerry prayer posture. My point is that the number of times you will actually have an opportunity to send an email may be very infrequent.

Next, your inbox will probably have fewer messages than it might have had in the past. The select group of people that will be allowed to send you email will understand exactly when it is appropriate. They will not want to squander your time. Overall you might agree that much of the email will not require a response. Of those that do require a response, the answers could be brief.  You should not be subscribed to Distribution Lists. This can unnecessarily add dozens or hundreds of items to your inbox.

When you are inclined to reply to an email and you come across a message that might offer a slight chance of legal ambiguity, you can simply forward those items to your in-house counsel. Counsel can either reply to you to provide clarification, or respond for you. I assume that those transactions would be covered by attorney client privilege.

Also, with the PKI encryption, all of the required archived messages will be encrypted. To comply with the regulatory requirements, obsolete keys would need to be archived as well.  One possible side effect is that it would be very difficult to “go fishing” in the archives.  Any potential legal discovery process would have to be very selective.

Above all else, you are in uncharted territory and will need to develop a presidential etiquette towards email. You maybe the first President to use Email, and future presidents and historians will study your examples.

Conclusion

In conclusion, you can keep connected with wireless email. There is an industry standard solution that is secure and will allow you to eliminate unauthorized senders. You will need to accept that all of your email will be archived and potentially available for future review. However, since all messages are encrypted, those that can actually review the archived email will need to have access to obsolete public and private keys for your mailbox. Limit the number of outbound messages as much as possible.

You are the best hope for making leading edge technology a part of the oval office.   The reward is worth the risk for yourself and the country.