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Making A Case For Obama’s Blackberry
Months after saying I was going to get an iPhone, I can admit that I am and will remain a Blackberry addict. I couldn’t swing the deposit and the contract for AT&T, so I got a sweet setup from T-Mobile the day the 3G went on sale. And I’m pretty sure I couldn’t live without it.
I hear stories of other people giving up their phones for honeymoons or weekends away from the office. I don’t understand that concept. If I didn’t have my BB, I would be less free to go do things away from the computer. If something goes wrong on the site I manage or if there’s breaking news, it lets me know immediately instead of running and checking my email constantly.
I’m pretty organized about my entire Google suite of BB apps, so I can keep up with what’s showing up in my GReader feed (I really need to weed it down, because I’ve got over 500 feeds and that’s hard to weed, but I do have them categorized by favorites too.) And since I’m a ridiculous Twitter addict, I can keep up with my follow stream on Twitterberry if I’m stuck in a waiting room for awhile. While it’s a cheesy way to get people interested in my phone, I’ve had a lot of reaction to the app that turns my BB Pearl’s trackball into a crystal ball. It’s my one teeny bit of bling (the phone itself is black and otherwise looks like something that would show up on Torchwood, and have fun guessing my ringtone.)
I understand that Barack Obama has the same addiction I do. He’s constantly using his. But because Obama’s going to soon be under the kind of security reserved for the folks who spend lots of time in missile silos, it’s assumed by the press and pols alike that he’ll be giving it up.
Not so fast.
First, there’s the matter of his correspondence being public record. Easily fixed. Set a rule on his mailbox that everything he sends is BCC’ed to a separate account. Disable any messaging programs that don’t have auto-forwarding. The contents of that account are then printed out weekly. It’s similar to what some TV stations do to keep their FCC public files updated.
Okay, so a good bit of subjects would be off-limits for him. Foreign affairs, certainly. He and Hillary would never become BB buddies if she gets the State job. And anything that would invite itself to misinterpretation would have to be dealt with carefully. Any random remark about an opponent’s religion or secrets in family life would be off-limits.
But seriously, the current trend for Obama’s “change” is transparency. True transparency, where he keeps us all informed on how he plans to do things with a weekly YouTube video. Whether he’s ever actually used @barackobama himself or not, there are multiple Twitter feeds devoted to news about him and even what he should and shouldn’t do. His people are even heavily vetting all of his staff to make sure their lives are ready to be open-booked too.
Really, a lot of the stuff that the BlackBerry would keep open for him would be the mundanities that we all have as wired private citizens. The ability for our friends to text us when they need us. The way to get pictures from SOs (not dirty ones, but just the ones that show pieces of them we’d miss otherwise when we’re not with them.) Having immediate access to CNN.com and NYT.com via their apps.
Since I’m sure that BB would be more than happy to give him a Storm, he could show off how to do the tricks they do on the commercials to the press corps. If we’re so interested in his future puppy, wouldn’t we be obsessed with his cell phone, too?
Anyway, I’m sure there are some folks reading this (the smarter folks who work in network security) who could poke a million holes and point out that Sarah Palin’s email was put on public display because of a weak password. Me, I would like to think that if we suddenly saw all the emails Obama had written on some random site, they would end up being as inconsequential as the ones in Palin’s. Hopefully better written, but rather boring. And on this point, we probably would want to know sooner rather than later if I’m wrong.
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November 23, 2008 at 8:25 pm
New blog post: Making A Case For Obama's Blackberry http://tinyurl.com/69ts7c