This is a NY Times article about Obama having to give up email.
I just assumed Presidents used email. Email, really, only became widely used under Clinton; compared to the numbers today, the number of people using email during Clinton’s administration is minuscule.
So how does the President communicate? Really, the only question is how does Bush communicate? He’s really the first President during wide use of email (and the World Wide Web).
I can’t imagine this moratorium on email will continue. Still, though…what exactly is the rule with Presidential communication? Even if he used PGP, would Obama’s email still be public record?
Forgive all the ignorance this post implies…it’s new to me.
That’s exactly the issue that caused a scandal for Gov. Palin. She used her private email account to conduct state business instead of her government address.
Any President using a private email account would be subject to questions about what he was using it for.
I’m going to come out and say that that article is a lot of bull. First of all, plenty of people in the White House do use email, or am I in some kind of bizarro world where the whole scandal of White House folks sending emails through the wrong server never happened? If they can use email, and in theory, at least, be in compliance with government regulations, then so can the President. Notice that Bush said he was stopping his email use not because of government regulations, but because:
Meaning, he didn’t want people forwarding around something he emailed them, and not that he was prohibited from doing so.
Nor is it a “security risk.” You, provided you have the proper clearances to buy them, can use devices like the BlackBerry, which encrypt everything, and it remains encrypted until it reaches the correct recipient. Yes, social engineering and spyware can breech those, but being able to successfully pull those off on someone like the POTUS would be insanely difficult.
Obama will no doubt have to watch what he sends to whom, and what account he uses to do it, but he can keep emailing people if he so desires. Given the man’s love of tech (multiple cellphones, Star Trek references, etc.), I really doubt he’s going to quit, though he certainly will cut down.
I wouldn’t do it if I were the Pres. It is easy enough to send encrypted messages to someone with something like a PGP key but the person on the other end could still decrypt it and send it somewhere else creating a bad chain of messages if they so desired. The risk simply is not worth it.
There’s ways around that. Instead of the person getting the text of the email, they just get a link to an encrypted webpage, they have to prove they’re who’re they’re supposed to be, and then they can read the message. Once they’ve read it, the webpage automatically deletes it. Additionally, you can set up a person’s device so that they can only send and recieve messages to and from selected people. This is done at multiple levels, so the ability to get around it is extremely limited.
When I worked for the satphone company, we had to set up a pair of satphones so that they could only call one another, or be called by one another. It took a lot of work, and I have no idea why this was needed, but it was done, and the customer was a former POTUS.
Still not a legal requirement for him to “cease and desist,” however, and there are rules about the public getting them, and given this Administrations refusal to turn over documents even when ordered to by the courts, I have a hard time believing that Bush was worried about them being examined through official channels.
RTFOP, notice the words “having to give up email,” with the implication that somehow becoming POTUS means you can’t use email any more. Pretty much the only way that could happen if you’re the most powerful man in the world is if you’re required to do it by law, or if the laws of physics prohibit you from doing so.
Yes, I agree that it is dumb of this Administration to do such a thing, but they’ve done plenty of dumb things in the past, so its well within plausability.
What’s the big deal if he communicates with old friends or stays in touch with what’s going on “in real time”? As long as he isn’t sending state secrets with an emoticon, there’s nothing to really worry about, no? Obama seems like the kind of guy that’s smart enough not to be stupid.
Given Obama’s use of his CrackBerry and that there were no leaks until the mention of Hillary as SoS, I tend to agree with you. He’ll certainly cutback on his emailing, but I doubt if he’ll be able (or want) to give it up altogether.
one can use windows digital rights management or other software to send a secure encrypted email that can not be forwarded or printed. one can set a ‘self destruct’ after a certain date or after being opened once.
of course, blackberry does have that functionality so Obama will need to switch to a windows mobile device.
I suspect that Obama, as President, will be just too busy to do email personally.
I have worked with the head of a much smaller government agency, and he hardly ever responded to email himself. Most often, his email was printed out, he took it with him & looked at it during meetings, travel time, etc., and scribbled notes on it to various staff members on how to respond. Then he’d drop it off with his secretary, who would forward the email & his note to the appropriate staff person. They would then respond (usually tvia email) to the original sender. So email was received & sent, but very rarely by this executive – he was just too busy.
I would imagine that same situation is even more true for the President. He’s just too busy to be sitting down typing out responses to emails, and he has available a horde of secretaries & aides who can attend to this for him.
There’s no government cellular equivalent, though. Wouldn’t it be a security risk to have these messages sent through such channels? Even if the message is encrypted, wouldn’t there be a risk from the provider itself (let’s say someone at a high level in Sprint was working with a foreign government)?
No. First of all, modern encryption methods simply can’t be broken without the data key. Trying to decrypt it without the key would take centuries. Second, the government has its own monitoring equipment and dedicated communication equipment in the domestic telecomm facilities. If you have a government issued secured cellphone, any calls you make on it (at least in the US) will be routed through the government’s switchers, and not the switchers that the average phone call are handled by.
