Your reference [0] appears to contradict what you've said here. It speaks at length about several NSA approved options as alternatives, but says Obama used a BlackBerry.
The photo attached to the article captioned "President-elect Barack Obama checks his BlackBerry while riding on his campaign bus in Pennsylvania last March." appears to show a blackberry.
I take it from the article that this was as controversial as I remember it being at the time. Thanks for posting it.
He was allowed to keep his BlackBerry for personal communication only, not classified communication, and had to use a Sectéra Edge for classified communication. [0]
The Blackberry for personal use wasn't a stock BlackBerry, but hardened by the NSA and fitted with the SecurVoice software package to encrypt voice calls, emails, and messages. The few people he had on his approved communication list were given the same devices.[1]
That BlackBerry was, again, not used for classified communication. So it's not the same thing as the current scandal.
> He was allowed to keep his BlackBerry for personal communication only, not classified communication
Presence of the senior staff on his (very limited) contact list would seem to contradict that statement. Communication with them would be, by definition, not personal.
I agree with you that our government officials should be using the secure infrastructure our patriotic service members and civil servants work so hard to build and maintain.
If you’d prefer, we can call it unclassified communication rather than personal communication. The point is that it was not used for Secret, Top Secret, or other classified communications. For that, he had the SME-PED device.
So, again, it’s not a parallel to the current situation. Nobody is saying the SecDef and other staff shouldn’t have unclassified devices as well as their classified devices, the issue is that they’ve been using the unclassified devices to conduct Secret or Top Secret discussions.
But how could he have created accidentally a conversation for discussing targets during military attack with a journalist if secret communication was not done on his clear-text device ?
That's not a counter-argument. You're introducing a hypothetical with no substantiating evidence, trying to create a parallel to a situation where we have unambiguous evidence of non-classified devices and software being used to discuss classified material. The onus is on you to prove the claim, not on others to prove a negative.
It has been eight years since Obama's presidency, had there been any use of this hardened BlackBerry for classified communications it would have emerged by now. Similarly, all messages on that device were subject to the Presidential Records Act, and are archived by NARA. You can FOIA them if you want to.
There were also no claims made during his administration that he ignored security protocols. Even his insistence on retaining a BlackBerry for unclassified communications was done through a compromise and an NSA-hardened device, not by ignoring the rules.
Similarly, how do we know that Reagan didn't hold cleartext phone calls with his aides on the Top Secret plans to contain the USSR? We don't, but in the absence of any supportive evidence over the years it's safe to assume he did not.
My statements were complete. You were not completing them, but trying to spin them in a way that implies wrongdoing when no evidence exists of it. I can only presume you're doing so for partisan reasons, to try to defend the actions of the current administration.
Whatever the reason, I have made my case. Feel free to make yours with a similar level of evidence.
> I can only presume you're doing so for partisan reasons
Speak for yourself.
My voting record is public and it's all green and blue. That's actually independently verifiable, unlike most of what you've said. When you haven't enthusiastically contradicted yourself or your sources, condescended, assumed, and accused. You interpreted mild skepticism and a willingness to discuss it as political opposition. Wild.
How do you expect to convince red voters this way? A suggestion: when you next make the attempt, try to resist your urge to dunk on them, and work to find something to agree with them about. Build on that. Give your enemies a golden road on which to retreat.
The photo attached to the article captioned "President-elect Barack Obama checks his BlackBerry while riding on his campaign bus in Pennsylvania last March." appears to show a blackberry.
I take it from the article that this was as controversial as I remember it being at the time. Thanks for posting it.