No BlackBerries for Bushies

Posted on August 5, 2008
Filed Under Beijing Olympics, Cyberespionage |

Think Progress, quoting CBS News, reports:

Last week, Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS) expressed outrage that the Chinese government could “listen to anybody and everybody’s and their communications” during the Olympics. The White House is apparently also fearful of being spied on, as CBS News reports that Bush’s staff “have been told to leave their BlackBerries at home“:

The mobile e-mail blackout is the latest sign of U.S. concerns over Chinese cyber-spying. Sensitive presidential communications are always encrypted, but government cyber-security experts are worried about electronic eavesdropping on the BlackBerries, which are difficult to protect from snooping.

BlackBerries have been banned on other presidential foreign trips but the order underscores specific concerns about Chinese spying during the Olympics.

It’s a welcome development that the White House is acknowledging the intrusiveness of government spying. Unfortunately, neither the White House or Brownback seem to notice the obvious similarities to the administration’s own spy program.

This is a reasonable precaution that should be followed everywhere the president goes, not just China. Mobile devices are easily lost and who knows what data could be harvested from stored messages and possibly stored passwords.

Like the case of the Commerce secretary staffer who’s laptop hard drive was widely assumed to have been super-vacuumed in moments (technical limitations of hardware interfaces notwithstanding), it’s also grist for the China-cyberespionage-hype-mill and sets mouths a-frothin’.

Kudos to Think Progress for pointing out that spying is not limited to the Chinese government, but it’s also something that the US government practices on its own citizens. As Think Progress also noted Customs and Border Patrol officers can take and copy any laptop they want to from travelers entering the United States.

I wonder if Chinese officials, when visiting the US, are told to leave their cracked iPhones behind.

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