Obama and His BlackBerry

They wouldn't have to take it away until he was sworn in would they?

KT
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I guess they could walk him back to just a regular cell phone with internet access. He could still get online but it would make it a lot harder to check email and stuff like that. The truth is to me I feel like they just need to change the law and allow him to keep the black berry but just archive all the messages. Some kind of way our laws including those dealing with the presidency need to be pulled into the 21st century. Next thing you know they will say he can't use his ipod because there might be confidential stuff downloaded on it. You know speaking of that, the one thing that has shocked me is that apple never tried to get him to switch to an iphone. If they find a way for him to keep his blackberry I will bet good money that apple jumps into the fray.

Congress could pass a law. I think the biggest worry is lawsuits. Perhaps create a law that a judge would have to rule that any lawsuit seeking access to his emails had extra super probative value before it could be released as discovery.

I still don't get it. Is there a link out there that describes this beyond "security?" It can't be the presidential records act, given Rove's behavior.

KT
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Yeah eventually they could scale down to a walkie talkie and an etch a sketch. Its all so very silly to me. Every top business guy in the world and even every other top elected official in this country has some form of a blackberry but our president can't have one. Yeah that makes a lotta sense.

I mean this cnn thing says:

if a president doesn't want his e-mail public, he shouldn't e-mail, experts said. And there may be security issues about carrying around trackable cell phones.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/11/17/obama.blackberry.ap/index.html#cnnSTCText

He travels with a frickin' six car motorcade to go to the gym.

If this is about the presidential records act, amend it. Or enforce it, on the Bush administration.

And it's so stupidly easy to circumvent. He can use Michelle's.
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The argument Bush makes wrt executive privilege--that people should be able to speak frankly without fear of reprisal to the president--makes perfect sense. And there are reasons why things like sneaking into countries, and overthrowing them requires a formal presidential order. Circumventing those processes should be illegal.
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But you can't do stuff like that without leaving a paper trail. It's not just email the Bushies have refused to release to Congress. It's pretty much everything. And the courts and Congress have let that ride.
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I'm still in shock over the fact that one of the stories on this mentioned that Obama would be the first president to put a computer in the Oval Office.
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No computer... I lack the words.

There should be a way to deal with the security issue.

As for his email, as long as they make arrangements to archive it, I don't see why he couldn't continue to email. Surely he could still use it for innocuous matters.

I don't blame him wanting to keep it. We don't need another bubble-boy preznit. That would suck.

As for easing him off his "habit" - maybe they could get him to do what John McCain does - paint on a cave wall.

Sean--
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Clinton is a pen and paper kind of guy. Bush is a give incoherent orders kind of guy. Not a reader.
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fourlegsgood--
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I still haven't heard an explanation that makes sense. I'm hoping we may finally have a president who will say "This is silly." to the secret service.
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jay, me either.
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I'm glad that the secret service is taking his security seriously - but this whole thing is nutty. There's no substitute for being able to just surf for information on your own.

All the Secret Service has to do is monitor Sean Hannity listeners and Obama should be safe.

trifecta
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Did you write a diary on kos today?

I did.

congrats. Still on the recd list

Poor guy is gonna be lost without it. I can see it now, the day of Obama's swearing in, the secret service goes to confiscate the little blackberry and a struggle ensues.

Well lookie here. Karl Rove is already coming out against Obama's Health Care reform. Who woulda thunk it?

I must be the only person left alive who has never used a Blackberry, IPhone or other smart phone. Surprisingly, I don't feel my life if poorer for the fact.

Jayack: I thought the blackberry problem was principally a question of the legal requirement that all of the President's correspondence be archived. (and the issue is written communication, hence the problem with email and text messages, which doesn't exist with phone calls). Don't understand why both email and text couldn't be downloaded periodically, hard drives retained, or some such thing.

davemc321 - No, I'm another one. Don't even have a cell phone.

Former Time and current NY Times columnist Bill Kristol wants there to be a Presidential medal for torture. And I quote:
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One last thing: Bush should consider pardoning--and should at least be vociferously praising--everyone who served in good faith in the war on terror, but whose deeds may now be susceptible to demagogic or politically inspired prosecution by some seeking to score political points. The lawyers can work out if such general or specific preemptive pardons are possible; it may be that the best Bush can or should do is to warn publicly against any such harassment or prosecution. But the idea is this: The CIA agents who waterboarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and the NSA officials who listened in on phone calls from Pakistan, should not have to worry about legal bills or public defamation. In fact, Bush might want to give some of these public servants the Medal of Freedom at the same time he bestows the honor on Generals Petraeus and Odierno. They deserve it.
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Yet he is still employed.

trifecta, seeing how much Bush has tarnished the value of the Medal of Freedom-Rummy, Tenet, and Bremer-it is not as crazy a suggestion as it seems. Idiotic, sure. But not crazy.

Kathy--
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So I poked around a little bit, having been too lazy to do so to date. A few things.
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1) I can't find where it was decided that email was written rather than verbal communication under the meaning of the act. It looks like, from a CREW document charging the Bush administration with violating the act that:
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the White House email system automatically copies all messages created by staff and sends them to the White House Office of Records Management for archiving. It appears that the White House deliberately bypassed the automatic archiving function of its own email system that was designed to ensure compliance with the PR

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Now there are requirements in the private sector about email retention. (I frankly don't understand this either. Why aren't the same rules applied to telephone calls? In either case, it takes an affirmative action to archive them. [this raises a side issue. Is the NSA intercepting the president's communications? Along with everyone else's.]) that might be why they've been autoarchiving. But who decided email counted? The email retained in the IBM PROFS system in place during Iran-Contra was critical. But so were the Watergate tapes. Why are not all Oval Office communications recorded? (Echo answers, for the same reason all blackberry or text message traffic shouldn't be. And, arguably, email. If the president is going to use text messaging to replace telephone communication, is there really an argument for treating that as written rather than verbal communication? And if the standard is "he was using a keyboard" does that mean the presidential keyboard should have key capture?
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2) Rove is walking around free. As long as that's the case, then I do not see how this standard can be imposed on the President when it was not imposed on Rove. If Rove can have two machines in his office, two email server accounts, two blackberries, and the president cannot then, echoing Cartman, something's effed up here right now.
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3) The PRA was passed in 1978. It was last amended by (mind you) GHWB's executive order. Revise the act. Exempt text messaging. It only counts if it hits the white house email system. That's a much more stringent standard than has been in place for the last 8 years, where the material hitting the white house email system has been systematically deleted.
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(And why isn't this a scandal to the jaybirds? I mean, how come it's a story that Obama maybe can't use a blackberry, but it's not a huge part of the story that the White House refused subpoenas on precisely the same issue? Why is the story "Isn't he cute? He's one of those blackberry kids." rather than "this opens up serious issues regarding the Bush administration's abject refusal to abide by the PRA, citing executive privilege as a justification for rejecting subpoenas over this material." The cute story about a special fax number ignores the question of effective presidential communication. He doesn't want the blackberry so one of his basketball buddies can get through.
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(This does raise some interesting new media questions. Imagine Obama hops out of bed, runs his 30 minutes on the treadmill, does his 40 vertical ups, practices his effin' bowling because Axelrod insisted, and then texts KT, saying "WTF? I didn't say that." The Obama campaign was very controlled, giving very, very limited media access. the Obama presidency might behave differently. Seen that so far with the frequent press conferences.)
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4) Circumvention is trivial. Set up a dummy account.

Yet he is still employed.
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My grandmother used to say, "What makes you stink so?"
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I think he loses both gigs in January.
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Oh, and send me an email, trifecta, if you see this. Jay@ackroyd.org.