hbjhb

(Updated: January 31, 2017) Over the past five years, a range of articles on this weblog covered the secure and non-secure phones used by president Barack Obama , whether in the White House, at his Summer residence or aboard Air Force One. With Donald Trump taking over the US presidency in a few days, it's a good moment to look back and provide a comprehensive overview of the communications equipment during Obama's time in office. Additional context for this was provided by a background story from the New York Times from April last year, as well as by several other sources, which show an almost complete overhaul of the communication systems of the Obama White House. Preparations under George W. Bush For the communications systems used by the president of the United States it was more important to be reliable, than to be up-to-date, and so the equipment often served decades, almost until the moment that there are few officials left who know how to maintain it. Modernization s...

(Updated: March 20, 2016) Around January 20, 2009, when Barack Obama took over the office of president of the United States, there was quite a lot of media attention about the fact that he had to give up his BlackBerry, because it was considered to be a security risk. This caused almost world wide media attention, but the follow-up was less accurately covered and a number of different stories were told. Here we will show that Obama actually kept his beloved BlackBerry, but only after it had been secured by special encryption software and some additional security measures. Barack Obama using his BlackBerry 8830 during the election campaign in 2008 (Photo: Getty Images) Obama's predecessor, George W. Bush, also used a BlackBerry during the 2000 presidential campaign, but had to give it up, as well as the use of any e-mail software, upon taking office. Three days earlier, he sent out a final e-mail to 42 friends and family members to inform them that he would no longer correspond el...

In the previous post we saw the cool phones the American president uses in his Oval Office. This time we take a look at the telephone equipment he uses when he is on vacation, because "Presidents don't get vacations, they just get a change of scenery." as a former president once said. For this purpose we have two nice pictures from the vacation of president Obama from August 18 to August 29, 2011 on the Blue Heron Farm in Chilmark on the island of Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts. In the first picture we see president Barack Obama, reflected in a mirror, conducting a conference call on the situation in Libya with his national security staff. Also participating is John Brennan, Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, who sits on the right: President Barack Obama and his assistant John Brennan in a conference call. August 22, 2011 Note how the telephone and power cables are taped onto the table (White House photo by Pete Souza - click f...

(Updated: December 21, 2014) In April last year, US president Obama told some fundraisers that he was disappointed by the communications equipment he found in the White House: "I always thought I was gonna have like really cool phones and stuff," he said during a Q&A session with contributors at a fund-raising meeting in Chicago on April 14, 2011. "We can't get our phones to work." Acting out his exasperation, he said: "Come on, guys. I'm the president of the United States! Where's the fancy buttons and stuff and the big screen comes up? It doesn't happen." Obama made these remarks after the press pool had left and may not have realized some reporters back at the White House could still hear his comments. The president was probably responding to a question about bottlenecks in technological innovation and he used his White House experience as an example. A lot of people would probably like to believe these remarks of the presiden...