The American President has won his battle to keep his BlackBerry mobile jammed to his side

Caught in a BlackBerry ‘jam’

President Obama always vowed he would keep hold of his BlackBerry mobile despite ‘security’ concerns at the White House. "I'm still clinging to my BlackBerry," he said in a recent interview with CNBC. "They're going to pry it out of my hands." The President used his BlackBerry to check his e-mail during his daughter's football games, e-chat with actress Scarlett Johansson, and before the New Hampshire primary he told CNET news that the BlackBerry phone was his favourite gadget.

It now seems the President has won his battle to keep his BlackBerry jammed to his side, according to the blogger Marc Ambinder of The Atlantic. A super-encrypted device will allow Obama to check “routine and personal” messages.

Mr Ambinder wrote: “With few exceptions, government BlackBerries aren't designed for encryption that protects messages above the SECRET status, so it's not clear whether Obama is getting something new and special. The exception: the Sectera Edge from General Dynamics, which allows for TOP SECRET voice conversations.”

General Dynamics' Sectera Edge, a combination phone-PDA, might hold the answer. It's been certified by the National Security Agency, as being sufficiently secure and heavy duty for the likes of Top Secret voice communications and Secret e-mail and Web sites. The Sectera Edge comes in at a mere $3,350, a drop in the economic ocean for the President of the most powerful nation in the world.

The Obama Administration and General Dynamics have not commented on the reports.

Key Facts

The president said in a recent CNN interview: "I think we're going to be able to hang on to one of these. I want to be able to have voices, other than the people who are immediately working for me, be able to reach out and send me a message about what's happening in America."

"It's not just the flow of information," Obama said in a recent interview with CNN. "I mean, I can get somebody to print out clips for me, and I can read newspapers. What it has to do with is having mechanisms where you are interacting with people who are outside of the White House in a meaningful way. And I've got to look for every opportunity to do that - ways that aren't scripted, ways that aren't controlled, ways where, you know, people aren't just complimenting you or standing up when you enter into a room, ways of staying grounded."

Credit: Times Online