Hang Onto That BlackBerry, Barack

This weekend was full of stories about how Barack Obama will have to give up his beloved Blackberry as president—but that’s wholly unnecessary, writes Stephen Wildstrom in BusinessWeek. The only good reason to dump the phone would be because it's a timesuck, but “Obama has shown himself to be nothing if not disciplined,” Wildstrom notes. Other arguments to lose it are “specious” or misinformed.

One concern is that anything Obama types on it could go public. But that’s true of anything he writes anywhere: “again, it's all about discipline, not technology.” As for message security, all his notes would be encrypted. But the most ridiculous concern is that “evil-doers” could locate him by his Blackberry. Finding the president isn’t difficult, Wildstrom writes; he moves “with all the subtlety of the 101 Airborne Division.”
(More BlackBerry stories.)