orangeek's blog

Some time ago the NYTimes wrote about Obama's addition to mobile email, powered by his Blackberry. The reporter wrote actually about the issues the Secret Service is going into because of that: the point is that RIM's software for the Blackberry is closed-source and god-only-knows (along with RIM) how does it work.

[ "Addiction", CC-licensed picture by hirefrank ]

Questions like "Who's reading my emails?", "Who can shut off remotely my phone?" or "Am I really sure my emails aren't forwarded to some hidden email account tied to some al-Qaida agent?" are just dumb-paranoid questions for all of us but not for the a President. Well, The President.

So, Fabrizio came up with a smart proposal to the white collars in the Secret Service: use open source software to power Obama's mobile email!

That's the only way you can really be sure there is no trap in the software code you're using. Doing this way, you can note if some line states:

if (user == "Barack Obama") send_email_to("Silvio Berlusconi")

:)

And at the end of the day, are you really sure protecting your own private comunications is important just for Obama?

Think about that.