I would prefer them not to. Here in Kentucky, we were not allowed to use them, especially for government-related correspondence. We seemed to have crossed a line somewhere, and it appears to have been going on for a while.

Obama used a hardened, sanctioned Blackberry. Trump 45 was seen with a Samsung S3 that I hope ran a third party OS without Google Services -
but I doubt it.

We used Blackberries for serveral years. Sometime before 2015, they
switched over to a choice between Apple and Android and phased out the last Blackberries in 2015.

Last phone I got sometime before COVID was an Apple, so I am not sure if they had phased all the Androids out, too, or if I got that just because my
previous work phone was also an Apple.

Based on what I was told in 2015 when they forced me off of Blackberry, it sounded like they "got a great deal" had a lot more weight than whatever security risks they were introducing.

Mike

* SLMR 2.1a * Ah, the vastness of space and time... and I end up here..
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It should be easy for the gov't to produce an app that would be used by elected officials.

Different levels of encription could be divied out to different portions of gov't.

You would think so. My limited experience with government programming
shops and web applications would be that, due to the pay gap vs. private industry, the talent pool would be limited.

They'd either wind up with something not too secure or some "closed
source" application that was created "for government use" by a third-party.

That experience comes from watching employee turn over rates, and also from working on disaster recovery exercises, where your inadvertantly learn some things about what the web apps are doing in the background (like making
calls to servers for CSS, etc., that are outside of the government server network). Lots of "no-nos" can be exposed when doing disaster recovery on
a closed network. ;)

Mike


* SLMR 2.1a * (((((This message in Stereo where available)))))
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Government grade VPN encryption PKI keys for access and a messaging
platform housed on-premise in a US government data center with the highest
security profile possible and following all government data retention
requirements.

Not a commercial product that allows auto-deletion of messages...

Yes. That last bit is a big no-no as it violates FOIA standards.

Mike


* SLMR 2.1a * To risk nothing is to risk everything.
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Mike Powell wrote to KURT WEISKE <=-

Based on what I was told in 2015 when they forced me off of Blackberry,
it sounded like they "got a great deal" had a lot more weight than whatever security risks they were introducing.

Lack of security updates and patching aside, a system where all traffic
goes through a server seems much more secure/auditable.




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Mike Powell wrote to KURT WEISKE <=-

Not a commercial product that allows auto-deletion of messages...

Yes. That last bit is a big no-no as it violates FOIA standards.

The White House allows the use of Signal in certain circumstances, but
you know that means that if one sensitive military exercise is being
discussed on Signal, that a ton of other conversations that should be
preserved are being discussed and deleted. The notion of retaining
records is long gone.



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The White House allows the use of Signal in certain circumstances, but
you know that means that if one sensitive military exercise is being
discussed on Signal, that a ton of other conversations that should be
preserved are being discussed and deleted. The notion of retaining
records is long gone.

They seemed to understand it was wrong when Hillary Clinton did it.

What gets me is that his most ardent supporters know it is happening but don't really care that it is wrong. The reason they don't care seems to be that they know things are being shared that, if kept record of, would expose things that shouldn't be done.

To them, President > Country. :(

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