President Obama's BlackBerry was more difficult to create than you'd think. <\/p>\n
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) <\/p>\n
\"It just really bothered a lot of people -- nobody wanted to put anything out there that wasn't completely secure,\" said retired NSA technical director Richard \"Dickie\" George in an interview with CNNMoney. <\/p>\n
George's role was to review the BlackBerry's algorithms and write and engineer diagrams for the phone. <\/p>\n
In response to Obama's request, the NSA set up a lab where dozens of experts performed surgery for several months on a high-profile patient: the soon-to-be presidential BlackBerry. The course of treatment was to manipulate the device's innards to weed out potential threats to secure communication. <\/p>\n
In the end, that meant taking most of the fun out of the phone: the president can't play Angry Birds, for example. <\/p>\n
\"You try to get rid of any functionality that's not really required. Every piece of functionality is an opportunity for the adversary,\" George says. <\/p>\n
According to George, the president simply wanted a phone that enabled him to communicate with his advisers. Though the president was a well known BlackBerry (BBRY) addict at the time, the choice of smartphone model was the NSA's, not Obama's, George explained. <\/p>\n
What functionality the president's phone actually possesses is secret -- and the NSA won't even confirm that he can use it to send a text or write an email (but it's a pretty safe bet it isn't used for Oval Office selfies). <\/p>\n
Related: Let's talk about text, baby <\/p>\n
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The NSA guy who made Obama's BlackBerry<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" President Obama's BlackBerry was more difficult to create than you'd think. NEW YORK (CNNMoney) \"It just really bothered a lot of people -- nobody wanted to put anything out there that wasn't completely secure,\" said retired NSA technical director Richard \"Dickie\" George in an interview with CNNMoney. Continue reading