Ron Schenone

White House Still In The Dark Ages?

Posted by on Jan 24, 2009 | 5 Comments

One of the first things that President Obama’s staff noticed when they entered into the White House, was that it seemed to return them all to the dark ages. It seems that technology has not been that important to previous administrations. Staffers were finding they had to downgrade their equipment to get it working.

One staffer was quoted as saying that:

One Obama spokesperson as characterizing the transition as “kind of like going from an Xbox to an Atari.”

So what is the new staff going to do?

Luckily, Obama’s staff won’t be stuck in the dark ages forever. MSNBC says that White House counsel had approved the use of Gmail accounts and personal cell phones, allowing staffers — many of whom arrived to their new offices to find neither computer nor phone — to get communications up and running. Many of the other restrictions on White House communications can be lifted or altered with a stroke of the President’s pen.

Rasiej says Wi-Fi isn’t out of the question, either. “I’m not sure if the first family will have Wi-Fi access, but I don’t see why not, under the right security,” he theorizes. Staffers won’t care either way; White House-issued laptops are reportedly scarce.

It’s not known whether the White House currently uses Wi-Fi, but the network security news site Dark Reading used a long-range antenna to scour the White House environs for vulnerable wireless networks in 2007. They found 104 networks and 66 wireless access points in the area, many of them encrypted with easily-hackable WEP passwords — mostly coffee shops, hotels, and offices. They couldn’t trace any of them back to the White House itself, until they access a database that mashes up WAP data with Google maps. They find eight networks coming from inside the building, but none of them visible or accessible to outsiders. (As they note, these could belong to press organizations or other non-governmental entities camping out at the first residence.)

So it seems that Obama is going to have to upgrade the White House to get up to speed with the current technology.

Comments welcome.

Source

  • Jeff

    I’m still waiting for a “My Fellow Americans…” speech with a laptop on the desk. I mean, the most powerful man in the country and he doesn’t even get the news in digital form?

  • None Required

    Actually, I think what they will need to wrap thier heads around is that now that they are IN power instead of chasing it, they will learn that the rules change, and that the law requires different accountability than they are accustomed to.

  • Greg

    I think the Obama team needs to learn that they are no longer free to Twitter or Facebook every fart they have. This is now a matter of national security and keeping stuff away from hackers is paramount.

    This is the big leagues now.

  • Cliffystones

    Yea Ron, my only concern would be security, with all those hackers (some Jihadist) out there. Can the administration be too careful? Time will tell, I suppose.

    And like I stated on the “Blackberry” post, no problem with Obama using one as long as he doesn’t use his address book to store the launch codes :) .

  • KN

    Obama is converting the White House to Macs.

    http://www.9to5mac.com/barack-obama-mac-user