Obama BlackBerry

Hardbody ppls

Barack Obama is getting a “souped-up, high security BlackBerry for use in and around the White House and during presidential travel.” The device is a BlackBerry 8830 World Edition, with some incredible security tweaks to make sure Kim Jong Il isn’t listening in on his conversations.

Washington-based Genesis Key developed the special security software for Obama’s new 8830, called SecureVoice, which will presumably run alongside the traditional BlackBerry OS. Officials from the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), the White House Communications Agency (part of the Pentagon’s Defense Information Systems Agency), Research In Motion (RIM) and Genesis Key all collaborated on Barack Obama’s presidential BlackBerry.

The security software was designed to provide access to NSA top secret information. In order for the BlackBerry to access this information, which is the highest grade of security classification, the software was required to be incredibly robust. The software not only works on Obama’s BlackBerry, but is compatible with any 8830 or BlackBerry Curve 83xx. This does not mean it will be available to consumers, but rather it’s needed to be able to communicate with other SecureVoice enabled devices.

Don’t expect any leaked screenshots!

[Al Sacco Via]