He doesn't need an iPad, He needs get off the golf course, skip the Jay-Z parties and stay off Letterman long enough to attend his Intelligence briefings.
http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-841285
"" As more information comes to light regarding the violence in Egypt and Libya, including the deaths of four Americans, it becomes apparent that Barack Obama was caught completely off guard. Not only does it appear that the violence in Libya was coordinated and planned, but Barack Obama hadn't even attended a security briefing in a week. As reported by Tony Lee at Breitbart.com , the Internet movie which is being blamed by the Obama administration as the cause for the attacks in Libya and Egypt most likely was just a cover for a coordinated attack that had been planned for some time. But a closer examination of the evidence indicates al-Qaeda orchestrated these attacks, and the movie was just a bogus excuse used to trigger the widespread violence. Even worse, it seems al-Qaeda telegraphed these attacks, and the Obama administration still got caught flat-footed, unaware of the terror group's strength in the region, missing key signals""
How long had it been since President Obama attended his daily intelligence meeting in the lead-up to the Sept. 11 attacks on U.S. diplomatic facilities in Egypt and Libya? After all, our adversaries are known to use the anniversary of 9/11 to target the United States. According to the public schedule of the president, the last time the Obama attended his daily intelligence meeting was Sept. 5 a week before Islamist radicals stormed our embassy in Cairo and terrorists killed our ambassador to Tripoli. The president was scheduled to hold the intelligence meeting at 10:50 a.m. Wednesday, the day after the attacks, but it was canceled so that he could comfort grieving employees at the State Department as well he should. But instead of rescheduling the intelligence briefing for later in the day, Obama apparently chose to skip it altogether and attend a Las Vegas fundraiser for his re-election campaign. One day after a terrorist attack.
On Monday the same Washington Post columnist, Marc Thiessen, reported that the president has missed 62 percent of his daily in-person intel briefings in 2011 and 2012. President Bush almost never missed a briefing after 9/11.
President Obama has brought the latest high tech gadgets into the Oval Office.
U.S. President Barack Obama made waves when he was the first chief executive to use a BlackBerry. A government insider now says that the U.S. National Security Agency hardened an iPad for Mr. Obama to review state secrets disclosed in his daily intelligence briefing.
Last Friday, a non-profit professional organization called Information Security Systems Association (ISSA) held a meeting in Baltimore where the NSA’s Dr. John Levine was the keynote speaker. Levine discussed a trend of how government and military officials were demanding the high productivity of today’s latest consumer electronics. The President is not exception, so the NSA set about securing his iPad.
“The president is getting his daily intelligence briefing on an iPad. Ten years ago we wouldn’t have done that, but that’s what the president wants, so that’s what he gets. Now, that iPad is neutered-it has no connectivity. It gets plugged into a docking station. We can do that for the president, but can we can’t scale that. So the question is, can we use commercial products that are secure?” said Levine.
That quote is attributable to American Civil Liberties Union’s senior policy analyst Jay Stanley, who attending the meeting and blogged about it. Levine’s talk noted that NSA officials are cooperating with communications service providers (CSP) to use commercial networks (voice and data) for classified calls, buying capability from CSPs in much the same way that services like GM’s Onstar do.
I’m reminded of news from May about how microprocessors manufactured in China were alleged to have a backdoor that could potentially be exploited for espionage. Chinese electronics maker Huawei Technologies sits at the center of the controversy, but has denied any malfeasance both publicly and to the U.S. House Intelligence Committee. That may give room for some pause.
Despite this concern, I have a high degree of confidence in the NSA’s ability to secure devices like the ObamaPad. It is a center of excellence for cyber security, which was impressed that upon me during an interview with a high-ranking official in its integrity assurance division several years ago.
The question is could it be doing its job too well?
The ACUL’s Stanley cautioned that consumer companies may be too cozy with government officials, citing a recent Apple patent that permits an iPhone’s functionality to be disabled from a central source. He also cited recent comments by the NSA Director that the national security state is putting pressure on private CSPs.
“Information assurance can be good for privacy but can also block the next whistleblower who is trying expose things that will help our country but cause pain (in the short term) for a national security bureaucracy,” Stanley said.
“…We don’t want to see security and top-down control given priority over openness and individual control.”
(Image Credit: Pete Souza/ Rapport Press )
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