Obama to Keep BlackBerry

Update: Despite objections from the Secret Service and the NSA, President Barack Obama will keep his BlackBerry, using it for personal and non-sensitive communications.

This is the best day of RIM's life. The door is not shut entirely on the handset described below, though: surely every hacker on the face of the earth will now focus his or her efforts on breaking the BlackBerry, specimens of which are available in every mobile-phone shop in town.

Previously: President Obama will not have to kick the smartphone habit after all, as the National Security Agency (NSA) has approved a device made by Sectéra that passes its security litmus tests.

This is not a consumer product, as it will cost over $3,000. The video on the Sectéra site depicts the device in military use, but no word on if it can do custom mp3 ringtones. I'd want the Mission:Impossible theme to play whenever the CIA rang.

I bet the publicity around this product placement will goad Sectéra into a Hummer-style civilian product release.

If you want to check out the Edge, here it is... I think it's quite hideous, but its feature set is no joke if you're security-minded.

One concern is support: how many people know how to use this thing, or to fix it if something goes wrong?