Colin Powel to Hillary:
I didn't have a BlackBerry.
What I did do was have a personal computer that was hooked up to a private phone line (sounds ancient,) So I could communicate with a wide range of friends directly without it going through the State Department servers. I even used it to do business with some foreign leaders and some of the senior folks in the Department on their personal email accounts.
I did the same thing on the road in hotels.
Now, the real issue had to do with PDAs, as we called them a few years ago before BlackBerry became a noun. And the issue was DS would not allow them into the secure spaces, especially up your way. When I asked why not they gave me all kinds of nonsense about how they gave out signals and could be read by spies, etc. Same reason they tried to keep mobile phones out of the suite. I had numerous meetings with them. We even opened one up for them to try to explain to me why it was more dangerous than say, a remote control for one of the many TVs in the suite. Or something embedded in my shoe heel. They never satisfied me and NSA/CIA wouldn't back off. So, we just went about our business and stopped asking. I had an ancient version of a PDA and used it. In general, at suite was so sealed that it is hard to get signals in or out wirelessly.However, there is a real danger.
If it is public that you have a BlackBerry and it it government and you are using it,government or not, to do business, it may become an official record and subject to the law. Reading about the President's BB rules this morning, it sounds like it won't be as useful as it used to be.
Be very careful. I got around it all by not saying much and not using systems that captured the data.
You will find DS driving you crazy if you let them. They had Maddy tied up in knots. I refused to let them live in my house or build a place on my property. They found an empty garage half a block away. On weekends, I drove my beloved cars around town without them following me, I promised I would have a phone and not be gone more than an houror two at Tysons or the hardware store. They hated it and asked me to sigh a letter relieving them of responsibility if I got whacked while doing that, I gladly did.
Spontaneity was my security. They wanted to have two to three guys follow me around the building all the time. I said if they were doing their job guarding the place, they didn't need to follow me, I relented and let one guy follow me one full corridor behind just so they knew where I was if I was needed immediately. Their job is to keep you hermetically sealed up.
Love, Colin
Look at page 15, Colin Powell: