Obama's secure PDA

[Jerry Leichter]

On Jan 28, 2009, at 2:03 PM, Perry E. Metzger wrote:
>>
>>> There's a "Classified USB Cable for file transfer with Classified  
>>> PC"
>>
>> I wonder what a "classified USB cable" is.  Perhaps it's an  
>> unclassified USB
>> cable with the little three-prong USB logo blacked out by the  
>> censors.
>
> I would imagine it is a tempest shielded cable, and appropriately
> altered connectors.
That's probably a big part of it.

I commented earlier that $3200 seemed surprisingly cheap.  One of the  
articles on this claimed this was absurdly expensive - typical DoD  
gold plating.  Well ... the real price of a standard Blackberry is a  
couple of hundred dollars, and put one in a room with a speaker phone  
and listen to the famous "Blackberry buzz".  Shielding these things,  
even to avoid obvious interference, is *not* easy.  Getting it to  
Tempest specs must take some impressive engineering.  For a non-mass- 
market device with that kind of engineering, $3200 seems pretty cheap.
                                                         -- Jerry

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