too trusting

An item on the news this week was about the use of the Blackberry by high ranking officials in our country. Our security services have some serious concerns about that.

As is usual the high ranking officials themselves could not care less. And for once this included mr. Vincent Van Quickenborne who concluded that this was another storm in a glass of water.

So let us see :
Fact 1 - The Blackberry makes use of a Network Operating Center. The ones for Belgium are in the United Kingdom.
Fact 2 - It is common knowledge that the United Kingdom monitors all electronic trafic. That system is called Echelon.

Now, let us make some assumptions with those facts in the back of our minds :
Assumption 1 - The Belgian governments are working hard to keep the Opel plant in Antwerp running.
Assumption 2 - GM probably does not care where the axe in Europe falls, as long as it falls.

Now, is it really too farfetched to believe that Germany, the UK and any other country with an Opel or Vauxhall plant would be very interested in any information they can get on the strategies of the other countries ?

Mr. Van Quickenborne, I am a big fan of your modernisation of our government. But it is also your task to protect the less knowledgable officials against possible mistakes that could harm Belgium.

To finish I want to put one of your statements on Blackberry security against another statement :
Statement 1 - Obama uses a Blackberry
Statement 2 - France banned the Blackberry in 2007 for government officials
Think about it ... and consider the chance that mr. Obama really uses the very same unmodified Blackberry that mr. Leterme uses (and goes through the very same NOC's that mr. Leterme uses). I think you'll find that chance ... nil.