Another program can detect the phone's location by way of signals it sends to nearby cellular towers, turning it into a homing device.
According to a database maintained by the Department of Homeland Security, at least 16 potential chinks in the BlackBerry's security armor have come to light since 2004.
"Of course, the president's location is usually fairly publicly known. He's within the White House or a building," said John Pescatore, vice president for Internet security at research firm Gartner Inc.
"However, somebody could have the ability to figure out [that] he's on this floor or that floor," said Pescatore, who worked on communications security for the Secret Service in the early 1980s.
Ultimately, the biggest concern may not be an outsider hacking into Obama's BlackBerry, but rather someone targeting the devices of people with whom the president is communicating, said Johannes Ullrich, chief research officer for the SANS Technology Institute in Bethesda, Md., which trains network security and system administrators.
Obama probably would not lose his BlackBerry, with dozens of Secret Service agents around to keep an eye on it. But if one of his e-mail correspondents lost his or her device, agents would not be there to scoop it up.
Security concerns are not the only consideration for Obama. Work-related communications of executive branch employees could become public records after the president's term is over.
Although the law includes narrow exemptions for strictly personal communications, aides to the president say they assume his electronic messages will become public.
That prospect was enough to inspire George W. Bush to curtail his family e-mails. He said he did not send them to daughters Jenna and Barbara for fear that his "personal stuff" might end up in the public domain.
"It's e-mail, and it has to be saved under public records laws just like one he sent from a desktop," said Tom Blanton, director of the National Security Archive at George Washington University and author of "White House E-Mail: The Top Secret Computer Messages the Reagan-Bush White House Tried to Destroy."
"If you don't like that," Blanton said, "you might have to choose between being leader of the free world and having your BlackBerry."
Gibbs said Obama saw the device as "a way of keeping in touch with folks, a way of doing it outside of getting stuck in a bubble." He said the president sent him e-mails that included business as well as such matters as "why did my football team perform so miserably."
It's an elite group that can be trash-talked via Obama's Berry. Only a small circle of friends and senior aides would be trading electronic messages with the president, Gibbs said, declining to pass out Obama's e-mail address to the media.
Word that Obama would be keeping his BlackBerry was hot news to reporters who packed the briefing room for Gibbs' first performance as White House press secretary.
As soon as Gibbs made the pronouncement, reporters immediately began thumb-typing the news to editors. The news began to make its way through Washington, fittingly, via BlackBerry.
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cparsons@tribune.com
jim.puzzanghera@latimes.com
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Lost in transition
Obama team encounters tech trouble. BUSINESS, C2
