ANTenna Blog -- The rANT

Earlier this week, The rANT posted a screed blasting the powers that be for denying President-Elect Obama his prized Blackberry once he enters the White House. Well, it turns out that Blackberry has already been hacked.

It seems that employees of Verizon breached the records of Obama's cell phone usage, and CNN reports that at least some of them have already been fired. But Verizon Wireless is still investigating whether Obama's information was shared with people outside the company, and has also alerted law enforcement.

This kind of unauthorized access is obviously a serious problem for Obama, and one that would likely get much worse once he becomes POTUS (sorry for the silly acronym, but The rANT always wanted to say "POTUS").

The rANT is not fond of eating crow, so despite how bad this looks -- and we admit it looks pretty bad -- we're still going to argue for the importance of giving the President -- and any key employee -- access to the technology they need to do their jobs as effectively as possible.

The absolutely real need for security can't be allowed to shut off innovation. Security can never be totally airtight and bulletproof (whether or not technology is involved), but we clearly need to make security a priority and find ways to protect and enable workers and bosses to do the best job they can.