Interesting topics from the NSA's 2009 Presidential Transition Book

(Updated: April 8, 2025)

In the period between the election and the inauguration, a new US president prepares to take over the administration and gets briefed by numerous officials and agencies, including the National Security Agency (NSA).

Here I will present some interesting topics from the extensive 2009 Presidential Transition Book (pdf), which the NSA had prepared for Barack Obama after he had been elected president on November 4, 2008.

Context

The NSA's briefing book was published in May 2017 by the National Security Archive as part of its Cyber Vault. That collection contains 42 declassified documents about cyber issues and also includes a 42-page Transition 2001 briefing (pdf) which the NSA had prepared for incoming president George W. Bush.

The 2009 Presidential Transition Book (pdf) for Obama was declassified on April 13, 2016 and has no less than 289 pages from a binder. It combines various documents and briefing materials from 2006 to 2008, some of them quite highly classified and therefore still heavily redacted.

Despite the redacted portions, the book provides a good and detailed introduction to the NSA and its activities, but with its 289 pages it sometimes goes well beyond what the president and his staff had to know, like for example the highly detailed acquisition and procurement plans of the agency. (p. 154ff)

Mission

While on its public website it was said that the NSA had just two core missions, Information Assurance and Signals Intelligence, the Presidential Transition Book add a third one:

- Signals Intelligence (SIGINT), including codebreaking,

and

- Information Assurance (IA), including codemaking,

which together enable

- Computer Network Attack (CNA), which includes offensive operations against adversaries' information systems, but this had to be done in collaboration the JFCC-NW, which eventually merged into the US Cyber Command.

> See also: NSA's Strategic Mission List

Communications monitoring

Another topic that seems not necessary for the president to know is about a hardly known NSA unit called the Joint COMSEC Monitoring Activity (JCMA), which was part of the NSA's former Information Assurance (IA) directorate.

The JCMA consists of a Headquarters Operations Centers at Fort Meade and six Regional COMSEC Monitoring Centers, located at Menwith Hill Station (MHS) in the UK, NSA/CSS Europe in Stuttgart in Germany, an undisclosed location, NSA/CSS Hawaii at Camp Smith in Hawaii, and NSA/CSS Georgia at Fort Gordon in Georgia. (p. 36)

These JCMA units monitor the unclassified communications of American military and government entities to determine if critical information has been disclosed or if other vulnerabilities exist that adversaries could exploit. (p. 36)

According to the Transition Book the "Attorney General-approved procedures (and Federal law) permit monitoring with consent, and NSA/CSS ensures that personnel are notified of the possibility of monitoring and that all required consents have been obtained before such monitoring can begin." (p. 49)

Label on an Integrated Services Telephone (IST) which can be
used for both classified and unclassified phone calls
(click to enlarge)

Declassifications

The 2009 Presidential Transition Book, which was declassified in April 2016, also reveals some details that can be compared to information from the Snowden documents:

For example, the Transition Book reveals the involvement of foreign partners in the NSA's RT-RG processing and analysis system:

"The Real Time Regional Gateway (RT-RG) [...] is bringing the full Signals Intelligence analysis, processing and exploitation power of NSA/CSS to deployed U.S. and governement agencies and military forces along with our 2nd and 3rd party partners in Theater through special agreements. RT-RG provides Signals Intelligence analysts near real-time access to [redacted]." (p. 19)

As part of the Snowden revelations this aspect was reported only three years later, in May 2019, by the online outlet The Intercept.

> See also: From 9-Eyes to 14-Eyes: the Afghanistan SIGINT Coalition (AFSC)

The Transition Book also mentions the multilateral group formed by the NSA's partners in the Pacific Region called SIGINT Seniors Pacific (SSPAC):

"In addition to bilateral partnerships, NSA/CSS continues to support a limited number of multilateral relationships such as SIGINT Seniors Europe (SSEUR) and SIGINT Seniors Pacific (SSPAC)." (p. 47)

The name of this group had already been revealed a year before, in March 2015, when The New Zealand Herald released a document from the Snowden trove (although a paper from 2012 had already mentioned a "Pacific version of the Five Eyes ‘plus’ grouping").

> See also: NSA's Foreign Partnerships

Cyber defense

Several parts of the 2009 Presidential Transition Book are about "Defending Vital Networks", which at that time already was a high priority issue.

The NSA saw a central role for itself, because "Insights and information gained from the Signals Intelligence mission, combined with the expertise and capabilities offered by the Information Assurance mission, make NSA/CSS a key player in defending vital networks against the threats of the Internet age." (p. 30)

Accordingly, the NSA was one of over 20 federal departments involved in the Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative (CNCI), or simply the "Cyber Initiative", which was established by president George W. Bush in January 2008 and was continued by president Obama.

The CNCI "seeks to address current cybersecurity threats and anticipate future threats and technologies in order to prevent, deter, and protect the U.S. Federal government (.gov) domain against cyber intrusions. The strategy includes establishing shared situational awareness across the federal government." (p. 32)

The exact way in which the NSA contributes to the CNCI is redacted, but some of its unclassified contributions are:

- "Threat analysis provides a comprehensive understanding of the intentions, capabilities, and activities of the adversary."

- "Activity analysis allows for the discovery of unknown, significant intrusion activity, in-depth analysis of known intrusion sets, and trend analysis."

- "Network analysis and cyber target development efforts monitor, characterize, and report on foreign digital networks, organizations and personas in cyberspace." (p. 32-35)

An intriguing issue is that in other NSA documents the notorious Utah Data Center is called an "Intelligence Community Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative Data Center", but the Transition Book doesn't contain a single unclassified reference to what the purpose of such a CNCI data center would be (neither do the Snowden documents).

However, the Transition Book does emphasize that "All of our responsibilities under the CNCI are within our existing authorities and missions, i.e., SIGINT, Information Assurance, enabling network warfare under JFCC-NW, and providing technical assistance to other federal agencies. The vast majority of our work under the CNCI is work we are already doing under our Transformation 3.0." (p. 100)

The NSA/CSS Threat Operations Center (NTOC), ca. 2006
(photo: NSA - click to enlarge)

Transformation 3.0

The 2009 Presidential Transition Book seems to be the first document that provides an elaboration of "Transformation 3.0" or T3.0. This appears to be a strategic technology plan meant to "distribute our processing capabilities throughout the global enterprise and to unify our missions."

This had to be done by "creating a cooperative and concerted real-time exploit-attack-defend capability [redacted]. T3.0 connects analysts, missions partners, clients, sensors, systems, and information on a global scale through a robust, secure, and distributed network." (p. 60)

(Upon request of The Black Vault, an Intellipedia page about Transformation 3.0 was declassified in 2018, but again most parts have been redacted)

Transformation 3.0 comes after two earlier Transformations of the NSA, which apparently took place in the 1990s and the early 2000s:

"T1.0 - Modernization
Following the cold war, T1.0 improved corporate business processes, shaped the workforce, modernized technlogy, and updated operations - better positioning the Agency to grapple with varied threats and emerging technology."

"T2.0 - Collaboration
Following 9/11/2001, T2.0 began to move NSA/CSS from a paradigm of "need to know" to "need to share", both within NSA and with our clients and partners. T2.0 began to merge the Signals Intelligence and Information Assurance missions together as one, providing on-site support and tailored services - which enabled NSA/CSS to fashing new relationships for the new world order, redrawing distinctions between national and tactical, producer and consumer, collector and operator."

T3.0 - [redacted]
Today, NSA/CSS is focused on the [redacted]. The intention is to create cooperative, interoperable, real-time Exploitation/Defense/attack-enabling (E/D/enA) capabilities [redacted]" (p. 123)

Transformation 3.0 was comprised of three parts: "(1) Mission Modernization, (2) Infrastructure Modernization (comprising significant improvement in Power, Space and Cooling (PS&C) and Information Technology (IT) Modernization efforts, both described earlier) and (3) Workforce Modernization." (p. 125)

T3.0 is briefly mentioned in some documents from the Snowden trove as well, for example this one that says that the initiative started in 2006, which means it came shortly after Transformation 2.0 which had just been launched in 2003. See about T2.0 also this newsletter. At GCHQ there was a counterpart program called SIGINT Modernisation.

Another document leaked by Snowden says that the objective of T3.0 was nothing less than "Global Network Dominance" and that a crucial piece for that was the Remote Operations Center (ROC), which manages and operates the NSA's rapidly growing array of hacking operations.

The 2009 Presidential Transition Book also includes a copy of an internal powerpoint presentation about the Transformation 3.0 plan, which is almost completely redacted. (p. 79ff)

This briefing slide from the Transition Book repeats that an important part of T3.0 was to "create cooperative, interoperable, real-time Exploitation, Defense and attack-enabling capabilities" which reminds us of the NSA's TURBULENCE program. This program was first reported on in 2007 and was the successor of the TRAILBLAZER project.

Update:
An internal NSA newsletter from October 2006 confirms that TURBULENCE is the actual implementation of the Transformation 3.0 initiative. Something similar can be read on page 293 of the National Defense Authorization Act (pdf) for the fiscal year 2008, which added that TURBULENCE was structured as a "series of loosely connected projects, not one of which met the threshold for designation as a major systems acquisition. This decision, while permitting the NSA to avoid external acquisition oversight, exacerbated the Agency’s weaknesses in systems engineering and systems integration."

TURBULENCE (abbreviated as TU) was/is an umbrella program with at least seven components, including TURMOIL for passive collection from fiber-optic cables and TUTELAGE, which detects and blocks cyberattacks directed against the computer networks of the US Defense Department.

Even more interesting is TURBINE, which uses identifiers from TURMOIL and TUTELAGE to initiate a semi-automated process in which an implant from the NSA's Computer Network Exploitation system QUANTUM is installed on a target's computer system.

With these three components, TURBULENCE integrates all three capabilities of Transformation 3.0: TURMOIL for exploitation, TUTELAGE for defense and TURBINE for attack-enabling.

Slide about the TURBULENCE program from the Snowden files
(click to enlarge)

Research program

Another interesting chapter in the 2009 Presidential Transition Book is about the efforts of the NSA's Research Directorate (RD):

"Since 2003, the NSA Research Program has been structured around four important mission thrusts which drive our advanced research efforts.

"Owning the Net.
This denotes our goal to dominate the global computing and communications network. Research will develop tools and techniques to access, at will, any networked device for offensive or defensive purposes."

"Coping with Information Overload.
We must turn the massive amount of information on the global network into a strategic asset, rather than an obstacle. Under this thrust, Research will develop capabilities to present the most valuable information, organized to make sense to analysts so that thy can perform their tasks in a more efficient and effective manner."

"Ubiquitous, Secure Collaboration.
The focus here is to provide the techniques and technology to allow diverse users - within the government and with our industrial and international partners - to work collaboratively and securely across multiple domains and different environments."

"Penetrate Hard Targets.
Penetrating hard targets provides the technological solutions to enable new access, collection and exploitation methodologies against the nation's toughest intelligence targets. The research Directorate provides foundational and advanced mathematics that contribute innovative solutions to all of the above mission thrusts." (p. 69)

The NSA's Research and Engineering (R&E) Building at Fort Meade
(click to enlarge)

NSA workforce

The exact number of people working at US intelligence agencies was always classified, but surprisingly, the 2009 Presidential Transition Book provides some very detailed figures.

It says that, probably in 2008, NSA/CSS employed 36,371 people worldwide, with 52% of them civilians (18,849) and 48% military and civilians from the armed services (17,522).

68.8% of the NSA's civilian workforce had a bachelor's degree or higher, 40.7% were women, 17.7% members of a minority and 3.8% were persons with disabilities. The average age of the civilian workforce was 43.6 years. (p. 58-59)

A separate chapter titled "NSA/CSS Footprint" provides detailed information charts about the NSA's four regional Cryptologic Centers, including the names of their commanders, partial organizational charts and numbers about their workforce, with actual numbers for 2008 and projected numbers for 2012 and 2015. Below are the actual numbers for 2008: (p. 185ff)

- NSA/CSS Georgia (codename SWEET TEA):
2930 employees: 368 civilians, 42 service civilians, 2173 military, 347 other (foreign or IC partner, contractor)

- NSA/CSS Hawaii:
3054 employees: 224 civilians, 121 service civilians, 2582 military, 127 others

- NSA/CSS Texas (codename BACONRIDGE):
2136 employees: 246 civilians, 56 service civilians, 1689 military, 145 other.

- NSA/CSS Colorado:
1324 employees: 233 civilians, 4 service civilians, 976 military, 115 contractors.

> See also The NSA's regional Cryptologic Centers

Finally, the 2009 Presidential Transition Book ends with the biographies of over 30(!) top officials of the NSA, all of which have been fully redacted, except for those of the director (Keith B. Alexander), the deputy director (John C. Inglis) and the chief of staff (Deborah A. Bonanni). (p. 243ff)

The presidential communications equipment under Barack Obama

(Updated: April 30, 2023)

Over the past five years, a range of articles on this weblog covered the secure and non-secure phones used by president Barack Obama, whether in the White House, at his Summer residence or aboard Air Force One.

With Donald Trump taking over the US presidency in a few days, it's a good moment to look back and provide a comprehensive overview of the communications equipment during Obama's time in office.

Additional context for this was provided by a background story from the New York Times from April last year, as well as by several other sources, which show an almost complete overhaul of the communication systems of the Obama White House.

Preparations under George W. Bush

For the communications systems used by the president of the United States it was more important to be reliable, than to be up-to-date, and so the equipment often served decades, almost until the moment that there are few officials left who know how to maintain it.

Modernization started under the presidency of George W. Bush, not directly to keep up with the rapid rise of internet communications, but because the existing system failed during the attacks on September 11, 2001. As the 9/11 Commission report says:

"The President told us he was frustrated with the poor communications that morning. He could not reach key officials, including Secretary Rumsfeld, for a period of time. The line to the White House shelter conference room and the Vice President kept cutting off."

> Read more: 9/11 inside the White House emergency bunker

Conference room of the Presidential Emergency Operations Center (PEOC). September 11, 2001
In the drawer there's a small version of the Integrated Services Telephone (IST)
(White House photo - click to enlarge)

These failures led to an overhaul of communications systems and the installment of new equipment. Bush' deputy chief of staff Joe Hagin ordered for example the upgrade of the Intel 486 computers, replacement of the slow and cumbersome Lotus Notes e-mail system, and White House staff members started using the first BlackBerries.

From August 2006 to May 2007 the famous Situation Room in the West Wing basement underwent the biggest renovation since this facility was created under the Kennedy administration. It was transformed from one simple conference room with a small office space into a multi-room facility with high tech communications equipment, much like we got used to from fictional movies and tv-series:

Video about the White House Situation Room. December 2009.
(White House video - click to play)

Simultaneously, a new and highly secure telephone system was established that should prevent failures like on 9/11: the Executive Voice over Secure IP-network, which connects the president with all major decision makers, like the secretaries of State, Defense and Homeland Security and the Director of National Intelligence.

For this network, common Cisco 7975 unified IP phones are used, but instead of the bezel or faceplate being standard silver, it's bright yellow, which is the color code for the highest classification level: Top Secret/SCI. The phones themselves have no encryption capability, there are separate network encryptors, probably from General Dynamics' TACLANE familiy.

Obama calls the French president Hollande using the Cisco IP phone with
yellow faceplate for secure communications. Key Largo, Florida, March 8, 2014
(White House photo by Pete Souza - click to enlarge)

Before this new IP-network was installed, the president's secure phone calls went through the Defense Red Switch Network (DRSN), which is the secure telephone network for the entire US military. In 2001, the DRSN was still circuit-switched, but its special multilevel precedence and preemption (MLPP) functionality couldn't prevent the glitches during the September 11 attacks.

The DRSN uses custom-made telephone devices, the latest model being the Integrated Services Telephone 2 (IST-2), which can be used for both secure and non-secure phone calls. Probably because of this combined functionality, president George W. Bush got an IST-2 in the Oval Office and so this was also the phone that Obama found on his desk when he took over the Presidency in January 2009:

A single IST-2 telephone on Obama's desk, March 29, 2009
(White House photo by Pete Souza)

Although it was useful to have just one phone for secure and non-secure calls, the IST-2 was probably a bit too military-looking, and also a special cover plate had to be made to cover the 50 direct line buttons, to prevent visitors from seeing who Obama's primary phone contacts were:

The IST-2 telephone with cover plate. The wooden box with the presidential
seal and the red button is an emergency call device
(click to enlarge)

In March or early April 2011, the single IST-2 on the president's desk was replaced by two more common phone sets:

- A black Avaya/Lucent 8520T, which is for the internal White House telephone network that was installed in 1996 and can be used for all non-secure phone calls.

- A dark gray Cisco 7975G Unified IP Phone with expansion module 7916, which is for the highly secure Executive Voice over Secure IP-network, but instead of the yellow faceplate, the phone in the Oval Office has the standard silver one, probably to make it not stand out too much. Although this phone came on the president's desk under Obama, the system itself was already operational since 2007.

The Cisco 7975, Lucent 8520 and iPad 2 on Obama's desk, July 31, 2011
(White House photo by Pete Souza)

In the Oval Office, this configuration would stay in use until the Summer of 2015. The same telephone sets could be found in the office of the president's personal assistent, which is right next to the Oval Office, as well as in the West Wing offices of other White House staff members who may need secure voice communications:

Obama in the office of his personal assistent, with a black Avaya/Lucent 8520T
for non-secure and the gray IST-2 for secure phone calls, May 24, 2010.
Left of the television there's a smaller Avaya/Lucent 8410D.
(White House photo by Pete Souze)

President Obama bids farewell to his personal secretary Katie Johnson. June 10, 2011.
(Cisco 7975 IP phone for secure and the Avaya/Lucent 8520T for non-secure calls)
(White House photo by Pete Souza - click to enlarge)

The office of Ben Rhodes, deputy national security adviser for strategic communications,
with a black Avaya/Lucent 8520 and the Cisco IP phone with yellow faceplate.
Also note the white file cabinet with KABA MAS high security lock.
(photo: Doug Mills/The New York Times - click to enlarge)

In March 2011, president Obama received an iPad 2 directly from Apple founder Steve Jobs ahead of the commercial release. As of January 31, 2012, this device was used to provide Obanma with portions of the President's Daily Brief (PDB), a summary of the most important intelligence assessments. This electronic way of delivery allows analysts to add video and audio clips and interactive graphics. For security reasons, the wireless connections of the president's iPad are disabled.

New equipment under Barack Obama

Immediately after becoming the 44th president of the United States in January 2009, a problem arose with the BlackBerry that Barack Obama was almost addicted to before he was elected. The president using a BlackBerry was considered a big security risk, as foreign intelligence agencies could easily track the president's movements and intercept his communications.


Secured BlackBerry

Obama definitely wanted to keep his BlackBerry, so the White House Communications Agency (WHCA) and the National Security Agency (NSA) came up with a solution: in cooperation with engineers from BlackBerry manufacturer Research In Motion (RIM) they secured a set of regular BlackBerries with the SecurVoice application.

Somewhere in May or June 2009, this highly secured BlackBerry was delivered to president Obama as well as to a group of up to twenty people with whom he liked to stay in close contact with. This because it's only possible to have secure communications if both ends are using the same encryption method or device.

> Read more: How Obama's BlackBerry got secured

President Obama using his secured BlackBerry 8900 in the limousine while
traveling to the airport in Jakarta, Indonesia. November 10, 2010.
(White House Photo by Pete Souza - click to enlarge)

As of 2009, the White House Communications Agency (WHCA) started upgrading its Washington Area System network, modernizing six network switches in Washington, transiting secure telephone units to IP-based phones, purchasing 24 secure deployable voice switches, upgrading narrow and wideband satellite systems, and conversing the radio network used for presidential travels to an IP-based system.

As part of the Senior Leadership Communication System (connecting the president, vice president, Congress, secretary of Defense, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, etc.) the WHCA established a nationwide network that would survive a high-altitude electromagnetic pulse (HEMP) from a nuclear blast. This network would consist of fiber-optic rings with redundant connections with HEMP and non-HEMP networks.

For all this, the WHCA asked an extra $ 24.7 million for its 2009 procurement budget, which also included upgrading the Head of State network to an IP-network. This system is used by the president to communicate with foreign leaders, but unfortunately we have no additional information about it, so it's not clear which heads of state are connected to it and whether and how it is secured.

A small room within the White House Situation Room where the president
"can make a head-of-state phonecall from the Situation Room itself"
(screenshot from a White House video)

Cool phones?

Even though Obama inherited a fully modernized Situation Room and a sophisticated IST-2 phone on his desk, and was also provided with a uniquely secured BlackBerry, he still expressed his disappointment of the communications equipment he found in the White House. During a meeting with fundraisers in April 2011, he said:

"I always thought I was gonna have like really cool phones and stuff," and: "We can't get our phones to work." Acting out his exasperation: "Come on, guys. I'm the president of the United States! Where's the fancy buttons and stuff and the big screen comes up? It doesn't happen."

> See also: Does Obama really lack cool phones?

Although this wasn't really the case for the president's own equipment, it did apply to other White House employees. The New York Times reported that West Wing aides were stuck "in a sad and stunning state of technological inferiority: desktop computers from the last decade, black-and-white printers that could not do double-sided copies, aging BlackBerries (no iPhones), weak wireless Internet" and desktop phones from the mid-1990s.

Part of this problem was that responsibility for White House technology has long been divided between four agencies, each with their own chief information officer:

- the National Security Council (NSC)
- the Executive Office of the President (EOP)
- the US Secret Service (USSS)
- the White House Communications Agency (WHCA)

That led to a series of Band-Aid solutions over the years, as one agency or another has attempted piecemeal upgrades to White House gear.

"Composite of several images of the President and his national security team during meetings
in the Situation Room discussing the mission against Osama bin Laden" - May 2011.
On the table we see the Cisco with yellow faceplate and an STE secure phone.
(White House Photo by Pete Souza - click to enlarge)

Even in March 2016, when a full IT modernization had already started (see below), Obama said that the pop-culture depiction of presidential-grade technology and the real world are far apart: movies and TV shows "make it appear as if I’m in the [Situation] room and moving things. [We] have half a finger print and a half an hour later I’m tracking a guy on streets of Istanbul. Doesn’t work that way, no. Sometimes I’m just trying to get a connection."

After all the system upgrades, trying to get a connection should not be a problem anymore. Real-time monitoring of military of intelligence operations may be different, but the White House was eager to show that at least they were capable of doing so during the moments when US Navy SEALS killed Osama bin Laden on May 1, 2011:

President Obama in one of the small conference rooms of the Situation Room,
following the operation against Osama Bin Laden. May 1, 2011.
(White House Photo by Pete Souza - click to enlarge)

In the air

With quite some improvements of the ground-based communications systems, the equipment aboard Air Force One was still lagging behind. For their modernization, an $ 81 million contract was awarded to L-3 Communications in 2009. This included replacing outdated analog systems, providing fixed bandwidth switching and integrated secure/non-secure video teleconferencing.

By August 2012, all the old phone sets from the 1980s had been replaced by the Airborne Executive Phone (AEP), which is able to make both secure and non-secure calls from a single handset. It also provides Multiple Independent Levels of Security (MILS) for digital voice and internet data access.

> Read more: New phones aboard Air Force One

President Obama talks on the phone aboard Air Force One. April 10, 2014.
The Airborne Executive Phone has the red light on, which means it's a secure call.
(White House Photo by Pete Souza - Click to see the full version)

After the upgrade of the phone system, administration officials still had to sent e-mails over an air-to-ground internet connection that was often no better than dial-up modems from the mid-1990s.

Current White House deputy chief of staff for operations Anita Decker Breckenridge told The New York Times that this wasn't acceptable anymore and that she has since worked with the Air Force to upgrade the president’s plane to broadband speeds: "This is the Oval Office in the sky. Talk about a network that didn’t work."


On the road

The Airborne Executive Phone was also installed in the presidential limousine: in the next picture we can recognize a dark gray version of the device between the seats, underneath the presidential seal. President Obama seems to be using a Motorola RAZR flip-phone, for which there's a cradle right next to the side-window.

Previously, an earlier Motorola clamshell phone was used inside the limousine, which means that there must also be a picocell inside, as the heavily armored vehicle will act as a Faraday cage that blocks wireless signals. In the picture, Obama also has two BlackBerries and his iPad in a cover:

President Obama talks on the phone with Aurora Mayor Steve Hogan during the
motorcade ride to Palm Beach International Airport. July 20, 2012.
(White House Photo - Click to enlarge)

(The WHCA also provides secure and non-secure telephones at every location the president visits while traveling. These phones are slightly different and will be described in a separate article later on)


On vacation

"Presidents don't get vacations, they just get a change of scenery" - so when president Obama was on Summer vacation at the Blue Heron Farm in Chilmark on the island of Martha's Vineyard, the White House Communications Agency (WHCA) would install all the necessary equipment, especially for secure communications.

In the following picture we see Obama during his vacation in August 2011, with on the table two common white Panasonic KX-TS108W office phones, which the WHCA provides for non-secure calls. For highly secure calls, two Cisco 7975G Unified IP Phones with yellow faceplate were installed:

> Read more: Obama on vacation

President Obama monitoring Hurricane Irene with his assistant John Brennan and
some other officials. Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, August 26, 2011
(White House photo by Pete Souza - click to enlarge)

The New York Times reported about a situation during Obama's Summer vacation in 2014: when White House aides accompanying the president struggled with their laptops as they tried to revise a presidential statement, they could not get on-the-road tech support from the WHCA because the agency’s staff members were not authorized to log in to computers issued by the Executive Office of the President.



IT modernization

After this incident in Martha's Vineyard, White House deputy chief of staff for operations Anita Breckenridge was determined to finally fix the mess of the presidential communications systems.

By March 2015 she had hired David Recordon, who designed and maintained the office technology for Mark Zuckerberg and the other employees at Facebook, to modernize the White House IT systems. Just 28 years old, he was appointed as the first Director of White House Information Technology. "It was an interesting challenge and world for me" according to Recordon.

For this overhaul, the White House didn't need to request additional money - it was paid out of the existing technology budgets for the various agencies involved. In some cases, money was saved by eliminating duplications: the four agencies involved no longer negotiate their own contracts with cellphone companies and no longer buy duplicate copies of software licenses.

President Obama in his private study in the Treaty Room of the White House. We see two
black Avaya/Lucent 8410 phones, a computer screen and an HP laser printer. March 2009.
(Callie Shell/Aurora Photos - click to enlarge)

New IP phones

After almost 20 years, the old internal White House telephone network with the black Avaya/Lucent telephones was replaced by a new IP-based system with the latest Cisco IP phones from the 8800-series.

These phones have full-color (video)screens, WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity (although likely disabled for security reasons), and speed-dial buttons that can be configured online - for the old desktop phones only few staff members knew how to program them. Many White House aides now carry the most recent iPhones, but Obama still carries his own specially modified BlackBerry.

The new IP phone system seems to have been first rolled out in the White House staff offices in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building (EEOB) right across the street, where the new phones were first seen in this picture from November 2015:

White House staffers in the social media office of the White House
in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. November 2015
(photo: Stephen Crowley/New York Times - click to enlarge)

Later, the new phones also made their way to the office of Obama's personal secretary, right next to the Oval Office, where they replaced the old Avaya/Lucent Lucent 8520T and now sit next to the older Cisco IP phone for the highly secure Executive Voice over Secure IP-network (here also with the standard silver instead of the yellow faceplate):

Obama presents a birthday cake to his personal secretary Ferial Govashiri,
in her office just outside the Oval Office. August 30, 2016
(White House photo/Pete Souza - click to enlarge)

Strangely enough, this new Cisco IP phone was not yet installed on the president's desk in the Oval Office. There, a much simpler telephone from a different manufacturer had replaced the old big black Lucent 8520 by May 2015. The new Avaya 9608 IP phone is a very common office phone with just an average monochrome display and only a few direct line buttons:

President Obama talks on his phone for secure calls with Secretary of State
John Kerry. In front of it there's the new Avaya 9608, July 13, 2015.
(White House photo by Pete Souza - Click to enlarge)

This Avaya IP phone was also placed underneath the side-table in the seating area of the Oval Office, as can be seen in the following picture. In the seating area there's always the same set of telephones as on the president's desk, but when the president makes a phone call, he usually uses the ones on his desk. The phones in the seating area can then be used by his aides or advisers to listen in to the call.

President Obama and FBI Director James Comey speak to members of
the media in the Oval Office of the White House, June 13, 2016.
(AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais - click to enlarge)

However, in November 2016, the Avaya phone underneath the side table had been replaced by the more futuristic looking Cisco IP phone from the 8800-series, but on the president's desk there still seems to be the simpler Avaya device.

Jann Wenner visits president Obama in the Oval Office, the day
after the 2016 presidential election, November 9, 2016.
(White House photo/Pete Souza - click to enlarge)

Updates:

A close look at the high-resolution version of a photo from December 24, 2016, shows that also on the president's desk, the Avaya phone has been replaced by what can be recognized as the new Cisco from the 8800-series, with some kind of module on the back.

Meanwhile, readers of this weblog have recognized that the box on the back is because this Cisco 8841 IP Phone has been modified in order to meet Telephone Security Group (TSG) standards, including on-hook security for the headset and speakerphone, in this case by Advanced Programs, Inc. (API). The modified phones can also be recognized by the bright red secure hold button:

On the very last day of the Obama administration, just hours before Donald Trump was inaugurated, all the offices of the White House West Wing were empty, leaving just the new communications equipment:

Empty desks in the White House press offices, with a new Cisco IP phone, a new computer
screen and keyboard with integrated smartcard reader. January 20, 2017.
(photo: David Nakamura/The Washington Post - click to enlarge)

New computers

Besides the new telephone system, director of White House Information Technology David Recordon also installed a new computer network. The New York Times reported that first he tried to map the miles of Ethernet cables and phone wires inside the walls of the White House. His team of technicians eventually discovered and removed 13,000 pounds of abandoned cables that no longer served any purpose.

"They had been installed over the decades by different organizations using different standards, different techniques, from different eras" Recordon said. "They were finding these pipes that just had bundles of cable that had been cut off over the years, no longer used. So we just started pulling it out."

With the wiring fixed, Recordon started replacing the old computers by new ones with fast, solid-state drives and fast processors, as well as installing color printers. The WiFi is now made strong enough to live-stream for example an event on Facebook from the Roosevelt Room. And finally, the White House has started requiring users to log on to their computers with two-factor authentication using a smartcard and a pincode.

An Avocent KVM-switch and a smartcard-reader with a smart ID card
inserted, as seen in Ben Rhodes' White House office
(photo: Doug Mills/The New York Times)

Update:

On April 30, 2023, The Washington Post published 23 out of 900 photographs that were obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request to the Obama Presidential Library. They show the moments inside the White House during the raid in which Osama bin Laden was killed on May 1, 2011:

Obama and his team during the capture of Osama bin Laden, May 1, 2011
(White House photo by Pete Souza - click to enlarge)

Links and sources
- The New York Times: Obama Boosted White House Technology; Trump Sees Risk (Dec. 2016)
- The White House: How the Presidential Transition Works in the Social Media Age (Oct. 2016)
- The New York Times: Technology Upgrades Get White House Out of the 20th Century (Apr. 2016)
- Comparison of Cisco IP phones: Impressions of the 8861 (Aug. 2015)
- Many more pictures at Cryptome: Obama Phones (Jan. 2012)
- NBC News documentary: Inside the Obama White House (2009)
- See also: The White House Museum

How Obama's BlackBerry got secured

(Updated: October 31, 2023)

Around January 20, 2009, when Barack Obama took over the office of president of the United States, there was quite a lot of media attention about the fact that he had to give up his BlackBerry, because it was considered to be a security risk.

This caused almost world wide media attention, but the follow-up was less accurately covered and a number of different stories were told. Here we will show that Obama actually kept his beloved BlackBerry, but only after it had been secured by special encryption software and some additional security measures.

President Obama showing his BlackBerry (photo: Reuters)

Obama's predecessor, George W. Bush, also used a BlackBerry during the 2000 presidential campaign, but had to give it up, as well as the use of any e-mail software, upon taking office. Three days earlier, he sent out a final e-mail to 42 friends and family members to inform them that he would no longer correspond electronically.

Eight years later, Barack Obama was also forced to give up his BlackBerry, not only because of concerns that its communications and e-mail could be intercepted, but also because of the Presidential Records Act of 1978. This makes all written White House communications public property and subject to examination under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

However, this time Obama definitely wanted keep using this popular business phone to stay in touch with people outside the White House bubble. Therefore, the Secret Service (USSS), the White House Communications Agency (WHCA) and the National Security Agency (NSA) went looking for a solution.

Obama using his BlackBerry 8830 during the election campaign in 2008
(Photo: Getty Images)

US President Obama using a silver BlackBerry 8830
Nokia E61 or E62, as recognized by someone here

Sectéra Edge

Some media suggested Obama had to change his BlackBerry for the Sectéra Edge, a highly secured PDA, which is produced by General Dynamics for the US military. But the Sectéra Edge is quite big, heavy (340 grams) and bulky and therefore hardly convenient for someone used to a BlackBerry. This solution would also require everyone that Obama would like to communicate with to have the same phone, which is priced between 2650,- and 3350,- USD. Secure communications are only possible if both ends use the same (or compatible) encryption devices.

According to other sources, the Sectéra Edge was only used in addition to Obama's BlackBerry, until a permanent solution was worked out. Reports weren't clear about how exactly these two devices were combined. Probably the Sectéra Edge acted like an encryptor, which was plugged into the BlackBerry, so Obama could keep using this device to make a call or send out an e-mail, which then went through the Sectéra Edge, encrypting it, before going over the telecommunications network.

The Sectéra Edge, manufactured by General Dynamics

Compromise

That latter, temporary solution must have been even more cumbersome, so a compromise was made, in which president Obama could keep using a BlackBerry, but equipped with a software package to encrypt phone calls and text and email messages.

For this purpose, the security agencies choose the SecurVoice application, which was developed by The Genesis Key, in cooperation with engineers from BlackBerry manufacturer Research In Motion (RIM). SecurVoice should not be confused with Secure-Voice.com, nor with SecuVOICE, which is used for securing the smart phone of the German chancellor Merkel.

Update:
Responsible for securing Obama's BlackBerry was Richard "Dickie" George, who served as technical director of the NSA's Information Assurance Directorate (IAD) from 2003 until his retirement in 2011. In 2014 he told CNN that the NSA set up a lab where dozens of experts performed surgery on the president's future BlackBerry for several months. The device was manipulated to weed out potential threats to secure communication and BlackBerry's algorithms were also reviewed. The choice of the smartphone model was eventually the NSA's, not Obama's, George explained.

After the NSA did all the necessary tests and checking to make sure the software met federal standards like FIPS 140-2, the highly secured BlackBerry was delivered to the president somewhere in May or June 2009. He also gave up his old e-mail address and switched to a new one, which is kept secret.

Maybe we can see the new, secured BlackBerry in this picture below, where there are two BlackBerrys lying in front of Obama. The silver one seems to be the BlackBerry 8830, which he already used during the election campaign. The black one, probably a BlackBerry 8900, could then be the new secure one, as we can see the president using this one in later pictures:

President Barack Obama works with Jon Favreau, director of speechwriting, on the Normandy speech
aboard Air Force One enroute to Paris. In front of him are a black and a silver Blackberry.
(White House photo by Pete Souza, June 5, 2009 - click for a bigger picture!)

Detail from the picture above, showing the two BlackBerrys

The secure BlackBerry was not only issued to the president, but also to a small group of people with whom he likes to stay in close contact with. This because, as said, it's only possible to have secure communications if both ends are using the same encryption method. This limited Obama's goal of keeping in touch with the outside world: encryption (still) means exclusion.

The number of people able to message and call the president is probably only between ten and twenty. Included are vice-president Biden, Obama's chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, advisors David Axelrod and Valerie Jarrett, press secretary Robert Gibbs, first lady Michelle Obama, a few other family members, and some personal friends from Chicago.

Update:
On March 16, 2016, AP reported that in February 2009, secretary of state Hillary Clinton also wanted a secured BlackBerry like the one used by Obama, but that NSA denied that request. A month later, Clinton began using a private server, located in the basement of her home, to exchange e-mail messages with her top aides through her regular, non-secure BlackBerry. Later it came out that this rather risky solution was also used for sensitive messages.

On October 30, 2013, Obama's press secretary Jay Carney said that the president will continue to use his (secured) BlackBerry, despite concerns about eavesdropping which came up after it was revealed that NSA intercepted the communications of 35 world leaders.



The Genesis Key

The SecurVoice software for the presidential BlackBerry was developed for a small company called The Genesis Key, Inc., based in Washington DC. This company was founded in October 2008 by W. Steven Garrett, who took the name from an item used in the 1986 computer game The Legend of Zelda.

The software was developed in the previous four years, apparantly for one of the projects of Steve I. Cooper, a former special assistant to the president, senior director for information integration, and CIO (Chief Information Officer) for the Office of Homeland Security. He is now a member of the advisory board of SecurDigital, Inc., a firm founded in October 2009 by Bruce Magown and Steven Garrett to distribute the SecurVoice software applications.

Steven Garrett is a man with a quite surprising background. His Linked-In profiles show that he has been involved in a very wide range of businesess, like manufacturing plants for Fannies Fat Free Cheesecakes and Fat Free Burger (providing microwave-ready cheeseburgers to military commissaries) and marketing & sales for Lion Sportswear and Faded Glory Jeans. He also developed a highly secure appartment building, named Garrett Place. At his twitter account he describes himself as "Proven Rainmaker, Change Agent, Strategist, and Driving Force for Unprecedented, Exponential Growth in Revenues, Earnings, and Market Valuation".



SecurVoice

The Genesis Key released the SecurVoice software in December 2008, claiming this to be the world's first completely secure voice and data encryption solution. Allthough there were already a number of other hardware and software encryption solutions, the SecurVoice application should be able to protect global voice connections between and within all types of cell, satellite, PBX, SDR and VOIP phones and phone systems.

SecurVoice is 100% Java based, which should make it device- and carrier-independent, but according to the website, the software is currently only operational on the Blackberry operating system version 4.5 and up. Software porting for other operating systems, like Symbian, Brew, Windows Mobile, Google, and iPhone is said to be underway.

With SecurVoice, each phone can be loaded with up to three levels of security, each one accessible through a separate icon and recognizable by a different ringtone. When dialing a number and this number has a cryptographic key associated with it, then the call is automatically placed as a secured call. If a phone number has no cryptographic key associated with it, then the cell phone operates normally and the call is placed unencrypted.

The SecurVoice software comes in two versions:
- Phone-to-Phone (P2P), where secure calls are made directly from one cell phone to another. The price for government users is 1795,- USD per application.
- Phone-to-Server (P2S), where secure calls are routed from the phone to an enterprise server and back. The price of a server license is between 2500,- and 25.000,- USD.

It's likely, that for Obama the server solution was chosen. This allows a centralized key management, monitoring of all secure calls and record keeping of the messages. One source says the president may have to wait up to 50 minutes for an e-mail reply, as the system actively sniffs out incoming messages for viruses or Trojan horses.

Overview of the SecurVoice application options
(by The Genesis Key/SecurDigital)

Encryption

The SecurVoice software features a dual-layered, or hybrid encryption scheme, which means it combines symmetrical and asymmetrical encryption algorithms. It performs the voice encryption in real time by using a fast symmetric cipher, using a strong key. This key is then encrypted with a public-key or asymmetrical cryptosystem, like RSA or ECC, and transmitted together with the encrypted message. This is also how the vast majority of present-day communications encryption works.

The SecurVoice symmetric encryption uses a 256-bit session (conversation) key, which replaces the encryption every second with non-reoccurring numbers. This session key is a combination (salted hash) of the sender Base Secure Key (stored in the recipient key store) and a random session key. According to the manufacturer, SecurVoice uses classified Type 1 encryption algorithms, which are restricted to government and military users. For corporate users, public crypto algorithms like AES are used.

In case of a SecurVoice enterprise server, the software converts voice into encrypted data, which is then sent over the carrier network to the SecurVoice Enterprise Server where it is decrypted. It is then re-encrypted and sent back over the carrier network to the receiving phone, where it is decrypted and converted back to voice. It's also possible to select different encryption algorithms, so that, for example, encryption from a cell phone to the enterprise server may be the AES algorithm with a 128-bit, while from the server to the receiving phone this may be done by using Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC).

President Obama using his BlackBerry 8900 in the limousine while traveling
from the University of Indonesia to the airport in Jakarta, Indonesia.
(White House Photo by Pete Souza, November 10, 2010)

Security risks

As Obama wanted to keep using a BlackBerry device, the security solution is software only. This still leaves risks like compromised hardware and hacking by means of social engineering. Therefore, some security specialists say that it's not impossible to hack Obama's BlackBerry and that foreign states and other hackers will likely try to do so.

To minimize these risks, the secured BlackBerrys prevent forwarding e-mail messages from the president and sending him attachments. His secret e-mail address is likely to be changed regularly as well and Obama's friends and staff members were lectured about these security issues.

Another risk of the president using a BlackBerry, like a cell phone in general, is that enemies can try to track the president's location in real-time, even when GPS is disabled. Every cell phone regularly transmits it's IMEI-number to the cell tower, and this can be intercepted by devices like a Triggerfish. How this tracking can be done, and countered, is described in this, respectively this article.

One source says the presidential BlackBerry can only connect to a secure base station, which can be used to hide the IMEI-number of the device and thus prevent tracking it. This would mean the White House Communications Agency has to carry such a secure base station wherever the president goes.

There must be also a secure base station inside the presidential limousine, as we can see in the picture above. First because using a foreign cell phone network would be a big security risk, but also because the limousine is most likely constructed like a Faraday cage, and therefore a BlackBerry could only be used if there's a base station in the car itself (and probably also in Air Force One). The secure base station is probably connected to a secure satellite link with Washington.

President Obama uses his BlackBerry for calling Mitt Romney
(White House photo by Pete Souza, November 6, 2012)

President Obama using his old BlackBerry, during a campaign
visit to Albuquerque, New Mexico in August 2008

Conclusion

As we have seen, president Obama has kept his BlackBerry, but only after it had been secured. This took quite some effort: newly developed software had to be tested within a couple of months, all his contacts have to use the same software, limiting their number to a rather small group, and a secure base station has to follow the president.

Nonetheless, this ad hoc solution for the president marks the beginning of an era in which top level mobile communications will no longer be secured with dedicated hardware, but by using software applications for regular commercial smartphones.

Update #1:

By the end of 2014, a Russian state-sponsored hacker group, known as Cozy Bear, was able to infiltrate White House e-mail servers containing the sent and received emails of president Barack Obama, but they failed to penetrate the servers that controlled the traffic from his personal BlackBerry. The Dutch Joint Sigint Cyber Unit (JSCU) monitored these hacking operations and alerted the Americans.


UPDATE #2:

Since August 2023, the actual BlackBerry devices used by president Obama are on display in the National Cryptologic Museum (NCM). This museum, which is located just outside the NSA campus at Fort Meade, shows four BlackBerry smartphones, several with the presidential seal. Following Obama’s term, the NSA removed security modifications and classified data from the phones and eventually offered them to the NCM.

BlackBerry devices used by president Obama on display at the NCM
(photo: NSA - click to enlarge)

Besides the four BlackBerry devices, the NCM also has three Motorola A840 flip phones on display, which Obama used in his presidential limousine, for example. In the photo released by the NSA, we see that the front side camera of these phones have been replaced by what looks like the seal of the White House Communications Agency (WHCA), which maintains (secure) communications for the president.

Motorola A840 flip phones used by president Obama on display at the NCM
(photo: NSA - click to enlarge)

Sources and Links

- Yahoo.com: Obama has finally ditched his BlackBerry, but its replacement will surprise you (2016)
- CNN.com: 'I made Obama's BlackBerry' (2014)
- FoxNews.com: Obama Getting Super-Secure BlackBerry
- New York Times: Symbol of Elite Access: E-Mail to the Chief
- The Telegraph: Barack Obama's BlackBerry 'no fun' (2010)
- PRWeb: The X-Change Corporation Acquires Genesis Key, Inc. (2010)
- Radio interview about SecurVoice: Telecom Junkies - Secret Agent Phone
- Interview with Steven Garrett: Wireless Technology Risks and Enterprise Security (2010)
- Washington Times: Obama soon to get secure BlackBerry (2009)
- WirelessMoves: How To Secure The BarackBerry (2009)
- Communities Dominate Brands: Do Communities Dominate personal security of Obama? The Blackberry Battle (2009)
- See also: securvoice.blogspot.com

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