Obama gets to keep his BlackBerry

Barack Obama is to be allowed to keep his beloved BlackBerry. He had been advised by the US secret service that he would have to surrender the device, which he uses to keep in touch with friends and family, when he moved into the White House on Tuesday. However, on his insistence the National Security Agency have come up with a bespoke "super-encryption package" that will enable him to keep using it "for routine and personal messages".

His protectors had feared a hacker could eavesdrop on his calls or emails or discover his precise location. Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, said: "The President has a BlackBerry through a compromise that allows him to stay in touch with senior staff and a small group of personal friends in a way that use will be limited and the security is enhanced to ensure his ability to communicate."

Another hurdle was that all presidential correspondence must be preserved, under the Presidential Records Act, so that it is open to public scrutiny in the future. But John Podesta, who organised the transition, said that it was agreed that removing the BlackBerry would have cut Obama off from real people.

Meanwhile, it appears that George Bush was not quite as keen on new technology as his successor. Obama's staff were reportedly appalled to discover the state of the White House's technology upon taking residence, with spokesman Bill Burton describing it as "like going from an Xbox to an Atari." Chief among their complaints were an absence of Macs, and PCs running six-year-old versions of Microsoft software. ·