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As the American presidential campaign winds it’s way to the convention stage, attention is now being paid to wireless security and it is being taken seriously…at least as seriously as politicians can take technology. In fact, the upcoming Democratic National Convention in Denver has named Symantec the “official information security software provider to the Democratic National Convention” and wireless services are being provided by both Qwest and AT&T. Sounds great, as a political convention is an ideal place to showcase and utilize the flexibility, convenience and power of mobile computing. Right?

Apparently not so much….

There are fears not only of the loss of sensitive information and plans to hackers, but also of someone planting incriminating information or something like porn on a delegate’s laptop. Certainly I could see both as possible, and political dirty tricks have stooped far dirtier in the past. However, reviewing the announced IT Security measures being planned for the upcoming convention, most of them seem to revolve around keeping non-delegates out of the parking lot around the convention building itself so someone can’t hack into the convention network (which could likely be defeated by a high vantage point and a Pringles can) and concerns that delegates will have their “Blackberrys and Bluetooths” hacked while at trendy and stylish Denver eateries. Ummm….OK.

Since Symantec and several high profile security consulting firms are in on this, I would like to assume that the REAL security is not being announced. However, then I read that the DNC is making the convention center “unwired” and doing all networking from landlines assuming somehow that those are hack-proof. On top of that, they are advising  all delegates to “make sure they don’t have wireless devices turned on, make sure they don’t have their Bluetooths turned on and that they are very aware of their surroundings”. Yeah right..but at least he didn’t say BlueTEETH. These people live or die by Blackberry or iPhone. No way they will keep them off the entire time. Wouldn’t it be smarter to have Symantec just work on making a hardened wireless network for them with proper encryption. As for personal wireless devices, why not trust AT&T and Qwest to do their jobs to avoid the PR nightmare that would come with failure? The market economy at work, right?

Of course, the real hoot for me was the following quote from a DNC spokesperson…

We don’t anticipate delegates’ bringing laptops to the convention. They may bring them, but they will use them in the hotels to surf the Internet. They aren’t trying to connect to the convention hall.

Yeah right.

Considering that this revolution is going to be live-blogged, how likely is it that people won’t be on their laptops from every square foot of that convention area including the restrooms? I have no doubt all major speeches will be twittered word for word, flickered moment by moment and Qiked in all it’s 35fps glory to hundred of thousands of avid internet viewers. After all, isn’t a convention all about exciting the voters and rallying the faithful? Seems to me a major opportunity to connect to people is being overlooked here out of overblown fears.

And these are the DEMOCRATS! What will the Republicans do, issue legal pads and Number 2 pencils at the door?

(Source – Colorado Independent)

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Zealot (482 Posts) - Website | Twitter | Facebook

By day a department manager and writer for a major network device vendor...by night Zealot stalks the mean magnetic streets, striking fear into the hearts of bandwidth abusers and theme park mascots. Zealot has been involved with mobile devices for more than a decade now, starting off with dumb phones, moving to PDAs and then to smartphones, notebooks and netbooks with the odd PMP thrown in. Most of his mobile time currently is spent on a Treo Pro, Zune HD, Thinkpad T61, Gigabyte M912M or a Hackintoshed Compaq Mini 704. He proudly groks the Geek community and considers himself a Neo Maxi Zune Dweebie (thanks Will Wheaton!).