Another reason for Obama to ditch his BlackBerry

Verizon employees reportedly accessed the President-elect's old cell phone records.

Published November 21, 2008 8:00PM (EST)

Yet another public figure's privacy has been breached: Verizon says some of its employees, without authorization, accessed President-elect Barack Obama's personal cell phone records.

In its report on the incident, Reuters paraphrases Michael King, a telecom analyst, as saying, "a telephone employee accessing billing information could likely see the numbers a customer had called, how long conversations with those people were and when he called them."

Earlier this year, as you probably remember, Sarah Palin's e-mail was hacked. That didn't happen here; Verizon says the phone was voice only, and didn't have data services like e-mail. Still, it provides yet another example of why, as the New York Times discussed in an article last week, Obama will probably have to give up his BlackBerry upon taking office.


By Alex Koppelman

Alex Koppelman is a staff writer for Salon.

MORE FROM Alex Koppelman


Related Topics ------------------------------------------

Barack Obama War Room