14 DAY TRIAL // It goes without saying that the leaders of the world must use super secure phones, so when she was appointed secretary of state, Hillary Clinton was aiming for nothing more than a BlackBerry similar to the one belonging to President Barack Obama and specifically strengthened to be hacker-proof.
But new information revealed under the Freedom of Information Act and highlighted by Wired show that the NSA didn’t agree with Clinton’s request because of the high costs associated with another BlackBerry “Obama” version.
For example, it was estimated that each device had a price of $4,750 (€4,250), plus an extra of $30,000 (€26,850) for the security systems and necessary infrastructure, the documents show. So if Hillary Clinton couldn’t have a BlackBerry, what was the device she could have used as a secretary of state?
It turns out that the NSA had a super-secure Windows phone prepared for top secret use that could have easily handled Clinton’s communication needs without exposing any data. But before anything, this wasn’t a Windows Phone device, but a Windows phone running Windows CE.
2.8-inch QVGA display and 2 GB of storage
More of a PDA than a phone, the so-called Sectera Edge had a cost of approximately $3,000 (€2,685) in standard version and was officially released in mid-2008. It was produced under an $18 million (€16 million) contract with the National Security Agency and used by employees in several state departments, including Defense and Homeland Security.
The Sectera Edge had a weight of 340 grams and came with a 2.8-inch TFT QVGA color display with 64K colors, as well as with microSD card support up to 2 GB of storage.
Although Hillary Clinton strongly refused to use the device, even President Obama was at some point believe to get the phone, as the NSA wanted him to replace the BlackBerry with the Edge for more secure communications. Instead, however, Obama received another BlackBerry that featured strengthened security systems.
For what it’s worth, the Sectera Edge was officially discontinued in 2015 and state officials are now using modern smartphones that come with state-of-the-art encryption and security systems. Current Secretary of State John Kerry is using a Samsung Galaxy S4.
