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Obama  may have to do something he doesn't want to do. He may have to give up his Verizon BlackBerry 8830 World Edition smartphone. You may have noticed the new President is always playing around with his Blackberry sending text messages. Well turns out lawyers don't like Presidents sending out emails because those can be subpoenaed . Obama has said publicly that he is dreading the prospect of being forced to give it up. “I’m still clinging to my BlackBerry,” Mr. Obama said in an interview with CNBC and The New York Times. “They’re going to pry it out of my hands.” Regardless, of the new President's love for the Blackberry, Obama is being advised for security reasons and his own legal protection to refrain from sending e-mail during his presidency. What could the “BlackBerry president” charge for his plugs of the device if he were not a public servant? More than $25 million, marketing experts say, and maybe as much as $50 million. The maker of the BlackBerry, Research in Motion, recently introduced advertising campaigns and products like the touch-screen Storm that are meant to position BlackBerry as not just a business device but a consumer product like the iPhone.

The company, which declined to comment on Mr. Obama’s enthusiasm for its product, also struck a sponsorship deal with John Mayer, a popular guitarist but hardly the leader of the free world.

Blackberry Security

Research in Motion, the Canadian company that makes the BlackBerry, boasts that its devices and network were designed from the bottom up to protect the data that passes through them.

When the White House or companies in general install R.I.M. servers on their internal e-mail networks, their employees’ BlackBerry messages are heavily encrypted before they are sent to one of R.I.M.’s network operations centers and passed on to other devices or networks.

This means that if someone were to intercept a message, it would be almost impossible to unscramble the contents, R.I.M. says.

The F.B.I. feels comfortable enough with the technology to give BlackBerrys to its employees, of course it does not allow agents to transmit classified information over them.

But on the other hand Obama would be a big target for hackers and spies that would stop at nothing to hack into the new President's phone messages. Experts believe that while the Blackberry is secure nothing is completely safe. Plus there is the worry that the phone could give away Obama's location.

Legal Battles

Lawmakers, historians and open government groups routinely request all presidential communications under federal laws like the Freedom of Information Act. Under the 1978 Presidential Records Act, administrations are required to turn over their communications to public archivists, who make them public starting five years after the end of a president’s final term.

Knowing from history as we do that Presidents and their administrations often come under some investigation during the time of the Presidency it seems from the President's view point to not have every single thing he says on the record.

No reason you can't own your own Blackberry today though.