Even if they don't trust triple-DES, they've still got an additional layer of near impenetrable encryption. How are two notoriously monolingual anglo countries going to cope with emails in French?

1: If Paris Hilton can get the contents of her... umm, personal occupations ripped off and posted on the innerneck, then what about a determined hacker against a minister? That could be fun...

2: The Minstère des Finances et Industrie (MINEFI) has ordered several hundered blackberries and deployed over two hundred to date, the MINEFI IT manager noted the existance of the security bulletin, but only took it as "advice" and not "an order". Oh well, that'll be my income tax taken care of then ;-)

The real question posed by the security guys is data security... How long would a Blackberry security system (or any other smartphone for that matter) hold up against a determined hacker with some ressources (think very organised crime, Comrades)?

Just as long as Sarko does not store the nuclear launch codes in his Palm...

Government ministers don't have anything to hide, do they? So why should they have anything to fear...?!

For the record, Ex-President François Mitterand's illegitemate daughter, Mazarine Pingeot, was classed "Secret Défence" and you could be put into prison reporting about her existance is it violated the secrets act....

Then again, Mitterand was a real bar-steward (and not only for that either...)

Brings a whole new meaning to having a bit on the side....

Chirac : Seems to have helped an African nation cover up the murder of the French Judge, Justice Borel, sent on a fact-finding mission to Djibouti... That one is still coming out today.

The left wing would like to know how the Chirac family spun up such a large food bill at the Elysée palace and/or at the Paris Town Hall when he was Mayor.... like well over 6 figure numbers. Compare that to Gordon Brown who drinks Babysham the tight bugger. At least the French do it in style!

An' there's more...

Cheers,

Daniel

Actually the French for bigwig is "grosse legume" - see above for translation. Rather more colourful I think.