Troy Lange knows that just mentioning cellphones is enough to give security officers heartburn at the National Security Agency.
Lange, as the NSA's mobility mission manager, is developing a smartphone that he wants to bring inside the super-secret U.S. spy agency to access classified information and apps while on the move. He wants it to work as easily as any of the smartphones those that are so ubiquitous in the outside world.
That is no small vision for an agency where entire buildings are designated as Sensitive Compartmented Information Facilities, known as SCIFs in spy speak, with many restrictions to ensure the handling and discussion of secret information stays secure.
Visitors to the Fort Meade, Maryland, NSA complex are not allowed to bring outside cellphones into the building. Lange argues that using smartphones inside areas that deal with secret material will increase efficiency.
"I want to get this into everybody's hands" -- every employee in the Defense Department, intelligence community and across government, he said, while acknowledging that kind of talk makes "the security people's heads pop off."
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