President Obama made it official over the weekend -- access to his e-mail address is limited to a very small circle.

As the New York Times reported yesterday [1], getting President Obama's e-mail address is the new status symbol in Washington. So small is the circle of insiders who get to trade e-mails with POTUS (like White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and press secretary Robert Gibbs) that folks in D.C. are reluctant to admit that they are outside the loop.

During the elite Alfalfa Club dinner Saturday night, Obama quipped that in his first weeks as president, he was forced to engage "in some of the toughest diplomacy of my life . . . And that was just to keep my BlackBerry." 

Forced to limit the number of his pen-pals, Obama told the glittery crowd, "It's a very exclusive list. How exclusive? Everyone look at the person sitting on your left. Now look at the person sitting on your right. None of you have my e-mail address."

Sunday, in a pre-Super Bowl interview with NBC's Matt Lauer at the White House, Obama quipped that his high-tech, message-encrypted mobile device "has everything. It can turn into a car." Lauer asked if world leaders could text him. Obama said they could reach him at the Oval Office. 

All of which led Computerworld to speculate that the president's new device is actually a security system already approved by the National Security 

Agency, "probably a Sectera Edge" like those used by other federal employees.

If you hear before I do . . .