My detailed analysis showed:

• How one of the nightmare scenarios I wrote about in the book has now come true with almost freaky precision.

• How this isn't just a cautionary tale for the U.S. government, but for businesses and individuals as well -- and, as we've now seen, other governments across the world.

• How the scope of the security risk is bigger than it might seem. For example, if Quintero Curiel had stolen paper documents instead of BlackBerrys containing the digital equivalents, he'd have to haul 166.8 pounds of U.S. government information back to Mexico.

• How those BlackBerry devices could have contained anything. They could have home addresses of relatives of key U.S. officials. They could have pictures of their kids. They could have passwords, access codes, phone numbers, directions to evacuation locations.

• How it happened. I explored the scene of the crime and also explores the issue of whether Rafael Quintero Curiel was merely a diplomatic functionary or an agent under diplomatic cover.

• How, because of the unfortunate perceptions many Americans have of Mexicans, this act is being treated more as a joke than as a serious security breach by both press and the blogger community.

Compromised BlackBerry as possible surveillance device
What I didn't discuss was what might have been put onto the BlackBerry's while Curiel had them in his hands. There's software (I won't mention where to get it, but it's an easy, cheap download off the Internet), that can turn a BlackBerry (and most other smartphones) into a mobile surveillance system.

Supposedly designed to allow husbands and wives to keep an ear on cheating spouses, the software, once installed on the phone, is undetectable. It allows the spy to hear everything that the phone's microphone can pick up, it allows the spy to undetectably listen in on phone coversations, and it allows the spy to get copies of every email sent and received by the device.

The stolen Mexican BlackBerry's were returned to their owners after being recovered by the U.S. Secret Service. But, when the Secret Service got the devices back, did they do a full, bare-metal wipe of the devices, or did they just return them to their owners?

If they didn't do a bare-metal wipe, is it possible that White House staffers, walking around in the presence of Presidential-level discussions, are transmitting those discussions to someone in Mexico -- or elsewhere?

And there was my worry: what if there are White House staffers with compromised phones wandering around the White House, acting as unwitting mobile bugging devices? How serious a risk is that?

Clearly, the Secret Service is an extremely competent organization, but just on the off chance that they might not have thought of this one, I considered it my patriotic duty to bring it to the attention of some slightly scary government friends I have in Washington. Whether they every found anything on those BlackBerrys is something we'll all probably never know.