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Congressman Calls For Probe Into Trump's Unsecured Android Phone (cnet.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNET: President Donald Trump regularly makes news because of his tweets. Now a congressman is making news because of the device the president reportedly uses to tweet. On Friday, Congressman Ted Lieu, a Democrat from Los Angeles, wrote a letter to the House Oversight Committee requesting an investigation into Trump's cybersecurity practices. In particular, he calls out Trump's apparent decision to keep using his personal Android phone instead of a secured phone the Secret Service issued him for his inauguration. The letter is also signed by 14 other members of Congress and calls for a public hearing to discuss the issues. "The device President Trump insists on using -- most likely the Samsung Galaxy S3 -- has particularly well documented vulnerabilities," the letter says. "The use of an unsecured phone risks the president of the United States being monitored by foreign or domestic adversaries, many of whom would be happy to hijack the president's prized Twitter account causing disastrous consequences for global security. Cybersecurity experts universally agree that an ordinary Android smartphone, which the president is reportedly using despite repeated warnings from the Secret Service, can be easily hacked."
Our president's postings are so bizarre.
Well if you're unhappy with it, why not pay the $200k fee and go tell the President yourself!?
He's selling access to himself for that. No kidding.
His home, Mar-a-largo is a private club, you pay $200k to join and have wide access to the President (fee was doubled when he because President and a suite was renamed "President Suite").
It's a dog and pony show folks.
http://www.bbc.com/news/video_and_audio/headlines/39006681
"Elections have consequences" -- Obama
then it very probably has ALREADY been hacked. The reason we haven't heard about it is a), it's been covered up or b), it hasn't been discovered yet, and the hacker is laying low in order to collect as much dirt as possible and/or do as much covert damage as possible. Trump as President is too high-profile, too controversial, too thoroughly disliked, and too valuable as a potential blackmail asset, for there NOT to have already been multiple hacking attempts by serious players with deep pockets. If he IS using anything like a stock Android phone, it's very unlikely that he hasn't already been pwned at least once.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
Yet nobody steps up to fight except a few crazy terrorists. Because its well known that once outsider step in we will look past our differences and kill whoever comes. Liberals and Conservatives are like siblings. I can punch my little brother. But if you touch him i will kill you.
I think the problem for any potential enemies is that there seems to already be a process for dealing with Mr. Trumps bizarre proclamations on Twitter - the actual administration official responsible for the portfolio provides what is the correct information.
This has happened at least a couple of times with the most recent one being Mr. Trump announcing a One State Solution for Israel - the UN ambassador just said that the US policy on the issue hasn't changed and the Two State Solution is the preferred approach.
Other than his base, I think the rest of the world treats Mr. Trump's tweets the same way they would when read something strange and inexplicable that has gone viral from an eccentric old man that's gone viral.
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
Exactly and as it has been pointed out in the past. Top secret meetings have phones barred from entering rooms. I doubt he can get around that no matter how much of an asshole he is.. Hes not Stupid.
What they forget is no one cares what phone Trump uses to tweet from. As long as he has a second phone to keep the classified stuff secure, who cares if he also keeps his personal phone? Not even the Democrats really care: this is just yet another tactic to try and smear a very popular president.
Wouldn't you want to know if his personal phone was compromised and he was carrying it around all over the place?
At the very least it acts as a big red target painted on his back where ever he goes. At the other end of the spectrum the microphone and camera record and pass on everything it sees and hears.
This is security 101 and not political. That is Trump we are talking about makes it very easy to slip into an argument of "He's a doofus. No, you're just butthurt".
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For decades, the Republicans have been warning us that there was a political party embedded with Freedom-hating people who would gladly sell us out to Russia.
Seems like they knew what they were talking about.
And then when the president leaves the meeting, you REALLY think he doesn't talk about the meeting within earshot of his phone?
Really? I think being a fly on the wall even just where the phone was allowed to go would be plenty interesting.
Exactly and as it has been pointed out in the past. Top secret meetings have phones barred from entering rooms. I doubt he can get around that no matter how much of an asshole he is.. Hes not Stupid.
Look at what happened in Mar-a-lago with the North Korean issue and the lackadaisical handling of documents in public. If they think that is reasonable then I don't put anything past this administration.
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Read it and weep.
https://www.washingtonpost.com...
You are welcome on my lawn.
Just watch his twitter feed. If he begins making sane, rational tweets you'll know it was hacked.
OMG! Then we'd know where he is every minute of the day! (You do know the President's daily schedule is public record, right?)
OMG the presidents schedule is public. But what happens when there is a security issue and the president is whisked away to a secure location. Do you really think that the schedule is publicized.
Or how about the use of Marine one to transport the president:
As a security measure, Marine One always flies in a group of as many as five identical helicopters. One helicopter carries the President, while the others serve as decoys.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
So do you want that security measure invalidated?
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He has tweeted at a time he was scheduled to be in a Top Secret meeting. Either he's not attending his meetings, or he's tweeting during them. Either is gross negligence, so which gross negligence is it today?
Learn to love Alaska
And you're reasonably confident he never discusses anything of a sensitive nature outside that room ? It's trivial to remotely enable the mic and record.
As democracy is perfected, the office of the president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people.
On some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House
will be occupied by a downright fool and a complete narcissistic moron.
~H.L. Mencken
And you could turn the mic on and listen in on everything, or get access to all the accounts on the phone. Why you think the most interesting thing a compromised phone is good for is location tracking is between you and your stalking victims, but there are other uses for a compromised phone.
Learn to love Alaska
Along these lines, I think that Trump should be investigated over this at least nine times.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Because it's impossible that he could have an aide tweeting on his behalf.
It's well known and obvious that aides tweet for Tump. Because aides use an iOS device and Trump uses and Android device. That doesn't change the issue.
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It DOES matter. A hacked phone allows the hacker to access everything in the phone, like the camera, the microphone, the GPS. Trump is known to be using an out of date, hackable phone for his Twitter nonesense. Nevermind that Twitter-time should be over... you won, damn-it, now get on with doing the job instead of bitching about Hillary, who likely has already gotten rip-roaring drunk, yelled, screamed, ranted, fallen down, puked all over Bill and herself, slept it off for about a week, and moved on. Trump's still chasing invisible enemies with his Tweet phone. He needs to get down to the incredibly boring, tedious business of keeping the machinery of the country running smoothly and reliably. Instead, he's Tweeting on an old Android phone like he's still running for office, signing orders as vague as campaign slogans, and people charged with getting the job done don't know what the fuck. And all the time, Putin's listening and watching through his unsecure Tweet phone? Four years of this shit! Pray to Christ he doesn't start a war just so he can blame someone and throw all the mean people calling him names into camps!
And within 30 seconds of reading your post, I came up with the idea of storing recordings on a phone, and then forwarding them later when the signal isn't blocked.
Except that I didn't actually come up with that idea, it's how many real world apps work (and how much eavesdropping malware works).
That's only twitter you know. His tweets are not a state secret. That doesn't mean he uses that phone for government communication. I am not a fan of Trump but this is plain ridiculous.
The Russians and the Chinese are arguing with each other about the hours they get to listen in but the malware is making the phone unreliable so they'll have to sort that out first with the Iranians.
we're upset because after nearly a decade of the right chanting Lock Her Up that resulted in the worst presidency in history (and we're 30 days in) we're damn well going to point out that the right are a bunch of hypocrites. Nobody ever cared about the emails. They hated Hilary. What bothers me most about the Hilary hate is it was mostly manufactured. A bunch of wealthy and powerful men decided the country was going to hate Hilary Clinton and it did. We all did exactly as planned. My God, we're a bunch of shleps...
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Story after story on globalists giving our jobs to India and H1Bs, finally we have a President who cares and you're all sour grapes.
He cares by using a Samsung Galaxy phone not vetted by U.S. services? You know what "Samsung" is, right?
Why aren't you giving nationalism a chance? Because the snarky jews on TV convinced you someone is Hitler?
The snarky jews could not care less about what happens to muslims. Take a look how Israel treats Palestinians. No, he isn't Hitler. Just like Hitler, with the "Jewish World Conspiracy" replaced by a Muslimic one, painting members of a religion with an overarching brush in colors of prejudice with only a homeopathic connection to facts.
Take a step back and think about yourself for a change - you're going to be better off. More jobs, lower taxes, not competing with Xi and Pajeet.
Have you considered applying for the job of propaganda minister with Trump? You are putting up a nice Goebbels incarnation. Nationalism has been given lots of chances in lots of places, and its death toll exceeds that of most natural catastrophes and epidemics. There is a reason people are wary of giving it a whole lot more chances than less potent mass murderers, rapists, and robbers.
I'm sure obama never had a vulnerable phone. As every time a phone is released there are GROUPS of hackers that try to break it as fast as humanly possible. Mind you it never takes more than a few days
Well, at least the NSA damn well tried to give him a secure phone, and Obama cooperated with them. See the constant stream of news items on this subject during his presidency. You can always insist that it is not secure enough, no matter what was done. There is even a tiny chance that you are right, and that the hackers were smarter than the NSA. Your claim that it `never takes more than a few days' is just unfounded speculation, though. (To avoid using a stronger term.)
In any case, surely you're not going to argue that this is equivalent with a president who refuses to give up his civilian phone that is known to be insecure?
" The secure phone isn't even capable of communicating with Twitter. "
So his private phone is like a private email server?
Here is the thing you don't get. Phones can be compromised, and they have microphones and have a camera.
He could be using a secure phone for some important conversation where the android phone is just sitting on the table, but that android phone could be recording the whole thing and uploading it to some server.
So, according to his own words, he should be locked up in prison.
I love that the President uses an unsecured phone. He will care about the privacy of all us normal folks using unsecured phones and rein in the NSA. At least hes not allowing the washington apparatus to put him inside a bubble and neuter him like they did to Obama
**Life is too short to be serious**
Um, why is that BS? Trump could absolutely afford a new phone, but Trump is a man who does what he wants. If he doesn't want a newer phone, he's not getting one. Remember Trump is 70; older people tend not to update their technology unless they have to update it.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
The last time I checked Hillary isn't President. But your point is as silly as saying since your neighbor deals drugs; therefore, you are free to deal drugs. Hypocrite much?
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
But if they are whoever tasked at keeping the situation secure should be fired.
Nobody was fired after this:
https://www.washingtonpost.com...
The president gets to make the rules - everyone else just gets to make suggestions. So if Trump wants to overrule someone who tells him to not bring his android phone into a SCIF, he can. And the Mar-a-Lago example indicates that he might be willing to do exactly that.
Obviously Hillary can NOT run a private email server without a lot of negative publicity and essentially costing her the election. But oh, SHE did it, so anyone else who does it shouldn't have the same negative publicity?
You're fucking stupid.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
How much "Top Secret" information have you seen on twitter? Why do you people try to make yourself look like morons.
If you think that posting "Top Secret" information on twitter is the only security risk of a private phone, you are the moron.
You're correct. But the fact of adding potential attack vectors making it harder to secure. Why not use shit like twitter and other social bullshit on a separate phone since its all trivial public crap anyways. the people comparing this to the hillary email server are ignorant. from what I understand from the article. They are speculating the phone that he is using. and directly linking to other liberals mad that hes not using a trivial service like twitter from a phone that also handles top secret matters. I feel from a security standpoint there is nothing wrong with what he is doing with the phones.
Your claim falsely assumes that everything can be explained in simple terms.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
I know I'll get modded down for being honest here, but I don't care.
Nah, if you get modded down it'll be for the rant in the second half of your post.
The first half of your post was good and informative, and if you added a link to support the info, it would have been a good solid post.
Also, your sig is inflammatory, which (shouldn't but) can cause people to moderate differently.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
after 8 years of Obama we have more racial tension than ever before
No, we don't. All of that racial tension you're seeing was already there. What happened was that having a black president encouraged black Americans to speak up about the ways in which they're systematically oppressed, which means that you are now more aware of the existing racial tension.
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So, all those "but Hillary uses email - lock her up" folks, where are you now? What do you think of this situation?
Silence?
There's been so much partisan political bullshit in this place pretending to be about online security but really nothing of the sort.