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Worried About Trump iPhone Eavesdroppers? China Recommends a Huawei (reuters.com)
China's foreign ministry has some suggestions for the Trump administration if it is worried about foreign eavesdropping on the U.S. president's iPhones: use a Huawei handset instead. Or just cut all forms of modern communication with the outside world. From a report: The riposte came after the New York Times reported that American intelligence reports indicated that Chinese and Russian spies often listen in on President Donald Trump when he uses his Apple cellphones to chat with old friends. Aides have repeatedly told him that his cellphone calls are not secure, but although the president has been persuaded to use his secure White House landline more often, he has refused to give up the phones, the Times said. Trump called the Times report incorrect on Thursday, and dismissed it as "long and boring." "I only use Government Phones, and have only one seldom used government cell phone. Story is soooo wrong!" Trump wrote on Twitter. In a later tweet, he said, "I rarely use a cellphone, & when I do it's government authorized. I like Hard Lines. Just more made up Fake News!"
Leave that stuff for the jerks on Twitter
They're right: once you know for sure something is happening then you can stop worrying about it. It's the doubt and uncertainty that's the real killer. Their suggestion certainly removes all doubt on the matter.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
It says he uses the phones to talk to old friends, people he was in regular contact with long before he became president. So long as he's not discussing classified information (and he cant be, or there would be a much bigger fuss being made) then whats the problem?
Even if using a government supplied landline, if hes calling regular phones then it can't be encrypted end to end, it has to traverse the public telephone network at some point where it could be subject to interception.
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ORANGE MAN BAD!
My favorite thing to come out about this story is that the intelligence community doesn't care that our President's communications are bugged because he doesn't bother listening to the briefings. It's like that is Dilbert joke where he'd have to be smarter to do something stupid.
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I think what China said was mistranslated. They intended to say that if Trump wanted to make sure that China could eavesdrop, then he should have went with a Huawei phone.
Orange Man Bad!
Orange Man Bad!
Orange Man Bad!
China, being one of the largest sources of spying threats, recommends a specific phone. That they happen to make.
They assure us that they can evesdrop on every other phone, except the one designed & made in their country, with no outside audits.
Sure. We'll get right on that.
This is what happens when a company (apple) gives their crypto keys to a totalitarian government without hesitation.
As far as security and privacy, I mean.
Both gather user information and send it somewhere on internet servers which are very likely exploitable.
Both have 0-day exploits.
The idiocy of the user is exactly the same.
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
and he cant be, or there would be a much bigger fuss being made
Are you kidding? You don't think that he tells random people all sorts of US secrets? He fucking Tweets nation secrets.
If we didn't have a ridiculously corrupt Congress, he's be serving life behind bars for treason.
I don't respond to AC's.
James Damore was fired for poor rape performance.
The phone brand doesn't matter. If it's on wireless it can be stingrayed, and it's already been shown that DC is full of them.
And I can't say I feel sorry for you guys. You made a glorified ideology out of turning your brain off and keeping it off. Now the hangover come back to bite you in the ass, and you’re not even half-awake yet. But as you have brewed, so you must drink. Maybe, just maybe, it will teach you... At least for a century, like it taught us here in Germany. (The dumb fucks are at it again now. Partially due to the "help" by the USA and Russia.)
He doesn't use any phone other than government issued. I trust him on that as he railed on Clinton for this. I'm sure somebody posts stuff for him too. You're talking about a guy who never had a computer on his desk. At any point other than a picture in his plane pre-election.
...and finding out what your Moms current rates are.
Far more likely than any of your scenarios.
Thanks for the laugh though NPC.
This is slashdot.
I now get modded to -5 by the communists who happen to have mod points.
Corporatism != Free Market
I thought it was funny. I thought it was velly funny. Just a little playful banter between countries.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
This isn't a legitimate suggestion to use a Chinese phone. This is a passive agressive quip at the Americans for heaping shit on China only to have their own equipment allegedly tapped by a foreign power.
were an issue. You're a high priority target you don't get to take chances.
Well, not the "same" issue. Private email servers are used throughout Washington and somehow stopped being an issue after 2016. I wonder what changed?
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
...and now you're trying to pass bull off as something factual. Seriously turn down the trump derangement syndrome.
Hand in your geek card.
How stupid do you have to be to believe this nonsense? Stupid enough to try to install a dll file in Linux I'm guessing. At least your not as stupid as animofo who thinks the russians and chinese are flooding Washington DC with phony cell towers.
The hell of it is that this stupidity will continue for another 2 years. Maybe some of the citizenry will learn how to spot fake news and trolls and I am talking about both sides here.
If the public phone system is too insecure for a president to use, then it's probably too insecure for anyone else to use, too. Maybe it should be .. oh, I don't know .. fixed?
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I could write a long screed about Trump's short attention span (probably he got bored with the article because it didn't have enough pictures). But instead, I will point out that he wrote his comeback on Twitter. Trump doesn't have a desktop computer - he does his tweeting from a phone. Soooooo, he shot off this tweet from his Government Phone? I'm guessing that his government phone has been modified so that it can't have twitter (or most anything else) installed on it.
Collusion made up by Clinton cronies - true
Rest of what you written - sounds like fan-fiction.
US companies abandoned US electronics manufacturing a long time ago. Were paying the price now, because American's wanted to buy more electronics at cheaper prices. Now were concerned that China is slipping stuff into these electronics to spy on us. Its very possible Apple is very committed to privacy for its iPhone users, its also very possible as with the Bloomberg report that Apple is clueless what is going into their hardware made in China of which most of it is. The argument then would be if smartphone's all come from China, many times with parts made also in China. Is any one brand more secure then another and has companies like Apple actually have data and hardware control proof that in fact they are.
How exactly would a foreign country eavesdrop on the U.S. president's iPhone? They can't claim this without saying that all iPhones can be eavesdropped on, or that they no longer have control over their own mobile networks.
Obviously, he's using a phone and Telegram or something else, so that the NSA or CIA can't listen in, but if he agrees to accept a "secure" phone from CIA or NSA, then obviously it will prepared in such a way that they can listen to every phonecall me makes.
'Or just cut all forms of modern communication with the outside world.'
I wish.
That's what this is, plain and simple: Huawei is mocking Trump, and all of us here in the United States along with him. That is what this man has done to us: made us a laughingstock, all over the world.
we could sure use some transcripts of Trump's phone calls...
"I love wikileaks!"
Lock him up! Lock him up!
Morons...
We all know, or at least assume and understand, that any electronics like compute devices are subject to tampering by Chinese intelligence. What I have not seen is hard evidence, which I think would be very beneficial for the public to see. They likely use a complex series of subtle tactics that allow for different forms of monitoring and reporting. If some folks, advanced enough for the task (that's NOT me!), unravel some of these mechanisms and expose it on the Internet. Switches, phones, computers, etc.... just post it, expose it.
The Chinese is recommending a phone to avoid evesdropping? WTF!!!
It wouldn't be effective for Trump alone to have a secure phone. If Trump calls someone else without a secure phone, then it can leak on that end just as easily.
Why is no one talking about it and how it was secured?
And was trumps iPhone secured in the same way?
Get a Huawei, then it's guaranteed