National security

President Donald Trump uses a White House cellphone that isn’t equipped with sophisticated security features designed to shield his communications, according to two senior administration officials – a departure from the practice of his predecessors that potentially exposes him to hacking or surveillance.

The president, who relies on cellphones to reach his friends and millions of Twitter followers, has rebuffed staff efforts to strengthen security around his phone use, according to the administration officials.

  Politico

Let me stick my neck out here: He already has been hacked. Somebody is just waiting for the right moment.

The president uses at least two iPhones, according to one of the officials. The phones – one capable only of making calls, the other equipped only with the Twitter app and pre-loaded with a handful of news sites – are issued by White House Information Technology and the White House

Communications Agency, an office staffed by military personnel that oversees White House telecommunications. While aides have urged the president to swap out the Twitter phone on a monthly basis, Trump has resisted their entreaties, telling them it was “too inconvenient,” the same administration official said.

Too inconvenient? What's inconvenient about it? He has to let it out of his hands?

The president has gone as long as five months without having the phone checked by security experts. It is unclear how often Trump’s call-capable phones, which are essentially used as burner phones, are swapped out.

[...]

Trump’s call-capable cell phone has a camera and microphone, unlike the White House-issued cell phones used by Obama. Keeping those components creates a risk that hackers could use them to access the phone and monitor the president’s movements. The GPS location tracker, however – which can be used to track the president’s whereabouts – is disabled on Trump’s devices.

We already know where he is: either in his bedroom or on the golf course, or at Mar-A-Lago.

The West Wing official refuted the idea that the presence of a camera and microphone on the president’s phone posed any risk, telling POLITICO, “Due to inherent capabilities and advancement in technologies, these devices are more secure than any Obama era devices.”

Somebody didn't watch Laura Poitras' Snowden documentary "Citizenfour".

While the president has the authority to override or ignore the advice provided by aides and advisers for reasons of comfort or convenience, Jones said, “Doing so could pose significant risks to the country.”

He doesn't give a shit. Somebody should tell him his money is at risk.

“Her [Hillary Clinton's] server was easily hacked by foreign governments, perhaps even by her financial backers in communist China – sure they have it – putting all of America and our citizens in danger, great danger,” Trump said in a June 2016 speech in which he called Clinton “the most corrupt person ever to run for president.”

[...]

Dozens of Trump’s friends and advisers testify to his frequent cell phone use. Florida congressman Matt Gaetz, a Trump confidant, told POLITICO in April that he hears from the president either late at night or early in the morning, sometimes from a blocked number and sometimes from “a 10-digit number that starts with a 202 area code.”

That blocked number that Junior calledbloc between his calls to the Russians?

Personal cell phones were banned from the West Wing in January in order to “protect White House information technology infrastructure from compromise and sensitive or classified information from unauthorized access or dissemination,” according to a memo sent to staff.

The memo was sent after Kelly’s own phone was apparently compromised during the Trump transition. At the time, according to a senior administration official, he was told to replace the phone – his own personal device – though he didn’t do so until October, after POLITICO reported the potential hacking.

Jesus, these people.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

I agree.  (And I like it in the Oracle voice.)

UPDATE: