Donald Trump gives out his cellphone to foreign leaders, doesn’t realize whole world is eavesdropping
Based on the attributes displayed by his Twitter account in the Tweetbot app, it appears Donald Trump finally stopped tweeting directly from an unsecured Android phone, which had been creating a long running security liability for the U.S. government. But it turns out he hasn’t learned his lesson about private communications, as he’s now subjecting himself to even more egregious security risks.
Trump’s overseas trip was a disaster in terms of his relations with the leaders of U.S. allies. He physically shoved one. He called another evil. He flipped a middle finger at one of them. He shouted at yet another of them. By the end of the trip, when the other G7 leaders decided to take a friendly stroll together, Trump was relegated to following along behind in a golf cart. So now, according to the Associated Press (link) he’s suddenly trying to get these world leaders on his side – by giving them the number to his personal cellphone.
It’s an interesting gesture in theory. But what Trump is either too obstinate or too clueless to grasp is that when a world leader makes a phone call on something as unsecured as his private cellphone, the world is eavesdropping. There’s a reason the White House uses secure phones for such calls. Or as Congressman Ted Lieu put it in a tweet, “Dear POTUS: Please do not use your cell phone for sensitive calls. SS7 flaw in networks allows foreign intel to monitor conversations.”
This also raises the question of what other spy-able conversations Donald Trump is having on his private cellphone. It’s long been widely reported that he spends his evenings in the White House calling up his personal friends to seek political advice. Does he have the sense to use a secure phone for those calls? If not, what sensitive information has he unwittingly given to America’s enemies during those calls?
