Monat: Februar 2017

Senators Are Asking Questions About The Security Of Trump's Personal Phone

Pool / Getty Images

Is President Trump still using an insecure smartphone? If he's been given a secure device for his personal use, is he actually using it? And what security measures are in place to protect his personal phone from intruders?

These are some of the questions recently put to Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis by two Democratic Senators who serve on the Homeland Security Committee. In a letter dated February 9th, Sens. Claire McCaskill and Tom Carper expressed concern that Trump&039;s personal phone — which he may use to send tweets, they note, and may be vulnerable to hacking — poses a serious national security risk.

“Public reports originally indicated that President Trump began using a &039;secure, encrypted device approved by the U.S. Secret Service&039; prior to taking office,” the Senators wrote. “Subsequent reports, however, suggest that President Trump may still be using his personal smartphone, an &039;old, unsecured Android phone.&039; While it is important for the President to have the ability to communicate electronically, it is equally important that he does so in a manner that is secure and that ensures the preservation of presidential records.”

Sens. McCaskill and Carper describe these news reports as “troubling,” since hackers can target unsecured devices and activate a phone&039;s audio recording, camera, and location tracking. Even when people take precautions to secure their devices, hackers continue to exploit security weaknesses or create new pathways to personal data, the Senators said.

“These vulnerabilities are among the reasons why national security agencies discourage the use of personal devices,” the letter reads. “The national security risks of compromising a smartphone used by a senior government official, such as the President of the United States, are considerable.”

Sens. McCaskill and Carper asked Secretary Mattis to confirm whether the president has a “secured, encrypted smartphone for his personal use.” They also asked to review the Defense Department&039;s written policies for securing President Trump&039;s personal device.

Alongside the security risks, the Senators are also concerned that presidential records — including Trump&039;s tweets — may not be properly recorded if they are created on his personal device. “The National Archives and Records
Administration considers President Trump&039;s tweets to be records that must be adequately documented, preserved, and maintained for historic purposes, as required by the Presidential Records Act,” the letter explains.

One of questions posed to Secretary Mattis was whether the Defense Department collaborated with the National Archives and Records Administration to ensure that the security measures on Trump&039;s phone don&039;t interfere with the preservation of presidential records.

The Senators asked Secretary Mattis to respond by March 9th.

Last month, McCaskill and Carper wrote a letter to White House Counsel Donald McGahn seeking to find out if Trump&039;s staff complied with federal law regarding the use of private email accounts to conduct official business. They asked that he respond by February 10th. A spokesperson for Sen. McCaskill told BuzzFeed News that they have not received a response.

Quelle: <a href="Senators Are Asking Questions About The Security Of Trump&039;s Personal Phone“>BuzzFeed

Here's How Much Traffic A Trump Tweet Drives

When President Trump deployed his “big, beautiful Twitter account” to direct his followers to the swearing-in of Sen. Jeff Sessions as attorney general last Thursday, some 66,000 people clicked the link he created to get them there.

Trump, whose @realDonaldTrump Twitter account currently boasts 24.5 million followers, often uses a URL management tool called Bitly to shorten the links he tweets. And because he uses the public version of that tool, the anonymized traffic analytics for those shortened links is freely available.

That data — which would be inaccessible to the public were Trump to use standard URLs — reveals that @realDonaldTrump is a traffic cannon. Though the president&#039;s Twitter influence manifests itself largely in conversation-driving tweets like last Thursday night&039;s “SEE YOU IN COURT” missive, it&039;s also quite effective at directing his followers to stories and reports he wants them to read.

Last Wednesday, for instance, Trump shared a link to a story citing an Emerson College poll that found voters trust the Trump administration more than the media. Placing a plus sign after the Bitly link he created, “bit.ly/2k4b0imEmersonPoll,” summons a page displaying all the click data on the link — including the number of clicks through to the story and where they came from.

In the case of the Emerson poll story, published by The Hill, more than 678,000 people clicked Trump&039;s link to it — 558,000 of them on Twitter. 72% of those clicks occurred in the US, 6% were generated in the United Kingdom and another 6% in Canada. Of the remaining 120,000 clicks, around 32,000 originated from Facebook, and the rest from platforms other than Twitter.

Trump&039;s activity on Bitly blows away other links created with the service. In the first hour after he tweeted the Emerson poll link, 78,411 people clicked it, according to Bitly, far and away the most clicks on any Bitly link within that timeframe. The next-most-clicked Bitly link in that timeframe was another Trump-generated link, and the following eight in the top 10 a grand total of approximately 31,000 clicks.

Bitly

The caveat here is that Bitly measures all clicks on the shortened links it creates: If someone copied Trump&039;s link and shared it somewhere else, those clicks are included in this data as well. That said, Bitly&039;s analytics can put a rough, but reasonable, number on the kind of web traffic Trump drives. And, predictably, that number is massive — especially when compared to that of other celebrity Twitter accounts.

A recent Bitly link tweeted by Kim Kardashian, for instance, generated just 2,998 clickthroughs from Twitter despite the fact that Kardashian has an audience of 50 million followers — double the size of Trump&039;s.

Bitly

Trump, meanwhile, has averaged 84,000 clicks per tweet on the last 10 Bitly links he&039;s shared.

Hillary Clinton also uses Bitly. A tweeted link to her concession speech generated 78,000 clicks from Twitter, less than Trump&039;s average click number.

Bitly

Quelle: <a href="Here&039;s How Much Traffic A Trump Tweet Drives“>BuzzFeed