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Trump Claims He Doesn’t Use iPhone… in Tweet Sent from an iPhone

Danielle from Leaf and Core
Reading Time: 5 minutes.

Trump's tweet. Text reads: "The so-called experts on Trump over at the New York Times wrote a long and boring article on my cellphone usage that is so incorrect I do not have time here to correct it. I only use Government Phones [sic: capitalization], and have only one seldom used government cell phone. Story is soooo[sic] wrong!" The tweet was sent at 6:54am on the 25th of October, 2018, via the Twitter app for iPhone, which could not be installed on a government phone.

Trump was caught in a lie by Twitter

The New York Times reported that President Trump is using a personal cellphone to conduct official presidential business. The phone itself, an iPhone, may be secure. However, because the iPhone communicates using standard cellular service, foreign agents could easily target it and intercept these communications. Unless using a specific app, which Trump is not (Twitter is the only third party app he has), the calls are not encrypted or secured.

Hillary Clinton had her own email server. She asked for a better solution so she could use a single phone to unite her duties and her personal life, but was never given one. So, she set up her own email server. It was secure for normal consumers, but not up to government standards. Still, any confidential communication could still take place through secure channels, and Hillary Clinton was not found to be criminally guilty of any wrongdoing.

However, Trump is using his personal iPhone to conduct confidential business. He’s not just putting the security of the nation at risk, he’s breaking the law.

 

In a twitter rant refuting the claims, Trump claimed to only use landlines for all communications and rarely used his phone for anything… he tweeted these items from his iPhone.

Side note:

I don’t know what Trump considers “very long,” but the original NY Times story was under 2,100 words. An average adult reads at 300 words per minute, and should be able to read that in 7 minutes. Anyone who has to read as much as the president should be able to do so in under 5.

The President’s Phones

Phone 1: Calls

President Trump has a total of three phones. First, he has his government issued mobile phone. I call it that instead of a cell phone due to a little bit of history. A cell phone is named as such because of the way the coverage areas of cell towers look on a map. They appear like human cells. Trump’s first mobile phone, however, communicates only with a satellite. This means it cannot be intercepted along the chain of towers that lead to hard lines for a cellular network to work. This is the only mobile phone Trump is allowed to use for calls.

Phone 2: Email and… Twitter

The second phone is a government issued iPhone. It is extremely limited in its abilities, however, officials did allow Twitter on it. The phone cannot connect to cell towers, as this would be insecure. Obama had a similar phone (though without Twitter), and reported that the device is next to useless. It has no cameras, it cannot store contacts, it cannot download apps, it can’t even play music. However, it can use special government secured email and other communication methods on the government’s secure WiFi networks. Trump is not allowed to use this phone for calls.

Trump must swap this phone out once per month for a new one. This prevents any security intrusions from gaining more than a month of intelligence. It also allows experts to discover any vulnerabilities and patch them in future versions of the phone. Trump refuses to hand this phone over to officials because it’s “inconvenient.” He’s been using the same phone for the past 5 months.

Phone 3: ????

The third phone is Trump’s personal iPhone. Trump was willing to give up his Android phone, as it’s less secure than the iPhone, but his use of this phone should be extremely limited. Really, officials would prefer he doesn’t have this phone at all. Trump claims he uses it to keep track of his contacts. However, he’s using it far more than that, according to his own aides and other White House officials. He’s using it for calls, emails, twitter, and more.

Trump’s Phone Habits

This tweet was sent from an iPhone. Not a hard line, a personal iPhone with Twitter installed. Trump, again, deceived his followers.

Trump breaks all the above guidelines. He’s not swapping out his official iPhone every month, as he’s supposed to. Instead, he continues to use it, which means that, if he was compromised, we wouldn’t know. The intelligence community believes the Russians and Chinese likely have access to this phone.

But that’s not the worst of it. Trump uses his mobile phones when he doesn’t want officials logging his calls. When he wants to avoid the White House switch board and the required U.S. government tracking of his activities, he uses either his mobile or his personal iPhone. These are calls to friends, businessmen, and, frequently, Fox News, Trump’s favorite news network. Trump frequently calls these people, and aides can only hope he’s not discussing anything he shouldn’t be.

The Chinese use a influencing technique that allows them to influence the president without direct contact. This involves getting to the people he communicates with. His friends or business associates will have ties to China, willingly or not, and they can be compromised. From there, they can act as unwilling agents to put ideas in Trump’s head or, worse, a source of a leak of confidential information coming out of Trump’s head.

Trump has been warned against using this phone for anything other than storing his contacts. Instead, he’s calling them. Every time he does, he puts the security of this nation at risk.

Spying Made Easy

America’s own spy agencies now know, without a doubt, that President Trump’s cellphone calls have been compromised by Russia and China. Our own agents within those governments have reported as such. The president has been compromised, and he couldn’t care less.

This is an easy form of hacking and spying. In fact, Edward Snowden’s leak showed that the U.S. Government engages in these simple spying techniques as well. In fact, we were caught tapping Angela Merkel’s phone lines. It’s simple. Cell phones need to send a signal to towers. They can bounce around multiple towers, and from there, go to a hard line. The hard lines can be tapped, the cell towers can be tapped, and we can easily set up a fake cell tower that can intercept a phone call or message that is not encrypted, read it, and pass it along. It’s the most basic form of a “man in the middle” attack, and just about any government could do it with ease.

But it’s not just any government doing this. We know for a fact that Russia and China are spying on Donald Trump using these methods. They’re finding out personal details about Trump, his plans, and his beliefs, at the very least. They’re getting potential leverage points that they could use to blackmail and influence Trump. It’s safe to say that Donald Trump, president of the United States, is compromised.

Trump’s Twitter Lies

This was tweeted from an iPhone. Not a “Hard Line” [sic].

 

Trump took to Twitter to refute the New York Times article. He claimed that the article was full of inaccuracies and lies. The NY Times spoke with numerous aides and officials. All spoke on the record, but, because national security and their own jobs were at risk, remained anonymous. But, when Trump went to refute those claims, he was asking us to take his word over all of those sources. Unfortunately, as he was doing this, Trump lied, undermining whatever credibility we could potentially give him.

Beyond the fact that Trump is refuting what his own aides have reported, he did so on Twitter, via an iPhone. He claimed to prefer hard lines over an iPhone. In fact, over 98% of his tweets have been from an iPhone. This is not a hard line. Donald Trump chose to refute the reporting that he overuses his iPhone… from an iPhone.

Sources/Further Reading:

 

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