Hypocrisy so thick you can skate on it.
Vice President Mike Pence used his personal AOL email account when he was governor of Indiana, which he used for public business matters, the IndyStar reports. Pence used the private account even when discussing sensitive matters, including issues of national security.
The emails, which the IndyStar received through a public records request, were sent from the vice president’s personal account, and included discussion of matters including security gates at Pence’s home and Indiana’s “response to terror attacks across the globe.”
Pence’s personal email account was hacked over the summer, prompting concerns from cybersecurity experts about the content on his private email. According to IndyStar, advocates for government transparency also expressed concern, noting that emails sent from a personal account could not be retrieved on a state server in response to a public records request.
The Trump campaign often questioned former Sec. of State Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while discussing matters related to her position, even calling for an investigation of Clinton. The call prompted chants of “Lock her up!” at Trump rallies on the campaign trail.
And there’s more…
Because it’s not just Pence, as of late January there were several senior members of the Trump White House staff who also have private RNC email accounts.
Senior Trump administration staffers, including Kellyanne Conway, Jared Kushner, Sean Spicer and Steve Bannon, had until Wednesday active accounts on a Republican National Committee (RNC) email system, Newsweek has learned.
The system (rnchq.org) is the same one the George W. Bush administration was accused of using to evade transparency rules after claiming to have “lost” 22 million emails.
Making use of separate political email accounts at the White House is not illegal. In fact, they serve a purpose by allowing staff to divide political conversations (say, arranging for the president to support a congressional re-election campaign) from actual White House work. Commingling politics and state business violates the Hatch Act, which restricts many executive branch employees from engaging in political activity on government time.
But after then-candidate Donald Trump and the Republicans repeatedly called for “locking up” Hillary Clinton for handling government work with a private server while secretary of state, the new White House staff risks repeating the same mistake that dogged the Democrat’s presidential campaign. They also face a security challenge: The RNC email system, according to U.S. intelligence, was hacked during the 2016 race. “They better be careful after making such a huge ruckus over the private email over at the State Department,” says former Bush administration lawyer Richard Painter.
Now, the RNC has since said they’ve deleted the Bannon, Kushner and Conway accounts, so that’s nice, but they should’ve planned ahead to do that by January 20th.
Oh, just In case you’ve haven’t heard, the phone that Trump uses to post his tweets with is unsecured. According to Wired.
AS PART OF a broader look at President Donald Trump’s acclimation to the White House, the New York Times noted on Wednesday that Trump still uses his personal, consumer-grade Android smartphone in the White House. That’s worrying.
Even if you’re not a security expert, some potential dangers of keeping an insecure device in the White House probably come to mind right away. There’s a reason President Obama had to make do with a heavily modified BlackBerry for most of his time in office, and why security officials reportedly issued Trump a locked-down device when he took office. One that he apparently doesn’t always use. If Trump does use his old Android smartphone in his spare time—which recent @realDonaldTrump tweets sent from Android seems to support—he’s leaving himself exposed to all manner of unsavory outcomes.
The headlining concern around Trump using Android is that he’s likely not protected against phishing attacks or malware. All it takes is clicking on one malicious link or opening one untoward attachment—either of which can appear as though it were sent from a trusted source—to compromise the device. From there, the phone could be infected with malware that spies on the network the device is connected to, logs keystrokes, takes over the camera and microphone for surreptitious recording, and more.
…
“Hopefully the Secret Service is treating his device as already compromised and restricting that phone from having any connections to secret or official government materials, resources, networks, and documents,” says Greg Linares, a security researcher who specializes in threats intelligence and reverse engineering. “Exploitation of Android devices, for the most part, is not as trivial as it was even a few years ago. Attackers would still need to develop a reliable exploit and deliver it to the President. But since it is a non-hardened device, the level of threat is rather high.”
What exactly could someone do if they compromised the phone? Well… this.
Android Central analyzed images of Trump using his phone and suggested he probably owns a Samsung Galaxy S3, first released in 2012 – a phone so old that it would no longer receive any new security updates or major software releases.
If Trump is still using this device, it represents a major security threat.
Perhaps the greatest risk, as highlighted by security expert Bruce Schneier, is the possibility that the phone could be hacked and turned into an eavesdropping device, listening in on classified conversations.
“That Android has a microphone, which means it can be turned into a room bug without anyone’s knowledge. That’s my real fear,” said Schneier.
And it’s not like this is a new idea, the FBI has been remotely using phone mics for wiretaps for over a decade.
The FBI appears to have begun using a novel form of electronic surveillance in criminal investigations: remotely activating a mobile phone's microphone and using it to eavesdrop on nearby conversations.
The technique is called a "roving bug," and was approved by top U.S. Department of Justice officials for use against members of a New York organized crime family who were wary of conventional surveillance techniques such as tailing a suspect or wiretapping him.
Nextel cell phones owned by two alleged mobsters, John Ardito and his attorney Peter Peluso, were used by the FBI to listen in on nearby conversations. The FBI views Ardito as one of the most powerful men in the Genovese family, a major part of the national Mafia.
The surveillance technique came to light in an opinion published this week by U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan. He ruled that the "roving bug" was legal because federal wiretapping law is broad enough to permit eavesdropping even of conversations that take place near a suspect's cell phone.
And how easy could it be to hack? This easy.
It’s not just Trump’s device that poses a security risk. Earlier this week, a hacker exposed potential vulnerabilities in the official Twitter accounts used by the president (@POTUS), vice-president (@VP) and first lady (@FLOTUS).
The hacker, known by his online name WauchulaGhost, said on Twitter that these accounts were more vulnerable because they had not enabled a security setting that requires the user to provide a phone number of email address to reset the password.
And until Thursday afternoon, the @POTUS Twitter account, which was turned over to Trump’s team last week, was registered to a private Gmail account. The account registration, which appeared to belong to Dan Scavino, Trump’s head of social media, was changed on Thursday after several journalists and online users flagged it online. It’s now attached to a White House email.
Well, thank God they changed the twitter email account from gmail and now require you to enter a phone number or email address to reset the password. It’s not like anyone might be able guess Trump, Pence or Melania’s phone number or anything….
Hopefully the Pres and VPres are real careful about what they click on… and say near their phone while it’s battery is in place Or then again, considering the FBI investigation of the Trump campaign and White House, hopefully not.
