This makes me furious. Our president cares so little about his job and protecting American interests that not only did open himself up to this possibility but it actually happened. It's these sorts of things that infuriate me, and I'm not even center-left.

I would really take these stories with a healthy dose of skepticism. These articles are click bait and are Tabloid in nature. They primary purpose is to either raise hysteria or political assassination.

From the article itself:

>“If true, this may be the largest, most significant breach of White House communications in history,”

There is a huge problem with the News these days. Most of it is B.S. and it getting harder to take any of it seriously.

Edit: Must of hurt someones feelings...Junk Away....

You have a fair point. Anything about Trump is tabloid gold. However, everything I know about Trump is consistent with the idea that he'd be careless enough not to keep proper security protocol with his phone. And given that drip of leaks we get about this administration, it is entirely plausible someone spoke to the press about information they received that his phone actually was compromised.

> Obama switched to an iPhone, albeit with a number of features removed, including the camera and microphone.

I'd happily pay extra for iPhones, laptops, and cars with verifiable hardware kill switches for all built-in microphones and cameras. Since I'm dreaming, I might also ask for verifiable hardware kill switches for wifi, bluetooth, and any other radio connections. It's so sad that it's just about impossible to find any of these (except maybe a single niche-market laptop) unless you're being protected by elite government agencies.

I'm taking this all with a huge grain of salt ...but...I thought Apple was secure? Perhaps this reflects more on Apple and our dependency upon foreign produced hardware.

So what happens after an event like this in the NSA's digital standards degradation dept.?

Does some lackey at least have to add an entry under the "cons" heading in the powerpoint?

Or do they just rationalize non-security by saying one out of three phones getting hacked is an example of their secret 3-fold safety factor working as designed?

Emails kinda seem tame now.

Really? The email server in my opinion was a flagrant breach of rules. I really think she should have been charged. And junior doing this would have been. And this view elites are above the law is so wrong.

The phone is possibly more damaging to security, but it's not illegal as far as I read. So stupid and arrogant. But not illegal.

The email thing was also not illegal. It broke policy, and a junior might have been reprimanded (and maybe even fired), but not imprisoned. And given that Clinton was no longer in the government, she couldn't be fired.

What is amazing is that, in this day and age, people still think unencrypted emails are somehow secure. It shouldn't matter where the email server is. Her use of an unsecured communications device was far more critical. And yet, here we are...

Not to defend Clinton's use but: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Trump+admin+email+servers&t=fpas&i... the Trump's phone usage is an and not an instead

As you probably already know, a "rule" isn't the same a a "law". Even breaking a law doesn't usually lead to criminal prosecution because most laws are civil, not criminal. And, most salient, the relevant standard for criminal prosecution w/r/t classified information require intent. HRC obviously did not have criminal intent. Moreover, nothing actually happened: while the setup may have been risky, there's no indication it actually had any consequences (beyond those for her career).

You can contrast this with the Republican attitude to Gen Patreaus, who intentionally gave classified information to his girlfriend and who was vigorously defended by the political right.

And even then, Patreaus got what you might consider to be a slap on the wrist.

Can we just agree to put them both in prison?

Send me that petition and I'll sign.

Can we just have a do-over of 2016 with both of them in prison before the primaries? I'd subscribe to that alternate reality.

> Can we just agree to put them both in prison?

I keep hearing the chants of "Lock her up" but no one has pointed out any conclusive evidence that HRC should be jailed. See above for the arguments about the email server. As for Benghazi, multiple investigations by some of the most relentlessly aggressive Republicans failed to find any wrongdoing even worth charging her for.

So, why put her in jail? Because you don't like her?

Could the link be changed to the original source, which is https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/24/us/politics/trump-phone-s... ?

It's not just decent to reward those who actually did the legwork, it also happens to be a much better article.

This thread is a dup of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18296959 which does link to the NY Times article.

Alternative theory: Trump doesn't trust the NSA and wants a phone that they haven't touched. Intelligence agencies "leak" the "fact" through the NYT that Trump is being eavesdropped on by Russia and China with no evidence, in an attempt to coerce him into dropping his personal phone, whether for nefarious reasons or not.

Why not just tap the people who he calls on a regular basis? Seems like an even easier job.

You have to know who he calls on a regular basis. By compromising his phone, you get both.

Why not both?

An article about an article that cites no one.

Amazing display of journalistic integrity.

Anonymous sources do tend to be more trustworthy than named sources, actually.

That's because accountability isn't just dropped. Rather, the publisher's and the reporter's reputation replace that of the source.

And a journalist faces a far greater risk for making stuff up: where you could survive a lie or two as a politician or career official, a journalist's career is essentially over when.

Even the source actually faces more scrutiny when being quoted anonymously: when they are found to have lied, the journalist is no longer bound to their promise of confidentiality. When revealed to have fed lies to journalists, they face far more consequences because they exposed the journalist to such existential risks. The result is a loss of trust by exactly those people you need to shape the conversion. It's rather rare that any single issue is worth such risks to your career.

Mr. Trump’s use of his iPhones was detailed by several current and former officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity so they could discuss classified intelligence and sensitive security arrangements.

And those officials are...

I too can make up random shit and claim it as fact with vague references, but that doesn't make it any more true, false, or valid.

There is a world of difference between the New York Times citing anonymous sources in the White House, and you "making up random shit".

I have yet to be convinced of that. This is the same media company that sold the Iraq war lies.

They do seem to have one constant though; writing articles that support the destabilization of sovereign middle eastern countries.

> This is the same media company that sold the Iraq war lies.

That's another way of saying that they truthfully and reliably reported the anonymous leaks coming from the White House, which justifies the opposite conclusion you seem to be making.

There weren't anonymous leaks regarding the propaganda campaign the NYT had for the Iraq war.

That all came from Ahmed Chalabi, who had ties with officials at the Pentagon. The guy was a swamp creature.

They didn't all come from Chalabi. But in any event, I actually met the man as an intern at a K Street national security policy think tank. Chalabi was the darling of Cheney, Rumsfeld, and other neocons in the administration. To the extent Chalabi was the source, much of it was originally laundered through the administration (particularly Cheney's office) as anonymous leaks.

Correct, most of the DOD stuff was from 'curveball'.

> laundered through the administration (particularly Cheney's office) as anonymous leaks.

Aside from the fact that Judith Miller knew who she was getting her data from, doesn't this prove my point about anonymous sources being bullshit? The example you just gave was state sponsored propaganda 'leaked' to the NYT in order to sell the public on a pointless war. Had the public been made savvy who the sources were, we probably would not have had any sort of approval on the war.

None the less, that doesn't change what is going on here. Journalists can editorialize any topic they would like and face no repercussions because the sources are anonymous and corroboration is impossible. There is no risk to printing lies when the get out of jail free card is effectively a non verifiable entity.

Deepthroat was anonymous, not b.s. Snowden was briefly anonymous, not b.s.

You're applying an aggressive falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus standard, and while it's not crazy you are by choice considering any unnamed sources as b.s. stories, and worthy of wholesale discarding. You really cannot correlate anonymity of sources to trust or reliability. That's why reputation matters, for good or bad. And it's why triangulation matters.

Come back when you have an example that isn't old enough to have finished high school by now.

(And possibly one that doesn't also serve as illustration for the severe consequences even of errors of negligence.)

I'm sorry, there is absolutely no way to verify for certain that this is correct.

It's like comparing Bank of America and Bitcoin.

One I trust, but someday they might break that trust.

Bitcoin is code.

Any of the early bitcoin people could break bitcoin at any time by flooding the market.

Your trust is easily gained!

That doesn't actually break bitcoin - the end result is a redistribution of funds, not exploitation of a flaw of the protocol. The underlying system is still sound.

Yeah but code is code. It can be manipulated and attacked, but I don't doubt that the letters on the screen are in fact the letters.

someone with fingers in their ears, will never listen.

Personal attacks will get you banned here. Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and don't post like this, regardless of how wrong someone is or you feel they are.