LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – President Trump is still using his trusty old Android phone for early morning tweet storms — and California Congressman Ted Lieu wants to put a stop to it. That’s because consumer-grade Android phones, especially if they’re dated like the one that Trump is reportedly using, can easily be hacked.
“We are writing to request that the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hold a public hearing into troubling reports that the President is jeopardizing national security by egregiously failing to implement commonsense security measures,” the letter reads.
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Trump’s continued use of his Android phone has been raising questions with security experts; the President is reportedly using a Samsung Galaxy S3, which isn’t capable of running the latest version of Android. The Galaxy S3 was also found to be vulnerable for “Stagefright,” a software exploit that made it possible to hijack phones with a simple multimedia text message.
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Samsung has pushed software updates to affected phones to deal with that specific issue, but it’s unclear whether the President’s phone was patched, and which other vulnerabilities it may be susceptible to.
The Secret Service successfully talked President Obama out of using an iPhone for security reasons. Instead, Obama used a locked-down Blackberry phone throughout his presidency. Trump on the other hand has reportedly resisted calls to trade in his Android phone, and tweets written by the President still originate from the device.
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