Technology: a string of security blunders in the Trump White House

Perhaps surprisingly, given his intense campaign focus on Hillary Clinton using a private Gmail account while Secretary of State, the Trump White House has made a string of security blunders during its first few days — one of them involving Gmail.

First, there’s the president himself.

The New York Times reported yesterday that Mr Trump is still using "his old, unsecured Android phone, to the protests of some of his aides," even after a story last week said he had been supplied with “a secure, encrypted device approved by the Secret Service.”

After examining closeups of several photos, Android Central says Mr Trump's handset is a Samsung Galaxy S3, dating from 2012.

That puts it “a good three years out of step with the latest Android security updates,” Android Central says, noting there have been no software updates available for that vintage of Android for some time.

There is a good lesson to be learned here for any organisation: Keep an eye out for hopeless old handsets in this age of bring-your-own-device. What if your boss is the leader of the free world and won’t give up his comfy old handset? Pour water on it when he’s not looking.

More blunders
There was another blunder this morning as White House press secretary Sean Spicer appeared to accidently tweet his password. It was the second morning in a row he'd done it.

Until at least Wednesday, senior Trump administration staffers, including Kellyanne Conway, Jared Kushner, Steve Bannon and Mr Spicer, had active accounts on a Republican National Committee (RNC)  private email system, Newsweek reports.

And Intercept has noted that the official @POTUS (president of the United States) Twitter account is tied to a Gmail address for password reset.

Sad!

Or, as Mr Trump once put it:

How can Hillary run the economy when she can't even send emails without putting entire nation at risk?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 21, 2016

POSTSCRIPT

Another question is why Mr Trump did not “buy American” when he picked his phone. Though that does raise the thornier issue of “What is American?” when you’re so focused, as POTUS is, on where things are manufactured. iPhones are designed by Apple, which employs 80,000 and generates more profit than any other US company but manufactures in China using components (some of them from Samsung) sourced from multiple countries. Samsung manufactures in Vietnam, China, India, Brazil, Indonesia, and Korea but Android phones’ software – which some would say is their defining feature – is a creation of US company Google. Tricky cove, Johnny Globalisation.

For now, POTUS is sold on Samsung. Keen followers of Mr Trump’s social media account will have noticed that the tweets from an Android Twitter client tend to be more front-foot and inevitably end in an exclamation mark! The more conventional tweets all come from a Twitter client for iPhone – obviously wrangled by someone in the White House comms team.