Trump expresses doubts about security of all computers

Even those rules don't work anymore.

> it's like a stopped clock telling the right time rather than a deep insight

That's a really good analogy (I mean in general, not specifically referring to this situation)! I'm going to start using it.

I wonder if fax would be a good compromise between time and security. Encrypted fax standards exist. I guess the real question is how easy it'd be to shoehorn AES into the T.30 protocol.

> I can't imagine that having messages couriered everywhere by hand will be a practical way...

I thought the same about large organisations until last week I saw a ward-sister with a transit envelope, one of those manila pockets on which you write the next destination and send it on through internal post.

Apparently they're still widely used within the UK National Health Service to send confidential paper records and other data-conveying objects.

He was communicating out of band to unknown parties that his communications are being monitored.

I don't know if using Twitter on a smartphone is a reasonable infosec strategy. More than a few Twitter accounts have been hacked or taken over with social engineering. And he's using a Samsung Android smartphone, so you don't know how up-to-date he is with security patches.

But then again, according to Trump himself: “I know a lot about hacking." And he also knows “things that other people don’t know. And so they cannot be sure of the situation.” The man could be a brilliant hacker for all I know.

>>Trump rarely uses email or computers, despite his frequent tweeting..

>If 2016 taught us anything, this is a reasonable infosec strategy - Although I assume, when he becomes President there is some high powered govt. agency that can do it securely if he uses whatever protocols they suggest.

I do wonder about problems even with Twitter. If the current @POTUS account announced a nuclear attack had just been launched I think most people would assume the account was hacked because it doesn't have a pattern of being used used for information like that. But with Trump it doesn't seem completely impossible that Trump might actually tweet out some information he had just learned or decided, no matter what it is.

Imagine the worldwide chaos you could cause by hacking Trump's twitter Saturday night at 3AM and announcing a nuclear strike to or from someone!

Trump lives among the 1% where they don't have to interact with computers to get around in society. He has aides and servants to conduct much of the routine paperwork and other things that ordinary people need to do to function with government and business. That includes email for communications. It doesn't surprise me that in his world, he uses phone calls and personal meetings to conduct most of his face to face business. It is definitely isolating and he lives very differently than most other people. Interestingly, I see the same situation with homeless or poor people who aren't as plugged in with everyone else.

Well, consider that that is entirely artificially created by a media establishment that ridiculed him relentlessly but he still ended up winning. It's actually nothing to do with him at all; it's that the media are presenting a view that is out of sync with reality.

Could be, but if that were true I would expect we would have seen a lot of publicity about such hacked info. Surely there's been no shortage of interest in finding "dirt" on Trump, his businesses, family, etc. The nasty political situation would be a great incentive for it. The absence of such data suggests decent security is in place.

That makes sense insofar as Trump runs large operations that has to require considerable computing resources to run them. He probably has top-notch people overseeing the data end of management and that would include maintaining security

It's meant to be parsed as "traveling to play golf (without a pool... to ensure the public)", not "traveling to play golf (without pool...) to ensure the public.

Or for the manila envelope cartel.

How so? The absurd thing is that it is news - it should just be common sense that computers are not secure. It shouldn't take a statement by the future US president to convey that message.

Have you ever looked at a computer owned by one of your relatives (someone who is not a computer expert)?

Without any political connotation, of just email as a communications platform: Email incurs costs of mental kind on the end user. I see nothing bad of not using it - if one can afford not to. For example, Donald Knuth seldom uses email as well. http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~uno/email.html

I'm not sure if it's such a great strategy for a future president, though (especually as he seems to spend awfull lot of time on twitter).

Because encrypted email hasn't really worked out?