At Mar-a-Lago, Trump Puts Government Affairs on Display for All to See

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At Mar-a-Lago, Trump Puts Government Affairs on Display for All to See

One of many potential security breaches

by KEVIN KNODELL


Pres. Donald Trump and Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe were at the Mar-a-Lago, a private golf club the Trump family owned in southern Florida. DeAgazio — a retired investor who joined Mar-a-Lago three months earlier — documented the events of the evening on social media.

This included posting photos of himself posing with White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, as well as a military aide reportedly carrying the “nuclear football,” a piece of gear that enables the president to launch a nuclear attack.

“HOLY MOLY!!! It was fascinating to watch the flurry of activity at dinner when the news came that North Korea had launched a missile in the direction of Japan,” DeAgazio later posted with more photos.

“The prime minister Abe of Japan huddles with his staff and the president is on the phone with Washington, D.C. the two world leaders then conferred and then went into another room for hastily arranged press conference. Wow … the center of the action!!!”

Trump and Abe were a spectacle for the Mar-a-Lago guests who were there that night. Many members of the intelligence community weren’t similarly impressed.

But whether regardless of how serious this particular incident actually was, it’s just one of the Trump administration’s potential security breaches.

During the 2016 election campaign, Trump and his surrogates repeatedly promised he would protect sensitive American intelligence. Though he had no background in national security matters, his opponent was uniquely damaged on this front.

Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton was rightly scrutinized and took harsh criticism for maintaining a private e-mail server and using it to conduct government business. While serving as Secretary of State, rather than use an official account on government computers, Clinton had her own equipment in New York, as The New York Times first reported.

Clinton used the same e-mail address for both her job as the nation’s top diplomat and for personal matters that likely included the activities of the Clinton Foundation,which in turn led to widespread concerns about potential conflicts of interest. On top of that, because she would often send messages from her own private Blackberry cellphone rather than a more secure device, experts worried that foreign spies might have been able to break in and steal sensitive information.

Clinton’s staff admitted to deleting tens of thousands of e-mails rather than turn them over to the State Department on grounds they were “personal,” and she was frequently caught lying about several aspects of the scandal.

A subsequent FBI investigation found that Clinton and several of those working with her were sloppy in dealing with the server and e-mails, as well as how they handled classified information. Though the Bureau didn’t recommend criminal charges, director James Comey testified to congress that if someone working in intelligence or diplomacy had done something similar, they may have faced severe consequences.

This caused anger among those who believed Clinton was being held to a different standard than lower ranking intelligence and military personnel who had suffered much stiffer punishments for lesser security breaches. Coupled with the tragic Benghazi fiasco, Clinton’s e-mails were one of the top scandals to plague her throughout the election.

“Hillary Clinton … sent classified information, even during her travels overseas, jeopardizing the national security of the American people by allowing her emails to be hacked by foreign intelligence services,” the Trump campaign’s website charged.

But recent episodes, such as DeAgazio’s social media posts, raise questions about how Trump himself is treating classified information, as well as his relationship with the American intelligence community.

Since taking office, Trump has continued his prolific use of Twitter. Though his team now has control over the official presidential account, he’s used his personal one to engage in feuds with entities ranging from Republican Senator from Arizona John McCain to retail outlet Nordstrom. Much like Hillary Clinton, he opted to continue using a reportedly unsecured personal mobile device, in his case a smartphone running Google’s Android operating system.

He seems to be using the Android phone primarily to post to his Twitter account. But using the social media site requires a connection to the internet, which can expose the device to security vulnerabilities if so-called “two-factor authentication” — such as a password plus a special code to use certain functions — aren’t in place.

If any president were to decide to use a smartphone on an unsecure wireless network, it’s possible could he or she could be exposing location and other personal information on the device to anyone with the right skills, from spies to criminals. “Donald Trump for the longest time has been using a insecure Android phone that by all reports is so easy to compromise, it would not meet the security requirements of a teenager,” computer scientist Nicholas Weaver told NPR.

Weaver’s appraisal was harsher than that of others, but mobile devices can indeed be quite vulnerable. Hackers can access a phones camera and microphone functions to snoop on their targets.

In 2013, when Edward Snowden met with reporters in Hong Kong to leak files he’d stolen from the National Security Agency, he told them to put their phones in a refrigerator, on the off chance someone had hacked the devices. He believed this was the best way to block other people from listening — or looking — in on the gathering.

The Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency, with the help of the NSA, have tracked numerous terrorists through their cellphone signals — and then killed them. In some cases, nicknamed “touchdowns,” the phone itself is the official target of the strike.

At Mar-A-Lago, DeAgazio’s photos showed Trump using a phone at the table, though it’s not clear what specific device he had in his hand. But rather than relocate to a private location, Trump and Abe decided to get the initial information on North Korea’s missile launch at the patio in full view of guests while continuing their meal.

In addition, “the patio was lit only with candles and moonlight, so aides used the camera lights on their phones to help the stone-faced Trump and Abe read through the documents,” according to CNN. DeAgazio’s photos clearly show the cellphone flashlights.

The White House insisted no classified information was on display in the dining area. Officials reportedly moved Trump and Abe into a more secure location to discuss those details after they’d finished their meal.

But this was hardly the first time concerns about security in the Trump administration had come up. Not long after Trump’s inauguration, several twitter users found that both the @potus and @realDonaldTrump accounts appeared to be linked to the personal Gmail account of White House social media director Dan Scavino.

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