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President Trump rejected a report on Chinese and Russian spies listening to his calls on his mobile phone as being "so bad", while acknowledging the crucial vulnerability exploited by foreign agents – the fact that he's using a cell phone to make calls.
The article, published Wednesday in the New York Times, explained how US intelligence agencies had discovered that China and Russia were listening to calls that Mr. Trump was making from his iPhone and that the president was still using a mobile phone despite warnings, calls are not secure. Moreover, it is now thought that China is using what it has learned from calls – how Mr. Trump thinks, what arguments tend to persuade him and who he is inclined to listen to – to try to find out. Influence Mr. Trump and avoid again escalating a trade war, according to several current and former US officials.
Mr. Trump jumped on the news early Thursday, write on Twitter these so-called "so-called Trump experts" from the Times had written a boring, skeptical article, "I do not have time to fix it here."
He added, "I only use public phones and I only have one government mobile phone. The story is so bad! "
Mr. Trump followed about three hours later with a second tweet, saying that the Times "has a new Fake Story that now Russians and Chinese (happy to have finally added China) listen to all my calls on cell phones. Except that I rarely use a mobile phone, and when I do it, it's allowed by the government. I like hard traits. Even more fake news invented!
According to the Times report, this is the problem that Mr. Trump uses a cell phone, whether government or not. Vulnerabilities exploited by China and Russia have nothing to do with the real devices of Mr. Trump, officials said. The president's calls are rather intercepted as they pass through the cell towers, cables and switches that make up the national and international mobile networks, they said.
"We are confident in the accuracy of our reports and will let the The story speaks for itself, "said Times spokeswoman Danielle Rhoades Ha in response to the president's tweets.
Officials said the president had two official iPhones modified by the National Security Agency (National Security Agency) to limit their capabilities – and vulnerabilities – and a third personal phone that does not differ from the hundreds of millions of iPhone used in the world.
Auxiliaries and people familiar with Trump said it was only late last year that he finally started using his government-issued mobile phone regularly instead of his personal mobile phone. But Mr. Trump kept his personal phone because he had no phone number on the government phone, they said.
For many months, Trump also did not memorize the number of one of his government's phones, staff said. He found the situation aggravating and complained to his associates of not having a phone number to provide when friends at his private club, Mar-a-Lago, in Palm Beach, Florida, asked how join him.
US officials know how easy it is for a government to intercept mobile phone calls. This is considered as an essential spy tool for American and foreign spies, and leaders like Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir V. Putin or Russia avoid using the mobile phone when possible.
Mr. Trump, however, sits on his cell phone to talk with old friends and contacts. Officials said that he had started using more landlines in recent months – landlines are much safer than mobile phones – but that he still relies on his iPhones when He does not want calls to be recorded by the White House telephone switchboard.
Several West Wing officials have stated that Jordan Karem, oval office operations manager, had told his colleagues that he was reviewing the president's call logs from the standard every morning and was filling out the role of Chief of Staff, John F. Kelly. White House officials said that an email was sent each morning to a number of officials detailing the call log.
Officials quoted in The Times newspaper said they did not fear Trump would reveal secrets during his calls. The President rarely delves into the sensitive details of secret and military operations, and he has long been paranoid about recording his appeals.
China and Russia, for their part, have also rejected the report of the Times, ridiculing it without denying it exactly.
Hua Chunying, a spokeswoman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, suggested that "some people in the United States" were competing for "the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay", and even used a familiar Trump trope, warning the newspaper that he risked called "false news".
The best way to prevent calls being intercepted was to avoid "any modern communications device," she said.
Ms. Hua then asked a Chinese competitor of the iPhone that Mr. Trump favors. "They're worried a lot about tapping the iPhones, they can use Huawei," she said, referring to the telecommunications giant who himself The United States has expressed security concerns, potentially vulnerable to Chinese intelligence.
In Russia, Kremlin spokesman Dmitri S. Peskov reacted in the same way. "The newspaper probably has detailed information on this subject that may justify the publication of such information," he said, according to Ria Novosti.
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