7 ms·

If it's this easy to hack Trump's Twitter account and say things that could trigger war, maybe we need to reconsider allowing elected officials to use social me

If it's this easy to hack Trump's Twitter account and say things that could trigger war, maybe we need to reconsider allowing elected officials to use social media as their official communications channel. Instead, they should have a government run portal where they relay whatever info they need to.

smitty1e 7y ago
How, precisely, does a 280 character payload trigger war? Is UTF-8 just so much U-238 in drag? If someone is starting a war, than any tweet is fungible with another.
- mattchamb 7y ago
  What if a world leader said something along the lines of.. "Just ordered a strike xxxcountry. This is war." That would probably trigger war.
  - smitty1e 7y ago
    Would it? Is there any country whose leaders are so foppish as to believe what they read on Twitter as though it were some actual diplomatic channel, or even an early warning system? Color me skeptical, sir.
    - SturgeonsLaw 7y ago
      I'd wager you're correct in your assumption that most decision makers would not be duped by something like that, however a bogus tweet from an official source could be used as plausible cover for leaders who are seeking justification to take actions they wanted to take anyway. Can you imagine what would have happened if a post-9/11 Iranian leader's account had tweeted "we have successfully acquired nuclear weapons and will be attacking Washington DC and Jerusalem tonight"? Elements within the governments of the USA and Israel have been agitating for war with Iran for decades, and that could give them the cover they need to act on it.
      - smitty1e 7y ago
        So, if all that's sought is a pretext, why don't state actors just hack accounts and stage pretexts at will? The elevation of social media to the level of a United Nations general assembly just doesn't seem to pass muster, boss.
paulddraper 7y ago
I think this comment just as far overexaggerated as when you made it one minute earlier. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20842357 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20842357
flixic 7y ago
I'd wager that government-run portals might be even easier to hack. Regardless of that, separating "official communications" from "personal" would be really tricky. Which tweets would come as "the current president" and which as "the candidate up for re-election"? In addition to that, there are actually separate accounts (official @POTUS / personal @realDonaldTrump) but Trump-the-person has no incentive to ever use the official account (it's not "his") and so all @POTUS account does is just retweet the personal account, sort of defeating the purpose.
- paulpauper 7y ago
  look at Equifax for example: huge organization yet undone by very elementary errors

smitty1e 7y ago

How, precisely, does a 280 character payload trigger war? Is UTF-8 just so much U-238 in drag? If someone is starting a war, than any tweet is fungible with another.

mattchamb 7y ago
What if a world leader said something along the lines of.. "Just ordered a strike xxxcountry. This is war." That would probably trigger war.
- smitty1e 7y ago
  Would it? Is there any country whose leaders are so foppish as to believe what they read on Twitter as though it were some actual diplomatic channel, or even an early warning system? Color me skeptical, sir.
  - SturgeonsLaw 7y ago
    I'd wager you're correct in your assumption that most decision makers would not be duped by something like that, however a bogus tweet from an official source could be used as plausible cover for leaders who are seeking justification to take actions they wanted to take anyway. Can you imagine what would have happened if a post-9/11 Iranian leader's account had tweeted "we have successfully acquired nuclear weapons and will be attacking Washington DC and Jerusalem tonight"? Elements within the governments of the USA and Israel have been agitating for war with Iran for decades, and that could give them the cover they need to act on it.
    - smitty1e 7y ago
      So, if all that's sought is a pretext, why don't state actors just hack accounts and stage pretexts at will? The elevation of social media to the level of a United Nations general assembly just doesn't seem to pass muster, boss.

paulddraper 7y ago

I think this comment just as far overexaggerated as when you made it one minute earlier. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20842357 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20842357

flixic 7y ago

I'd wager that government-run portals might be even easier to hack. Regardless of that, separating "official communications" from "personal" would be really tricky. Which tweets would come as "the current president" and which as "the candidate up for re-election"? In addition to that, there are actually separate accounts (official @POTUS / personal @realDonaldTrump) but Trump-the-person has no incentive to ever use the official account (it's not "his") and so all @POTUS account does is just retweet the personal account, sort of defeating the purpose.

paulpauper 7y ago
look at Equifax for example: huge organization yet undone by very elementary errors