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Dear Mr. Vice President, Please Take Off Your Apple Watch
- netsharc 2y agoTheir agents too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KX7f1PwXEWg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KX7f1PwXEWg
- ec109685 2y agoDon’t smartphones pose all the same risks? The only thing unique to an Apple Watch is that the screen stays visible at all times, so maybe something could leak there via a notification or whatnot. If he’s doing things right, the VP should have two phones with the watch tied to his personal one, reducing whatever risk the watch introduces further.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- aarond0623 2y agoIt is, and they give them special phones for that reason. Obama had a special Blackberry limited to 10 people. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/dec/05/barack-obama-cant-have-an-iphone-security-blackberry https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/dec/05/barack-ob...
- RandomBacon 2y agoYour comment's interpretation is ambiguous. I interpreted as there are/were 10 people that had these special Blackberry phones, when the article says Obama's Blackberry was just limited to contacting 10 people.
- ch3 2y ago[dead]
- al_borland 2y agoThe default behavior is for notifications not to show content until the watch is unlocked. This can happen by accident, but notifications can also be turned off completely for messages and email, if this is a concern.
- el_snark 2y agoThought this was pretty cool, but as the article progressed, it seemed to be selling various analogue watches, so that took the glee out of it a bit.
- JKCalhoun 2y agoNever mind the visible hands of the analog watch precisely timestamp any photo — possibly useful to "the enemy"!
- geddvjnf 2y ago[flagged]
- snailmailstare 2y agoReality TV is perhaps a grey area, but I think there hasn't been an actor and villain in the White house since Reagan, so as usual, they get by on a technicality.
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- dosinga 2y ago> We are big fans of Apple and believe the iPhone and iPad are two of the most consequential products of the last century Huh? How are they products of the last century? Other than that most things are
- angoragoats 2y agoBecause they were invented at some point in the previous 100 years.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- rsynnott 2y agoYeah, it’s ambiguous. They mean ‘of the last 100 years’, ie 1925-2025, not the 20th century. (I can see an argument for the iPhone, but the iPad, really? I have an iPad, I like the iPad, but world-changing it is not.)
- trimethylpurine 2y ago>I can see an argument for the iPhone I don't give them that either. It is nether the first nor most ubiquitous at the global scale. US maybe.
- keiferski 2y ago“The last century” can mean both the previous century and (1900-1999) and the preceding hundred years. “The previous century” or “the prior century” are more common ways to refer to the calendar century (19th, 20th, etc.)
- Finnucane 2y agoJust making it easier for his sponsors to keep tabs on him.
- addandsubtract 2y agoI find it cute that the CIA is worried about his smartwatch getting "hacked", when they are openly collaborating and selling out to foreign actors. No hacking needed.
- ribcage 2y ago[dead]
- chatmasta 2y agoThe article suggests to order a Breitling through a special program they have for White House employees to engrave the White House seal on the watch. What if they do more to the watch than engrave it? Talk about a targeted supply chain attack…
- woodruffw 2y agoIt’s presumably easier to detect a bug in a watch that shouldn’t have one than to verify that a watch whose design includes recording the owner isn’t doing so surreptitiously.
- rayiner 2y agoThat assumes the department modifying those watches isn’t adding a bug. I’d trust a stock Apple Watch more than one modified by the spooks: https://www.politico.eu/article/when-the-cia-infiltrated-a-presidential-campaign-barry-goldwater-lyndon-johnson-howard-hunt/ https://www.politico.eu/article/when-the-cia-infiltrated-a-p...
- woodruffw 2y agoI think the article is mostly about foreign concerns, not domestic ones. But even so: I'll go ahead and speculate that the US's intelligence services don't need to go to the trouble of putting a bug in a mechanical watch to know what VPOTUS is saying. (This is all for the sake of argument, since I don't think even the underlying premise is true: the US IC has as-good or better access to iOS, etc. 0days than any other intelligence community.)
- Rastonbury 2y agoCharitable interpretation of the comment. I thought the person was implying the White House engraver is susceptible to being infiltrated or influenced by North Korea to install a mic and battery into the VPs watch, what spy movie is this?
- JohnnyLarue 2y ago[flagged]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- dangus 2y agoDon't worry, J.D. Vance doesn't have anything interesting to say of use to any foreign intelligence service. The current president of the United States is Elon Musk, and Donald Trump is the Vice President. J.D. Vance is just the coffee boy.
- _uxvx 2y agoYeah, sure. Tell me more about what they ordered you to say, comrade? :))))
- tqahGkqaH 2y agoConfused by the smileys, but the Time magazine pushes the theory of President Musk: https://edition.cnn.com/2025/02/07/media/time-magazine-elon-musk-cover-trump/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2025/02/07/media/time-magazine-elon-... The TASS on the other hand is walking on eggshells with respect to Trump. So I guess your message is intended as a caricature of the usual USAID/NAFO interference whenever someone posts something critical of a current Western government?
- chowchowchow 2y ago[flagged]
- dangus 2y agoI was ordered to call the “Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America,” but it wasn’t a communist who ordered me to do so.
- pjc50 2y agoI feel like this is a cute little nicety compared to the whole Trump files business, plus a bunch of unvetted non-employees having access to the whole of USAID and an increasing number of other systems, simply by barging in the front door.
- pjc50 2y agoMissed edit window: this sort of thing https://krebsonsecurity.com/2025/02/teen-on-musks-doge-team-graduated-from-the-com/ https://krebsonsecurity.com/2025/02/teen-on-musks-doge-team-... (Nb Krebs is not a neutral source, but who is, really)
- MonkeyClub 2y agoThe photo makes it clear that the kid suffers from assholitis, cut it some slack.
- 9283409232 2y agoTrump administration is stripping down the government and selling it to enemy nations and oligarchs so they can run their "Network-States." I don't think spying on an Apple Watch is exactly a priority here.
- gadflyinyoureye 2y agoPlease go on. You’ve made many claims there. Please elaborate.
- 9283409232 2y agoA slew of people including Musk, Vance, Curtis Yarvin, Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen and a few other VC billionares are trying to break up the US into nation states that they call network-states. Think of Cyberpunk with a heavy dose of Snow Crash. It's a completely authoritarian agenda. While I understand this sounds like conspiracy, Andreessen quite literally has a book called "The Network State" and Yarvin has blogged about this extensively. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RpPTRcz1no&feature=youtu.be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RpPTRcz1no&feature=youtu.be https://www.vcinfodocs.com/what-is-the-network-state https://www.vcinfodocs.com/what-is-the-network-state https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/23373795/curtis-yarvin-neoreaction-redpill-moldbug https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/23373795/curtis-yarv... https://www.thenerdreich.com/the-network-state-coup-is-happening-right-now/ https://www.thenerdreich.com/the-network-state-coup-is-happe...
- zozbot234 2y ago> A slew of people including Musk, Vance, Curtis Yarvin, Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen and a few other VC billionares are trying to break up the US into nation states that they call network-states. Network states? Like, turning CNN, FOX and MSNBC into actual governments? That might not be such a bad idea after all, given the extent to which society gets divided along ideological lines these days. It might work along the lines of explicit "pillarisation" in the Netherlands.
- 2y ago
- amelius 2y agoMakes sense, because what if a Chinese company becomes owner of Apple? In a free economy, very possible.
- tonetheman 2y ago[dead]
- throw1231918 2y agoHe could use a golden pager provided by the Mossad: https://edition.cnn.com/2025/02/06/middleeast/netanyahu-trump-golden-pager-intl/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2025/02/06/middleeast/netanyahu-trum... In any case, the tech bros he is aligned with do not care much about security or quality software.
- analog31 2y agoOf course his watch is hacked. If anybody's tracking him, it's the boss. Anybody who's ever worked a regular job knows this.
- vtashkov 2y agohttps://www.hodinkee.com/articles/the-watches-of-president-biden-collector-in-chief https://www.hodinkee.com/articles/the-watches-of-president-b... "Now we're talking ubiquity. When President Biden isn't wearing one of his many steel (or two-tone) sport watches, you'll likely find him with an Apple Watch. It's unclear why, or for which occasions he chooses the smartwatch out of his watch box, but he's worn it in the Oval, and at the Resolute, just as he has with any of his other watches. " So when Biden wears it, it's OK. No 'former CIA' writes any open letters, no HN Commies "following orders". When the Vice-President wears it - they are stupid and they are threatening national security. What a hypocrisy is the whole democratic party. Disgusting propaganda methods akin to Soviets.
- binarysneaker 2y agoWho cares about Biden? He's history.
- kurikuri 2y agoNeither of them should have had access to the smart devices… when Obama had gotten a smartphone, it was a locked down BlackBerry. Trump came into office and did not seem too concerned about the IT security risk his unvetted personal phone posed. Don’t what-a-bout it… they can both do wrong. There are things to complain about with the Democratic Party, this isn’t it though.
- chowchowchow 2y agoEmotional posts like yours don’t really further the discussion of whether it’s good practice for US leaders to wear an Apple Watch.
- 404mm 2y agoI’d argue that the VP himself is greater threat to this country than his Apple Watch.
- pixxel 2y ago[dead]
- emeril 2y agoI love the comment on the article "Lol. Lmao. You think a watch is going to be the biggest insider threat? What about the unelected foreign national rifling through every server closest in the DC metro area?"