Le Monde discovers that some US Secret Service brokers use the health app Strava [File]
| Picture credit score: AP
An investigation by French newspaper Le Monde discovered that the extremely delicate actions of US President Joe Biden, his presidential rivals Donald Trump and Kamala Harris and different world leaders might be simply tracked on-line by way of a health app utilized by their bodyguards.
However the US Secret Service advised the newspaper that it doesn’t imagine the safety it offers has been compromised in any method.
Le Monde found that some US Secret Service brokers use the health app Strava, together with in latest weeks after two assassination makes an attempt on Trump, in a video investigation broadcast in French and English. Strava is a health monitoring app used primarily by runners and cyclists to file their actions and share their exercises with a neighborhood.
Le Monde additionally discovered Strava customers among the many safety personnel of French President Emmanuel Macron and Russian President Vladimir Putin. In a single instance, Le Monde tracked the Strava actions of Macron’s bodyguards to find out that the French chief spent a weekend within the Normandy coastal city of Honfleur in 2021. The journey was meant to be non-public and was not listed on the president’s official agenda.
Le Monde stated the whereabouts of Melania Trump and Jill Biden is also recognized by monitoring the Strava profiles of their bodyguards.
In a press release to Le Monde, the US Secret Service stated its personnel aren’t allowed to make use of private digital gadgets whereas on responsibility throughout protecting duties, however “we don’t prohibit private use of social media by a “off-duty worker.”
“The affected personnel have been notified,” he stated. “We are going to overview this data to find out if further coaching or steerage is required.”
“We don’t assess that there was any impression on safety operations or threats to any protectee,” he added. Areas are “disclosed periodically as a part of public programming releases.”
In one other instance, Le Monde reported that the Strava profile of a US Secret Service agent revealed the situation of a resort the place Biden subsequently stayed in San Francisco for high-risk talks with Chinese language President Xi Jinping in 2023. A number of hours earlier than Biden’s arrival, the agent went for a run from the resort utilizing Strava, which mapped out his route, in response to the newspaper.
The newspaper’s journalists say they’ve recognized 26 American brokers, 12 members of the French GSPR, the Safety Group of the Presidency of the Republic, and 6 members of the Russian FSO, or Federal Safety Service, all of them in control of presidential safety, who had public accounts on Strava and subsequently communicated their actions on-line, even throughout skilled journeys. Le Monde didn’t determine the bodyguards for safety causes.
He stated actions trackable on Strava may result in safety breaches, particularly when safety officers journey prematurely to locations comparable to motels the place leaders keep and maintain conferences.
Macron’s workplace said on Monday that the implications of the occasions reported by Le Monde “are very slight and don’t in any method have an effect on the safety of the President of the Republic.”
Native authorities are conscious of Macron’s actions prematurely and the locations the place Macron stays are all the time fully secure, “so the danger is non-existent,” the assertion stated.
“Nonetheless, the chief of workers despatched a reminder to brokers asking them to not use this utility,” Macron’s workplace added.
Harris’ marketing campaign referred feedback on the safety difficulty to federal officers. In response to questions posed to the Trump marketing campaign, a spokesperson for the Republican Nationwide Committee repeated a few of its criticisms of the Biden administration, however didn’t deal with the vulnerability or how the marketing campaign has responded.
The safety dangers related to health apps present the necessity for higher laws on how expertise firms can use shopper information, in response to Ibrahim Baggili, a pc scientist and professor of cybersecurity at Louisiana State College.
Baggili’s analysis has uncovered how criminals may use information from health apps to trace potential victims, creating dangers of harassment, theft and different crimes.
Customers usually give app builders the proper to make use of or promote their information when they comply with the phrases of service, Baggili stated.
“Corporations love our information and we love the product, so we give it away,” he stated. “The federal government actually wants to start out cracking down on how information can be utilized and the way lengthy it may be saved.”
Figuring out the presidential bodyguards (a few of them utilizing their full names on Strava) may additionally assist discover different particulars about their private addresses, their households, their actions and the pictures they posted on varied social networks, all of which may very well be used to place stress on them. for malicious functions, the report highlights.
Printed – October 29, 2024 09:33 am IST
