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Adam Bannister is a contributor to IFSEC Global, having been in the role of Editor from 2014 through to November 2019. Adam also had stints as a journalist at cybersecurity publication, The Daily Swig, and as Managing Editor at Dynamis Online Media Group.
President Trump’s uncharacteristically conciliatory speech upon winning the presidency in November lulled some of his critics into hoping for a more emollient approach to governing than he’d exhibited on the campaign trail.
Those hopes have been unequivocally dashed.
While his opponents are alarmed at an unprecedented flurry of executive orders – a tool allowing presidents to bypass Congress – that have left the machinery of government struggling to keep up, his supporters have marvelled at the novelty of a politician that appears to act on his promises immediately rather than engage in the mucky business of bipartisanship and compromise.
Some of the most eye-catching orders have pertained to security issues.
The order banning people from seven Muslim-majority countries has sparked protests worldwide and even elicited opprobrium from usually Hawkish Republicans.
‘The Donald’s’ plan for a “big, beautiful, powerful wall” along the entire Mexican border, meanwhile, continues to elicit both bemusement and anger. A draft executive order ordering a cybersecurity review is less controversial, although the President’s credibility on the issue is somewhat tarnished by his association – fair or not – with Russia’s alleged cyber encroachments into US electoral affairs.
Here are five security questions arising from Trump’s bewildering array of executive orders.
1. Is the ‘Muslim’ travel ban a propaganda coup for Isis?
Trump’s travel ban bars all immigrants and visa holders from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the US for 90 days. It also bans all refugee admissions for 120 days, and Syrian refugees indefinitely.
Senator John McCain, generally a hawk on matters of national security, believes the ban will “probably in some areas give ISIS some more propaganda”.
Writing on Vox, meanwhile, Jennifer Williams writes that: “ISIS has been trying for years to convince Muslims around the world that the West — and especially the United States — is at war with Islam. President Donald Trump’s new executive order on immigration will make it much easier for it to make its case.”
Trump’s order also stipulates that Christians should be prioritised among refugee applications, which Williams says “plays right into the ISIS narrative.”
Former jihadi Abu Abdullah told CNN that the ban “can play into their propaganda, to make it clear for anyone who could be in doubt, that it’s a war on Islam and all Muslims.”
Also speaking to CNN, Fawaz Gerges, chairman of contemporary Middle East studies at the London School of Economics and author of ISIS: A History, said: “By banning Muslims, lumping them with radical Islamism, Donald Trump provides ammunition and motivation for al Qaeda and ISIS.”
However, in pro-Republican publication The National Review, David French argues that “given the terrible recent track record of completed and attempted terror attacks by Muslim immigrants, it’s clear that our current approach is inadequate to control the threat. Unless we want to simply accept Muslim immigrant terror as a fact of American life, a short-term ban on entry from problematic countries combined with a systematic review of our security procedures is both reasonable and prudent.”
2. Will the ban reduce the number of would-be terrorists on US soil?
The point of the ban is of course to prevent terrorists entering the US and committing the kind of atrocities we saw in Belgium, Germany and France throughout 2016. Security professionals will always admit that there is no such thing a total security, even if, outwardly, Trump appears not to indulge such shades of grey (everything is “tremendous” or a “disaster”; Obama founded Isis, Trump will destroy it).
So it’s pretty uncontroversial to acknowledge that the US could still suffer mass casualties from shootings and bombings despite the ban. We know this because one of the deadliest mass shootings in modern US history was caused by last year by someone born in the US to Afghan parents (Afghanistan is not on the banned list). There is also a mass shooting – defined as four or more people shot in one incident, not including the shooter – on five out of every six days on average in the US, according to data from the Gun Violence Archive.
Then there’s the countries exempted from the ban: Pakistan, which has well-documented problems with Islamic terror, and Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt and Lebanon, the countries from which the 9/11 hijackers hailed.
But even if the ban seems arbitrary, cruel and hastily implemented, surely the ban will at least reduce the risk of a terror attack?
“It’s a well-documented fact that would-be terrorists are posing as refugees to obtain admission into Europe, and visa screenings have routinely failed to identify foreign nationals who later committed terrorist attacks in the United States,” said the National Review in an editorial. “As the Islamic State continues its reign of terror across a large swath of the Middle East, it should be a matter of common sense that the U.S. needs to evaluate and strengthen its vetting.”
But if the National Review – a highly conservative publication – supports the policy in principle, it has serious reservations about its implementation: “Trump’s order displays much of the amateurism that dominated his campaign,” it continues.
“There seems to have been no guidance provided by the White House and the Department of Homeland Security to the officials nationwide who would be responsible for executing the order; and on Saturday, as refugees were being detained at airports across the country, it was reported that local officials were struggling to contact Customs and DHS higher-ups.”
Liberals spent the weekend misrepresenting President Trump’s extreme vetting temporary travel ban… get my take now on #Hannity — Sean Hannity (@seanhannity) January 31, 2017
Also in the National Review, Tom Rogan called the travel ban “a counterterrorism Maginot Line: A fortress of arrogance that ultimately proves impotent. Trump is preventing travel to the U.S. from seven terrorist-friendly nations. But just as the Maginot Line was circumvented by a Nazi blitzkrieg through Belgium, terrorists in the EU can circumvent Trump’s ban and attack America.”
Even US border agents may not be staying entirely neutral on the issue. There have even been reports of border agents defying orders of federal judges and refusing to implement the ban. If true, this may be as much about the confusion about the parameters of the ban, given the logistical problems reported, as much as any moral objection.
But Australia’s treasurer, Scott Morrison, said he sympathised with Trump, recalling that “I remember when we came in in 2013 and I was implementing our border protection policy people threw their hands up – and I said I’m doing what I said I would do in the way I said I’d do it – and guess what, I’m now getting the results I said I’d get,” Morrison told Hadley during their weekly Monday morning chat.
“And we did that as a government, and we’ve continued that as a government, and we are the envy of the world when it comes to strong border protection policies.
“The rest of the world would love to have our borders and the way they are secured and the immigration arrangements we have put in place, particularly most recently, over the last three or four years. We’ve got a good history around this. Really, the rest of the world is catching up to Australia.”
Meet the real heroes who kept families together after President Trump’s refugee and travel ban pic.twitter.com/5b9htKnvCH
— NowThis (@nowthisnews) January 31, 2017
3. Is a wall such a good idea?
To some, President Trump’s plans to build a wall along the US-Mexico border is simplistic solution to multifaceted challenges arising from a globalised world with highly mobile populations and a ballooning refugee problem. Yet in its simplicity – everyone knows what a wall is, what it looks like and what it’s for – lay its success on the campaign trail.
But if the message and imagery worked a treat as a vote winner, how effective will it actually be in its stated purpose?
It certainly cannot prevent 100% of the inflow of drugs, weapons, and immigrants, with so many smuggled through more than 40 tunnels along the border.
A physical barrier actually already exists, although much of the border remains barrier-free. A 21ft (6.4m) by 6ft (1.8m) fence already runs from San Diego to Arizona, with a 5000 psi (345 bar; 352 kg/cm²) concrete wall picking up the baton until Texas. The 651 miles of fencing comprises 299 miles worth of vehicle barriers and 352 miles of pedestrian fence.
Pedestrian fence is favoured in urban areas and adjacent to ports of entry, while vehicle fencing is located in more remote areas. It’s a patchwork of different fences and barriers, with materials, height and depth varying wildly depending on the topography and nature of the threat identified.
Is the construction of another wall really better value than drones, sensors and more border agents (though Trump is hiring more of these too)? That said, even Trump didn’t have the chutzpah to tell his rallies: “We’re going to hire more border agents… and you know who’s gonna pay for them…?”
Two men scale the border fence into Mexico near Douglas, Arizona, 2009
4. Why was Trump’s cybersecurity announcement cancelled?
President Donald Trump was expected to sign yet an executive order on Tuesday 31 January, this time on cyber security, but the signing was cancelled with no explanation given. Trump, who has been dogged by accusations of complicity with Russia’s alleged misdeeds in the virtual realm, was expected to launch several reviews of the government’s cyber capabilities.
The president has come under fire for rushing out executive orders without due consideration for the logistics of their implementation, so perhaps team Trump decided to slow things down a little. Given the mass resignations in the state department, perhaps they recognised that the machinery of government lacked the manpower and experience to cope with the avalanche of executive instructions.
Whatever the reason, officials did tell journalists that the order, when it finally materialised, would “hold the heads of federal agencies accountable for managing their cyber risk.” The Office of Management and Budget will assess the cybersecurity risks faced by the US government with a cybersecurity framework developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) was held up as the standard.
Trump’s pick for heading up his cybersecurity taskforce – Rudy Giuliani – has not inspired confidence in the tech community.
5. Is Trump emulating Hillary Clinton’s slapdash approach to secure communications?
On the campaign trail, Trump repeatedly pilloried Hillary Clinton for using an unsecured private email address to conduct government business as Secretary of State. That might now look a tad hypocritical if reports that Trump is still using “his old, unsecured Android phone, to the protests of some of his aides” are true.
This is despite the fact he has been supplied with “a secure, encrypted device approved by the Secret Service.” Google’s Android operating system is notoriously insecure, especially on older phones that no longer receive software updates from their manufacturers or wireless carriers.
Trump’s primary phone is a Samsung Galaxy S3, a model released in 2012 that has not received software updates since mid-2015, according to photographic evidence from Android Central.
“It’s just crazy that the president is interacting with such an out-of-date and likely insecure device,” Matthew Green, a computer science professor at Johns Hopkins University, told POLITICO.
Cybersecurity doyen Bruce Schneier said: “His off-the-shelf Android could potentially become a room bug without his knowledge. An attacker could certainly hijack his apps.”
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5 security questions arising from Trump’s travel ban, border wall and cybersecurity probePhoto: Michael Vadon via FlickR under Creative Commons 2.0 generic licence President Trump’s uncharacteristically conciliatory speech upon winning the presidency in […]
Adam Bannister
IFSEC Insider | Security and Fire News and Resources
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