Russian political staff who are working on next year’s elections have been officially ordered to replace their iPhones with devices running either Russia’s Aurora software or the Android operating system by April 1st.
“It’s all over for the iPhone,” a government source told a local newspaper. “Either throw it away or give it to the kids.”
This advice comes due to security concerns, and the belief of the Russian ministry that iPhones devices are vulnerable to hacking by Western intelligence agencies – especially the CIA and the UK’s GCHQ.
Sergei Kiriyenko, Vladimir Putin’s Head of Staff, has announced the order, which has been specifically directed at staff members working on the upcoming election.
The order is in line with similar bans in Britain, the US, and Europe on government staff using TikTok on official phones, as the app allegedly collects too much data.
Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov emphasized that “smartphones should not be used for official business,” but then broadened his statement by saying “any smartphone has a fairly transparent mechanism, no matter what operating system it has, Android or iOS.”
“There will be a huge number of challenges this year. The elections will be held under the conditions of a special military operation, sanctions, and escalation in international relations,” a source told the Kommersant, via the Moscow Times.
The latter is completely void of irony considering the findings of the investigations into Russia’s attempt to work against Biden while trying to influence a Trump win.
As the 2021 report by the National Director of Intelligence says Putin’s administration: “influence[d] operations aimed at denigrating President Biden’s candidacy and the Democratic Party, supporting Trump, undermining public confidence in the electoral process, and exacerbating socio-political divisions in the U.S.”
The post Paranoid Vladimir Putin Bans Kremlin Staff From Using iPhones Over CIA Spying Fears appeared first on Knewz.
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Author: Dave Malyon
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