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Jared & Ivanka: Couple 'Continues To Use' Private Messaging For White House Business, Top Democrat Says (thedailybeast.com) 252

Freshly Exhumed writes: Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD), the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, has revealed that senior White House advisor Jared Kushner's lawyer admitted in December that his client "continues to use" WhatsApp to conduct official White House business. The chairman also said that a lawyer for Ivanka Trump and Mr. Kushner told the committee late last year that they additionally used private email accounts for official White House business in a way that may have violated federal records laws. Mr Kushner's lawyer, Abbe Lowell could not say whether his client used WhatsApp to share classified information. Regardless, Cummings says the communications raise questions about whether Kushner and other officials violated the Presidential Records Act, which requires the president and his staff "take all practical steps to file personal records separately from Presidential records." As for Ivanka's use of a personal email account to conduct official business, her lawyer says she sent the emails before she was briefed on the rules.

If you're not familiar with WhatsApp, here's what you should know about it: "As of January 2019, more than 1.5 billion users in over 180 countries use WhatsApp, created in 2009 as an alternative to text messaging," reports USA Today. "Facebook acquired WhatsApp in 2014 to make a bigger play in the rapidly-growing messaging market, along with its own Messenger platform, which also boasts 1.5 billion users." The service features end-to-end encryption, meaning the sender and recipient are the only ones who can view the messages.
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Jared & Ivanka: Couple 'Continues To Use' Private Messaging For White House Business, Top Democrat Says

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  • by Freischutz ( 4776131 ) on Saturday March 23, 2019 @05:59AM (#58319666)

    Jared & Ivanka: Couple 'Continues To Use' Private Messaging For White House Business

    LOCK THEM UP!!! LOCK THEM UP!! LOCK THEM UP!! LOCK THEM UP!! .....

    • LOCK THEM UP!!! LOCK THEM UP!! LOCK THEM UP!! LOCK THEM UP!! .....

      Excellent example of the brokenness of Slashdot's moderation. I can see the selfish (even authoritarian) basis for the "I disagree" negative mods, but what's the justification for insightful in such a tiny joke? A "funny" mod or two for the satirical aspects might have been justified, but I don't think nepotism, even flagrant nepotism, calls for the chanting mob.

      However it does remind me of the parody protest I'd like to see, based on the chant of "Lock kids up, LOCK KIDS UP!" Obviously it would be a parody

      • LOCK THEM UP!!! LOCK THEM UP!! LOCK THEM UP!! LOCK THEM UP!! .....

        Excellent example of the brokenness of Slashdot's moderation. I can see the selfish (even authoritarian) basis for the "I disagree" negative mods, but what's the justification for insightful in such a tiny joke? A "funny" mod or two for the satirical aspects might have been justified, but I don't think nepotism, even flagrant nepotism, calls for the chanting mob.

        However it does remind me of the parody protest I'd like to see, based on the chant of "Lock kids up, LOCK KIDS UP!" Obviously it would be a parody of a Trump rally, but as part of a protest against child separation, especially for asylum seekers. I think for maximum impact, the protesters should chant in "Trump face", with the short video building to a crescendo of rage before dissolving into mad screams. Each Trump face could be as simple as a piece of paper. I'd recommend an angry shouty closeup of Trump's face. Try to forget the image of a mob of enraged little Trumps!

        Well done, I think that such a video might go viral. It might even cause some people to stop and think "Do I really want to be part of that sort of thing?"

        The bottom line is that it is legal to seek asylum. Be quite amusing if Trump's supporters want to flee in panic because the next president turns out to be a Democratic anti-Trump with Trumpian tendencies, only to discover that Canada and Mexico have closed the borders and will separate them from their children if they seek asylum.

        Slashdot should introduce a '-1 Bwaaaaaaahhhhh! ... UNFAIR!' mod just for Republicans.

        • by shanen ( 462549 )

          I can't tell if you are joking with some form of sarcasm or just ACKing my comment.

          However, I do not think that would be a solution approach that would lead anywhere. In the specific context of Slashdot, I think the two most important approaches would be (1) Make the dimensions properly orthogonal and symmetric and (2) Make moderation reflexive and symmetric with a multidimensional form of karma. In more general contexts, I think the broadest brush I've painted with is currently called MEPR. One version is

  • by Njovich ( 553857 ) on Saturday March 23, 2019 @06:38AM (#58319754)

    So are all conversations they have person to person also part of the public record? There should be some kind of difference between internal conversations of members of the same team (where hey, at some point, you will have a beer together) and official business between organizations or even countries where decisions are being made.

    • It's fascinating law. I believe that the latest version is available at recent amendments to it are recorded at https://www.congress.gov/bill/... [congress.gov]. As best I can understand it, the law includes voicemail and text messages. I believe that it was deliberately crafted after Richard Nixon's impeachment.

  • Trump Said It Best (Score:3, Insightful)

    by LifesABeach ( 234436 ) on Saturday March 23, 2019 @08:27AM (#58319998) Homepage
    "Lock'em up"
    • All I ever heard was how non-serious this was, and what a trivial violation it was, and mishandling top secret documents in a way that guaranteed they fell into the hands of Russian intelligence (It was a windows server computer and the program was **Microsoft remote desktop**. No shell requirement to get into her shit. It was that **easy**), and the only remediation should be mandated training for the personnel involved.

      In the interest of consistency and fairness, the following must be done: an exonera

  • by ytene ( 4376651 ) on Saturday March 23, 2019 @08:30AM (#58320010)
    If you look beyond the obvious partisan memes that continue to be spouted here, there are a couple of much more significant, underlying concerns.

    1. Why have officially mandated guidelines for all those serving in government - including post-holders, employees and advisors - not been tightened? If the concerns raised by the "Clinton Email Server" were as serious as the talking heads would have us believe, then when the Republicans came to power in 2016, why was the first new legislation on the slate not a comprehensive review of "conduct in public office", with permissible and impermissible activities more clearly defined?


    3. Why is it acceptable for "dark money" to be given to aid political campaigns, with voters having no visibility of sources and therefore no way of knowing if decisions and votes being cast by elected representatives are given based on representing their electorate or based on the requirements of those special interests?

    One way to look at this is as a customer - you a buying a service from the federal government by virtue of the taxes you pay.

    In order to be able to look at this objectively, we need to cast aside the specifics of Hilary's email server or Kushner's use of Whatsapp, or Jrvanka's access to Top Secret information through clearances that raised strenuous objections from every agency involved... Instead we have to look at this from th eperspective of imagining a worst-case scenario: that the republic is under direct attack from hostile foreign actors, corrupt insiders and mendacious corporations and make sure that the framework in which government operates is designed from the get-go to safeguard *us* from abuses of that system.

    Many /. readers have a technical background and are familiar with the concept of designing systems with redundancy, reliability and independent controls [to ensure effectiveness]. None of these concepts are beyond us - certainly not beyond an institution with the budget of the federal government.

    In shore, there are no excuses for the public to accept these failures of their government.
    • Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)

      by tempo36 ( 2382592 )

      Because the GOP 1) didn't really believe that the emails were anything other than a BS talking point and 2) they want to use their own private communication too (see #1).

    • by theCoder ( 23772 )

      The problem with Clinton's email server wasn't that she had a personal mail server. That's kind of cool (well, until I found out she was running Exchange on it). The problem was the spillage of classified information through it. You do not discuss classified information on the unclassified domain. Period. Most of the time, that sort of thing involves a harsh prison sentence, so it's already very illegal. No new laws were needed, and it is very different from complying with open records laws.

  • Ahahah. Right. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by tempo36 ( 2382592 ) on Saturday March 23, 2019 @10:21AM (#58320394)

    "[H]er lawyer says she sent the emails before she was briefed on the rules."

    It's a testament to this lawyer's iron will that he/she could utter that sentence without vomiting. If there's anyone on earth who really thinks that this administration could have entered the White House being blissfully unaware that email privacy and security was something to probably think about...

  • The very first month Trump is in office he blows up Israeli intelligence assets out in the open. It was made known that Israel's security officials now considered anything "leaked" to the U.S. president is at risk. It hasn't gotten any better since then but domestic intelligence has adopted the practice of withholding things from him.

    Over every objection by each and every U.S. intelligence agency Ivanka and Jared are given security clearances. These two are paid with taxpayer dollars to advise the

    • and is most likely open to blackmail.

      "most likely"? Just look at the recent 99 year lease taken out on the building that was likely to bankrupt the Kushner family business.

  • This is just whatabboutery on behalf of Hillary Clinton without mentioning her by name. No one else has set up their own private server, used it extensively & exclusively for electronically communicating the highest levels of classified information, or destroyed huge amounts of evidence while under active FBI investigation. There is no comparison whatsoever between Hillary and any Republican - Republicans, by the way, who Hillary blasted [youtube.com] for using "secret email" accounts a mere two years before settin

  • I'm just here for the ratio.

    (The /. ratio is defined as the ratio of AC comments by paid Russian propagandists compared to the rest of the comments in aggregate.)

  • by kenh ( 9056 )

    senior White House advisor Jared Kushner's lawyer admitted in December

    This is news now? I remember hearing about this at the time (December) - Cummings isn't claiming they are using WhatsApp today.

    Just to be clear an exchange between a husband and wife where oneor both work in the whitehouse about whether the other will be home for dinner qualifies as "official whitehouse business" since it involves their work schedule.

  • Until you arrest the grand prize winner for top secret material stored on a box conveniently accessible to the world, until that day I say not one government official should be punished for leaking information.

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