Signal Head Defends Messaging App's Security After US War Plan Leak (yahoo.com) 161
The president of Signal defended the messaging app's security on Wednesday after top Trump administration officials mistakenly included a journalist in an encrypted chatroom they used to discuss looming U.S. military action against Yemen's Houthis. For a report: Signal's Meredith Whittaker did not directly address the blunder, which Democratic lawmakers have said was a breach of U.S. national security. But she described the app as the "gold standard in private comms" in a post on X, which outlined Signal's security advantages over Meta's WhatsApp messaging app. "We're open source, nonprofit, and we develop and apply (end-to-end encryption) and privacy-preserving tech across our system to protect metadata and message contents," she said.
Not the point (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not the point (Score:4, Interesting)
I wonder if the same people griping about Hillary's email server will get outraged over Trump administration's apparent effort to get around document archive process?
Re:Not the point (Score:5, Informative)
Spoiler alert: one of the guys pitching a fit about Hillary's email server was one of the guys in this chat.
Pete Hegseth on Fox News in 2016 [x.com]: “How damaging is it to your ability to recruit or build allies with others when they are worried that our leaders may be exposing them because of their gross negligence or their recklessness in handling information?”
Pete Hegseth in 2025: “We are currently clean on OPSEC” in a Signal chat with an editor from The Atlantic.
These clowns all should resign or be impeached.
Re:Not the point (Score:5, Informative)
You missed the followup:
Pete Hegseth: nuh uh, never happened, lol Atlantic, Russia, Russia Russia!
https://www.independent.co.uk/... [independent.co.uk]
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These clowns all should resign or be impeached.
Including the Veep and also the one who picked them all.
Re:Not the point (Score:5, Informative)
These clowns all should resign or be impeached.
This presumes they believe in, or even understand, accountability and responsibility for *their* actions. For others, like those they dislike (Hillary Clinton), disagree with (Democrats), or look down on (the poor), sure, but not for themselves. Introspection is not their strong point. /s/c
To be fair, mistakes happen, but I'm *sure* at least some of the people in that group chat know that Signal and insecure cell phones are not approved for classified information and they did it anyway. Also no one bothered to review the group members to ensure everyone was cleared? Lastly, there are people whose literal job it is to ensure all those people have access to secure communications 24/7 -- a former one was interviewed on a nightly news show last night -- so it's not like secure communications weren't available. I'm also sure they all have been briefed on proper procedures at some point. People can claim incompetence, but indifference seems more likely. Any low(er) level person doing this would get immediately fired and perhaps prosecuted.
Re:Not the point (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Not the point (Score:5, Insightful)
Yep. Doesn't even pass a sniff test from a few time zones away.
If he published or gave this info to anyone, even after the fact, he would be guilty of violating the Espionage Act, which is why The Atlantic didn't publish all the details - they have lawyers, and they consult with them.
To the GP poster: get your tongue out of Trump's ass. He nominated incompetent buffoons to national security positions, and now you're surprised when there is monumental national security fuckups. Next you'll be shocked when you find out they're lying to you about the contents of the message group.
Example: when the nitwit just testified under oath to Congress that there wasn't any classified info, why can't they share the contents of the messages with Congress? Why did The Atlantic hold back on information they deemed to be sensitive and highly likely to be classified to not run afoul of the Espionage Act? Does that mean you're ok with them publishing the full, unredacted transcript if there's nothing classified?
Just as I thought, the mental gymnasts are out in force.
Re: Not the point (Score:5, Informative)
It takes the king of all dipshits to accuse pretty much all former presidents of engaging in some sort of illegal activities, while at the same time saying that if the president does it, it's not illegal.
It takes a lot of dipshits to get king dipshit elected.
Way to go, dipshits!
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Every time you poor saps play 4D chess against your own brains, you just trip over your shoelaces. Maybe learn how to tie them before you weigh in on anything more complicated.
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Every time you poor saps play 4D chess against your own brains, you just trip over your shoelaces.
Well... they're certainly tripping over *something* they like waving about; not sure it's their shoelaces. :-)
Maybe learn how to tie them before you weigh in on anything more complicated.
Ouch.
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Ah yes, the Peewee Herman defense
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This administration, like the 2016 before it, is conflict-averse.
Jesus fucking Christ.
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Are you really trying to convince people that looking like fucking buffoons committing the biggest national security blunder in decades makes us look big and strong?
And if they were to purposefully leak it, do you really think that they would choose a reporter from The Atlantic, rather than someone that might actually have contacts in the organization you're trying to leak shit to?
And even if this was some elaborate mole hunt bullshit, don't you think they might come up with a better plan that doesn't put m
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is that the starbucks wifi scif?
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The story was released several days AFTER THE ATTACK.
Come on - did you even read the comment you were replying to?
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I don't see why. Hillary Clinton ran a private email server and sent classified emails through it and nothing happened to her.
You supported her. All of you.
Why should anything happen here? Because it was Her Turn[tm].
People like you screamed for her to be locked up, and there was an FBI investigation. So at the very least you agree that there should be an FBI investigation for this as well, yes?
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Naa. These are the "good" guys doing it! Whatever the great leaders and stable geniusses decide must be right!
Do not expect even minimally working rational processes from the minds of the MAGA morons...
Re: Not the point (Score:2)
Oh and you are the idiot. (/s)
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That depends: are the folks that griped about Hillary's email server being a non-issue going to say this is a non-issue as well?
The reason Hillary Clinton's e-mail server was a non-issue was because it was legal at the time to use a non-government server (which had also been done by other secretaries of state, such as Colin Powell, Secretary of State under George Bush.) It wasn't made mandatory to use only government servers until after Clinton's period as Secretary of State.
It is, however, illegal now.
Amusingly, Clinton's private server turned out to be more secure than the State Department's. The State Department server [securityintelligence.com] got ha [cybereason.com]
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The reason Hillary Clinton's e-mail server was a non-issue was because it was legal at the time to use a non-government server (which had also been done by other secretaries of state, such as Colin Powell, Secretary of State under George Bush.) It wasn't made mandatory to use only government servers until after Clinton's period as Secretary of State.
Not entirely. Experts, officials, and members of Congress contended that Clinton's use of a private email system and a private server violated federal law, specifically 18 U.S. Code 1924
Amusingly, Clinton's private server turned out to be more secure than the State Department's. The State Department server [securityintelligence.com] got hacked, [cybereason.com] but her server didn't.
I wouldn't say that. Security experts such as Chris Soghoian believe that emails to and from Clinton may have been at risk of hacking and foreign surveillance. Marc Maiffret, a cybersecurity expert, said that the server had "amateur hour" vulnerabilities. For the first two months after Clinton was appointed Secretary of
Re:Not the point (Score:5, Informative)
It is against the law. If you are, say, a general, doing things like this gets you a dishonorable disharge. If you are the chief asshole or one of his cronies, nothing happens.
And yes, Signal is entirely blameless here. The people in this meeting fucked up to an extreme degree and they did it twice. First by using Signal for secret-level stuff, which is very much illegal and something they will have been explicitely warned against and second for failing the simple task of keeping it to the intended recipients. Failure does not get much more pathetic than this. These people must be really dumb for something like this to even be possible.
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I suspect that including a journalist was done on purpose. What better way for a whistleblower to blow the whistle than to include the editor of an important news paper in the group list. What? You aren't manually verifying the keys of everyone you talk to on Signal? Shame on you!
Signal is good tech, but it isn't magical. Hopefully, for whoever did this, Signal doesn't actually keep track of who added people to a group, because, if I am correct, then this could easily be full treason.
Re:Not the point (Score:5, Interesting)
Regardless of the app's inherent security, it is against the rules (law, possibly?) to discuss classified information on such, and again, the app's security has NOTHING to do with the bonehead move of inviting a journalist to the chat group.
But Signal has to defend themselves because, media being what it is, many clueless writers are painting the problem not as a policy violation or procedural error, but in implying that Signal itself isn't secure. Signal is having to deal with media sensationalism.
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Yeah - at least some of the very real issues are:
- There are many laws that dictate how classified information is to be handled and disseminated
- There are laws requiring that records of such discussions and transactions are recorded and kept
Not to mention that
- Jeffrey Goldberg, the Editor-in-Chief of the Atlantic turned out to be more careful about possible exposure of CIA agents and foreign assets than the UW cabinet members and security officials were.
One side note (which was mentioned by Goldberg) - wh
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I suspect someone realized that the conversation that they were having was both legally and morally wrong. I can certainly imagine a world in which someone might be a Trump supporter, but find this sort of thing farther than they were willing to go. What better way to whistleblow than to invite the editor of a newspaper into a ultra top secret conversation? I consider myself fairly security conscious, but I don't hand verify the keys of everyone that I talk to in a group in Signal.
Of course, I also don
Re:Not the point (Score:4, Insightful)
This goes back to the issue that Hillary Clinton had when it came to running her own personal e-mail server. Every system administrator for a server MUST be properly cleared for ANY piece of potentially sensitive information, no matter if it is a private or public service, the administrators and even customer service people may have access to the information flowing through it. If you don't have those people and the servers properly checked to make sure they are secure to DOD levels of security, then no government employee should be sending any sort of sensitive information through it.
Even if the server itself is fully secure, if the administrators are not cleared to view that information, then that server/service should not be used. End of story. These mental incompetents who like to play politics but don't understand the basics of security all should be removed from their positions, and if Trump himself knew about it, then he is guilty of being responsible for it being used as well.
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This is also one of the big problems (not the only one, unfortunately) with how Musk has been running the various DOGE takeovers.
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The Biden Administration approved Signal for use
For classified conversations? Or are strategic warfighting plans not classified any more?
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Only until the plans are put into action, then those plans becomes obsolete.
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Only until the plans are put into action, then those plans becomes obsolete.
So, we're in agreement that these were classified conversations then?
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I don't disagree, but if you invite the wrong people and don't clearly state that this shouldn't be spread then the people invited aren't under constraints except by their own judgement.
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Re:Not the point (Score:5, Interesting)
One thing pointed out in today's Senate hearings was that, (1) the alleged administration argues that nothing in that conversation was classified, (2) no, they couldn't discuss it with the senators because some faux "committee" on national security was investigating the matter. The senators were not buying that. Well, the Democrat senators were not. The Republican senators were there but were MIA.
What they meant to say was they didn't want to air their dirty laundry (their comments about Europe are why we have no allies left) and that this faux committee is actively attempting various spins to see which one they can get corporate press to buy into.
The N. Security head (I think it was him) was in Moscow while on the call. They also claimed that it was Bidien's fault because his administration also used Signal. What they left unsaid was that the Biden administration wasn't stupid enough to discuss classified plans on Signal. Hence they couldn't admit the information was classified. An alternative explanation was the information should have been classified (war plans putting American personnel in harms way) but they were too stupid to do it.
Re:Not the point (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, because Signal conversations are supposedly auto-deleted, and these kinds of conversations are legally required to be recorded/stored by law as part of the FOIA. The fact that a journalist was added is just a bumble by idiots. The fact they were discussing war plans on Signal is the bigger story. The Kremlin didn't tell the Houthis when and where they were going to be bombed probably because the Russians make more money selling them replacements than they do passing on intelligence. The fact is the Russians probably had the opportunity to tell a US enemy when and where to shoot down US fighter jets.
The Kremlin is actively targeting Signal accounts and exploiting their device linking feature to get copied on any conversation on a compromised device. I'm not sure any of these guys on the conversation are savvy enough to know the difference between a QR code from a Kremlin account and a legit one from Signal.
Counterpoint. (Score:2)
Also TDS! TDS! TDS!
(It's 2025 so I felt the
Re: (Score:3)
pjmedia.com
Oh, you're cute. How about a site that links to primary sources instead of a circle-jerk of linking to their own bullshit articles?
In fact, it wasn't even sensitive, because they were talking about things that had already been said in public.
They were discussing military plans that hadn't been executed yet. If the targets knew about it already we've got bigger problems.
It wasn't Mike Waltz who brought Greenberg onto the call; it was one of Waltz's staff.
Again, have a primary source corroborating that?
To me, this really smells like a canary trap.
Then you should pull your head out of your ass.
So we should expect a year of hearings when? (Score:3, Informative)
jk, we all know MAGA are too busy inviting pedos and rapists to the white house.
Carrying water for nitwits (Score:5, Insightful)
Great. You claim that the chat was "secure" except it should have never been on your app to begin with because THEIR PHONES ARE NOT SECURE TERMINALS IN A SCIF. That chat existing, with it's contents, is a violation of records keeping laws, and classified information laws. If this would have happened under any other administration, we'd be seeing people resign or be fired. And if it happened to lower-level cronies in this administration we would also see people fired. But when it's cabinet-level cronies and yes-men we'll see obfuscation, bad-faith arguments, diminishment of severity, gaslighting, lies, and absolute bullshit.
I look forward to experiencing the mental gymnastics associated with trying to bothsides and whatabout this from the cultists. I'm already going to actively ignore any false equivalencies of "but but but whatabout Hillary's emails?!?!?" - try harder, apologists.
Re: Carrying water for nitwits (Score:2)
Re: Carrying water for nitwits (Score:5, Funny)
My past experiences entering a SCIF always involved leaving any unauthorized device outside the door. I guess rank does have its privilege.
See, the problem is you can't take your morning gin into the SCIF with you.
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See, the problem is you can't take your morning gin into the SCIF with you.
Just chug it while walking up to the metal detector, like the unwashed masses at the airport.
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Do not expect anything from the mindless fanatics. This whole disaster is just an indicator of how well the current US administration has things in hand.
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You know, as bad as the Trump Administration is, the one thing to be thankful for is this isn't like Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, Mao or Stalin. Those guys were brilliant, strategic immoral monsters. Trump and his gang are immoral monsters, but may count as some of the dumbest people to ever fall upward. What a pack of unbelievable idiots.
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Indeed. Better incompetent and dumb immoral monsters than ones that actually can get things done.
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You know, as bad as the Trump Administration is, the one thing to be thankful for is this isn't like Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, Mao or Stalin. Those guys were brilliant, strategic immoral monsters. Trump and his gang are immoral monsters, but may count as some of the dumbest people to ever fall upward. What a pack of unbelievable idiots.
And yet despite being total morons, they've managed to rally enough of the other morons to take over most positions of power and start shitting and pissing all over everything.
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They're already saying it didn't happen (even though the whitehouse confirmed it) and blaming everyone but Hegseth. Tulsi Gabbard is claiming none of the info was classified.
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It's going to be entertaining when the evidence of her perjury before Congress is made public.
After all, if it's not classified, then there's no reason for The Atlantic to hold back the entire transcript.
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Great. You claim that the chat was "secure" except it should have never been on your app to begin with because THEIR PHONES ARE NOT SECURE TERMINALS IN A SCIF. That chat existing, with it's contents, is a violation of records keeping laws, and classified information laws. If this would have happened under any other administration, we'd be seeing people resign or be fired. And if it happened to lower-level cronies in this administration we would also see people fired. But when it's cabinet-level cronies and yes-men we'll see obfuscation, bad-faith arguments, diminishment of severity, gaslighting, lies, and absolute bullshit.
I look forward to experiencing the mental gymnastics associated with trying to bothsides and whatabout this from the cultists. I'm already going to actively ignore any false equivalencies of "but but but whatabout Hillary's emails?!?!?" - try harder, apologists.
What's sad about this is that the company head feels it was prudent to put out any statement at all about this. That may be a miscalculation. The idiot brigade that made all this happen isn't smart enough to have thought of blaming Signal for their dumbassery all by themselves.
Re:Carrying water for nitwits (Score:5, Interesting)
And they would never lie.
How about saying the actual time the first bombs would hit before they were dropped, and then exactly that happened? Don't you think that would be classified, you fucking muppet?
Even the god damn National Review [nationalreview.com] is excoriating these clowns (article title: Why Even Bother to Classify Our War Plans If We're Just Giving Them Away?).
When even those propagandists are using the type of language that they are, you might want to rethink your position.
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Anybody claiming somethign as dearnged and disconnected that this online exchange was not classified is just pushing FUD and part of the problem.
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Even the god damn National Review is excoriating these clowns
National Review is a neocon mag that hates Trump with a passion because he steered the GOP towards nationalism, economic populism, and closed borders, and away from their holy trinity of free trade, foreign wars, and tax cuts as an answer to every problem. They put out a special issue called Against Trump [nationalreview.com] in 2016, and have never changed their editorial stance. Pro-Trump writers are strictly verboten. NR bigwigs like Jonah Goldberg famously hate the guy. If you're going pick a right side media source as an
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Also, good job completely ignoring the violation of records keeping laws in your rush to be a gaslighting apologist.
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Yep! Hillary needs to be locked up for now using a piblic chat service for war plans! I mean...this was Hillary doing criminal stuff, right? Or was it the "other" side? Well, in _that_ case, ignoring laws and endangering troups is perfectly fine!
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It's all good. Trump used his mind powers to declassify the info before hand. Like his documents in the pool room.
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Even if it weren't classified (which, I feel like "we're about to bomb a foreign country" is pretty need-to-know imo...) the fact that they are using a software platform that is not accredited and is not part of the governmental records keeping laws (and sounds like from what I've seen that their chat was set to auto-delete itself which would 100% be in violation).
This is ridiculous and anyone defending these people should be ashamed of themselves.
Re:Carrying water for nitwits (Score:4, Insightful)
Hillary Clinton was incompetent when it came to security, but after that whole thing(remember, she didn't get elected as president), anyone who was calling her out for being horrible about security will now be guilty if they are doing the same thing or worse. Hillary had her personal e-mail server that had a system admin who wasn't properly cleared, but here you have Trump administration people at the highest levels using a service that the general public can go on, with many many more administrators who have access to the data going through it.
These people never learned from the mistakes of others, and then doubled down on being incompetent when it comes to security. This makes their guilt clear, because they should have known better. What's next, use Facebook or X to communicate sensitive information? Why not just announce it on FM radio?
Re:Carrying water for nitwits (Score:4, Informative)
It's even better than that - one of the principles in this breach was one of the dogpiling dipshits [x.com] during the Hillary Email fiasco in 2016:
“How damaging is it to your ability to recruit or build allies with others when they are worried that our leaders may be exposing them because of their gross negligence or their recklessness in handling information?”
- Pete Hegseth, Secretary of Defense
These people aren't just stunningly incompetent. They're also monuments to hypocrisy.
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These people aren't just stunningly incompetent. They're also monuments to hypocrisy.
We've already seen plenty of supporting evidence to both points... neither is a particularly new revelation.
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There's the whataboutism I was looking for.
Thanks for following through with my predicted false equivalency.
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I don't disagree and I'm certainly not condoning that behavior. Perhaps they should suffer the same punishment as Hillary did for storing top secret comms on her private email server and circumventing records keeping laws. That seems fair.
Oh wait....other than publicly being shamed, nothing at all happened to her...even after she had the evidence destroyed.
Oh good, so when does the FBI investigation start?
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Right off of the cuff, any discussion of targets would inevitably expose the means of identifying them, which the US goes to great lengths to hide
Then there are operational details like the flights and types of attack aircraft, which could expose US pilots to anti-aircraft systems that know exactly where to point their radars in order to shoot them down
And I know literally nothing about military operations, much like Hegseth, apparently
[Sigh] (Score:2)
And to think of all the times I could have made points with the Saigon bar girls discussing next week's Arc Light mission.
Re:Carrying water for nitwits (Score:5, Insightful)
Just today, Gabbard and others said that they could not tell Congress what was in the texts. Why would they do that if the information was not classified?
Goldberg has stated that the texts included operational details and actual names, i.e. stuff that is obviously classified. In this case, I sure as fuck believe him more than I believe the clowns in Trump's cabinet.
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Relevant. https://www.psychologytoday.co... [psychologytoday.com]
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All information that isn't classified yet shall be considered secret.
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I don't think anyone is attacking Signal. Signal is probably a perfectly fine app when used appropriately. This was a decidedly inappropriate use of Signal.
What's with the garbage framing? (Score:5, Insightful)
The only people questioning Signal's security right now are trying to distract from the boneheaded choice to use a non-classified system for operational military secrets.
Signal is fine for it's intended uses; protecting against drunk SecDefs leaking secrets is not one of them.
Re:What's with the garbage framing? (Score:5, Funny)
Clearly he's a "DUI Hire". /rimshot
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Indeed. This is not a Signal issue. All claims to that effect are lies by misdirection. Well, the current US administration has a lot of experience and some stunning "successes" with low-quality lying. Hence no surprise they are trying this approach for this pathetic fuck-up as well. And they will probably succeed, with the mental capabilities their fans have demonstrated so far.
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The only people questioning Signal's security right now are trying to distract from the boneheaded choice to use a non-classified system for operational military secrets.
Signal is fine for it's intended uses; protecting against drunk SecDefs leaking secrets is not one of them.
Kegsbreath is a DUI hire, I’m not so sure granting a chronic alcoholic that license on the promise he’d consider stopping was a great idea.
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That is my feeling. After the Hillary Clinton private mail server situation, it seems that Trump and his administration want to do it 100 times worse.
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This was not a Signal issue (Score:4, Insightful)
This was a complete fuck-up of the cretins in chatrge of "leading" the US at this time. They apparently are too dumb to even get a simple OpSec issue right, like basic secure communication. Extreme Dunning-Kruger cases, the lot of them. But this action is only an indicator of a much larger problem. I mean, they cannot even get simple things right, like a list of whom to invite. What do you expect their performance on more complex issues will be? Right.
Re:This was not a Signal issue (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, this is just the one where they got caught.
How many other Signal chats are happening, containing classified information or would be deemed official administration communications that should be going to the national archives that we don't know about?
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Indeed. Makes one wonder whether Trump is really a russian intelligence asset. I would expect the Russians to have higher standards.
Re:This was not a Signal issue (Score:5, Insightful)
He is. Both before and now he has exposed U.S. secrets to Russian officials. One need only look at his exchange with Zelensky. The man is trying to save his country and the convicted felon berates him for a) not saying thank you even though Zelensky has said it hundres of times and b) for standing up to for his country when the convicted felon lied about what's going on.
Contrast that with his words about Putin where he says Putin is much more easy to get along with, is holding all the cards (wtf does that even need to be said?), and has said Putin is savvy and a genius for invading Ukraine. Not to mention him spouting the exact Russian talking points.
It is a guarantee the convicted felon is working for Russia, knowingly or unknowingly.
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It is a guarantee the convicted felon is working for Russia, knowingly or unknowingly.
I agree that there is no doubt about that. But I think that he is just too dumb to understand what he is doing.
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there are Assets and Useful Idiots
you choose
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Indeed.
If I was a state based actor... (Score:2)
I'd know where to target my efforts, and I don't just mean Jeffrey Goldberg's phone.
Blunders we don't know about (Score:2)
I for one am thankful there are no blunders we don't know about that this esteemed administration is making.
Not surprised anymore (Score:2)
Trump's cabinet is a clown car of subservient weirdos and amateurs who do not belong in any position of responsibility.
Text of conversation (Score:5, Informative)
Text of conversation [newsweek.com]. Note: the reporter is considering to release the entire conversation [newsweek.com] he has. This article only has part of what was recorded.
Did Hegseth break the law [newsweek.com]?
David French, a former military attorney, wrote an article in The New York Times on March 25 in which he wrote that Hegseth could potentially be facing criminal charges.
"I don't know how Pete Hegseth can look service members in the eye. He's just blown his credibility as a military leader," French wrote.
French is a former attorney with the Army Judge Advocate General's Corps (JAG Corps) and is very familiar with prosecuting military officers for breach of security.
This incident shouldn't surprise anyone. This is what you get when you have a drunk DEI hire.
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Don't blame the tool (Score:2)
I don't think anyone is blaming Signal for this screw up. A hammer may be a great tool but if you give it to a moron they will bonk themselves in the head with it.
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Right now it seems like the fool is bonking everyone else with the hammer. It would be a relief if they were bonking themselves with it.
Signal is not the issue (Score:5, Insightful)
Signal is not the issue - use of any app for S&C subject matter is. These conversations are only allowed in a secure environments (a SCIF)... they can be set up nearly anywhere and portable versions exist. There was no reason for this fiasco.
That this chat even existed is the issue. (and most of the people on it knew better than to participate and discuss these matters on there)
What some of the decision makers said in the thread is the issue. And is now out in the public. Good luck pulling those words back and showing the world that the US can be trusted to uphold agreements without first sending money.
The sheer idiocy of the people in those conversations is the issue.
The fact a journalist was added ACCIDENTALLY is the issue.
The white house response full of lies is also the issue- "no classified info was shared"... yes there was, the journalist decided to NOT PUBLISH IT, that doesn't mean it wasn't in the fucking chat- but he can't now legally publish it to prove it, so the white house has it technically contained behind that bullshit of a lie. If he wants to prove the existence of classified intel in the chat, he puts himself in jeopardy just to prove the lie.
The fact that steven miller shut down any dissent with a single message is an issue.
The fact that the military actions are done based off of "as i heard it"... which is a weasly legal way to not get blame/blowback and say oops, i misunderstood... my bad.. insulating everyone above from repercussions... while putting all the heat on anyone below.
as for the security of Signal- it's great that they are open source, and all that... none of that guarantees their security.... encryption can be broken, people at signal can be compromised, hardware can be compromised, unknown vulnerabilities in code/repos/encryption tech, etc can exist and be exploited. End user devices can be compromised, lost/stolen devices... video captures of the screen can reveal data... any number of things can compromise the security, it's WHY IT IS NOT ALLOWED. This should never have been a fucken thing. what a fucken embarrassment. (not a single fucker will lose their job/security clearance for this... Any grunt in the military would get CM'd for far less and face jail time. )
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The prevailing theory was that it was fake due to timing and other suspicions from the past of the alleged recipient.
No, the prevailing theory is that someone in the upper ranks of the President's Cabinet added a journalist to a privileged conversation amongst those top leaders.
The bullshit theory from the Denier in Chief's damage control department is that this is "fake news".
Re:Illegal? (Score:5, Insightful)
He initially considered it a joke and consulted with co-workers. That he was included in the exchange is irrelevant to whether he should have read it. How was he supposed to know this was a "classified" communication without reading it?
If he weren't a "respected journalist", wouldn't his taking advantage of this mistake be criminal?
The quote marks aren't needed. He is a respected journalist. In fact, he is so respected, he didn't even mention anything until after the strikes took place, thus ensuring operational security. Something the amateurs on the conversation couldn't be bothered to do. In fact, as I pointed out in another post, he removed the name of a CIA official mentioned in the exchange for security reasons. Sounds like he knows more about OpSec than these hacks.
Further, this has happened multiple times throughout history. A reporter is inadvertently given information they wouldn't normally see. Depending on the issue, they consult with legal advisors on how to proceed, generally doing what this reporter did which is wait until the dust settles then notify people they knew about it.
Given the security concerns, why didn't he immediately notify the people in the chat that it was not secure? Because he had scoop of course! And the journalists covering the story aren't about to start asking the embarrassing question.
Would you? If you knew of something big before anyone else did, would you say anything? That's a reporter's job.
But blame the reporter, not the ineptitude of the drunk DEI hire and the amateurs in office.
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>>Was it legal for the Atlantic editor to read the chat, much less publish it? If he weren't a "respected journalist", wouldn't his taking advantage of this mistake be criminal?
If he had sold this info to the enemy, that might be true. He waited until after the bombing was already public knowledge to report on it so "secret" was already out at that point. When government employees leak information to journalists it is the leaker that (potentially) breaks the law, not the journalist.
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In the USA we have the right of Free Speech. Unless you previously agreed to a contact stating otherwise, it's 100% legal for the editor to read and publish the chat. Everyone who gets security clearances are required to sign a contract (with some laws backing it up) stating they won't publish nor seek out classified information they're not supposed to see. So if you do deal with classified material then you're supposed to avoid looking at the released chat logs (until they're officially declassified. A
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You can fix it - but it's going to be very messy.
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