Posted by mdhb 4/2/2025
Are they adding just everybody under the sun in these chats or only those who think wouldn't be traitors? For example I can understand one snitch being added by mistake. But four snitches?
That's a lot of snitches in my book.
Don’t expect others to do stuff for you.
Although I suspect you want the story not discussed, in the name of free speech I assume?
I am not conspiratorially minded, but I bet this was because Waltz had Jeffrey Goldberg's number. I bet Waltz leaked things to Goldberg in the past, and this is the Trump administration cutting ties with him in the most "sleep with the fishes" way possible.
Except they forgot to actually throw him to the wolves? Or will that come later somehow?
1. The head of the CIA
2. The secretary of defence
3. The vice president
4. The director of national intelligence
5. The White House chief of staff
6. Chief of Staff for the Secretary of the Treasury
7. Acting Chief of Staff for the Director of National Intelligence, and nominee for National Counterterrorism Center Director.
8. The Secretary of State
Plus a bunch of others including random trump political allies like Steven miller and witkoff, a journalist and an as yet unidentified person known only as “Jacob”.
But they collectively got together, and decided repeatedly to do this over 30 different occasions in just this story alone.
But don’t let anyone try to convince you this was some single persons problem, this was the absolute textbook definition of a conspiracy at the highest levels of government to knowingly and repeatedly violate the law with regards to both handling classified information and around government record keeping laws.
And this line they are trying to spin about signal was somehow approved for use is here in black and white proven to be wrong with the NSA making it clear there was a known vulnerability in the platform and it wasn’t even approved for unclassified but official use communications as recently as February 2025: https://www.scribd.com/document/843124910/NSA-full
Given this, and assuming it’s true, I wonder to what degree a controversy can be predicated on usage of an approved application on an approved Government device. I’m sure there is plenty to nitpick around the edges (“classified vs. top secret,” “managed device vs. personal device,” “expiring messages,” etc.), but the fundamental transgression cannot be “using Signal.”
More importantly, I just don’t think people care — beyond pearl-clutching, tribal narratives and palace intrigue — about the safety of “classified data.” And the sad part is that it’s obfuscating the real story, which is the federal government’s seemingly indiscriminate bombing of Yemeni residences in an attempt to execute a mildly infamous terrorist. It’s the banal tone with which the government officials discuss it – like it’s a new product launch or a weekly check-in meeting – that we should find disturbing. Nobody cares about the communication medium; if anything, we should wish for _more_ transparency and visibility into discussions like this…
(Also, it’s quite an endorsement of Signal.)
https://www.yahoo.com/news/scif-inside-high-security-rooms-2...
Just because Signal comes preinstalled on devices doesn't automatically mean it's intended for discussion of classified material.
It’s not even approved for unclassified information that’s used in an official capacity.
The Biden Administration strongly denies his claim.
>Former Biden officials, though, said that Signal was never permitted on their government phones.
“We were not allowed to have any messaging apps on our work phones,” said one former top national security official on the condition of anonymity. “And under no circumstances were unclassified messaging apps allowed to be used for transmission of classified material. This is misdirection at its worst.”
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-war-plans-signal-biden_...
There are a few possible explanations:
- “It was intentional.” This doesn’t pass the smell test and it’s not clear who benefits.
- ”It was a setup.” I suppose this is possible, if the Intelligence Community is preloading the application onto the devices in question.
- ”It was an accident.” In some ways this is the most believable and unbelievable. What are the chances that you just happen to add Jeff Goldberg to the chat?! Which leads to the final possibility…
- ”It was an accident, and not the first time.” We just heard about it this time because Goldberg was the one included. This would explain the astounding coincidence, because it changes “the one time they messed up was in front of the editor of The Atlantic” to “this time they messed up was in front of the editor of The Atlantic.”
If they did it once, what are the chances the most vocal recipient was the first example of the mistake?
I’m sure we can count on an extensive audit of the participants in these 20+ other chats……
First off, I 100% agree that the bombing of civilian buildings in Yemen should be a bigger controversy. I don't really have anything to add to that, I just agree that it's important.
There are a lot of situations where it'd be acceptable for a government employee to us Signal, even to communicate potentially sensitive data. There are a lot of times where someone with only phone access may need to communicate sensitive info, and Signal is a good tool for that. It's a hell of a lot better then text messages or Slack or whatever.
The issue isn't Signal's security, it's the security of the phone it's installed onto. The phones of high-ranking government employees are a huge security weak point, and other countries know it. One has to imagine that Russia (or some other country) is trying very hard to hack into Pete Hegseth's phone. A lot of countries have invested huge amounts of money into developing hacking teams, and it should be assumed that any device with access to the broader internet is a potential target.
That's why government devices that access high-security information have immensely high security requirements. From air-gapped networks, to only buying hardware from vetted vendors, to forbidding outside devices (like phones) from even being in the same room. This is a level of security that Signal can't provide, and is necessary when discussing things like military plans.
Finally, the fact that someone accidentally added a journalist to this group and no one said anything shows a frankly reckless attitude towards security. Someone should have double checked that everyone on the group was supposed to be there, and the fact that no one did is fucking embarrassing.
Here’s evidence in writing from NSA from earlier this year that makes it extremely clear that isn’t the case: https://www.scribd.com/document/843124910/NSA-full
This doesn't actually contradict your point about tribal narratives, but it's not that long ago that data misuse was an election-defining narrative involving FBI investigations and crowds chanting "lock her up"...
also the story about how a natsec reporter just happens to be so intimately in contact with these officials that they accidentally add him to the group chat in the first place. There is no adversarial relationship between journalists and the state department, there never was, no matter who is in the white house. They just parrot whatever the US or allied nations are saying when it comes to foreign policy (that is the illegal invasion and murder of innocent civilians in foreign sovereign nations).
The fact that they used signal and leaked some messages to a propagandist is a distant third, but everyone only cares about that, makes me sick. This is why the US is hated around the world, and nobody gives a shit about Trump outside the western bubble.
Do not mean to downplay the mistake (at a minimum, the SecDef should suffer the same fate a lower ranking member of the DoD would for reasons of military order), but humans will be humans. Dealing with security sucks and involves trade offs and compromises.
Some government software and processes are not pleasant to deal with such as the process of obtaining a green card so I don't really fault people for being skeptical of the existing systems without evidence of their robustness.
2) their are laws about storing government communications which are built in to the official channels. Trumpists are suspiciously intentionally breaking these laws.
Is this a serious question?
If I wanted to use a personal chat or personal email, I'd need to know their personal details, or copy-paste their work info, it would confuse which accounts they reply to... it would make no sense at all.
I keep my work convos and personal convos separate not just because it's company policy, but it's 100x easier for me.
Government rules are often laws. Company rules are often internal policies.
Potato, puh-treason…