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U.S. national-security leaders included me in a group chat

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Re: U.S. national-security leaders included me in a group chat

#91

Post by LWIRVoltage »

bayarearefugee wrote: post #81
LWIRVoltage wrote: post #53

From people on Reddit: Something that blows my mind- but is fully true "Hell, I've been in fucking EVE Online alliances that had better opsec than this." "I'll raise you one: I've never been in any EVE alliance that didn't have better opsec than this." ..I noted Board Games(Secret Hitler, for example) require better opsec. So do card games- it's mindblowing to note this too... [Main comment by me - technical outlook]…

Even if we are generous and assume Signal's protocols and entire communication infrastructure are 100% safe and cannot be compromised, any one single person in the group chat using Signal on a compromised device invalidates all of that. The fact that Signal was used is less concerning to me personally than the fact that they had this group chat outside of the overall safety umbrella of fully end-to-end vetted systems…

This is true absolutely

One would hope indeed- I do wonder on that ......

There's another observation though- Salt Typhoon compromised wiretap infrastructure - before Signal, there's no doub't some stuff like this occured over text messages- Because of everyone's efforts to go to Signal- even if it's for the message disappearing- with this, with military branches pushing it hard- with Sweden's Miltary pushing it, etc(for non sensitive stuff)- there's so much of that , that the attack surface overall is massively reduced. In short, if there's going to be stuff outside of vetted systems- running that sort of stuff Signal- likely still helps. (I'm reminded again, of the JD Vance interviews where he let slip that he'd been targeted ,and was informed about it by agencies- but that he was good because of his Signal usage. Now, I don't know what measures he takes to avoid zero day exploits and whatnot- the TLAs would inform him of that- but from what he was saying, it sounds like they were sure he wasn't compromised by that.)

(I'm aware a serious targeted effort would be more intricate than Salt Typhoon/ Trying to use the country's own general Wire tapping capability to target the VP)

Edit: Also, this reveals a bit about psyche- J.D.Vance somewhat ribbed the president- there is probably pressure TO use Signal, so a record of him criticizing the President can't be found out by the President or those more allied with the President who could then start retribution- I imagine dynamics like that, which are human behavior- -ultimately are what absolutely drive all of this.

Re: U.S. national-security leaders included me in a group chat

#92

Post by dzhiurgis »

neverokay wrote: post #54
lapcat wrote: post #27

> Waltz set some of the messages in the Signal group to disappear after one week, and some after four. That raises questions about whether the officials may have violated federal records law: Text messages about official acts are considered records that should be preserved. I suspect that this was the point of their using Signal, to avoid preservation of records.

The DoD or Pentagon don’t have their own messaging apps? Maybe our government doesn’t spend enough on tech. To me this is the same as if this were happening on Zoom or Discord, since these are not exactly world war level apps. Finally, the echoes of Dr Strangelove are strong with this one. A veritable board room of talking heads that don’t ever really talk about life or death, but just the material numbers of raw com…

> not exactly world war level apps.

And what is?

Re: U.S. national-security leaders included me in a group chat

#93

Post by namaria »

Balgair wrote: post #77

If anything, I'm a bit surprised that Jeff Goldberg burned this source. If anything, I'd suspect that he'd keep the channel open as long as he could. Or, he's got other channels that work better. All the same, I mean, wow. These guys are just morons here, there's really no other way around it. I'm trying to think of a charitable way to spin this and I've got nothing. Like, very clearly, these people are going to get…

Knowingly keeping sensitive US national security data on a personal phone would be a very bad idea.

Re: U.S. national-security leaders included me in a group chat

#94

Post by neverokay »

dzhiurgis wrote: post #92
neverokay wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The DoD or Pentagon don’t have their own messaging apps? Maybe our government doesn’t spend enough on tech. To me this is the same as if this were happening on Zoom or Discord, since these are not exactly world war level apps. Finally, the echoes of Dr Strangelove are strong with this one. A veritable board room of talking heads that don’t ever really talk about life or death, but just the material numbers of raw com…

> not exactly world war level apps. And what is?

A face to face meeting in a bunker. But seriously, we pondered the psychological damage of those who are drone operators. How is this different? There should be more ceremony when making decisions like this, not an afternoon group chat. Dress for it, look yourself in the face for it. Be present.

I’ll just say one thing about this administration. It is often true that when one thing is wrong with a man, then it’s possible all things are wrong with the man. We keep adding to the list, but I’m suggesting the inductive proof here. All things may be wrong with these men, which is scary.

Re: U.S. national-security leaders included me in a group chat

#95

Post by anigbrowl »

hello_computer wrote: post #75

[flagged]

Goldberg wrote an influential-at-the-time article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Goldberg#Views_on_Iraq

I feel it's a stretch to say 'he lied us into the Iraq war' as if everyone based their decisions on that. There's an very unfortunate tendency in political discussions to rely on fallacies of composition, where an instance of some phenomenon is taken as equivalent to a whole. Throwing that out with no further context or discussion looks like a genetic fallacy as well. The White House has already acknowledged the reported conversation appears to be authentic.

Re: U.S. national-security leaders included me in a group chat

#96

Post by anigbrowl »

LWIRVoltage wrote: post #53

From people on Reddit: Something that blows my mind- but is fully true "Hell, I've been in fucking EVE Online alliances that had better opsec than this." "I'll raise you one: I've never been in any EVE alliance that didn't have better opsec than this." ..I noted Board Games(Secret Hitler, for example) require better opsec. So do card games- it's mindblowing to note this too... [Main comment by me - technical outlook]…

It's not that secure. If someone has a desktop signal client it has been possible to just access attachments via the file system; they were stored with obfuscated names but no encryption. They may have fixed this since I tested it ~6 months ago.

Re: U.S. national-security leaders included me in a group chat

#97

Post by [deleted] »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #63
cocacola1 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m sort of surprised Democrats haven’t snapped yet.

> surprised Democrats haven’t snapped yet There is no Democrat in the singular. There is a left-wing bloc defined, first and foremost, by identity politics and foreign policy views (namely, Palestine). There is a centrist bloc focussed on employment and wages (historically pro-union). And there is a free-trading bloc focussed on American enterprise and industry (historically pro Wall Street and the party's dominant w…

[deleted]

Re: U.S. national-security leaders included me in a group chat

#98

Post by anigbrowl »

hypeatei wrote: post #90
anigbrowl wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SO much for 'the most transparent administration in history', not that I bought into that claim in the first place. Seems like a violation of multiple public record-keeping laws.

You can already guess what consequences they're going to face: none.

Nevertheless, the Democrats should move to impeach. The fact that they probably won't be able to get a vote taken (never mind win one) is beside the point.

Re: U.S. national-security leaders included me in a group chat

#99

Post by tptacek »

Balgair wrote: post #77

If anything, I'm a bit surprised that Jeff Goldberg burned this source. If anything, I'd suspect that he'd keep the channel open as long as he could. Or, he's got other channels that work better. All the same, I mean, wow. These guys are just morons here, there's really no other way around it. I'm trying to think of a charitable way to spin this and I've got nothing. Like, very clearly, these people are going to get…

As soon as he realizes (or a reasonable person would realize) that the group chat is not a hoax, and that he is getting confidential military information over that channel, his continued membership in the channel demonstrates intent to receive the information, which makes anything he writes about it in the future legally problematic. It's complicated and it's not like just receiving classified information from a source is intrinsically criminal, but it'll be the entire fact pattern he'd be confronted with by prosecutors.
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