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

theatlantic.com

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

#361

Post by jauntywundrkind »

_DeadFred_ wrote: post #115
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.

Please FOIA the administration's process for meeting records requirements while using Signal. People need to call them out on this or nothing happens.

Thankfully done, at some scale, https://bsky.app/profile/nationalsecuritylaw.org/post/3ll5cd...

It is such a horror that this government is operating off the books, that this administration will again leave behind only empty pages in the history book where normally the government would have ownership of what transpired.

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

#362

Post by Jtsummers »

EgregiousCube wrote: post #351
swiftymon wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's not unauthorized use of signal; "Government officials have used Signal for organizational correspondence, such as scheduling sensitive meetings, but in the Biden administration, people who had permission to download it on their White House-issued phones were instructed to use the app sparingly, according to a former national security official who served in the administration." https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation…

It's too bad that this is being downvoted - swiftymon is trying to provide some context. It's useful to the discussion and well sourced. I'd love to read counterarguments rather than have this fade away :)

Because their claim is false and unsupported by their quote. It is absolutely unauthorized for government employees to conduct discussions like this on services like Signal. It's not even allowed for CUI level discussions, and war planning pushes into Secret and TS territory very quickly.

Organizational discussions means things like, for a standard fed on a TDY with others, "Meet in the lobby at 0700 so we can drive to the site for the meeting at 0800." Not "So we're going to use ... to attack ... at ...", which is almost certainly Secret or TS once aggregated.

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

#363

Post by billy99k »

hoistbypetard wrote: post #305
frenchman_in_ny wrote: post #296

In the banking world, employees have been fined significant sums, or even forced from their jobs [0], for unauthorized use of messaging platforms. And here, it's barely a shrug. Unbelievable. [0] https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/morgan-stanley-hit-...

In the government world, people have been jailed for it. Not people so directly connected to a president, though.

Heh. Like when they arrested someone for running their own mail server and sending classified information through it? Oh wait...

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

#364

Post by seatac76 »

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…

He could have continued for weeks, imho he did the good citizen and responsible journalist thing here. Made the public aware before it really got out of hand.

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

#365

Post by jdcasale »

Without commenting on the (important) political or reputational considerations here, I want to talk a bit about the operational risk presented by this practice. There is a somewhat sizable "So what? Signal is e2e encrypted. Nothing bad happened and you're all overreacting." narrative floating around. (not so much in this thread, but in the general discourse)

If this operation was planned in Signal, then so were countless others (and presumably so would countless others be in the future).

If not for this journalist, this would likely have continued indefinitely. We have high confidence that at least some of the officials were doing this on their personal phones. (Gabbard refused to deny this in the congressional hearing -- it does not stand to reason that she'd do that unless she was, in fact using her personal phone).

At some point in the administration, it's likely that at least one of their personal phones will be compromised (Pegasus, etc). E2E encryption isn't much use if the phone itself is compromised. This is why we have SCIFs.

There was no operational fallout of this particular screwup, but if this practice were to continue, it's likely certain that an adversary would, at some point, compromise these communications. Not through being accidentally invited to the chat rooms, but through compromise of the participants' hardware. An APT could have advance notice of all manner of confidential and natsec-critical plans.

In all likelihood this would lead to failed operations and casualties. The criticism/pushback on this is absolutely justified.

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

#366

Post by downrightmike »

PokestarFan wrote: post #327
frenchman_in_ny wrote: post #296

In the banking world, employees have been fined significant sums, or even forced from their jobs [0], for unauthorized use of messaging platforms. And here, it's barely a shrug. Unbelievable. [0] https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/morgan-stanley-hit-...

Who's going to arrest them?

Fun fact, initially when places were setting up police forces, people railed that it was an infringement on their right to do a Citizen's Arrest.

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

#367

Post by johannes1234321 »

fergbrain wrote: post #342
basisword wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why you have a constitution, codified laws, judicial system, separation of powers, etc. We're just learning now none of these things are worth the paper they're written on.

The issue is that there’s nothing that requires prosecution, just allows it. This is the doubled edged nature of prosecutorial discretion.

Well, in the idea of the system there is: The system is built around the assumption that Congress would impeach a president who fails to to the right™ thing (or fails to make his administration do ...)

However once the legislative branch surrenders oversight over executive there isn't much left keeping the system in balance. Even if judicial branch would call a measure unconstitutional, who'd execute that ruling?

The system is built around the assumption that a notable part of the system wants to keep it alive.

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

#368

Post by sjsdaiuasgdia »

swiftymon wrote: post #313
frenchman_in_ny wrote: post #296

In the banking world, employees have been fined significant sums, or even forced from their jobs [0], for unauthorized use of messaging platforms. And here, it's barely a shrug. Unbelievable. [0] https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/morgan-stanley-hit-...

it's not unauthorized use of signal; "Government officials have used Signal for organizational correspondence, such as scheduling sensitive meetings, but in the Biden administration, people who had permission to download it on their White House-issued phones were instructed to use the app sparingly, according to a former national security official who served in the administration." https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation…

Let's assume for the moment that the discussion of military plans on Signal was covered by this policy. That's debatable as others have said. Other parts of that policy would seem to suggest this kind of conversation is expressly forbidden on Signal and similar unofficial chat apps, while other less sensitive conversations are permitted.

How does that excuse the lack of attention and validation that resulted in an unintended party being added to the chat?

Regardless of Signal usage policy, that is a massive fuck up.

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

#370

Post by EgregiousCube »

Jtsummers wrote: post #362
EgregiousCube wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's too bad that this is being downvoted - swiftymon is trying to provide some context. It's useful to the discussion and well sourced. I'd love to read counterarguments rather than have this fade away :)

Because their claim is false and unsupported by their quote. It is absolutely unauthorized for government employees to conduct discussions like this on services like Signal. It's not even allowed for CUI level discussions, and war planning pushes into Secret and TS territory very quickly. Organizational discussions means things like, for a standard fed on a TDY with others, "Meet in the lobby at 0700 so we can drive…

This is the sort of counterargument I'd have liked to see instead of disagreement-driven downvoting, yes.
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