Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

theatlantic.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

521–530 of 1001 posts

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

#521

Post by tromp »

bb88 wrote: post #487
joshuamerrill wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because I don't know whether either of those are appropriate. There aren't many comparable breaches to this one. The closest in modern times may be Hillary Clinton's email server being used for government business. In that case, the FBI investigated and declined to bring charges, under the expectation that a jury would be unlikely to render a guilty verdict. Okay, fine. But the FBI investigated and laid out the facts…

Why would we expect Patel and Bongino to investigate anything here? They were put there to investigate anyone else other than the current administration. Why would any FBI agent take a risk on investigating anyone potentially in current or future administrations? They'll get fired later when the political winds change.

With the current administration I expect that fierce loyalty trumps both competence and accountability. Sadly, I expect to see many more such examples of amateur hour.

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

#522

Post by kelipso »

threeseed wrote: post #450
ctrlp wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, those are the reasons for, but would be interesting for you to address the salient point of not trusting those government systems. I'm sure you can make the counterargument.

The administration has not made this argument though. You have. So why should we default to the position of not trusting those systems when every previous administration has used it without issus.

The argument is that there are many organizations in the current government, a lot of them independent agencies, that are politically aligned against the Trump administration. Many people in these organizations have backdoor or spying access to government communications, and so members of the Trump admin can't trust government systems for communication.

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

#523

Post by bb88 »

simonh wrote: post #513

Steve Witkoff was on the chat while he was in Russia. There’s a vulnerability in Signal where you can set up linked devices that replicate your signal messages. You can do this by just scanning a QRcode. This is known to be used by Russian hackers. What are the chances the Russians duped Witkoff into scanning a QR code while he was in Moscow?

Why must a Signal attack take place only in Russia? If Russia intelligence operations can operate freely in the US, they can attack US Officials in the US as well.

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

#524

Post by markhahn »

ctrlp wrote: post #390

In my opinion there are at least two ways to interpret this: a) It's an unintentional opsec failure. Perhaps there was an address book collision with another intended user. Perhaps it was fat-fingered. This seems likely. b) It was an intentional leak. Perhaps overtly, perhaps covertly, by one or more of the channel members for unknown purposes. This seems less likely as there are better ways to leak with less blowbac…

if you think the national security infrastructure is untrustworthy, you need to fix the national security infrastructure. getting elected doesn't mean you get to create your own private government - we call that a revolution, not an election.

but of course, this lot thinks the existing government is all corrupt / deepstate.

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

#526

Post by anigbrowl »

yowzadave wrote: post #482

What are the odds that Goldberg was included in the Signal chat intentionally by a whistleblower? I.e., someone who had reservations about what was about to take place (either the bombing action itself, or the intentional avoidance of government recordkeeping) and so included him as a witness?

I'd give it about 10%

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

#527

Post by idle_zealot »

dragonwriter wrote: post #433
idle_zealot wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why have a bunch of rules and policies that you do not follow yourself? If you can get away with it, why wouldn't you set things up this way? Rules for thee, not for me. You can't try to view power plays like this through the lenses of ethics or morality. The point is to use rules to bind and punish your enemies and to make sure that only your friends can get away with breaking them. You do this with media capture…

> If you can get away with it, why wouldn't you set things up this way? Ethics and morality. > You can't try to view power plays like this through the lenses of ethics or morality. Yes, you can, that's the entire point of ethics and morality. > The point is to use rules to bind and punish your enemies and to make sure that only your friends can get away with breaking them. Well, yes, that's the point of the specific…

Perhaps rather than "can't try to view" it's more accurate to say that it's an ineffective lense to try to understand the motivations and dynamics at play. You can, and should, analyse the ethics of just about everything in order to make value judgements. Those judgements just have very little to do with people's motivations, and to assume a principled moral stance on the part of an observed actor will leave you baffled more often than enlightened.

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

#528

Post by simonh »

bb88 wrote: post #523
simonh wrote: post #513

Steve Witkoff was on the chat while he was in Russia. There’s a vulnerability in Signal where you can set up linked devices that replicate your signal messages. You can do this by just scanning a QRcode. This is known to be used by Russian hackers. What are the chances the Russians duped Witkoff into scanning a QR code while he was in Moscow?

Why must a Signal attack take place only in Russia? If Russia intelligence operations can operate freely in the US, they can attack US Officials in the US as well.

Good point. I was just thinking Witkoff must be dealing with Russian functionaries all the time in Moscow so they have near constant direct access. There’s nothing to stop them duping one of them in the US though, and it doesn’t seem like duping these guys would be a stretch.

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

#529

Post by belter »

simonh wrote: post #513

Steve Witkoff was on the chat while he was in Russia. There’s a vulnerability in Signal where you can set up linked devices that replicate your signal messages. You can do this by just scanning a QRcode. This is known to be used by Russian hackers. What are the chances the Russians duped Witkoff into scanning a QR code while he was in Moscow?

What are the chances Trump portrait[1] has a passive microphone? [2]

[1] "Putin gave Trump portrait to envoy, Kremlin confirms" - https://thehill.com/policy/international/5212691-putin-trump...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_(listening_device)

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

#530

Post by Izkata »

anigbrowl wrote: post #508
Izkata wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd go with b: They've been talking for a while about finding information leaks, and the messages themselves seem a bit staged. They probably did it intentionally with different people, with slightly different wording, and because of which version got published they just identified a leak.

A barium meal is for finding leakers within an organization. IF you send material to a journalist, unsolicited, and they report on it, what exactly have you established? Like, do you think they did the same thing with multiple journalists in an attempt to see who would publish and who would keep their mouths shut? Bear in mind, when you join a Signal group you don't see the conversation history from before you arrive…

My guess would be the journalist wasn't the one being tested, it was one of the other members. Adding the journalist would be how it was leaked.
Post reply on HN