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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

#561

Post by dcow »

codewench wrote: post #519
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…

18 USC 793(f) seems to apply here: "Whoever, being entrusted with or having lawful possession or control of any document, writing ... through gross negligence permits the same to be removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of his trust ... and fails to make prompt report of such loss, theft, abstraction, or destruction to his superior officer— Shall be fined under this title or imp…

Gabbard confirmed that no classified information was contained in the conversation.

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

#562

Post by defrost »

joshuamerrill wrote: post #457

I began my career in a classified environment working on government satellite programs. In my first week on the job, I was told, explicitly, that if I shared Classified or Controlled Unclassified information over unapproved channels, I would be reprimanded—likely fired, or less likely, prosecuted. It was also made clear that safeguarding the nation's secrets from the carelessness of others was my responsibility, too.…

A US public watchdog is now sueing for action to be taken.

The people in the chat group included Vice President JD Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, various other Trump administration officials and aides and notably Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

  As American Oversight lawyers pointed out in their lawsuit Tuesday, Rubio is also the acting archivist of the United States and, as such, “is aware of the violations” that allegedly occurred.

  The lawsuit, brought by the watchdog group American Oversight, requests that a federal judge formally declare that Hegseth and other officials on the chat violated their duty to uphold laws around the preservation of official communications.

  Those laws are outlined in the Federal Records Act and, according to lawyers for American Oversight, if agency heads refuse to recover or protect their communications, the national archivist should ask the attorney general to step in.
~ https://www.huffpost.com/entry/pete-hegseth-sued-over-signal...

Time will tell how this buttery Signals chat plays out .. it's certainly given other many other countries more fuel to ridicule the USofA, it's hard to believe these clowns are our partners in global "intelligence".

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

#564

Post by [deleted] »

markhahn wrote: post #524
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.

[deleted]

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

#565

Post by xuhu »

jimnotgym wrote: post #491

I guess Signal is pretty safe, but the phone you are using it on is far from safe. Then there is the issue of being able to accidently add unvetted people to the chat. Is that pretty much the size of the technological issue here?

Yes. Then there's the fact that they do this on a daily basis to avoid accountability.

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

#566

Post by abeyer »

snickerbockers wrote: post #544
atonse wrote: post #141

Setting aside the obvious shock of the actual subject, I'm going to try the herculean task of bringing this back to being a HN-related topic... My guess is that there is someone named Jeffrey Goldberg in the NatSec team (or high up, it seems like a common combination of first and last name at least), and likely that they meant to add him, rather than the EDITOR IN CHIEF of the Atlantic of all people. Could this be a…

I'm putting my money on somebody fat-fingering the wrong contact. Maybe it's just me but I swear every phone I've ever owned has had extremely unreliable UIs, stemming from a combination of phantom touches being detected, and the phone moving buttons around as I'm trying to interact with it , as if it's on dialup line struggling to load somebody's Sonic the Hedgehog fanpage on GeoCities one gif at a time in 1996. And…

Agree, though I 100% see it on PC too, when web pages try to override standard scroll behavior to do some visual trick at the expense of well tested platform and browser scrolling support.

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

#567

Post by simonh »

stavros wrote: post #560
bb88 wrote: post #559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about a restaurant that doesn't have menus and requires patrons to scan a QR code? Acrylic table menus have inserts which can be easily replaced.

You guys are forgetting that you have to scan the QR code from Signal's "link new device" menu, and then approve the new device, which is a somewhat uncommon thing for a restaurant menu to ask you to do.

That’s one way, but.

https://thehackernews.com/2025/02/hackers-exploit-signals-li...

“… the threat actors, including one it's tracking as UNC5792, have resorted to malicious QR codes that, when scanned, will link a victim's account to an actor-controlled Signal instance.”

“ These QR codes are known to masquerade as group invites, security alerts, or legitimate device pairing instructions from the Signal website.”

Also

“ Last week, Microsoft and Volexity also revealed that multiple Russian threat actors are taking advantage of a technique called device code phishing to log into victims' accounts by targeting them via messaging apps like WhatsApp, Signal, and Microsoft Teams.”

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

#568

Post by dylan604 »

bambax wrote: post #461
joshuamerrill wrote: post #457

I began my career in a classified environment working on government satellite programs. In my first week on the job, I was told, explicitly, that if I shared Classified or Controlled Unclassified information over unapproved channels, I would be reprimanded—likely fired, or less likely, prosecuted. It was also made clear that safeguarding the nation's secrets from the carelessness of others was my responsibility, too.…

No accountability or consequences for anyone is the motto of the Trump administration (or indeed Trump himself, who is a convicted felon).

First felon I know that has had no issues getting a job or getting a place to live. It's amazing how being a felon makes life so much more difficult for normies, yet actually improved his stature. It's embarrassing no matter which angle it is viewed.

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

#569

Post by jgalt212 »

joshuamerrill wrote: post #457

I began my career in a classified environment working on government satellite programs. In my first week on the job, I was told, explicitly, that if I shared Classified or Controlled Unclassified information over unapproved channels, I would be reprimanded—likely fired, or less likely, prosecuted. It was also made clear that safeguarding the nation's secrets from the carelessness of others was my responsibility, too.…

When you get to a certain level, you believe the rules don't apply to you. There are many examples of this, but I won't list any for fear of promoting false equivalencies.

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

#570

Post by Der_Einzige »

thunkingdeep wrote: post #382
jeffbee wrote: post #379

Amazing that with H.N.'s doctrinaire application of the exact original title rule, this is the title that the mods chose to editorialize.

Remember: every comment on here is implicitly directed to dang, and every link is implicitly approved of by dang. This is really his website at this point. The rules are mainly just his tools for shaping the content of discussions and submissions to his liking. A decade ago it was different. I mean, he was still way overbearing and biased, but I don’t think it really had the same power-steering effect on the shapes o…

Thank you for proving that other HN members can call out bad HN policies and the way its applied by its de-facto leader. N-gate died far too soon.
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