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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

#621

Post by georgemcbay »

joshuamerrill wrote: post #478
whattheheckheck wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are you specifically calling out you are not suggesting punishment nor prosecution?

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…

> We should feel lucky that merely an American journalist was added by mistake.

This time. We also have no idea how many times this has happened without the unique circumstances where the person incorrectly included would draw attention to the leak as part of their job as a journalist.

Generally speaking, if something like this can happen once, it has probably happened more than once.

We probably are very lucky that the time it very publicly happened was fairly early on in the tenure of this dumpster fire of a Presidential cabinet.

Of course instead of them seeing it this way they are certain to keep going after the journalist in an attempt to make him the bad guy of the story to project blame away, because that is what incompetent people do.

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

#622

Post by egl2020 »

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.…

Heck, one of my co-workers at a FAANG freaked out when he realized that he had used his personal phone to take a picture of a meeting blackboard instead of his corp phone. He spent the afternoon trying to figure out how to scrub the photo.

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

#623

Post by moshun »

exikyut wrote: post #605
ghostpepper wrote: post #581

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Does Chinese intelligence know? How likely is it that all 18 of those people were accessing from mobile operating systems with no known working exploit chain? I would say pretty unlikely.

If they're "just" using Signal, they're likely "just" using stock Android if there isn't a policy requiring iPhones in lockdown mode. It's a very good question as to whether such a policy exists.

At this point it wouldn’t surprise me if they were using free Android phones they won in a raffle set up by foreign intelligence agents

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

#624

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

dcow wrote: post #561
codewench wrote: post #519

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They are playing with semantics on minor technicalities that are irrelevant because federal code is expansive enough to make this breach a clear violation of the law on multiple counts. The Senators rightly grilled these incompetents on why couldn't they disclose the nature of the communications if they were unclassified and not sensitive.

The capable adults from the 45th administration are gone because they were too responsible. You can see what happens when you draw from a pool of nothing but drooling sub-80s.

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

#625

Post by itsanaccount »

whattheheckheck wrote: post #466
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.…

Why are you specifically calling out you are not suggesting punishment nor prosecution?

because hackernews is full of people who cultivate a specific naivety when it comes to power so they don't have to contemplate their responsibility or position therin. its endemic and I have a hobby pointing it out again, and again, and again.

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

#626

Post by dionian »

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.…

Was any classified information shared on Signal?

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

#627

Post by zmgsabst »

idle_zealot wrote: post #384
anthomtb wrote: post #371

This hypocrisy reminds me of one of my former lead developers. He required everyone on the team to go through multi-person code reviews and pass an extensive CI suite before merging changes into our mainline. But him? Half that time he'd approve his own changes without review, the other half he would force-push and bypass the CI system entirely. He knew the system well and seemed to do enough local testing to avoid m…

> 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…

You want a better outcome.

Culture transmission is more effective when followers can emulate leaders — so you’ll have an easier time getting people to obey when your goal is to get them to act the way you do. In this case, you’ll expend less political capital on enforcing your policy regarding code reviews and testing if you adhere to the same policy. (And accordingly, have an easier time avoiding disgrace like public failures if your service.)

If you want to view it purely through the lens of power politics, saving your political capital on issues like this preserves it for things with better rewards — eg, you’ll have an easier time getting your projects approved if your manager isn’t constantly having to deal with the fallout of your policy double standards impacting morale. Or for setting a standard that working fewer hours is acceptable if you’re meeting your quotas — which nobody can dispute you’re doing, as the whole teams is validating that you are.

This kind of petty power game is rarely an optimal exercise of power.

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

#628

Post by dionian »

zdragnar wrote: post #586
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.…

CISA explicitly promoted Signal for use by top level government officials. The fact that an outsider was invited to a conversation they didn't belong in is troubling, but basically nothing else about this seems to be outside of recommended policy. The administration is also claiming that there was no confidential information in the conversation, which I think is certainly debatable, but the rest of the story seems ov…

Is this false? I see it's being downvoted, leading me to believe people question its veracity

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

#629

Post by lmm »

exikyut wrote: post #605
ghostpepper wrote: post #581

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Does Chinese intelligence know? How likely is it that all 18 of those people were accessing from mobile operating systems with no known working exploit chain? I would say pretty unlikely.

If they're "just" using Signal, they're likely "just" using stock Android if there isn't a policy requiring iPhones in lockdown mode. It's a very good question as to whether such a policy exists.

Which do you think is more likely to be under foreign control and why? Bearing in mind that iPhones are made in China.

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

#630

Post by dionian »

tailefer wrote: post #611
zdragnar wrote: post #586

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CISA explicitly promoted Signal for use by top level government officials. The fact that an outsider was invited to a conversation they didn't belong in is troubling, but basically nothing else about this seems to be outside of recommended policy. The administration is also claiming that there was no confidential information in the conversation, which I think is certainly debatable, but the rest of the story seems ov…

You should read the release that CISA put out [0]. The use of Signal for classified discussions is not a suggested use. True, it's not explicitly forbidden, but people entrusted with that access should know better. Saying that CISA approved Signal (and, in right-wing sources, saying "Biden administration CISA") is an attempt to minimize and distract. They shouldn't have been texting classified information. Full stop.…

What classified info was in the chat? The only reference I saw to classified info was explicit references to getting out of that medium to discuss classified info
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