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

611–620 of 1001 posts

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

#611

Post by tailefer »

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…

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.

[0] https://www.cisa.gov/sites/default/files/2024-12/guidance-mo...

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

#612

Post by anderber »

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.…

Also, Steve Witkoff was in Moscow during the Signal text chain.

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

#613

Post by charcircuit »

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?

Because the goal is to keep risk to a reasonable level, not necessarily minimize it as much as possible.

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

#614

Post by Glyptodon »

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…

I relate to this a bit...

But for me the foundational issue is that my coworkers aren't holding up the bar when reviewing contractor code. And reviewing all the code isn't my job description.

Meanwhile my job description does include maintaining a system my coworkers don't really know anything about, and so I mostly make sure it's tests pass and let me manager know about anything I need to do to it.

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

#615

Post by timewizard »

outer_web wrote: post #577
timewizard wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> on the supreme competence, sophistication and wealth of the Pentagon, NSA and CIA. Agencies with no oversight are seen as competent? That's news to me. There's a definite waste of taxpayer dollars on propaganda to try to make this point publicly but I didn't think anyone was poorly educated enough to actually believe it.

Sorry are you claiming that the United States intelligence community is incompetent and that anyone who things otherwise is poorly educated? What are you basing this on?

Yes.

History.

Are you genuinely incredulous?

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

#616

Post by HumblyTossed »

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 the Russians duped Witkoff into scanning a QR code while he was in Moscow?

What are the chances this admin had him do it ON PURPOSE?

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

#617

Post by georgeplusplus »

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.…

>>>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.

Now, I’m not replying to you about the morality of what happened or to tell my opinion of what is right and what is wrong.

But do you honestly believe the president is held to the same standard as you?

Would it shock you that they aren’t?

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

#618

Post by flyingcircus3 »

chasil wrote: post #547
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…

Assuming this to be true, this conversation is over. "The Biden administration installed the Signal messaging app on CIA computers and approved it for official government use." https://pjmedia.com/matt-margolis/2025/03/25/has-the-staffer...

I think that there is a parallel story to this one that is equally as interesting. There is one group of consumers of this story who see the receipts provided by Jeffery Goldberg, along with confirmation of their authenticity from a spokesperson at the National Security Council, followed by admissions by cabinet member participants of the Signal chat in hearings before congress, and those consumers of all this news can only conclude that the evidence is about as conclusive as you can get that Jeffery Goldberg is telling the truth, that these people are sharing the names of active intelligence officers, and describing imminent plans of action of the US military.

Then there is another group of consumers of this story, with the same access to all of the same evidence, and all of the same first person confirmations, who confidently declare the argument that this might be illegal null and void because Joe Biden allowed the CIA to use signal, and are persuaded away from accepting all of that evidence by articles with that contain such gems as "what the media wont tell you about the Atlantic hit piece", "Democrats talking points on this story quickly unraveled", and "help us continue to expose the lefts desperate attempts to manufacture scandals".

How can propaganda be so effective that people lose the skill of object permanence?

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

#619

Post by [deleted] »

mandeepj wrote: post #583
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.…

The problem is that most of those 18 people are just random folks picked on the premise of just one qualification: THey'd be Yes Man/Woman!! They aren't career professionals. I believe that explains the mess they've created and their incompetent approach to their duties. It's still not too late to impeach that entire shack of clowns.

[deleted]

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

#620

Post by Analemma_ »

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.

“We investigated ourselves and found ourselves not guilty.”
Post reply on HN