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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 C
by joshuamerrill 2y ago
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.
It is mind-boggling that 18 people were on this thread, and none of them ever suggested that this discussion would be better served in a SCIF. To say nothing of SecDef starting the thread on Signal in the first place.
How many other such threads are active at the highest levels of government right now?
Does Chinese intelligence know?
I'm not suggesting punishment, or even prosecution, for the people involved. But the idea that this breach can occur with no accountability, consequences, or operational changes is unacceptable.
- baby 2y agoSCIF?
- rescripting 2y agoSensitive Compartmented Information Facility: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensitive_compartmented_information_facility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensitive_compartmented_inform...
- bambax 2y agoNo accountability or consequences for anyone is the motto of the Trump administration (or indeed Trump himself, who is a convicted felon).
- SSLy 2y agoThe consequences will arrive by the will of the Trumpist administration. Levied on the Undesirables only.
- dylan604 2y agoFirst 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.
- userbinator 2y agoIt's all about the $$$.
- whattheheckheck 2y agoWhy are you specifically calling out you are not suggesting punishment nor prosecution?
- rschiavone 2y agoYeah that should be the bare minimum
- FreebasingLLMs 2y agoBecause he wants the behavior to change, as it is a risk to the country's security. Typically these types of things at this level rarely result in prosecution; the compromise typically is a change in behavior / promise to do better / etc.
- joshuamerrill 2y agoBecause 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. My fear is that the current administration sees this as a PR problem. No, this was an operational failure. We should feel lucky that merely an American journalist was added by mistake. We should expect the FBI to investigate this, too. But I worry the facts are too inconvenient for even that level of accountability.
- bb88 2y agoWhy 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.
- tromp 2y agoWith 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.
- ohgr 2y agoAt least here in the UK our politicians delete all their messages on WhatsApp https://www.politico.eu/article/the-british-governments-disappearing-whatsapps/ https://www.politico.eu/article/the-british-governments-disa... More seriously, having worked in an undisclosed defence company, we were told that we would be prosecuted if we did this. There were many many security controls in place that prevented this from happening on top of the threat.
- stevenjgarner 2y agoAre you able to share any of those security controls? How do you stop presumably well-intended Signal app users from conferencing? Are you talking about cellular signal blocking, or are you talking about avoiding public networks entirely in favor of Sensitive Compartmented Information Facilities (SCIFs)?
- ohgr 2y agoMany layers of physical controls and regular audits mostly.
- Alupis 2y agoSo in other words... nothing stopped anyone from doing this either. Except the fear of potential punishment.
- HWR_14 2y agoI'm not sure how you ignored the "many layers of physical controls" part of the comment.
- lmm 2y agoWhat does a physical control mean in this context? Like, disabling that part of the phone's touchscreen?
- ThePowerOfFuet 2y ago
- hn_throwaway_99 2y ago> But the idea that this breach can occur with no accountability, consequences, or operational changes is unacceptable. There will be no accountability, consequences, or operational changes because the American people (a plurality of them anyway) voted for this. I like how people are even bothering to bring up the risk of prosecution, as if Trump wouldn't just pardon the people involved anyway. Look, I am as disgusted as you are, but I continue to be impressed/disgusted by the neverending levels of shamelessness shown by Trump and his cronies: 1. Trump is now somehow blaming the reporter for this, calling him a "sleazebag". 2. Probably doesn't need repeating, but all the chants about "lock her up" against Hillary Clinton were due to her supposed mishandling of classified information. Yeah, waiting to hear all the outrage from the right over this 10x more egregious example. 3. I still continue to be awed by Hegseth railing against DEI because it's "anti-merit", as I can't think of an ass clown less qualified to be Sec of Defense. Nothing will change unless the American people, at large, decide to punish those at the ballot box who exhibit these behaviors, and so far they have not been willing to do that.
- CoastalCoder 2y agoI'm concerned that what brings change won't be a smarter electorate, but instead losing a war or having another civil war. I'm somewhat politically conservative, and I still cannot make any sense of the plurality that voted Trump into office again. I really wonder if I'm in some kind of echo chamber that prevents me from understanding their perspective.
- Aeolun 2y ago> I really wonder if I'm in some kind of echo chamber that prevents me from understanding their perspective. I mean, I understand the ‘burn the world down’ perspective. I just don’t think it’s particularly productive.
- SantalBlush 2y agoTheir grievances begin with Reaganomics, then NAFTA, then the war in Afghanistan. All Republican projects. Now, instead of directing the blame where it belongs, they've adopted an even more 'enlightened' and destructive form of conservativism that abides corruption in broad daylight.
- VoodooJuJu 2y ago[dead]
- defrost 2y agoA 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-text-debacle_n_67e2f9b5e4b074f0c26efadc 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".
- jgalt212 2y agoWhen 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.
- chris_wot 2y agoIn the Trump Whitehouse, not only do you believe the rules don't apply to you, but actually the rules don't apply to you.
- riehwvfbk 2y agoUse Signal, an encrypted platform from the CIA with a charismatic public persona: the horror! Use an unencrypted email server in a closet for years: that's nothing.
- katbyte 2y agoI assume the email server you are referring to is the one Elon installed and then fed all sorts of peoples private information to
- root_axis 2y agoYears of investigations and congressional hearings is nothing?
- arbitrary_name 2y ago>charismatic public persona You have weird taste in men.
- riehwvfbk 2y agoDiscrimination much?
- chris_wot 2y agoSheesh, false equivalence much? An unencrypted mail server is also awful.
- ghostpepper 2y ago> 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.
- exikyut 2y agoIf 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.
- moshun 2y agoAt 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
- lmm 2y agoWhich do you think is more likely to be under foreign control and why? Bearing in mind that iPhones are made in China.
- riehwvfbk 2y ago[dead]
- sterlind 2y agostock iPhones run 100% Apple software, afaik. from drivers to the shell it's one company. the hardware is one series of models by one company. each Android vendor has a completely random fork of AOSP with who knows what kernel patches, out-of-tree drivers, unremovable apps and customizations. you're trusting an enchilada of your mobile carrier, Google, Samsung/OnePlus/whoever, plus all their vendors. Android can be highly secure. the NSA's Fishbowl project used vanilla AOSP + SELinux + IPSec on closely scrutinized hardware to make a phone that can be used for Secret text messages. the cheap prepaid phone you buy at T-Mobile is not that.
- mandeepj 2y agoThe 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.
- ModernMech 2y ago> It's still not too late to impeach that entire shack of clowns. The problem is that the people in control of the power to impeach are also picked for being yes men/women. It's yes-men all the way down by design.
- jimbokun 2y agoIt’s Trump’s one true talent. He got the Supreme Court and the judiciary leaning his way in his first term. Congress is controlled by either his Republican primary candidates, or Republicans who are too afraid to cross him. Now he’s purging from the federal branch anyone who is not completely ideologically loyal to him. That is the true purpose of Doge.
- 3np 2y agoVance' offices response is very telling of his priorities and supports this view.
- hn_throwaway_99 2y agoVance has to be the world's biggest boot licker. I cannot understand at all the complete lack of self respect he must have, solely for the acquisition of power.
- belter 2y ago“My fear with Trump was always that he didn't have great solutions.” - J.D. Vance “People listen to what their political leaders are telling them, and my view is both that Trump is tapping into some racially ugly attitudes, but also that he is leading people to racially ugly attitudes.” - J.D. Vance “I’m a Never Trump guy” - J.D. Vance “My god what an idiot” - J.D. Vance (on Trump) “Mr. Trump is unfit for our nation’s highest office.” - J.D. Vance “I can’t stomach Trump.” - J.D. Vance “I think there’s a chance, if I feel like Trump has a really good chance of winning, that I might have to hold my nose and vote for Hillary Clinton.” - J.D. Vance “Trump's biggest failure as a political leader is that he sees the worst in people, and he encourages the worst in people.” - J.D. Vance
- zdragnar 2y agoCISA 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 overblown to me.
- hyperhello 2y ago“the rest of the story seems overblown” sounds like a thought-terminator to minimize impact.
- ModernMech 2y agoYou're talking about this document: https://www.cisa.gov/sites/default/files/2024-12/guidance-mobile-communications-best-practices.pdf https://www.cisa.gov/sites/default/files/2024-12/guidance-mo... Which says: Organizations may already have these best practices in place, such as secure communication platforms1 and multifactor authentication (MFA) policies. In cases where organizations do not, apply the following best practices to your mobile devices. And goes on to say: Adopt a free messaging application for secure communications that guarantees end-to-end encryption, such as Signal or similar apps. But concludes: Any reference to specific commercial entities, products, processes, or services by service mark, trademark, manufacturer, or otherwise, does not constitute or imply endorsement, recommendation, or favoring by CISA. So they mention signal as an example of an app that they are talking about, but they explicitly state that by mentioning it they are not implying to endorse or recommend or even favor it. Moreover, the advice doesn't apply to organizations that have their own best practices in place, which the organizations in question certainly do. So the question isn't what CISA recommends it's what the CIA, DoD, Department of State, etc. recommend.
- tailefer 2y agoYou 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-mobile-communications-best-practices.pdf https://www.cisa.gov/sites/default/files/2024-12/guidance-mo...
- ferguess_k 2y agoI actually think the major powers mostly know what the others are doing.
- unyttigfjelltol 2y agoAnd should! That's how we remain, figuratively, minutes to midnight for generations, and not closer.
- excalibur 2y ago> I'm not suggesting punishment, or even prosecution, for the people involved. I am. Throw the book at them.
- anderber 2y agoAlso, Steve Witkoff was in Moscow during the Signal text chain.
- riehwvfbk 2y ago[flagged]
- whynotminot 2y agoSome of us are viewing this through the lens of the actual risk this could have caused to real American servicemen and women, and not just scoring points on television. Like what is wrong with you that this is your reaction to something so serious?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- georgeplusplus 2y ago>>>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?
- 20after4 2y agoIt's not shocking but it is unacceptable. The president should be held to a higher standard, not a lesser one.
- egl2020 2y agoHeck, 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.
- gonzo41 2y agoThere is a great thread on r/army where people are listing out all the Military careers destroyed by minor mistakes that pale in comparison to this.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- Ey7NFZ3P0nzAe 2y agoI'd be really interested in a link!
- fragmede 2y agoI had that problem, but the FAANG I was at was also the same company as the one running my phone's OS, so it wasn't as bad.
- dionian 2y agoWas any classified information shared on Signal?
- halfmatthalfcat 2y ago[flagged]
- dredmorbius 2y agoAt 11:44 a.m., the account labeled “Pete Hegseth” posted in Signal a “TEAM UPDATE.” I will not quote from this update, or from certain other subsequent texts. The information contained in them, if they had been read by an adversary of the United States, could conceivably have been used to harm American military and intelligence personnel, particularly in the broader Middle East, Central Command’s area of responsibility. What I will say, in order to illustrate the shocking recklessness of this Signal conversation, is that the Hegseth post contained operational details of forthcoming strikes on Yemen, including information about targets, weapons the U.S. would be deploying, and attack sequencing. From TFA. The discussion itself wasn't transacting classified documents as such. But as Goldberg makes clear, information of both general sensitivity and immediate tactical significance was disclosed.
- blitzar 2y agoIt was confirmed (under oath) that there was no classified information shared, however, the contents of the messages could not be shared with the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence as it is classified information.
- Phelinofist 2y agoEnglish isn't my first language so I might've misunderstood what you wrote, but isn't that contradicting?
- parrellel 2y agoYes. Yes it is.
- 2y ago
- throwaway5752 2y agoI have read that one of them (thanks to sibling commenter, yes, Witkoff) was traveling in Russia while on this group chat, and that the chat disclosed the identity of an intelligence officer.
- adamtaylor_13 2y agoDo we actually believe this was accidental? This seems like the most obvious “oops I leaked it to the press” I’ve ever seen. Now Europe “accidentally saw” what the American powers were saying and it’s going to influence them. I’m not at all sold that this was some ball that was dropped.
- Centigonal 2y agoI disagree. When you leak to the press, you often do it with a planted source who "leaks" to a journalist on condition of anonymity. Doing it with an "accidental" group chat add like this signals incompetence without any added value.
- angrydev 2y agoThe EU knows exactly how the administration feels about them with regards to military support. The Signal thread makes all involved look extremely incompetent. I’m not seeing the advantage if this was planned.
- jimt1234 2y agoUpdated Hanlon's razor: Never attribute to intelligence that which is adequately explained by stupidity
- ulfw 2y agoTrump can't fire any of them. Fox News doesn't have enough TV people to poach. Where else did he find his cabinet from?
- reverius42 2y agoTrump won't fire any of them, because nothing they've done displeases him, and displeasing Trump (rather than violating a law, for instance) is the only way to get fired by him.
- cjohnson318 2y agoWhy shouldn't punishment or prosecution be suggested. I've worked with classified information, and I would have been held accountable for my actions, why shouldn't they? I'm tired of this Too Important To Have Consequences business. It defeats the whole purpose of having qualifications, and security, and rules of any kind.
- rcpt 2y agoAnything less than criminal prosecution would be an abomination of justice.
- wernercd 2y ago[flagged]
- Galanwe 2y agoWell once you've stated that the president is immune and can pardon whoever for whatever, there's really not much to do. The US needs a new constitution to enforce this, otherwise the very concept of justice cannot exist.
- vFunct 2y agoAbsolutely not going to happen with the opposition party existing simply to supply Israel with more weapons. Chuck Schumer, the highest ranking opposition leader, the other day openly stated "My job is to make sure the left supports Israel". Why would that level of anti-democratic corruption have any interest in justice, when the very core of that party is based on maintaining racist injustice around the world? The only thing we can hope for is that our system collapses and our economy weakens, while foreign economies grow.
- maeil 2y agoIn the US, you can fly multiple planes into skyscrapers, rape three whole kindergartens, and lynch an entire race to extermination. As long as you then win the next election before you get convicted, you're in the clear. This is the United States of America.
- monksy 2y ago> information over unapproved channels, I would be reprimanded—likely fired, or less likely, prosecuted. Potential penalty of death as well. Also lets not forget those messages had a 4w expiary date.
- TomK32 2y agoIn normal times this might even be something Congress should be interested in. But instead I wouldn't be surprised if the journalist will get prosecuted on grounds that he didn't leave the group as soon as he noticed the mistake.
- belter 2y agoAll the President's Men: https://youtu.be/ihHU3IVVrfM?t=477 https://youtu.be/ihHU3IVVrfM?t=477 https://youtu.be/isNlC0RYOyE?t=565 https://youtu.be/isNlC0RYOyE?t=565
- tonyhart7 2y ago"that if I shared Classified or Controlled Unclassified information over unapproved channels" You are confuse yourself, THEY ARE THE LAW these are the most powerful guys in the nation, who decide to catch who and whom??? these guys who decide that not the other way around