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I keep thinking that the real story about this Signal stuff is that whatever authorized government equipment/software they’re supposed to be using probably just

I keep thinking that the real story about this Signal stuff is that whatever authorized government equipment/software they’re supposed to be using probably just sucks. Onerous, old, too much authentication, password silliness, biometrics, auto logout after 2 minutes, etc etc. Do not mean to downplay the mistake (at a minimum, the SecDef should suffer the same fate a lower ranking member of the DoD would for reasons of military order), but humans will be humans. Dealing with security sucks and involves trade offs and compromises.

martythemaniak 2y ago
No, the government has not had issues running military operations using its existing comms. The actual story is that they used Signal on purpose to bypass required government record-keeping laws.
- alaxhn 2y ago
  Can you please help us to understand why you believe the military has had *no* issues using existing comms? At face value this is an extraordinary claim and it flies in the face of examples of friendly fire such as https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj30zk1jnmno https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj30zk1jnmno. I think the strongest possible statement would be "military comms are equal to or better than civilian alternatives with the exception that they do not bypass government record keeping laws" but I'm mostly unaware of what the military uses to communicate so it's difficult for me to accept this at face value with an explanation of the existing systems and their capabilities. Some government software and processes are not pleasant to deal with such as the process of obtaining a green card so I don't really fault people for being skeptical of the existing systems without evidence of their robustness.
guelo 2y ago
I would say two things. 1) security inherintly is annoying, the more secure something is the more it sucks to use. Military communication channels have to withstand the most powerful attacks in the world, everyone, Russians Chinese Europeans Israelis, would all love to get access. So these have to be extremely secure and thus annoying to use channels. 2) their are laws about storing government communications which are built in to the official channels. Trumpists are suspiciously intentionally breaking these laws.

martythemaniak 2y ago

No, the government has not had issues running military operations using its existing comms. The actual story is that they used Signal on purpose to bypass required government record-keeping laws.

alaxhn 2y ago
Can you please help us to understand why you believe the military has had *no* issues using existing comms? At face value this is an extraordinary claim and it flies in the face of examples of friendly fire such as https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj30zk1jnmno https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj30zk1jnmno. I think the strongest possible statement would be "military comms are equal to or better than civilian alternatives with the exception that they do not bypass government record keeping laws" but I'm mostly unaware of what the military uses to communicate so it's difficult for me to accept this at face value with an explanation of the existing systems and their capabilities. Some government software and processes are not pleasant to deal with such as the process of obtaining a green card so I don't really fault people for being skeptical of the existing systems without evidence of their robustness.

guelo 2y ago

I would say two things. 1) security inherintly is annoying, the more secure something is the more it sucks to use. Military communication channels have to withstand the most powerful attacks in the world, everyone, Russians Chinese Europeans Israelis, would all love to get access. So these have to be extremely secure and thus annoying to use channels. 2) their are laws about storing government communications which are built in to the official channels. Trumpists are suspiciously intentionally breaking these laws.