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It seems reasonably likely they were using signal to avoid records keeping requirements and public scrutiny. If you found a group of employees using signal with
by remus 2y ago
It seems reasonably likely they were using signal to avoid records keeping requirements and public scrutiny. If you found a group of employees using signal with disappearing messages to talk about work outside of your normal work chat (slack etc.) you'd be pretty suspicious, let alone if they were working in public office!
- ljf 2y agoAlso if you then saw colleagues discussing company secrets or legally privileged information on a group chat, the onus is on everyone in the chat to call that out as wrong.
- trhway 2y ago>the onus is on everyone in the chat to call that out as wrong that would be in a group of even minimally qualified professionals, not the clowns who got their jobs on a whim of the bigger clown. You know the monkey with a nuclear bomb. I hope we wouldn't see how they handle the real bomb, and for now just the tariffs have like an extremely large nuke just wiped $10T+, and it isn't "just stock market", it is large complicated efficient logistics chains and trade relations that were built over years and were powering this civilization. To compare, the damage from the Ukraine war - you'd need several tens of nukes to produce such damage - is just around a "meager" $1T.
- Cthulhu_ 2y agoShould be, but the US is run by cults of personality where they defer to people they see as their superiors - that is, "if Hegseth does it, it's ok, right?"
- DebtDeflation 2y agoMost large companies monitor devices. You start GMailing source code to yourself, you get fired.
- HenryBemis 2y agoA very friend of mine was going through a nasty divorce. Although we weren't talking about the divorce/case he set our messages on auto-delete. Apparently his (now, ex-wife) had SMS and WhatsApp messages in court to be used for her cased. Any 'loving message' to her from the early days ("you are so perfect") and any 'nasty message' to others ("oh that bitch!!") sent to anyone was presented in court. So for caution he auto-deleted even the messages that were innocuous, just in case it could be used against him "oh he wanted to spend money for a new phone/laptop, thus he has money, thus I will take it"
- Terr_ 2y agoOh, absolutely, I try to remind people that even starting this group chat was criminal, because it's an attempt to break public records laws.
- _heimdall 2y ago100%, we have public records requirements for a reason and that needs to be followed. I assume you take the same issue with private email servers.
- wongarsu 2y agoYes. This is as bad or worse than Clinton's email servers. It deserves to be talked about at least as long and investigated at least as thoroughly. Which in the case of Clinton involved bringing it up for nearly a decade, an FBI investigation, an Inspector General's report on the FBI's and DOJ's handling of the case and a three year State Department investigation. It's only fair to apply the same standard here
- Terr_ 2y agoTo offer a concrete example, their choice to delete everything after 7 days is an unambiguously worse aspect. Premeditated spoliation of evidence.
- _heimdall 2y agoWe wouldn't know if a private email was configured similarly, or if emails on a private server were manually deleted. Either way, yes using a communication system on the public internet and outside of official documentation processes is bad no matter how you do it. Deleting those communications could be a bad sign, though to be fair it could also be a sign of someone trying to do what they think is more secure (avoiding old messages being leaked or hacked later).
- brookst 2y agoAbsolutely. And it’s astounding that Waltz also uses private email for official business[1] This is a problem and it needs to be stopped. 1. https://americanoversight.org/investigation/the-trump-administrations-questionable-email-practices/ https://americanoversight.org/investigation/the-trump-admini...
- refurb 2y agoFrom what I've gathered, Signal use was prolific among people in this administration and the past one. I'm not surprised. My own company sends out several emails that Whatsapp can't be used as it's not secure, yet I get Whatsapp messages from leadership I work with constantly. People ignore directives all the time. Usually out of convenience. People have even called it out in a Whatsapp chat "hey guys, we're not supposed to use Whatsapp" and people usually ignore it.
- xorcist 2y agoThat's not at all what's it's like to work with classified data, even deep down the subcontractor chain. They constantly drill into you to respect data classification and the consequences of ignoring these rules. Nobody ever does what you describe.
- refurb 2y agohttps://www.snopes.com/news/2025/03/27/biden-authorized-signal/ https://www.snopes.com/news/2025/03/27/biden-authorized-sign... During Biden's administration the CISA even encouraged the use of Signal. I’m not excusing it, just saying it was and still is, incredibly common among Whitehouse people.
- nailer 2y agoThe parent poster is right though, signal is permitted and encouraged for any discussion that would’ve happened over SMS, the issues are somebody dropping details into a channel meant for planning a meeting, as well as somebody accidentally adding somebody that should not have been there.
- nailer 2y agoHN has recently adopted a habit of downmodding inconvenient facts to oblivion but you can easily confirm Signal is approved for this use yourself.
- xorcist 2y agoWe do not know for sure but this would be very unlikely. Several of the participants does not need to know this information and it should be compartmentalized. Information concerning capability or location should not come near unclassified networks or civilian phones. Somebody could drop or steal that phone or glance over a shoulder which could necessitate cancelling the operation or much worse.
- codedokode 2y agoNothing good comes out of keeping records so it is natural that people do not want to keep them.
- brookst 2y agoWait, what? Sarcasm or implicit “if you’re a criminal”? For most people and companies record keeping is important and valuable.