I wish more people, especially media writers, would start with the presumption that "circumventing the state-approved security machine" is a _feature_ of this administration.
Not to pick on this in particular – nearly all the reporting on this starts and ends with "Signal is insecure" as if that was all it took to be wrong. And in other eras, that was enough.
The man likes Signal. For better or worse, he is the Secretary of Defense...The man we've entrusted to help coordinate our national defense.
There's so many questions I genuinely don't have an answer for...
Has Congress made it illegal to use an off-brand messaging app for secure communications? _Why_ is it insecure? What is the probability that China is reading these messages in real-time? 100%? 25%? 0.2%?
We need to start from the presumption that the people-in-power don't care that it's always been done this way...in fact, they have a ton of pressure to be different. But, in some cases, these people may be willing to listen to reasonable arguments which clearly establish _why_ using Signal is unreasonably worse than using US Government Issue messaging.
> What is the probability that China is reading these messages in real-time
Real-time might be nice but there's value in reading material at this level with almost any delay.
In 1949 a US counter-intelligence program(me), the Venona project[1] decrypted Soviet cables from 1945 which made it almost certain the First Secretary to the British Embassy in Washington DC [2] was a Soviet asset. That wouldn't have happened if the Soviets hadn't misused their channels of communication.
Here, his signal comms are likely top secret and we would have no way of knowing if his office followed the legally allowed step of forwarding after the fact for many years.
I think one of the issues is that at least some of the Signal war-plans chat group participants had their messages set to auto-delete. If that's the reason that they're using Signal, it is indeed a problem, even if Signal is secure.
> There's so many questions I genuinely don't have an answer for...
> Has Congress made it illegal to use an off-brand messaging app for secure communications? _Why_ is it insecure? What is the probability that China is reading these messages in real-time? 100%? 25%? 0.2%?
Is your point that, in the space of your own lack of knowledge, that reasonable rational may exist? Could you share what gives you trust in this administration to be so generous?
My point is that “make liberals sad” is also a stated policy goal of this administration.
I think this article is about one of two things…either there is a possibility that SecDef using Signal represents an ongoing, material national security crisis that should be a concern for all Americans…or it’s really the author grieving for a time when they felt safer because the strict protocols of confidentiality signaled (pun intended) a sense of seriousness about government secrets.
If this is a material security threat, I need a lot of writers to explain why because most people don’t know. If it’s a sad liberal, the result will be counter-productive and large numbers of people-in-power will read this article as a win for their team.
Clown take. The use of Signal or any app on a non-secure device by SecDef for what we know he messaged about in his office is absolutely a primary national security threat. Firing offense for any senior Pentagon official dealing with highly classified traffic. Nothing to do with politics.
Agreed. I thought Lloyd Austin should have been fired for going into surgery without advising his deputy or any of his staff of the risks, and his deputy should have been fired for taking over for him.....without leaving her vacation in Puerto Rico.
I think SecDef Hegseth is actually an even bigger disaster than SecDef Austin. That said....I think the Deep State/ military industrial complex/ Israel lobby is trying to get Hegseth fired because he's one of the Big 3 (Vance/Hegseth/Gabbard) opposed to going kinetic with Iran. But he's making it really easy for his adversaries, because he legitimately sucks at some foundational skills for management at his level.
The fact that everyone in the country knows specific details of what and how he communicates, is a national security crisis. If signal was secure and/or he was following reasonable precautions, no one would know anything about this issue.
>If this is a material security threat, I need a lot of writers to explain why because most people don’t know.
Because personal smartphones aren't considered secure for protecting classified information. Signal in and of itself might be fine when used properly, but it doesn't matter when the underlying platform is consumer-grade security. The risk of side-channel attacks is astronomical.
>My point is that “make liberals sad” is also a stated policy goal of this administration.
>If it’s a sad liberal, ...
I'm not sure any of that furthers whatever argument you're trying to make. Signal being used in that manner didn't only violate a myriad of established protocols, but it was straight up illegal on top of it. In any normal political climate we would've seen resignations from day one, regardless of party.
- one side ignored Clinton using a private server as sec of state
- this one ignores using Signal
I haven’t seen arguments about what the standard is supposed to be or why this in particular is egregious. That would be more convincing than hyperventilating.
Edit:
If you read the article, there are both classified/secured and unsecured lines available at the station. So what specifically is the problem the administration uses Signal together with unsecured comms?
I don’t follow the allegation its mere presence is problematic, when discussing general communications with other parts of the administration. Especially when accessed via separate/dedicated machine (distinct from secured systems).
If you want to talk about the specifics of, eg, the Yemen war plans then do that — but this article does not.
> Federal agencies did, however, retrospectively determine that 100 emails contained information that should have been deemed classified at the time they were sent, including 65 emails deemed "Secret" and 22 deemed "Top Secret".
There was whole massive campaign against her comparatively much milder infraction. It is crickets now. It was huge.
So, maybe 10 of you care, but the assymetry is beyond apparent.
For that matter, I remember when Obamas tan suit was horrible unpresidential infraction amd lack of respect. Same people voted for Trump not a peep about respectability.
How many people were complaining about “her emails” 28 days after the first one was sent? You’re looking at two very different points on the timeline of each event and concluding that everyone thinks they’re different because of the difference in magnitude of discourse on the topics.
Do you think the difference will remain at this level through the next election cycle?
I think plenty of people see massive amounts of equivalence and are more caught up in other, more urgent piles in Washington’s reinvention of the Augean Stables.
Donald Trump literally said she should be in prison her for the email server thing. Literally during campaign. It was cheered on.
The emails scandal was on for months and got invoked during election by conservative pundits, politicians. Again and again and again and again. They made it a whole big thing, pretending to care about security.
So yeah, it matters. The consistent track record of just extremely one sided care for security, respectability, lies and what not actually matter a lot. Now we know that conservatives complaining about X does not mean they care about X. They dont, they are ok when one of them does worst. It is just hypocrisy.
That's almost exactly my point. Four weeks into scandal B, it's not getting as much coverage and discussion as scandal A did during a campaign.
None of that is surprising, and I expect the current $SHITSTORM_DU_JOUR to get a lot more amplification in 2028 than in May of 2025, which is the same pattern as happened in scandal A's emails.
She was Secretary of State from 2009 to 2013. We heard a ton about the scandal in the 2016 election cycle [when it was convenient and useful politically], not in 2009-2013.
I'm friends with several retired military officers. They tend towards red, but they're absolutely incensed over the Hegseth topic, especially the ones who flew pointy jets.
> If you read the article, there are both classified/secured and unsecured lines available at the station. So what specifically is the problem the administration uses Signal together with unsecured comms?
There are two issues. First, official communications about the workings of government ought to occur on government platforms, so that there's a permanent record for the communication. (As others have mentioned, this is required by the Federal Records Act.)
Second, the Pentagon has limited phone service and limited public internet access by design. The other computers in the office, while for unclassified material, are not (as I understand it) connected to the public internet like Hegseth's personal laptop is.
That said, I have no issue if Hegseth wants to use Signal to make dinner plans with other government officials.
Unfortunately the list of politicians who either don't care about records of their communications being properly kept, or who went out of their way to keep their comms "off the books" is long.
We should want to hold all of them to account, not just this one.
[FBI director James Comey said] "Clinton had been 'extremely careless' but recommended that no charges be filed because Clinton did not act with criminal intent, the historical standard for pursuing prosecution"
Is '[not] acting with criminal intent' really the standard we think we want to hold our elected officials to?
> Yes, mens rea is a deeply-precedented standard that's a good default
(From the other side the pond) it does seem that legal standards such that one are applied very selectively in the USA, apparently depending heavily on the political leanings of those involved in any (potential) case.
On the other hand, at least you do actually run elections to pick your POTUS, this side of the Atlantic we get the President of the European Commission based on a back-room deal and a Soviet-style "vote" in the Parliament with no choice. To top it off, when she first got the job in 2019, VdL wasn't even a candidate for it during the immediately preceeding European elections.
The European Commission ended up in court trying to keep Ursula von der Leyen's messages secret 'claiming that the texts were “by [their] nature short-lived” and were not covered by the EU’s freedom of information law'
> European Commission ended up in court trying to keep Ursula von der Leyen's messages secret 'claiming that the texts were “by [their] nature short-lived” and were not covered by the EU’s freedom of information law'
Sure. They still wound up in court. Hegseth hasn't had to go to court to defend himself because he hasn't even been investigated. You really have to go back to the Austro-Hungarian Empire to find these levels of exploitable ineptitude at the highest ranks of a major military structure.
That case was brought by the New York Times, not any oversight body or investigative function of the EU, which makes it even more cringe-worthy.
"The European Commission faced an embarrassing grilling for almost five hours on Friday as top EU judges cast doubt on the executive’s commitment to transparency on the Covid-19 vaccine negotiations. The EU institution defended itself in a packed EU court in Luxembourg in the so-called Pfizergate case, brought by the New York Times and its former Brussels bureau chief Matina Stevis-Gridneff."
The NYT is presumably welcome to try to take Hegseth to court?
> The NYT is presumably welcome to try to take Hegseth to court?
The Times sued to get Von der Leyen to share information. Hegseth already does that because he's an idiot. To my knowledge, SecDef isn't subject to FOIA in a meaningful way.
Sharing details as he has done would put my brother who works for the Navy in the brig. As someone in his role he should know better but he’s only in his role as he will do whatever Trump asks him to. He was a O4, there’s a zero percent chance of him being knowledgeable enough to be competent in his role.
He knew better when saying Clinton's behavior amounted to treason.
We don't need to argue about if he knew better; he did, from his own mouth. We need to argue about if it is ok and if it is ok for the people in power to do nothing about it because it's "their team".
At some point soon we need to realize we the people are on one team and everyone saying otherwise is trying to hurt us.
> At some point soon we need to realize we the people are on one team and everyone saying otherwise is trying to hurt us.
This might be good for a generic politician running for an election to say, but it's not true. We're not on the same team; we're different groups of people with different values who hate each other. Our politicians are the people we've voted to represent us. It's not like Trump, for example, hoodwinked Republicans; they like everything he's doing, and have for ten years, and a lot of it is because people like me hate him. We're not on the same team.
I know some pretty competent O-4s...but also a TON of mouth-breathing field grade officers too. Hegseth sucks on his own merits (or lack thereof) as a person.
The issue is much deeper and more concerning. They’ve been using Signal like this across multiple administrations because the “official” tools are broken to the point of being almost useless. Signal has been one of the major workarounds.
It isn’t enough to say “don’t use Signal”, at some point they need to address the reality that there are no functional alternatives.
The article dissects what's on Hesgeth's desk behind him. First, there's a personal computer there connected to the open web. The article says, "He wanted this computer to use the messaging app Signal, which is the preferred method of communication among Trump's government officials."
Right next to that computer is a "Cisco IP Phone 8851 with a 14-key expansion module." That phone "connects the President, the National Security Council, Cabinet members, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, intelligence agency watch centers, and others." IOW everybody ostensibly on that Signal chat except the editor of The Atlantic.
So now I'm questioning what "functional" means in this context. Does it mean "A thing I can type into while I'm at my desk and can continue to use while I'm taking a dump as long as I poop in public wifi", or does it mean "a thing that brings all top staff together to truly "have op-sec"?
Reading further it looks like he also had access to "SecDef Cables", which provides " interoperable, certified and accredited, multi-security level voice, video, and data services."
So there are functional alternatives, especially considering the functions I personally thought our government was looking for. Maybe they prioritized a safe space for Waltz to use his favorite emojis instead?
> Has Congress made it illegal to use an off-brand messaging app for secure communications?
Yes. The law requires that classified information be handled under certain standards.
> _Why_ is it insecure?
Classified data is being transmitted on an unsecured device. If Hegseth's personal phone has Uber, Tinder, ... whatever apps installed, that software is running on a device that's contains national secrets.
Systems which handle classified data are meant to be airgapped from the normal internet/normal software.
The issue is not that signal is insecure, but rather that sensitive government information demands additional precaution (e.g. airgapping).
There's a separate issue that there are legal requirements for maintaining records of government communication. Using a personal device (especially with disappearing messages) is illegal since it doesn't maintain this documentation.
Additionally, classified information is tracked to see who read it and when. In the event of a security leak, this can help isolate where the leak happened. If the information gets posted on Signal, then there's nothing more that can be tracked.
> For better or worse, he is the Secretary of Defense...The man we've entrusted to help coordinate our national defense.
That's not the way rule of law works. The Secretary of Defense doesn't get to _decide_ we're doing things differently now. His actions, as well as the actions of his staff, are bound by the laws that congress has passed.
> We need to start from the presumption that the people-in-power don't care that it's always been done this way...in fact, they have a ton of pressure to be different. But, in some cases, these people may be willing to listen to reasonable arguments which clearly establish _why_ using Signal is unreasonably worse than using US Government Issue messaging.
The onus should not be on the general public to convince the Secretary of Defense to adhere to bog standard requirements for handling sensitive information. If he has an idea, "I think using Signal on my personal phone to discuss imminent military actions is better than using a secure line," he could push that idea forward. Have the Pentagon's security staff evaluate the idea. Instead, he simply did it.
Anyone in the military who did this, and didn't have the president personally protecting him would be cooling his heels in an 8x8 cell in Fort Leavenworth for a very long time.
The issue is that it has all been done with great incompetence, and with apparent glorification of ignorance as a sign of bravado. I, for one, want serious people in charge of my defense, not sycophants more concerned with their stage makeup, hair, fitted suit, and with 'owning the libs' than defending our nation.
Not to pick on this in particular – nearly all the reporting on this starts and ends with "Signal is insecure" as if that was all it took to be wrong. And in other eras, that was enough.
The man likes Signal. For better or worse, he is the Secretary of Defense...The man we've entrusted to help coordinate our national defense.
There's so many questions I genuinely don't have an answer for...
Has Congress made it illegal to use an off-brand messaging app for secure communications? _Why_ is it insecure? What is the probability that China is reading these messages in real-time? 100%? 25%? 0.2%?
We need to start from the presumption that the people-in-power don't care that it's always been done this way...in fact, they have a ton of pressure to be different. But, in some cases, these people may be willing to listen to reasonable arguments which clearly establish _why_ using Signal is unreasonably worse than using US Government Issue messaging.