> 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.
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/timeline-key-figures-found-l...
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.
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".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillary_Clinton_email_controve...
That sounds a lot worse than what Hegseth is accused of, but didn’t derail her nomination nor draw widespread condemnation from Democrats.
That’s what I mean by “ignoring it”: the conclusion was bad but largely ignored by the party.
The DoD kit makes it a little bit harder to add randos to chats where one needlessly posts tactical air strike details.
I hold this position and I don't think it's uncommon. Plenty of people think if something is wrong then it doesn't matter who does it.
There's definitely perception bias. Usually conversations are short when we're in agreement. Doesn't create engagement. Doesn't make for good news
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.
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.
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.
SecDef Lovett only rose to O-4 before going into the NYC business community and then becoming a Special Assistant to SecWar Stimpson in 1940. https://history.defense.gov/Multimedia/Biographies/Article-V...
SecDef McElroy came up through Proctor & Gamble, no government or military experience. https://history.defense.gov/Multimedia/Biographies/Article-V...
Just as a few examples of adequately-successful SecDefs coming from "unimpressive" paper resumes.
