I'm an external individual to the US, but I must admit that some of the sentiments being expressed here in this thread and elsewhere about the lack of accountability deeply concern me, it reminds me of many things I saw growing up and still see today in south asia.
Independent of anything else, I do see the overton window shifting in the US, the most subtle of which are norms and expectations around acts of corruption.
Every nation has it's minor acts of corruption, small favours between friends, which I've always thought of as being functionally impossible to remove as they also allow for a flexible environment which allows things to get done.
However the norms seem to be shifting more towards the idea that those in power can act as they will, and in fact the expected thing is they will act to enrich themselves. I hope this does not happen, because this is death to entrepreneurship, this is one of those things that will poison the economy, when people no longer trust that what they make can be theirs, that others can look on in envy at the work they have built on their blood and sweat and can take it as their due because they have power.
That will create a chilling effect for anyone who wishes to create and will make them wonder as myself and many others have considered, whether it's better to create their life's work elsewhere.
I sincerely hope this doesn't happen here, once this mindset becomes a norm, it's incredibly hard thing to stamp out.
20after4 · 35d ago
It's so much worse than that already. If corruption was the only problem we face in the US then there might be some real hope to reverse course.
bsenftner · 35d ago
The corruption is caused by their short sightedness, a total lack of critical analysis capacity to see past the surface assessment of pretty much everything. The problem in the United States is that adults are no longer adults, we manufacture immature people with simplistic world views that seriously know no better, and they have the entire Republican Party hostage, a material percentage of the Democratic Party, and in general the USA is awash in a state of noncommunication because such people cannot see past their immediate assessments to find any common ground. Sure, we have real adults, but not enough to make a critical difference in the quality of our public discourse, to reverse this nose dive.
noboostforyou · 34d ago
Bingo! And the sadder part is this isn't even anything new, but it's all come to a head now.
“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”
― Isaac Asimov, 1980
belter · 34d ago
Shame he did not take to the obvious conclusion that is now in evidence. The idea that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge" has been instrumentalized.
This relativism is encouraged, not because people genuinely believe all views are equal, but because it neutralizes inconvenient truths. If no one can claim authority, then no one can hold power accountable.
AStonesThrow · 34d ago
> The strain of anti-intellectualism
Perhaps part of the problem is that snooty intellectual elitists want everyone to be geopolitical geniuses and socially activist and fight for their hobby horses, when every nation, especially large ones, are in desperate need of people who mind their own business, keep their heads down, and contribute humbly to the common good.
Rather than being pushed through university and having technology shoved everywhere into their faces and bombarding them with messages from liars and hucksters at every step.
I honestly regret gaining knowledge about a lot of things that concern me because while “knowledge is power” it’s also known that “ignorance is bliss” because curiosity killed the cat.
If we’re a nation that stands and falls on the strength of social media disputes then perhaps it’s time to let the best bots win.
noboostforyou · 34d ago
> are in desperate need of people who mind their own business, keep their heads down, and contribute humbly to the common good.
What do you even mean by this? Unless I'm misunderstanding, your comment sounds like you are advocating for a "let them eat cake" ideology.
Do you think our current administration exemplifies the three things you say we are in desperate need of?
AStonesThrow · 34d ago
“Our current administration” idk wtf you even mean, because my leadership is significantly different than yours except for whoever’s in DC.
And you’ve hit the nail on the head there, because rather than placing our family first, community and local concerns ahead of all else, or loving who we are and where we’re at,
we’re wrapped up in a self-inflicted TDS dystopia that surely consists of a 7-layer burrito of illusions and fantasy, because politics is a reality show that is often scripted.
noboostforyou · 33d ago
> “Our current administration” idk wtf you even mean
This is a very common colloquial phrase assuming you are from the US - it refers to the President and their administration.
Can you answer the question now?
AStonesThrow · 33d ago
People are really enamored of focusing white-hot rage or glowing adulation on one guy. And for USians, it's the POTUS and his executive branch. It's not difficult to just send the same focus on just 9 dudes and dudettes in black robes, or just a majority of them, or a few choice villains in Congress, and just blame them for all the ills in society and our family's poor life choices and all that's wrong in the world today that may have started about 4 years ago so that we don't need to take accountability right here in the Old Therebefore, the distant past or present. So I invite you to downvote this comment to -3 like the parent.
I'm tired of blaming people far away and quite distant from us for stuff. At a National Security Level, none [hopefully] of us know what's really going on and none of us can actually DO anything about it, except kvetch and moan and whine into our keyboards. Surely all you spycraft fans could admit that there may be a 7-layer burrito of fake-outs and misdirection and Fog of War involved with a fuckin' Signal chat that got a scoop for a single news outlet? We're literally on social media discussing a... single report... about a thread on social media that was seen by one too many people. Since MySpace was founded, the lamestream media reporters have made entire careers out of digging stuff out of someone's profile or their friends posts and splaying it out in a Film At Eleven. But is there anything new under the Sun?
I personally admire our President [although he's got some unattractive personal traits] and I love the administration's progress since his first election, but it's all such big-picture stuff that really affects you and me so little, in the here and now. What matters much more is what's going on next door, in my home parish, in my municipality, and then there's diocese and county and state all above that. What also matters is the Finger of God, his angels and his saints, and their participation in what's going on, when "spiritual autists" need to hold men accountable and attack and blame humans--your sisters and brothers--for events and occurrences which are surely beyond human power to control or even correctly perceive. You believe that "knowledge is power" so is your knowledge absolute? Does your knowledge confer absolute power to know and act? Is there no higher knowledge or wider justice than the knowledge wielded by your philosophy, Horatio?
Name-calling, finding fault, spreading rumors and exposing scandalous gossip. When you get involved the Politics Reality Show and the Lamestream Media, that is your currency in trade. The media rakes muck and the politicians wallow in it and fling it back at them in the same briefing room, but it sullies not their impeccable blonde tresses nor designer Prada soles that you picked up in the 90210.
No comments yet
knowsuchagency · 33d ago
In the words of JD Vance, "What?"
DonHopkins · 34d ago
Well thanks for letting everyone know that you're one of the thin skinned victim playing anti-intellectualists Asimov (and many others) were warning us about. What is the term for "virtue signaling" when you're signaling the exact opposite of virtue?
mmmpetrichor · 34d ago
In the past, I think the two party system somewhat protected against this. The complete capture of the party by trump has removed the system's ability to guard against this. Most senior republicans from a generation ago would recoil at what is happening in their party today. but many of the ones around during the trump takeover were absolutely spineless during his first administration, and things are far worse now.
belter · 34d ago
The full text now:
"The statements by Hegseth, Gabbard, Ratcliffe, and Trump—combined with the assertions made by numerous administration officials that we are lying about the content of the Signal texts—have led us to believe that people should see the texts in order to reach their own conclusions. There is a clear public interest in disclosing the sort of information that Trump advisers included in nonsecure communications channels, especially because senior administration figures are attempting to downplay the significance of the messages that were shared..."
I'd recommend for Entrepreneurs, just like Scientists now do, to consider Europe as a safe-haven. In the EU the rule of law still matters.
somenameforme · 35d ago
The grass isn't always greener. I think the core underlying issue at all of this is social divides within countries. When groups of people become sufficiently antagonistic towards one another, it really enables widespread corruption because people will actively blind themselves (or handwave away) to the wrongs of "their side" and magnify the wrongs of "the other side" with no limits to the hyperbole.
And Europe is most certainly not an exception to this, especially in current times. For instance 65% of EU citizens do not believe that high level corruption is sufficiently pursued. [1] And basically every EU country (outside of Scandiland) has a majority to vast majority who believe that corruption is widespread in their country.
But public perception doesn’t necessarily reflect actual levels of corruption. Having dodgy planning approved is not the same as buying a seat at the head of the government for a quarter billion dollars.
somenameforme · 34d ago
Corruption is always measured by perceptions. There are many reasons for this but when it comes to high level corruption it's especially clear - high level corruption, in most countries, is rarely pursued, let alone prosecuted. And efforts to do such may themselves be driven by corruption. And people's actions, as on all things, will be guided by their perceptions. And so things like corruption's influence on things like starting a business will be driven largely by perceptions.
j16sdiz · 35d ago
Public perception do not reflect actual corruption, but it affects how likely people try to start a new business.
IMO, this is more important.
codingbot3000 · 35d ago
I'd say US corruption is now more transparent than EU corruption :D
That was once different, with Berlusconi at the helm in Italy while owning the major TV outlets.
akudha · 34d ago
The grass isn’t always greener
Like most things in life, I suppose it is all relative? Diabetes sucks, but it sure sucks less than cancer.
Of course it would be lovely if there is zero corruption, zero pollution, zero nepotism etc. Which is highly unlikely to happen?
Which brings the question - what is the best country to live, relatively speaking?
coldtea · 35d ago
Sure, that's why von der Leyen run the huge Pfizer deals then conveniently "lost" the SMS about them, hired her pals as defense consultants hiding €100+ million of the costs and the decisions which favored the companies supporting her (e.g. lucrative contracts were awarded to the global consulting giant McKinsey & Company, where von der Leyen's son works as an associate, and several other cases.
And she is just the tip of the iceberg of EU corruption. In general such politicians only get repercusions selectively, and usually only when the political direction changes and they're no longer useful to the establishment.
I love how this subthread devolved into arguing about Europe's attached bottlecap regulations and that the GDPR has resulted in lots of very annoying cookie banners.
So in the US you have a corrupt, authoritarian takeover of a society – and in Europe you have well-meaning, but somewhat annoying, regulations that still need some work to function perfectly.
Cthulhu_ · 35d ago
The cookie banners were never mandated by GDPR, that's entirely the industry's fault and intent - dark UX patterns to try and annoy the user into agreeing, or a silent protest to the perceived overbearing nature of the GDPR.
They could've just respected a browser's do-not-track header but chose not to. The EU legislators should've done that too, that is, dictate a standardized method for people to opt in.
fundatus · 35d ago
Or.. god forbid.. not track users?! I know this isn't viable for many businesses, but back then I just removed Google Analytics and all cookies from my sites, so no cookie banners needed.
gspr · 35d ago
Oh I agree. I'm just saying, either way that discussion goes, it just's not even the same order of severity magnitude as a corrupt authoritarian takeover.
username332211 · 35d ago
Could you explain why the state railway of the Federal Republic of Germany uses dark UX patterns to annoy the user into agreeing or silently protests the perceived overbearing nature of the GDPR?
Btw, I can dig up 3 dozen of other state institutions with cookie banners, if you so wish?
pembrook · 35d ago
Not sure how you could possibly come up with this idea — but I’d recommend not consuming hysterical media narratives and instead looking at actual data. This is a chart of globally relevant companies founded in Europe in the last 50 years:
The data depicts the exact opposite of what you are saying. As an entrepreneur, you can be “safe” knowing you will have far less chance to succeed in the EU.
bildung · 35d ago
These just compare market cap. As the US economy is disproportionally financialized, that outcome is hardly surprising: This was just measuring market financialization by proxy. I mean two of the largest on the left, Google and Meta, are essentially just ad companies.
I omitted the 50 years distinction because, unsurprisingly, the companies in the US are younger.
None of these are actually relevant for founders, however, as even in the US you only have a couple dozen large cap companies, but millions of founders.
What is relevant is the share of employers per capita, as that shows us how many founders actually exist.
Yes, Europe did have great entrepreneurial culture in the past, but the point of the “founded in the last 50 years” distinction is to measure how things have been going for entrepreneurs who are still alive today.
You can’t call a region a “safe haven for entrepreneurs” if all the globally relevant entrepreneurs from that region are dead from old age.
Remember, Europe has double the population of the US. To lag behind so dramatically in the last 50 years is absolutely something to be concerned about.
Having to move the goalposts to the 1850s to make a point about relevant European businesses should be alarming to you.
gnfargbl · 35d ago
Your point is well taken, but I think we need to question why Europe declined so significantly as a centre of innovation.
A big part of it is obviously the relative effects of twentieth century wars, both hot and cold. However, we also need to be aware that in recent decades, the US has just offered a better deal for entrepreneurs than Europe. By that I mean it has been a democratic, rule-of-law-based country with relatively easy access to capital and relatively low taxes.
It still has the last two things, of course. But the first two are also essential, long-term, and if they're eroded then the US might stop looking like a better deal.
veidr · 34d ago
I agree, but most Americans don't; I suspect we'll see in the coming decade or two, unless the US executes some kind of implausible course correction.
On the one hand, studies have suggested that nearly half of highly successful entrepreneurs/founders in the US are immigrants or children of immigrants. As the US becomes more authoritarian and more corrupt, its easy to imagine people choosing to do their new startup from, say, Berlin.
On the other hand, lots of people choose Singapore, too; rule-of-law-based country with relatively easy access to capital and relatively low taxes — but without actual democracy.
I'm aware of my own inherent bias of wanting democracy to be important to people when making this kind of calculation, but I'm not sure that we have any real evidence of that.
gnfargbl · 34d ago
The reason that I think rule-of-law will always be important to entrepreneurs is that if you don't have those things, then you're always at risk of the King taking what is "his" and you being left with nothing to show for all your efforts. In England, this problem led to the basic foundation of our democracy. The primary aim of the Magna Carta was for the Barons of the land to inform King John that yes, he was also subject to the law, and no, he couldn't just imprison them and confiscate their lands at will.
I do agree on Singapore, though. It's an interesting case in that the benevolent dictatorship offers most of the advantages of Western democracies in terms of a law-based contract between rulers and the ruled, but with (arguably) a more solid promise of long-term social stability. There's definitely a chance that we all end up in that situation.
immibis · 35d ago
Lag by what measure? Cities are just better as cities, laws are annoyingly bureaucratic but actually work, your neighbour isn't likely to shoot you dead... The US does better on abstract statistics like GDP, but... GDP is biased in favour of whoever issues the global reserve currency, so that doesn't actually mean a lot unless you are specifically trying to accumulate units of global reserve currency.
pembrook · 35d ago
These are all logical fallacies and red herrings that have nothing to do with what we're talking about.
If we try to steer the ship back to the topic at hand...here's why we should be concerned that Europe's private sector isn't growing much or innovating much.
It turns out, Europeans entire way of life is funded by taxing the activity of the private sector and redistributing that money to things like healthcare, education, pensions, etc. Innovation (increased productivity) is the only way to reliably grow this pie, and innovation is exclusively the domain of the private sector due to the competitive pressures of markets.
If our private sector is entirely composed of aging industrial-age conglomerates waiting to be disrupted by more dynamic and innovative Chinese competitors (China is rapidly becoming better at the things European industrial companies used to dominate), our entire society is at risk. Militarily, we're sitting ducks, and economically, we are as well.
Modern Europe is economically heading the way of the Soviet Union, with an increasing share of GDP driven via centrally controlled government spending (we're now at over 50% on average in the EU, the Soviets were around 70-85% at peak).
Meanwhile, The Chinese Communist Party has ironically created one of the most dynamic, capitalist systems on the planet. The Chinese supposedly "communist" economy is in fact more market-driven than even the US economy (33% government-driven vs 36% government-driven), and you can see this in the numbers:
https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/exp@FPP/USA/FRA/JPN/...
It doesn't take a Phd to understand that a much larger and more unified population in China, with a more unleashed private sector, is going to eat the lunch of the smaller, disjointed micro-economies in Europe. And this doesn't even factor in the rise of industrial investment in the US in recent years.
gnfargbl · 35d ago
China may be market-based, but does China actually allow successful entrepreneurs to actually retain the fruits of their successes, or are those fruits confiscated in ways unrelated to taxation? Look at Jack Ma, for instance.
This is why the rule of law is so important. It's a Maslow's Hierarchy type situation, and if the choice is between creating value in a system which will tax a good proportion of it away (current EU) and creating value in a system which may capriciously confiscate it (current China) then I argue that people are more incentivised in the first case.
Hard to say for sure about Jack Ma, did anything actually happen to him, and if so, was what happened to him fair? He seems better off than me.
China still has many billionaire and millionaire entrepreneurs, so it does appear that they have the concept of markets and capitalism on a leash in such a way that wins for the people of the China, the central government, and the entrepreneurs. Even if some of that isn't perfect, they live in a country of rising prosperity, and I live in a country of 30 years of stagnation where billionaires just bought the government to turn us into an impoverished 3rd world feudal state.
Even if I'm completely wrong about about China and it's all a lie or bubble, my country isn't exactly offering a future.
MPSFounder · 34d ago
Great analysis. I will disagree with your last point though. The intangible remains; China is not an open society by any means, and its companies are under gov surveillance (just look at DeepSeek). I met a very smart man at a conference a few weeks ago. We were discussing evs in China. His response was he wants to stay in the US and does not use DeepSeek due to its surveillance. He feared if he visited China he would get in trouble. This transcends my anecdote. Private companies operating under oppressive regimes will not prosper. The chains of oppression are not to be underestimated
yellowapple · 34d ago
> innovation is exclusively the domain of the private sector due to the competitive pressures of markets.
You are able to read this very comment (and write your own) in large part specifically because of public-sector innovation.
pembrook · 34d ago
Certainly a good point, but largely overstated. It's fundamentally incorrect to act as if the private sector didn't do the bulk of the development of computing and the internet itself, commercializing and evolving the software and hardware, and running the physical fiber optic lines.
But thank god for the US department of Y combinator for taking a risk on all those evil private startups so they'd be able to support this government website.
yellowapple · 34d ago
It's also fundamentally incorrect to act as if the private sector would've done very many of those things without extensive cooperation with and guidance/mandate from the public sector.
immibis · 34d ago
This is a logical fallacy and a red herring that has nothing to do with what we're talking about.
I say "GDP doesn't matter that much" and you pivot back to how GDP isn't growing and that's a problem.
You say the future will be like the present except that China will replace the USA in the position the USA currently occupies. So what? The present is pretty good.
You say that the USSR is when the government does stuff and that's really bad. That's going to need more evidence.
Funding is a way of keeping track of the things that are done, not a way of doing things. Different economies put more or less importance on the accounting and more or less importance on the actual doing. Facts about funding cannot be conflated with facts about actual doing, especially in economies that are more likely to override the funding if they don't like the way the funding is causing doing. (That's something like what the "government fraction of GDP" is - it's the percentage of times the people didn't like the free market results and chose to override them)
bildung · 34d ago
But if that is true, why does the EU actually has almost double the entrepreneurs per capita the US has, as I have linked?
> Having to move the goalposts to the 1850s to make a point about relevant European businesses should be alarming to you.
Please actually have a look at the EU list and click through to the companies. They are all directly linked in Wikipedia. The majority is from the 1980s and younger.
gnfargbl · 34d ago
I wasn't convinced of this, so I asked ChatGPT to give me the founding dates of the top 10 companies from the Wikipedia page, with an instruction to track backwards through M&A. Here's the result:
* Volkswagen: Founded on May 28, 1937, as Gesellschaft zur Vorbereitung des Deutschen Volkswagens mbH, later renamed Volkswagenwerk.
* Shell: Formed in April 1907 through the merger of Royal Dutch Petroleum Company (established in 1890) and The "Shell" Transport and Trading Company (founded in 1897).
* TotalEnergies: Established in 1924 as Compagnie Française des Pétroles (CFP).
* Glencore: Originated as Marc Rich + Co AG in 1974.
* BP: Incorporated on April 14, 1909, as the Anglo-Persian Oil Company.
* Stellantis: Formed on January 17, 2021, from the merger of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles and PSA Group. Fiat Chrysler Automobiles was established through the merger of Fiat S.p.A. (founded July 11, 1899) and Chrysler Group LLC (originally Chrysler Corporation, founded June 6, 1925). PSA Group was Established as Peugeot Société Anonyme in 1966, but its roots trace back to Peugeot's original founding in 1810 as a family industrial business.
* BMW: Traces its origins to Bayerische Flugzeugwerke AG, established on March 7, 1916.
* Mercedes-Benz Group: Resulted from the merger of Benz & Cie. (founded in 1883) and Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft (founded in 1890) in 1926.
* Électricité de France (EDF): Established in 1946 following the nationalization of France's electricity sector.
* Banco Santander: Founded on May 15, 1857, as Banco de Santander.
We could do the full list and then weight by revenue or something but broadly, I think the point that 'pembrook is making is proven.
As an aside, one feature of LLMs that I genuinely do enjoy is the ability to ask for intern-level research like this.
ta1243 · 35d ago
Stop pretending that America of today is anything like America of 15 years ago
pembrook · 35d ago
Please elaborate on the anti-entrepreneur shifts that have occurred in the US in the last 15 years that would disrupt this trend. I’m not aware of them.
If this were true, 15 years would definitely be enough time to show up in some form of data you can cite about the death of American startup culture.
Marazan · 35d ago
Who is talking about the last 15 years? We are talking about the last 15 weeks.
America has jut installed a corrupt autocratic government that has immediately become mired in corruption, graft and defiance of the rule of law.
That will have a negative effect going forward.
pembrook · 35d ago
Not sure how young you are, but I highly recommend not making decisions based on the hysterical 2-year swinging pendulum of American political rhetoric.
American media is just as innovative as the rest of their economy, meaning they are constantly finding ways to prey on your emotions and your eyeballs with stories and content.
In reality, the US government is one of the most static, unchanging organizations on the planet.
The US government has been trying to get Europe to invest in its own defense for 50+ years. It's been trying to solve immigration for 50+ years. It's been trying to come to a solution on healthcare for 50+ years. Nothing is going to happen in the next 4 decades let alone the next 4 years.
Marazan · 35d ago
> In reality, the US government is one of the most static, unchanging organizations on the planet.
How naive are you? I mean seriously.
Your post is one of the worst faux savvy takes I have seen. A true classic of the genre. The US Government is not an independent thing: it is made up of people. And if you haven't notice the current set of people are doing lots of gigantic, unprecedented things.
You either have a truly massive case of normalcy bias, or you approve of their lawlessnes and are running cover.
pembrook · 34d ago
Your argument might hold some more weight if it weren't the exact same flavor of hysterical rhetoric that we all saw back in 2016...where...not much changed.
But I totally get it, this time is different! The US is in crisis! How could I not see the obvious signs?? It's all over the headlines!
skyyler · 34d ago
I don't think any of our allies stopped buying our weapons during his first campaign.
According to his other comments, he's straight up in denial about everything that's been happening lately and thinks literally nothing is going wrong. If most Americans also hold that view, we really have no chance of getting out of this situation.
ta1243 · 35d ago
> The US government has been trying to get Europe to invest in its own defense for 50+ years
Blatantly untrue. America has spent 50 years ensuring europe is reliant on America for security, because America likes the economic benefits that brings.
pembrook · 34d ago
Joe Biden on the floor of the US senate over 30+ years ago complaining about how Europe has no coherent common strategy on defense:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YA9eMKNCRuQ
> The US has warned that greater military co-operation between EU countries would be a “dramatic reversal” of three decades of transatlantic defence integration, in the latest sign of the fraying relationship between Washington and Brussels.
That's 2019. When Trump was in power.
> It said that Washington was “deeply concerned” that approval of the rules for the European Defence Fund and the Permanent Structured Cooperation, or Pesco, launched in 2017 to plug gaps in Europe’s military power, would “produce duplication, non-interoperable military systems, diversion of scarce defence resources and unnecessary competition between Nato and the EU”.
skyyler · 34d ago
>"When have the Germans moved in a way to unify that continent?"
Uh, Joe, it was a pretty bad scene the last time that happened.
veidr · 34d ago
They are both true. America engineered the previous world order, where the West relied on American protection, which at the same time helped keep the dollar the world currency and America the most influential and powerful nation.
At the same time, they complained about Europe not doing enough and shouldering enough of the burden, and I find it plausible that they legitimately did wish Europe would do that, the above paragraph notwithstanding.
ta1243 · 34d ago
> At the same time, they complained about Europe not doing enough
Except whenever Europe did try to, America used its soft power to dissuade Europe from this course of action, and instead continue funneling money into American arms manufacturers.
veidr · 34d ago
I think your normalcy bias might be showing here:
> In reality, the US government is one of the most static, unchanging organizations on the planet.
The changes in that past couple of months are, objectively, enormous disruptions to the previous status quo (of the last 50+ years).
NATO may still exist on paper, but not in the world. The US has estranged almost all of its closest allies that it's had for my entire lifetime — I'm 50 — and in ways that are offensive, threatening, and simultaneously weirdly petty, and which would take a decade or more to repair even in the unlikely event that somehow the current administration was somehow replaced today, and efforts began immediately.
The US president has also opened up avenues for corruption and out-in-the-open bribe-taking (meme coin, banks of hotel rooms, his wife's vanity projects, etc etc etc) that are absolutely unprecedented in US history, of the ilk historically seen more in places like Malaysia, Peru, or the Philippines under Marcos. (Even Silvio Berlusconi was substantially more tactful and less obvious about it.)
At the same time, the administration is performatively flouting the rule-of-law, in ways completely unprecedented in the past 50 years. Openly defying judicial orders. Disappearing people without due process (yes, like all fledgling autocracies, they are starting with the already marginalized; purported gang members, brown-skinned or Asian permanent residents).
The childhood parables like "The Emperor's New Clothes" never actually, like, literally occurred in the America I knew, until this guy. Last time it was just "my crowd was bigger than Obama's" but this time it's "Ukraine started the war" (somehow arranging to be invaded by a murderous dictatorship waging a campaign of rape, torture, and mass child abduction).
> Nothing is going to happen in the next 4 decades let alone the next 4 years.
Way more than "nothing" has already happened. More substantial, self-directed change has already happened in 2-3 months than in Trump's entire first term, or any term of any president, in 50-100 years. I strongly suspect this trend will continue.
As you can no doubt infer, I am not a huge fan of this administration. But neither am I a partisan; I would characterize this administration as worse than any administration, Republican or Democrat, of my lifetime — and by a lot. (I include Trump's first term in that, but only because that static, glacial-pace US government you think still exists did still exist then, so even though the graft and weird dictator-fetish/emulation was present then, too, it didn't have the impact that it's already had in this term.)
Whether you think it is worse or better, I mean, we all have different priorities but it is unarguably very different — and has already made the US government very different — than anything seen in the past 50+ years.
pembrook · 34d ago
A whole lot of words to justify an emotional feeling that's going to change in less than <2 years when the mid-terms inevitably flip the senate and house towards the democrats, as always happens when the pendulum swings one way in US politics.
Washington is and always has been corrupt, and political battles no matter how hilariously trivial in context to history have always been "the most important of our lifetimes."
Everything is fine and going to be fine.
veidr · 34d ago
Well, I hope you are right, but I suspect your hypothesis will be disproven, and that you might, in fact, be the one who is confused by the hysterical American media that you decry, conflating its ratings-driven amplification of every conflict to existential crisis level — the informational version of the "loudness war" in music production — with actual events.
Sure, the TV and social media will tell you that every year's crisis is "the most important of our lifetimes", and that isn't true. But obviously, it sometimes has to be true, right? I mean, at least once, and probably several times, depending from when to when we are alive.
"Important" is a matter of perspective, and also desired outcome, so YMMV but in my 50+ years of life there have been 3 such events driven by or pertaining to the US government:
- the collapse of the USSR and the end of the Cold War
- response to 9/11 and the aftermath
- 2025 US table-flip of the post-WW2 world order, pursuit of autocracy, and assault on the rule of law
Every government is corrupt; it's a matter of degree, and the reason you can't name a US government as corrupt as this one is because there hasn't been one. Watergate? Iran/Contra? B.J. Clinton? It's not close to the same degree.
Lesser disruptions have included the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2007 financial crisis, the internet, AIDS, maybe crack cocaine in the 80s, ... but those are more emergent side effects of human behavior than things done with intent. Things we deal with, not things we do.
Everything is fine? Disagree. Everything is going to be fine? Well, whew, good to know.
But I understood your point to be that everything is the same, and will be the same, broadly speaking, as it's been for the past 5 decades.
But it's not. It's wildly different, already. And even if, as you suggest, the 2026 elections somehow happened without egregious interference from the ruling administration (unlikely), and flipped control of congress to the opposition (maybe) — there's still no way to go back to the "before" times.
ta1243 · 34d ago
> Every government is corrupt
I think it's also important to say every public company is corrupt. It's a consequence of size.
veidr · 33d ago
Sure, that is just as true.
root_axis · 34d ago
> when the mid-terms inevitably flip the senate and house towards the democrats
Very unlikely, just based on the math. Even less likely now that Trump is overhauling the federal election system.
Marazan · 35d ago
Historical data is not great for forming an argument when the basis is that things have radically changed and historical results don't matter anymore.
casey2 · 35d ago
How much of this is because of the US strong-arming companies in their sphere of influence? Nobody here actually forgot the MegaUpload fiasco, it's just that people pretend to forget abusive relationships.
whiplash451 · 35d ago
Europe suffers from another kind of "corruption", more akin to a corrupted file system: absurd, rigid and unpredictable regulation makes life very hard for businesses, which drives large private capital away.
I am European, and every time I open one of those stupid locked-on bottle caps, I feel pain for my country, for Europe (and for my face).
varius · 35d ago
Then send a message to the producer. The law requires for caps to be attached but doesn't describe how. I have a water bottle next to me that has a cap connected by one long piece after opening that doesn't touch my face at all when drinking.
Sure, Europe has some red tape that should be removed but don't paint it as some kind of Kafka's universe because it's not that bad. I'm from east side of Iron Curtain and I remember how bad that was.
Also, most of the businesses will do what's needed to be done because the market is big.
Personally, I prefer to live a life in a slightly over regulated place that at least keeps common people in mind than whatever is US turning into.
whiplash451 · 35d ago
Same answer as GDPR: when the majority/all of the companies implement it in a way that hurts everyone (businesses and end users alike), then the problem is with the regulator, not the regulated.
varius · 35d ago
Not exactly. First, a lot of bottles don't have that problem. Sure "most" bottles do but most is produced by few companies that made a bad design. So we only need few companies to fix design for the problem to go away.
Cookies stuff is indeed badly made and should be fixed. The should just mandate websites to accept a http header with relevant option (no-cookies, no-advertisment, no-tracking etc.).
Still, it's not the problem of regulator in itself. Rather, companies are taking advantage of the current version of the law because it's favorable to them - they know most people with quickly accept whatever to close the popup.
veidr · 34d ago
Yes, I 100% agree they should just mandate compliance with a specific HTTP header — and prohibit any popup or other smarmy trick or dark pattern of different behaviour if the header is present — but why haven't they?
I am honestly curious. If you are willing to go as far as they have, why not go that relatively tiny extra step?
I think it is a problem with the regulator. The cookie agreement mandate has legitimately fucked up the web for everybody. It's also done it in a way that mostly neutralizes the intended benefit of the law (because everybody just clicks the "fine! stuff your cookies up my arse or whatever, just get on with it!" button).
But a competent regulator must both measure the impacts of their regulations, and take action based on that data. It seems a weird place to stop.
3form · 35d ago
The conclusion isn't deducible from the premise (I can just as well say the opposite). Can you elaborate with some example?
immibis · 35d ago
In other words, personal responsibility doesn't apply to business owners.
watwut · 34d ago
GDPR does not hurt me and majority of its implementations don't hurt me. That there is a ton of nonsensical propaganda against it from entrepreneurs can't just do what they want is another matter.
m000 · 35d ago
GDPR is really not that complex. It's as simple as "if you don't need the data, don't collect them".
The problem is that every other company thinks they are Google or Meta. So they start overcollecting user data, in hope that one day they will be able to generate revenue from them. So they end up with overcomplicated compliance solutions and GDPR consulting fees, but without any actual use for the data they collect.
username332211 · 35d ago
So you think the GDPR isn't very complex. Let's put that to the test.
I need to record names and address across the European Union. What character encodings are illegal for such fields in a database?
No comments yet
nkrisc · 35d ago
> I am European, and every time I open one of those stupid locked-on bottle caps, I feel pain for my country, for Europe (and for my face).
Is life so bad in Europe that’s what you have to complain about? Sounds truly like a nightmare - caps attached to bottles? Barbaric.
soulofmischief · 35d ago
They're pointing out a surface-level symptom of a much deeper bureaucratic sickness in parts of Europe. There's a reason British comedy is what it is.
AdamN · 35d ago
What's wrong with recycling the bottle caps and not having them all over the place because they're small and otherwise fall onto the streets, sewers, and trails?? It's really not a problem to have the lid attached to the bottle - works totally fine for me whether it's milk, soda, or apple juice.
soulofmischief · 35d ago
I'm not OP, but to me, the bureaucratic issue is that plastic bottles should be wholesale banned instead of this halfass attempt at regulation or heavily purchase-controlled.
pastage · 30d ago
This is a political and economic issue though, there is no support for this.
foldr · 35d ago
It’s very easy to start a business in the UK and the regulatory environment isn’t particularly hostile to it. It depends a lot on what line of business you’re in, of course (as it does anywhere else).
soulofmischief · 35d ago
Unless my business is providing secure end-to-end communication to users in accordance with their basic human right to privacy and presumed innocence.
This feels like an attempt to derail the conversation rather than contribute to it. The arrest of Pavel Durov has nothing to do with the UK.
soulofmischief · 34d ago
Who said it had to do with the UK? The UK is part of Europe, and both the EU and UK have been introducing backdoor bills, the Online Safety Act and Chat Control respectively, and thus Europe as a whole has a political climate that is anti-freedom. So does the US, but Europe does, too.
foldr · 34d ago
My post that you responded to was specifically about the UK. You’re talking about someone being arrested in France. Your complaints about various pieces of legislation may be justified, but they’re not pertinent.
soulofmischief · 34d ago
Did you forget that my first message, which you replied to, was specifically about Europe?
So you replied about the UK specifically. I catered to that, and then reconnected it back to Europe as a whole, which I was originally discussing.
If someone here is derailing the conversation, it isn't me. Especially now that we're discussing the meta and not even the original subject.
Cthulhu_ · 35d ago
Stop buying disposable bottles then. They are part of a solution to a waste problem, but by continuing to buy disposablle bottles you're contributing to the issue.
lukan · 35d ago
"every time I open one of those stupid locked-on bottle caps, I feel pain for my country, for Europe (and for my face)."
You know that it is easy to remove the plastic locking the caps on? (Just twist them)
And to me it is also easy to drink with them locked on, just have it side ways.
So I also do have lots of complaints about the EU, but this ain't it.
redeux · 35d ago
This is what you complain about in Europe? Every day when I drop my children off at school I wonder if today’s the day. That’s not hyperbole, it’s my reality in the US.
franga2000 · 35d ago
European law is a patchwork of suboptimal solutions to hard (but often self-imposed) problems. The US meanwhile doesn't try to solve them at all.
Yes, the bottle caps annoy me, but if the beverage companies stuck to the much more recyclable glass bottles we wouldn't be in this mess in the first place.
Yes, the GDPR popups annoy me, but the law also punishes companies for being creepy exploitative bastards. If they had any morals, we wouldn't have the popups either.
So yes, Europe is sometimes frustrating, but at least it does some government. The US simply doesn't. It's a free-for-all hellscape and I'd much rather be lightly scraped on the face by a little plastic cap that one time a month I need to drink from a disposable plastic bottle than live in...that...
ta1243 · 35d ago
The bottle caps certainly don't annoy me, I find them very useful.
The popups are there for companies that ignore basic data sovereignty of "don't use my personal data until I say you can"
whiplash451 · 35d ago
I don't dismiss the problem, I dismiss the solution.
Yes, plastic bottles (and caps) are likely a major environmental disaster.
The alternative to regulation is innovation: force bottle makers to invest x% of their profit or revenue into actual research on plastic recycling or capture.
kristiandupont · 35d ago
>The alternative to regulation is innovation
That's a very easy but hand-wavy thing to say.
How exactly would your suggestion work? Are the companies supposed to share their findings from this forced research with the world? What happens if they happen to discover something that doesn't help with the plastic problem but does improve their bottom line somehow? I can't see this functioning in any way whatsoever.
whiplash451 · 34d ago
You don’t need to impose R&D to them. You can tax them and funnel that money into R&D labs/companies tackling recycling.
Cthulhu_ · 35d ago
Another alternative is anticonsumption; stop or reduce use of disposable packaging if possible.
Peanuts99 · 35d ago
GDPR and Cookie acceptance popups are separate regulations.
It will click no no no no no to all cookie prompts for you, and hide the popup. It's sad that we need to do this, the companies could just not track you at all. But I haven't had a need to manually click these popups for quite a some time now.
The internet is borderline unusable without extensions like "I don't care about cookies". And in situations where you care about them, you can not, because something has to record that I've seen the GDPR consent form. Recently, in the name of... who knows what, it's become a pain in the ass to access Google maps from Google search.
The idea that Europe can become a safe haven for entrepreneurs is beyond laughable. The vaunted "rule of law" has degraded into nothing more than fetishizing arbitrary and irrational rules.
lentil_soup · 35d ago
why blame the rule and not the people adding tracking and cookies without reason? You don't need those dumb banners if you don't try to cram cookies in everything
username332211 · 35d ago
Somehow, someway, I suspect basically every that operates in the EU has thought more about the requirements of EU regulations than the internet know it all's that insist the consent forms are unnecessary.
lentil_soup · 33d ago
it's not about being a know it all, it's a regulation you can look up.
Look here: https://gdpr.eu/cookies/
> Receive users’ consent before you use any cookies except strictly necessary cookies
If you don't use cookies or they're stricly necessary, no need for a banner.
Many websites work perfectly fine without a banner, for example, Hacker News.
jimt1234 · 35d ago
The ends justify the means is now openly accepted, even celebrated.
e40 · 34d ago
And conflicts of interest don’t exist.
dyauspitr · 35d ago
Yes, unfortunately we’re already at that point. Republicans and their base close ranks so effectively that it’s essentially a safe haven for all sorts of corruption and serious crime. The voters won’t punish them at the ballot and they’ve essentially captured all sources of checks and balances.
sureglymop · 35d ago
It's Republicans and Democrats. You're in this position in the first place because you have no real political diversity. It's not gonna change in that two party system either.
sethammons · 35d ago
Vote for ranked choice voting, starting at the local levels.
Grade school needs rank choice voting activities to help make it feel familiar.
I mean this with all due respect. Anyone who talks about Democrats and Republicans like they’re on one of the teams has totally missed the political charade being orchestrated in DC. These parties do not represent you.
immibis · 35d ago
Both are bad. One is much, much worse than the other.
user3939382 · 34d ago
It’s one party with some internal factions struggling for power, none of which stand to offer anything to the American people. More wars, no term limits, no campaign finance reform, nothing to stop corporate capture. They talk about divisive social issues to keep everyone’s eyes off the money.
immibis · 34d ago
Both are bad. One is much, much worse than the other.
user3939382 · 34d ago
It’s a false dichotomy, that’s the illusion. There is no other, it’s one machine.
immibis · 34d ago
Both are bad. One is much, much worse than the other.
user3939382 · 30d ago
There is no both
brandensilva · 34d ago
I'm already feeling like entrepreneurship is out the window.
It's a combination of AI being owned from these mega corporations and corruption at the highest level that I'm losing sight of what is the purpose building my startup business in an authoritarian landscape.
Trump illegally promoting Elon's corporation with a yard sale, kissing his feet for donating millions to his campaign thanks to citizens united, allowing him to ransack the federal government as an unelected official, to making vandalism a domestic terrorist act for people fed up when him,and now putting Elon in charge of investigating Signalgate.
People need to stand up now before they cannot.
boppo1 · 34d ago
>when people no longer trust that what they make can be theirs, that others can look on in envy at the work they have built on their blood and sweat and can take it as their due because they have power.
We just need liberals to embrace the 2nd with as much fervor as the right.
fpoling · 35d ago
> because this is death to entrepreneurship
This does not follow. Even in highly corrupt authoritarian countries entrepreneurship can flourish. Just consider Turkey or Russia. In such places one quickly learn whom to pay with corruption payouts becoming business expenses.
jaredklewis · 35d ago
Does entrepreneurship flourish in Russia? This would surprise me just because its GDP is smaller than Italy's, and around 17% of it is oil and gas. CAGR for past 10 years in Russia is ~1.5% (compared with ~2.3% for the US).
Just seems logical to me that if entrepreneurship was flourishing, we would see more economic growth as a result.
fp64 · 35d ago
You can’t take the GDP in US$ for comparison, given the sanctions and all. PPP is a better means.
I do not know about entrepreneurship, but I do know that a Russian’s average purchase power is significantly higher than what you might expect from just looking at the GDP
jaredklewis · 33d ago
It might be true that we can’t compare gdp between Russia and other countries, but even if so, wouldn’t we see a growth in GDP over time (ie comparing Russia to itself)?
tonyhart7 · 35d ago
"This would surprise me just because its GDP is smaller than Italy's"
GDP to US dollar is only works IF your export and import is only traded with US dollar which doesn't to be the case since Russia is trade with Brics partner that bypass all sanction and not using US dollar
fpoling · 35d ago
Russia has been spending all gains in economy on military for the last 15 years. Ability of local businessmen to quickly find new trading partners in Asia is one of the primary reasons Russian economy did not collapsed under suctions and the war.
flakeoil · 35d ago
It's thanks to oil, gas and minerals exports they have managed to keep the russian economy going. Not thanks to entrepreneurship or some russian made products. They also stole a lot of western companies and their assets.
m000 · 35d ago
West imposes sanctions forcing business to divest and leave Russia -> Russia "stole". That's some next-level reasoning there.
dudefeliciano · 34d ago
I wouldn't be so snarky when your own reasoning leaves out a key part of the series of events there..
netsharc · 34d ago
When the government said businesses must be locally owned, of course the bandits with money (aka oligarchs) saw the opportunity and suddenly became company-owners left and right. I guess it's "the West"'s fault that they created space for the bandits to move in (and not Putin's fault that he forced "the West" to sanction the country because of invasion). If we go further up the "cause and effect" chain it must be NATO's fault for expanding into East Europe. ;) .. but why wouldn't Eastern European countries want to join NATO, considering their large neighbor to the East still have imperialistic dreams.
Folcon · 35d ago
Please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but I get the feeling that this is purely a theoretical exercise for you, life under those conditions is chaotic and complex, at the bare minimum, it limits the complexity of the kind of business you can run.
And that's ignoring other externalities.
fpoling · 35d ago
Russian business is very complex. Just consider that due to sanctions many companies needed to quickly learn how to operate with cryptocurrencies, find new trade partners etc.
Or like building companies switched to Russian military contracts to build factories for drone, ammunition etc. to make weapons to kill Ukrainians.
If one has no moral compass, one can absolutely flourish as a businessman in Russia.
ModernMech · 34d ago
That's why Russian companies have such a global reputation for being sleazy. You have to be a sleaze in order to get anywhere. Fish rots from the head and all that, so we should expect American companies to get the same stink if things keep going this way here. Bad companies will wade into the muck, and good money will flow elsewhere more stable.
Scams and frauds are going to flourish under Trump because the guy himself is keen on running scams and frauds from the White House. Who is going to investigate crypto scams when POTUS is launching his own pump and dump shitcoin? It's going to be scams and frauds from the top all the way down.
IsTom · 35d ago
I don't think entrepreneurs enjoy paying for "protection" when mafia knocks on the door or companies being taken over entirely when somebody in power decides that they like this one.
dudefeliciano · 35d ago
Can you mention some Russian success stories to back that up?
s_dev · 35d ago
Wasn't this the whole shtick with Navalny -- minority shareholders rights being trampled and he set about trying to critique the Russian government. Or Bill Browder who was doing business in Russia until the Russian government literally killed his colleague.
belter · 35d ago
> one quickly learn whom to pay with corruption payouts becoming business expenses
Exactly also already happening in the US and with Law Firms.
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.
cjohnson318 · 35d ago
Why 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.
Aeolun · 35d ago
> I'm tired of this Too Important To Have Consequences business
Sure, but short of something similar to the UH CEO, do you think anything will actually happen to them?
If they’re doing this then the president presumably knows and does too. Even if they get prosecuted and convicted (after years of legal nonsense) they’d just get pardoned.
cjohnson318 · 34d ago
No, I don't think anything will change, but I'm still tired of it.
rcpt · 35d ago
Anything less than criminal prosecution would be an abomination of justice.
Galanwe · 35d ago
Well 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 · 35d ago
Absolutely 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 · 35d ago
In 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.
chrisco255 · 35d ago
The U.S. doesn't need a new constitution. If you don't like the current president, you vote for a new one in 4 years. That's how it works.
Galanwe · 34d ago
If there is anything to learn from the current situation IMHO, it's that 1) the US needs a stronger constitution to prevent a take over, and 2) it needs a new election system to avoid binary elections, which lead to extreme policy turnover and candidate fatigue.
There's nothing wrong with writing a new constitution. France is at its 5th iteration, and some candidates propose a 6th republic, nothing dictates that you're supposed to get it right on the first try.
chrisco255 · 34d ago
The U.S. is the world's oldest democracy. It is functioning just fine.
France has been toppled by internal revolutions and external enemies multiple times in the time that the U.S. has existed. It's not an example to aspire to.
free_bip · 34d ago
The US has gone through a dozen constitutional crises in the past 2 months and you call that functioning "just fine"?
lurkersince2013 · 34d ago
It’s looking less and less functioning and less and less like a democracy every day.
And give France a bit more credit; they were instrumental in the US’s own internal revolution against the British.
hamasho · 35d ago
Honestly, I'm giving up hoping for even a fraction of deserved punishment too. It's hard to handle the emotional dissonance I feel repeatedly when I see injustice, so I've adjusted myself to expect minimal or no punishment and just hope things improve a little. I know this is exactly what those people who repeatedly do malicious things want to happen, and I'm not suggesting we give up seeking social justice. I just can't handle the rage I feel every time or I'll suffer from severe depression again. I need to save my willpower to still hope for a better world and to encourage or support people who are actually working to improve society.
0xEF · 35d ago
I'm in the same boat. This whole thing is a War of Attrition, and my enemies are willing because I am getting too old and increasingly stressed out to keep up with and counter their irrationality. I honestly don't know where they get the energy to continuously be so stupid as to take classified information to a group chat, encrypted or not, like they're planning a night out.
These morons are going to get American citizens killed due to gross incompetence. I'm still trying to wrap my head around the fact that half my country said "yep, let's go with these guys" when they saw a bunch of bungling Nazis yelling at clouds like something out of Hogan's Heroes. I'd laugh at the absurdity of it all if I didn't think we were in genuine danger.
mandmandam · 35d ago
> I'm still trying to wrap my head around the fact that half my country said "yep, let's go with these guys" when they saw a bunch of bungling Nazis yelling at clouds like something out of Hogan's Heroes.
I'm still trying to square how 98% of American voters went for candidates promising to continue arming the world's most live-streamed genocide, even with all those protests; even with all the footage we've seen.
How it didn't end after the Al-Nasr babies story, or after Biden was caught laundering lies about beheaded babies, or the NYT laundering lies about mass rape, I just don't know. And still the Greens couldn't get 5%?
There's something deeply dark and disturbed across the entirety of American society, and it seems like most of us can't even see it... Well, the consequences will arrive regardless.
devaler · 34d ago
> I'm still trying to square how 98% of American voters went for candidates promising to continue arming the world's most live-streamed genocide, even with all those protests; even with all the footage we've seen
in case you’re not being flippant and genuinely believe what you’re saying, it’s because we had only two viable candidates, one of whom should never have been legitimized. the line of thinking you present throws the baby out with the bathwater and represents a false choice. it comes across as saying that you’d rather do nothing than do something to—if not move things in the right direction—at least make it easier to permit the right direction in the future. no, instead you or others like you choose to exercise your cynical blend of moral superiority, demonstrating that you care more about your own sense of self worth than actually, you know, holding your nose and doing something. holders of that philosophy can’t seem to stand the smell of ‘imperfect’, regardless of how much damage they’ll allow to happen in the name of some false standard.
mandmandam · 34d ago
Zero flippancy, none.
> we had only two viable candidates
That's a major part of the problem, and not one to be ignored or accepted.
> the line of thinking you present throws the baby out with the bathwater and represents a false choice.
Nope. It's simple facts. Both 'viable' candidates promised to continue arming a nation which is currently conducting genocide, as confirmed by basically every major human rights group and even some Israeli genocide scholars. That's thoroughly illegal by long-held, hard-won domestic and international law.
You can argue as to why that is, or accuse people who say so of "cycnicism" and "moral superiority", but it's a fact and needs to be said.
There is NO good reason for Harris to have ignored the wishes of the vast majority (77%) of her voter base in order to keep arming mass slaughter. Turning around on that one choice would have won her the election in a landslide, and anyone who looked at the polls knew it.
> you care more about your own sense of self worth
Again, it's simple facts. America is so thoroughly depraved that 98% of voters chose to go for someone arming an active genocide.
Not about me, not about my self worth (bro, I'm an anonymous account with basically no reputation to win or lose here). It's about America, and how a large part of it got conned into thinking that voting for a genocidaire was the right and practical thing to do somehow.
If genocide was properly considered as beyond the pale; far, far over any basic red line for human decency, then Americans would have gone for a third party candidate, or forced a change in nominations from the two 'viable' parties. It's up for debate why they didn't do that, but the simple fact is that 98% of US voters voted for continuing a live-streamed series of atrocities.
> holders of that philosophy can’t seem to stand the smell of ‘imperfect’,
The gulf between 'perfect' and 'complicit in genocide' is so, so vast. I refuse to believe that you can't understand that.
0xEF · 34d ago
You're fighting a losing battle, I'm afraid. Instead of trying to justify your position, explain to me and my fellow voters what the alternative third option was when we were presented with Kamala or Trump?
We don't like this any more than you do, yet you point the finger and offer no solutions, plan, or course of action. Your obstinacy and that of people like you served only to hand the election to those you so vehemently stand against, but rather than admit your own part in this mess we are now in, you chose to attack the people who made a rational choice to vote for Kamala given the circumstance.
I'm sorry, but you're part of the problem, here. Accept that and heal.
vaidhy · 34d ago
Wasn't there Jill Stein and Cornell West?
0xEF · 34d ago
Yes, if you want to call them candidates. That word seems to be doing a lot of heavy lifting, here.
Were they better options? Probably. I personally was a fan of Stein. Were they available to us on any realistic level in our broken "democratic" system? No. Had I voted for her, my vote would have counted for nothing.
They had zero backing when thrown up against the two candidates that the very real and present two-party system pushed in front of us, and that was that.
Every time someone wants to whine about Harris supporting genocide, I feel like I'm talking to a bunch of bots who have never seen a US ballot, have no idea how our party system works and are incapable of comprehending the vast network of chicanery that results in two major parties drowning every other option we might actually want to vote for.
The illusion of a choice is not actually a choice, is it? So, at the time, the best plan was "NOT TRUMP AGAIN" leaving Harris as our strongest option _even though most of us did not agree with 100% of her policies_. We had a knife to our throat, and a knife at our back. We tried to get everyone on board with the knife at our back since, sure it would hurt, but at least it wouldn't kill us and we could work to move closer to a better solution.
Instead, we're now getting slit ear-to-ear because of impetuous fools who can't see past their own blind outrage.
dcow · 34d ago
We really have to shatter the bind. Every time someone buys into the two party system and votes against rather than for, we all lose. I'm not criticizing you, I am lamenting how toxic and horrible first past the post voting makes our elections.
0xEF · 34d ago
I agree with you. Been shaking my fist about it since I cast my first vote. But I genuinely feel like an ant attacking a lawnmower. The machine just keeps going and barely notices our efforts. I was a Bernie supporter, too. Same deal although at least he's got street cred the media meat-grinder can't spin into something else. Still, I cast my vote and it mattered as much as a fart in the wind.
When you feel like that for a couple decades and you start to look for the best possible outcomes that everyone will actually agree to, things start to look really, really bleak. Again, it's a War of Attrition and historically speaking, the people with the most resources win those.
Rally. Protest. Please. I have no idea what else to do. I'd lead the damned charge in the revolution if I thought anyone would follow, but my experience has been the opposite. The liberals of the world all seem to hate each other just as much as the conservatives do, so I'll be dipped if they ever really come together on anything, these days.
I don't like my conduct in the earlier comments, but after being that guy who tried to tell everyone the two-party system has no power without us for so damned long, I am not going to sit idly and listen to someone accuse me of supporting genocide when I made the most rational choice I could have with what was presented while they did nothing, as though Gaza's horrifying reality is the only thing the American people have to worry about right now. We live in a zero-sum game, and I hate it, but that's it.
Anyway, sorry to anyone I offended.
mandmandam · 34d ago
Forced candidate: "I promise to keep arming this genocidal apartheid state."
Voter: I will vote for you, because the only alternative that our party have allowed [0] a chance to win is even worse somehow.
Other voter: Hey, you know that candidate promised to continue to arm genocide, right?
Voter: Supporting her was the most rational choice. You whine. It feels like you're a bot. You don't understand the complex zero-sum game we are in. You, who I know nothing about, did nothing; while I voted. Also you're cynical and think you're morally superior.
Other voter: O-kay.
Like I said: 98% of America voted for a candidate who promised to arm genocide. We should be sanctioned by the world, and the only reason we aren't is because we threaten to either fuck their economy, ie [1], or literally invade them [2].
Stein actually aligns far better with the real opinions of the majority of the American people; on affordable housing, on healthcare, on the military industrial complex, on the environment, on taxing the rich, on fracking, on education, and indeed on arming genocide.
However, the entire political and media class united to smear her as a "Russian stooge". Despite a complete lack of evidence, American voters ate that slop up and asked for seconds. It still disturbs me, how easy they made that look.
A Senate investigation ran from 2016 to 2019, investigating Stein. They found absolutely nothing, and completely cleared her in 2019... But try and find a corporate media article which acknowledges this. Many Americans still believe it; like WMDs in Iraq, or the Earth being 6,000 years old.
Try and find a Democrat who stood up for her this entire time. Nope - accusing Harvard-educated Jewish doctor ladies of being Russian assets without a shred of proof didn't seem to bother anyone.
Democrats went to extreme and even illegal lengths to take Greens off the ballot everywhere they could, and then accused the Greens of never winning elections (not true btw [0, 1]).
The media refused to cover any of those Green wins, then smeared the Greens as only appearing for Presidential elections as a "grift". A grift! In a race where that same media presented *Donald 'TrumpCoin' Trump as a serious candidate!
Let's see who was grifting:
Harris raised more than a billion dollars, and received 48.3% of the vote.
Stein raised $2.7m, 370 times less, and received 1% of the vote; in other words, her campaign dollars were more than 7 times more effective than Harris' despite rabid media bias.
But you can't explain any of this to a Harris voter. The real problem, I believe, is that once you've been conned into actively supporting genocide and ethnic cleansing, you can't really acknowledge that and still think of yourself as a good person. So people just lash out instead with personal attacks. The ones above are about the mildest I've seen, to be fair; usually bringing up Harris' complicity in genocide gets you called an asshole. Go figure.
> I'm still trying to square how 98% of American voters went for candidates promising to continue arming the world's most live-streamed genocide, even with all those protests; even with all the footage we've seen.
I assume you're referring to the livestreamed October 7th attacks?
hn_throwaway_99 · 35d ago
Do you honestly think that (a) Trump's Justice Department would prosecute any of these offenses, and (b) even if so, that Trump wouldn't just pardon anyone involved?
cjohnson318 · 35d ago
Yeah, there's no way anything is going to happen to these guys. I'm saying that's a great suggestion, and one that everyone should be able to agree on.
But yeah, I agree with you. Nothing is going to happen. Just like no one at the top has been held to any kind of a standard at all since maybe Nixon. Who knows, if he had just stuck it out maybe he would have gotten off too.
belter · 35d ago
The corruption is now, total and absolute. A complete Nero Court like the decadent days of the end of the Roman Empire.
"...Witkoff and his father, Trump’s special diplomatic envoy Steve Witkoff, helped launch World Liberty Financial with Trump and his sons last year. Under the terms outlined on the company’s website, a Trump-owned company has the “right to receive 75% of the net protocol revenues” from World Liberty Financial after expenses..."
Just a nitpick: Nero was nowhere close to "the end of the Roman Empire".
poulsbohemian · 34d ago
We all know this is the likely outcome, but Congress should use its powers to force the Trump administration to be public in not prosecuting and in pardoning, for the purposes of upholding rule of law to the extent possible. And the forth estate needs to throw both in their face to ensure the public understands both how everything about both what they did, and how the Trump administration will respond, is both unlawful and harmful to our country.
adrr · 35d ago
Do you think they’ll get prosecuted? I am willing to bet money that congress won’t even have hearings on it.
Where the director of the Intelligence Services, refused to say, if she was participating on the Signal thread with her government issued phone, or with her personal phone...
sethammons · 35d ago
Long pause: "I don't recall."
The exact legal advice passed on to me around answering questions in a deposition played out live; wild.
chrisco255 · 35d ago
None of what they said was actually classified, and if the conversation included the president and vice president, then they inherently decide what is and is not classified. The power of the executive branch is vested in the president.
2. There was tons of classified material shared including specific flight times and weapons systems. Here's a helpful side-by-side on what operational details are by default classified as Secret: https://bsky.app/profile/secretsandlaws.bsky.social/post/3ll...
mullingitover · 35d ago
Doesn’t matter, they were conducting government business on a clandestine private system with the intent of evading public records laws. Literally the crime they endlessly accused Clinton of.
chrisco255 · 34d ago
They have to archive the messages and they have staffers in those chats whose job is to do just that. The Biden administration used Signal as well. It's perfectly fine as long as it's archived.
mullingitover · 34d ago
Two problems with this:
How were the staffers archiving the disappearing messages?
What evidence do you have that the Biden administration conducted official government business on Signal?[1]
If they were above board and legal with this they wouldn’t have forced their republican congressional oversight committee to drag them into hearings.
Signal does not mandate that messages be disappeared, that's a customized setting. But there are multiple ways to archive including simple screenshots.
Here is CISA page updated last under Biden's admin:
In the PDF on that page you'll see Signal recommended for communication.
mullingitover · 34d ago
From the article above:
> Former Biden officials, though, said that Signal was never permitted on their government phones.
> “We were not allowed to have any messaging apps on our work phones,” said one former top national security official on the condition of anonymity. “And under no circumstances were unclassified messaging apps allowed to be used for transmission of classified material. This is misdirection at its worst.”
The CISA advice wasn't telling public employees to use Signal for classified communications or communications subject to FOIA.
You're going to be completely unable to show me evidence that this was ever okay, because it wasn't.
chrisco255 · 34d ago
Let me help you out from the CISA post:
"General Recommendations Apply these best practices to your devices and online accounts. 1. Use only end-to-end encrypted communications. Adopt a free messaging application for secure communications that guarantees end-to-end encryption, such as Signal or similar apps. CISA recommends an end-to-end encrypted messaging app that is compatible with both iPhone and Android operating systems, allowing for text message interoperability across platforms. Such apps may also offer clients for MacOS, Windows, and Linux, and sometimes the web. These apps typically support one-on-one text chats, group chats with up to 1,000 participants, and encrypted voice and video calls. Additionally, they may include features like disappearing messages and images, which can enhance privacy. When selecting an end-to-end"
Nothing in that chat was classified and to the extent that any of it would be, the President and his cabinet members ultimately have final say over what is and is not classified. They are the leadership.
The chat was a discussion mostly concerning opinions on the actions and high level logistics. Actual plans were distributed through CENTCOM.
It's completely ok because it's the President's cabinet. They run the government.
There is no authority higher than the president to determine the status of information.
mullingitover · 34d ago
> Let me help you out from the CISA post:
Yes, you are showing nothing in that quote authorizes or recommends using Signal for official communications subject to sunshine laws. Certainly not authorizing it for classified data.
> Nothing in that chat was classified and to the extent that any of it would be, the President and his cabinet members ultimately have final say over what is and is not classified. They are the leadership.
Hand-waving is not evidence, so my assertion you'd be unable to provide evidence stands. People far above my pay grade say obviously this was classified and while the president can de-classify, and he can pardon them for mishandling classified information, what they did was illegal and there's no un-ringing that particular bell.
ModernMech · 34d ago
You left out the parts of that refute your position though, how come?
"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."
"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."
> There is no authority higher than the president to determine the status of information.
That they gave themselves the authority to endanger national security doesn't change the fact they endangered national security, and in fact makes what they did worse as it's intentional.
skyyler · 34d ago
Are the reports of the chat making use of Signal's auto-deleting feature incorrect then?
chrisco255 · 34d ago
Given that we all know the content of these messages, they are clearly archivable.
skyyler · 34d ago
We know the content of the ones that leaked this chat.
That doesn't mean they're being archived according to the law.
vharuck · 34d ago
The information they discussed is almost always classified. If somebody were to declassify it so that these discussions could take place on insecure devices at insecure locations, then it's gross incompetence. There's a reason this kind of information is classified.
This is like ripping the warning sticker off an oxygen tank and pretending that makes it safe to use while smoking.
cjohnson318 · 34d ago
I'm pretty sure most of it was classified, which is why they chose Signal instead of WhatsApp.
outside1234 · 35d ago
But have you considered that they are Billionaires and therefore can do whatever they want?
jjallen · 35d ago
I don’t think everyone involved in this fiasco are billionaires.
vichle · 35d ago
They will be before this is over.
belter · 35d ago
The alternative explanation, is that they have so much dirt on Trump, they can't be fired...
cjohnson318 · 35d ago
Like my dad always said, "money talks and shit walks".
mandeepj · 35d ago
The 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.
davidw · 35d ago
These are the same folks who scrubbed the Navajo Code Talkers from the DoD web site for being "DEI" or some such.
fragmede · 35d ago
we replaced them with DUI hires.
feb · 35d ago
For those of us who are not used to the acronyms, DUI means Driving Under Influence. Similar term is DWI, Driving While Intoxicated.
MandieD · 35d ago
That is brilliant, and it’s heartbreaking that it’s brilliant.
fragmede · 35d ago
I can't take credit for it, I think it traces back to Lauren Tucker's substack, but someone certainly did before that. Then again, someone else popularized it given recent events.
> 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 · 35d ago
It’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.
deepsun · 35d ago
For years I've been taught that US political system is based on checks and balances. Now I see that just like in any other country it was based on morals of people: voters, elected, and appointed.
pjc50 · 35d ago
Like running both your "redundant" fiber through the same conduit, there isn't a second backup public to demand better.
People demanded this and they got it eventually.
intended · 35d ago
The power of controlling information marketplaces.
Also I suppose it’s crucial to point out that it’s not just controlling the marketplace for news, it also needed one party to be absolutely focused only on winning elections, and eschewing bipartisanship.
deepsun · 34d ago
Yes and no: nowadays third-parties can steer the people demands themselves. It became much easier with internet and "web brigades" (recently started utilizing AI as well).
So on one side yes, people demanded it. But on the other side, they were manipulated to think one issue is more important than the other, to think that "the whole system is broken" etc.
Maken · 35d ago
Every political system is based on how much people believes on it. Laws are not magic incantations, and there is nothing forcing people to follow what they say.
deepsun · 34d ago
Yes, and a big problem is that the belief itself can be manipulated easier by adversaries using internet.
__turbobrew__ · 34d ago
You forgot the last check, a disgruntled person with a gun.
deepsun · 33d ago
Gun is a good thing, but way more important is organization. I mean organization like "when order came everyone stands up and fights no slackers".
Even 10 organized people with no weapons are _way_ more dangerous than one armed person. That's why all autocratic regimes firstly jail/kill organizers (right now it's Turkey). Just having eyes in 10 different places is more important.
As Jefferson really liked (proposed by Franklin): "Rebellion against tyrants is obedience to God."
__turbobrew__ · 33d ago
I think you estimate what a single person with a gun can do.
* assassinate the president of Japan
* assassinate health care CEO
* nearly assassinate the soon to be president
StackRanker3000 · 35d ago
I’m going to respectfully disagree with you there. Trump’s success as a politician is solely down to three factors.
Firstly, he has an insatiable desire for attention, admiration, and generally benefitting himself. That’s what causes his drive.
Secondly, he has no scruples or adheres to any morals or ethics whatsoever, he is completely ruthless. This allows him to do and say whatever serves him the most in any given situation.
Lastly, he has a specific type of charisma that has purchase with a certain segment of the people.
That’s is the full extent of it. He has no other skills or useful attributes. Anything else, especially if it’s at all technical or practical, comes from the people he’s surrounded himself with.
To interact with your point, he’s not even particularly adept at enlisting sycophants. Remember his first administration, when numerous aides and associates had both public and private disagreements with him (as one example out of many, I’ll refer to Rex Tillerson calling him a ”fucking moron”). The reason things are different this time is that another set of people are running the show, and they’ve realized that including old establishment Republicans, that have to at least pretend to be serious members of society, would have been a barrier to their agenda.
Turning the judiciary red across the country is especially not something you can attribute to Trump. It’s been a systematic effort by the Republicans (and adjacent organizations such as the Heritage Foundation) over the span of decades. He just happened to be in the position to make the appointments.
verisimi · 35d ago
Attention, lack of scruples and charisma, are prerequisites for ALL politicians. Obama, Reagan, Clinton were the same, no?
StackRanker3000 · 35d ago
> Attention, lack of scruples and charisma, are prerequisites for ALL politicians.
Sure, to some extent. Trump is an extreme outlier though, at least on the first two. And my main point was mainly that he doesn’t have anything else.
> Obama, Reagan, Clinton were the same, no?
Again, to some degree. Obama and Clinton especially were also shrewd politicians and had skills and strengths in addition to the attributes mentioned above.
verisimi · 35d ago
But what skills do any politicians have? Most are career politicians, without non-political experience. Reagan had his acting experience. As a property developer and TV personality, Trump does have real-life experience, in a way most politicos don't.
poulsbohemian · 34d ago
You need to meet more politicians, they come in all shapes and sizes just like the American people. Are there a lot of born-with-a-silver-spoon, never-worked-a-day-in-their-life types? Absolutely. But across this country at every level, even in Congress, there are people who overcame remarkable odds and chose to work in public service to make their communities, states, and country better. Look deeper than just the people who grab the headlines.
Now, an elected official friend who is a former teacher is fond of saying the following: when people get elected, they come with three tiers of knowledge. There's what they know personally - their career field, maybe their hobby, maybe they are ex-military, etc. Then there's secondary: something they observed in a parent or spouse. Finally, there's everything else. In any given session - legislative, congressional, etc, there are going to be thousands of complicated topics thrown at these people, where the issues are way outside their wheelhouse. The best politicians are the ones who not only are really good at synthesizing information, but they surround themselves with quality policy staff - that is, they build a good team to overcome their own lack of background.
taormina · 35d ago
Many of them come from a background in law. Most of Trump’s experience is how to file in bankruptcy court.
ModernMech · 35d ago
Most politicians are sociopaths, whereas Trump is a narcissistic psychopath (aka malignant narcissist). You encounter sociopaths everyday, but a narcissistic psychopath is next level. Those are the Hitlers, Stalins, Saddam Husseins of the world. Or if you want to look outside of politics, the Charles Mansons and Jim Jones of the world.
poulsbohemian · 34d ago
What an absolutely unqualified statement. "Politicians" aren't just the attention seekers in Congress who make outrageous statements to keep their names in the headlines. There are quality people in Congress, in state legislatures, in government at all levels who are there because of a calling to public service. Not only that, but there are people around the world in every nation's governments with the same calling to not only make their countries better, but often too with an eye toward protecting all humanity and civilization.
ModernMech · 34d ago
I said most politicians are sociopaths, which as a matter of magnitude is hyperbole. But it's absolutely true that 1) sociopathic traits are useful in politics and therefore 2) sociopaths are overrepresented in politics. We can disagree on the magnitude to which they are.
But in saying what I did, in no way did I imply politicians are "attention seekers in Congress who make outrageous statements to keep their names in the headlines", because that's not a description of what a sociopath is, as sociopaths can be quiet, calculating people.
It's not necessarily bad to be a sociopath, we need them in politics to be sure.
3np · 35d ago
Vance' offices response is very telling of his priorities and supports this view.
hn_throwaway_99 · 35d ago
Vance 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.
jimbokun · 34d ago
As far as I can tell almost every current Republican politician is roughly tied for this honor.
The rest retired or got primaried.
belter · 35d 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
jimbokun · 34d ago
This would have been an amazing Harris campaign ad. Missed opportunity.
nobody9999 · 35d ago
How dare you!
Donald Trump "is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I've ever known in my life."
"A Groveler is a surfboard specifically designed to make the most of weaker or smaller waves"
fuzzfactor · 35d ago
>U.S. national-security leaders
Those aren't leaders, quite the opposite, nothing but typical Trump-like non-leaders disgracing leadership positions.
>those 18 people are just random folks
OTOH if you picked 18 random patriotic Americans, odds are none would be that far below average at defending what normal Americans have always held dear.
nla · 35d ago
On the subject of a 'shack of clowns,' now do the Afganistan withdrawal.
pathOf_aFineMan · 35d ago
Kind of off topic as that was the previous Trump administration, but they were also a 'shack of clowns'
egl2020 · 35d ago
Heck, 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 · 35d ago
There 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.
Ey7NFZ3P0nzAe · 35d ago
I'd be really interested in a link!
fragmede · 35d ago
I 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.
ghostpepper · 35d 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 · 35d ago
If 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 · 35d ago
At 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 · 35d ago
Which do you think is more likely to be under foreign control and why? Bearing in mind that iPhones are made in China.
sterlind · 35d ago
stock 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.
lmm · 34d ago
> stock 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.
That cuts both ways though. Any exploit for iPhone works on a lot of high value targets. An exploit for one android phone may well not apply to another. If we're talking about state actors, well, probably both are compromised, but the iPhone would be the priority IMO.
anderber · 35d ago
Also, Steve Witkoff was in Moscow during the Signal text chain.
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 · 35d ago
Are 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 · 35d ago
Many layers of physical controls and regular audits mostly.
lmm · 35d ago
What does a physical control mean in this context? Like, disabling that part of the phone's touchscreen?
ThePowerOfFuet · 35d ago
Think personal devices not being permitted beyond the entrance of the building, stored in a Faraday box.
Alupis · 35d ago
So in other words... nothing stopped anyone from doing this either. Except the fear of potential punishment.
HWR_14 · 35d ago
I'm not sure how you ignored the "many layers of physical controls" part of the comment.
whattheheckheck · 35d ago
Why are you specifically calling out you are not suggesting punishment nor prosecution?
joshuamerrill · 35d ago
Because 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 · 35d ago
Why 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 · 35d ago
With 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.
No comments yet
codewench · 35d ago
18 USC 793(f) seems to apply here:
"Whoever, being entrusted with or having lawful possession or control of any document, writing ... through gross negligence permits the same to be removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of his trust ... and fails to make prompt report of such loss, theft, abstraction, or destruction to his superior officer—
Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both."
We can only guess about the "prompt reporting of the issue", but from what I've seen and heard I'm willing to put money on the fact that, no, this was not reported.
throwaway2037 · 35d ago
> through gross negligence
If you talk to someone with a law degree (judge, lawyer, whatever), they will tell you that "gross negligence" is very high barrier to cross in US law. Most people misunderstand that. It is very unlikely that any of the people in that chat group would be found grossly negligent, especially for their first mistake. Please do not read that last sentence as an apology or excuse for their behaviour; they should be reprimanded for it.
bb88 · 35d ago
Why would the FBI investigate anyone who would be pardoned by the president anyway?
"The person predicted the impact could extend beyond Congress: “If you’re Google or Meta or Apple – you’re thinking, ‘Do I really want to use these firms?’ That could make it harder to work with the White House...."
imglorp · 35d ago
Yes and the legislature after that.
These are all smart people, so it boggles the mind to wonder how they can install a totalitarian regime without knowing the next two steps in the playbook.
chasil · 35d ago
Jefferson might have been called a totalitarian had the word existed when he signed the judiciary act of 1802, which removed judges added by federalists.
Well Jefferson certainly wasn't ever wrong about anything. He certainly wouldn't have held any beliefs contrary to 20th or 21st century values. /s
Obviously the dude had a lot of good ideas, but just grabbing anything he said and acting like it's gospel is flawed for dare I say a pretty glaring reason...
chasil · 35d ago
I'm not saying that Jefferson's words were elevated beyond his peers.
His flaws certainly belie such an assertion.
I'm saying that what Jefferson did was to remove problematic judges.
Congress had, has, and will have the power to reshape the federal judiciary as they choose. They can erase all courts below the supreme, and they can add or remove justices to the highest court as they choose (excepting present members, which are lifetime). Thus the saying "pack the court."
To challenge an executive that has friends in congress is a dangerous proposition for a federal judge.
It could end badly.
reverius42 · 35d ago
> To challenge [the legality of an action by] an executive that has friends in congress is a dangerous proposition for a federal judge.
> It could end badly.
This implies that the courts cannot be an effective check and balance on the other branches. Aren't they meant to be?
unyttigfjelltol · 35d ago
It depends what you think is meant by the term "effective". Courts foremost serve a truth-finding function and buffer against arbitrary authority being applied to individual people.
It's always been controversial whether a court can disparage a law of broad application or impugn the president directly. The "effectiveness" of those functions was always a little speculative.
reverius42 · 34d ago
> truth-finding function
Lower courts typically deal with questions of fact and how they intersect with questions of law; higher courts (appeals courts and Supreme Court) typically deal with questions of law (ambiguity/interpretation) exclusively. Courts as an institution don't serve a "truth-finding function" so much as a "law-ambiguity removing function".
> disparage
> impugn
Everyone seems focused on whether a court has the right to, like, insult the president personally. But that's not really the important part of what they're doing. They _of course_ have the right to question whether the law allows what the president is doing -- and questioning this is not disparagement or impugning.
vdqtp3 · 34d ago
They are meant to be a check and balance on the legislative and executive branch, but those branches are also meant to be a check and balance against the judicial. It's not a one way street. This statement is not intended to address the root current event being discussed.
bb88 · 35d ago
Relevant quote here:
Jefferson wrote that making judges the ultimate deciders of law would “place
us under the despotism of an oligarchy.”
Seriously that's cognitive dissonance 101. "Elon Musk can't be an oligarch. He's a great Americ... I mean South African".
I also hesitate why anyone would want a 360 degree view of Newt Gingrich. In real life or otherwise. /s
chasil · 35d ago
Gengrich is an interesting subject of study precisely because he worked so well with Clinton that the roaring '90s happened.
Clinton fared poorly under Democratic control of the house in his first two years, which was lost in the midterms.
Clinton prospered with Gengrich, and the .com era occurred under their aegis.
Some bad decisions were made by them, no doubt.
bb88 · 35d ago
Having been an adult in the 90s that is historical revisionism.
Yes, there is no difference beetween what republicans were doing back then and what democrats were wanting now /s
This is why bothsidism is ridiculous. Both sides are the same! Both are accusing the other one of something wrong! Oh, it does not matter than one is lying and other is saying the truth.
dcow · 35d ago
Gabbard confirmed that no classified information was contained in the conversation.
adgjlsfhk1 · 35d ago
And promptly proceeded to tell the same senators that she couldn't share the information with them because it was classified.
kevin_thibedeau · 35d ago
They are playing with semantics on minor technicalities that are irrelevant because federal code is expansive enough to make this breach a clear violation of the law on multiple counts. The Senators rightly grilled these incompetents on why couldn't they disclose the nature of the communications if they were unclassified and not sensitive.
The capable adults from the 45th administration are gone because they were too responsible. You can see what happens when you draw from a pool of nothing but drooling sub-80s.
ceejayoz · 34d ago
"We are currently clean on OPSEC" is an odd thing to throw into the chat if it doesn't involve any secrets.
> “1215et: F-18s LAUNCH (1st strike package),” Hegseth wrote in the chat. “1345: Trigger Based F-18 Strike Window Starts (Target Terrorist is @his Known Location so SHOULD BE ON TIME—also, Strike Drones Launch (MQ-9s).”
If I were a potential "target terrorist" and this chat had leaked before the strikes, I'd make damned sure I wasn't at my "known location" that day.
xeromal · 35d ago
But also decided she couldn't share the same information with the committee.
Analemma_ · 35d ago
“We investigated ourselves and found ourselves not guilty.”
MPSFounder · 35d ago
Traitors like her being in the highest offices of the land makes me sick. I will never forget images of her meeting Assad after that sob gazed children with chemical weapons, or her voting present to an impeachment. I wouldn't believe that traitor if she told me the Russians were at my doorstep. We have a circus filled with clowns unfortunately. The desk with Patel and her being interrogated is such a clown show.
No comments yet
thefreeman · 35d ago
“confirmed”
No comments yet
mandeepj · 35d ago
> The closest in modern times may be Hillary Clinton's email server being used for government business.
There is no reason to believe we are lucky. Instead, this is more of a canary in the coal mine that the DOD OIG and Congress are less able to excuse for a long-running hazard.
How much of the administration, for how long, and for what, is using hackable systems and without mandated audit trails for protected communications? Whether external hackers are already successfully snooping, or internal cover-ups are happening of ongoing corruption, both are deeply problematic, and can be happening in parallel to stupid leaks like this. Likewise, we can't even investigate and cleanup properly because these people are illegally deleting the forensic data for their illegal and insecure actions.
It's not even a surprise. Ex: It's already pretty well documented to embarrassing extents like the president flushing official documents down toilets and clogging them. Ex: The admins use of signal was a thing in the first term as well. The only new thing afaict is the public and checks-and-balances people have the evidence in front of them of illegal use when accepting the lies and criminality.
georgemcbay · 35d ago
> We should feel lucky that merely an American journalist was added by mistake.
This time. We also have no idea how many times this has happened without the unique circumstances where the person incorrectly included would draw attention to the leak as part of their job as a journalist.
Generally speaking, if something like this can happen once, it has probably happened more than once.
We probably are very lucky that the time it very publicly happened was fairly early on in the tenure of this dumpster fire of a Presidential cabinet.
Of course instead of them seeing it this way they are certain to keep going after the journalist in an attempt to make him the bad guy of the story to project blame away, because that is what incompetent people do.
jameshart · 35d ago
Right, among the reasons not to use Signal for this sort of thing is that it is explicitly difficult to verify within Signal that a contact is who you think it is. It can be a secure channel if used correctly. This shows these people are not using it correctly.
mulmen · 35d ago
> FBI investigated and declined to bring charges
Does the FBI make this determination? Wouldn’t that be the Attorney General’s call?
bb88 · 35d ago
Yeah, they do. The US Attorneys and the Attorney General are allowed to give input typically into whether any investigation is prosecutable.
Now did they investigate it? Probably not.
What's interesting to me is that personal phones were not seized for forensic examination though.
Were the phones hacked by foreign agents?
What other uses was signal used for?
dragonwriter · 35d ago
That's backwards. Prosecutors don't give input, they decide whether to charge. The FBI investigates, but they aren’t the ones who are responsible for taking cases to court.
bb88 · 35d ago
The FBI makes charging decisions all the time. The FBI has to be the one to investigate charges.
Now whether or not said charges are prosecutable is the job of the DoJ.
The demarcation line between the two is when the charges are filed in federal court.
Hillary Clinton was famously not charged by the FBI director Comey back in 2016. Not because she committed any crime, but because they wouldn't likely get a conviction at trial.
dragonwriter · 35d ago
> The FBI makes charging decisions all the time.
No, they don't.
> The FBI has to be the one to investigate charges.
They investigate before there are charges.
> Now whether or not said charges are prosecutable is the job of the DoJ.
The FBI is part of the DoJ, but there aren't charges until a prosecutor—not an FBI agent—either gets a grand jury to return an indictment or files a criminal information (the latrer only an option for minor offenses or if the defendant waives indictment, usually as part of a plea bargain.) Prosecution isn't a separate thing from charges, it is what charges are.
> Hillary Clinton was famously not charged by the FBI director Comey back in 2016.
No, famously Comey announced that the FBI recommended that no charges be filed. Like I said, you have it backwards: FBI makes recommendations, federal prosecutors decide to charge, or not.
“FBI Director James B. Comey said today that the Bureau has recommended to the Department of Justice that no charges are appropriate following an extensive investigation of Hillary Clinton’s use of a personal e-mail system during her time as Secretary of State.”
bb88 · 35d ago
Let's drop this. I do agree with you on Musk being a fascist -- or more specifically the average person might be correct in concluding the Musk is a fascist.
ModernMech · 34d ago
> The FBI makes charging decisions all the time. The FBI has to be the one to investigate charges.
The FBI is part of the DoJ... they are in fact the investigative arm of the DoJ and both bring the US attourneys evidence of crimes so that the attourneys can do the court work and they go find evidence as requested by the attourneys for ongoing cases. The fact that you're treating them as such separate entitites is indicative that maybe you should learn a bit more about how these things work.
tayo42 · 35d ago
> We should feel lucky that merely an American journalist was added by mistake.
Might not even be the first time already, just the first time they messed up and we found out...
nla · 35d ago
Hunter Biden: Hold my beer.
chasil · 35d ago
Assuming this to be true, this conversation is over.
"The Biden administration installed the Signal messaging app on CIA computers and approved it for official government use."
It looks like it was approved only for CIA use with permissible use. Even though it was installed, did not mean it was suitable for all communications.
Here's the important relevant quote:
"It is permissible to use to communicate and coordinate
for work purposes. Provided that any decisions that are
made are also recorded through formal channels. So
those were procedures that were implemented. My staff
implemented those processes," Ratcliffe said.
"My communications, to be clear, in a Signal message
group were entirely permissible and lawful and did not
include classified information," he added.
It's reasonable /u/chasil doesn't know this, but obviously there's no chance that Ratcliffe doesn't know this. Really makes one think!
"My communications weren't classified" — my is doing some work there.
bb88 · 35d ago
The classified community is one built on trust -- fundamentally that you won't leak information to others, perceived enemies or otherwise. This extends to elected or appointed officials and federal judges ruling on classified matters.
But honestly most of the people in the group will be loyal to the US regardless of leader's political affiliation.
But what they do ask is that classified information remain secret -- particularly if you're in harms way.
somenameforme · 35d ago
There's also the temporal issue. Communications are classified, or not, after their creation. So we might add:
'My communications weren't classified at the time I made them.'
bb88 · 35d ago
That's a distinction without a difference.
If you're in that intelligence community, you know exactly what is classified and what is not. I could imagine some information being so secretive it's not written down -- but instead passed verbally in person.
If a CIA agent has intelligence on an Israeli operation, it's classified, regardless of whether it was written down or not.
flyingcircus3 · 35d ago
I think that there is a parallel story to this one that is equally as interesting. There is one group of consumers of this story who see the receipts provided by Jeffery Goldberg, along with confirmation of their authenticity from a spokesperson at the National Security Council, followed by admissions by cabinet member participants of the Signal chat in hearings before congress, and those consumers of all this news can only conclude that the evidence is about as conclusive as you can get that Jeffery Goldberg is telling the truth, that these people are sharing the names of active intelligence officers, and describing imminent plans of action of the US military.
Then there is another group of consumers of this story, with the same access to all of the same evidence, and all of the same first person confirmations, who confidently declare the argument that this might be illegal null and void because Joe Biden allowed the CIA to use signal, and are persuaded away from accepting all of that evidence by articles with that contain such gems as "what the media wont tell you about the Atlantic hit piece", "Democrats talking points on this story quickly unraveled", and "help us continue to expose the lefts desperate attempts to manufacture scandals".
How can propaganda be so effective that people lose the skill of object permanence?
chasil · 35d ago
I have little doubt that Jeffery Goldberg is telling the truth.
So, was he added to the conversation inadvertently, or was it deliberate?
On the question of whether the use of the application was negligent, well, that is now moot.
rcpt · 35d ago
There is just no way this is deliberate. They have nothing to gain from this.
We need to stop thinking these guys are playing 3D chess when they try to shove the pieces up their nose
forgotoldacc · 35d ago
Call me crazy, but they have lots to gain. They got to see whether a journalist would dare stand up against them knowing very well they risk being found with 50 terabytes of illegal porn on their computer then dying of a suicide with 2 shots in the back of the head. Turns out journalists aren't yet afraid of them.
They also got a loyalty test with their own people. Everyone is saying "not my problem" and accepting no responsibility. They've passed that test.
Then the final loyalty test is of their voters. When this first broke, the script was "Oof. This is bad. Heads will roll because of this." When it became apparent that, no, heads will not roll, the script amongst them changed. "This doesn't matter. Why would it matter? Everyone uses insecure things and makes mistakes. Why did the journalist embarrass our country?" It's very obvious that the breaking point with their base is very far away, assuming there is one.
And the final result is seeing whether there will be consequences. A small time guy can get pinched for this and the president and everyone else will remain completely void of responsibility no matter what. But it's pretty obvious that even a small time guy won't be facing consequences.
So they've gained something very valuable from this: the realization that there really are no consequences. They're going to keep pushing things like this and they'll get bigger and bigger each time. And each time it sets a new standard for a tolerable level of bad. And any time someone supportive of them starts to think "maybe this isn't good", they'll be quick to rush in and say "it's a nothingburger, just like the last thing they were whining about." And they'll fall back in line.
ModernMech · 34d ago
It's a nice theory, but the reason everyone in this administration is acting with such impunity is because they already believe there really are no consequences. They had that realization when they fomented an insurrection in 2021 and not only did nothing happen to them, they were voted back into office. What more confirmation would they need?
These people are just brutes lumbering through a government the fully control now, smashing and doing whatever they want. There's no 4D chess.
bb88 · 35d ago
Well the FBI investigated it already -- even though the Hillary Clinton investigation took years -- and said there would not be charges brought.
It's a win on government efficiency I guess (no more year long investigations). But also, this is clearly not the first time they used Signal, and it won't be the last.
flyingcircus3 · 35d ago
Just to clarify on what is moot, you are claiming that sharing classified, perhaps TS/SCI information, over signal, as well as deleting the messages, which are both illegal when isolated from any specific communication method, has all been blessed as above board and legal, simply because Joe Biden allowed Signal usage at the CIA?
Couldn't every whistleblower and double agent from now on just make sure to do their leaking over signal, and therefore receive the magical immunity your logic claims signal usage provides?
chasil · 35d ago
Then act against the Biden administration that approved it.
Move against those that approved its use.
That would be an interesting turn of events.
thatnerdyguy · 35d ago
... but I think the argument goes "Signal can be used for unclassified communication, so we are OK"... great! .... but why were specific war plans and CIA officer names NOT classified? There are definite problems either way you slice it.
flyingcircus3 · 34d ago
This exemplifies my point. I laid out how illogical it would be for your claim to be accurate that Biden approved otherwise illegal activity so long as it occured over signal.
And you've simply incorporated this as additional straw for your strawman.
Does this mornings additional confirmation in the form of messages including times, planes, and weapons further solidify your feelings that this is all Bidens fault?
20after4 · 35d ago
There is also a large group who think it's a nothing burger and that Goldberg is simply lying or exaggerating about the nature and seriousness of the messages that were omitted from the reporting.
flyingcircus3 · 34d ago
Luckily for those people, more messages were released this morning, with times, planes and weapons described.
subjectsigma · 34d ago
lol no, you have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about
sarcasmatwork · 35d ago
Incorrect.
"Clinton has said that she never used her personal email to send information that was marked classified at the time, although some of her emails had been retroactively classified.
Comey says that's not true. Of 30,000 emails Clinton turned over to the State Department in 2014, FBI investigators found 110 emails containing information that was classified at the time the email was sent. Eight of those were top secret, the highest level of classification."
"Another 2,000 emails have been retroactively classified since they were sent, Comey said."
In reading deeper, many or most of these "classified" emails are comments on news stories that revealed information that another department would rather keep secret, such as news articles about CIA drone strikes, while the CIA at the time wouldn't acknowledge they had a a drone program.
Clinton argued at the time that such emails aren't and shouldn't be classified, since she didn't discuss any information sourced from the CIA, but only the publicly available news article. That seems to me to be at least a reasonable stance.
vdqtp3 · 34d ago
> Clinton argued at the time that such emails aren't and shouldn't be classified, since she didn't discuss any information sourced from the CIA, but only the publicly available news article. That seems to me to be at least a reasonable stance.
It's absolutely a reasonable stance. However, the rules aren't reasonable. For instance, as someone who held a clearance at the time, discussing/disseminating the Snowden leaks that were published in national news was considered a violation.
jimt1234 · 35d ago
And Hillary sat in front of Congress for 11 hours.
rschiavone · 35d ago
Yeah that should be the bare minimum
itsanaccount · 35d ago
because hackernews is full of people who cultivate a specific naivety when it comes to power so they don't have to contemplate their responsibility or position therin. its endemic and I have a hobby pointing it out again, and again, and again.
FreebasingLLMs · 35d ago
Because 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.
defrost · 35d ago
A 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.
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".
TomK32 · 35d ago
In 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.
throwaway5752 · 35d ago
I 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.
jgalt212 · 35d ago
When 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 · 35d ago
In 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 · 35d ago
Use 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.
root_axis · 35d ago
Years of investigations and congressional hearings is nothing?
katbyte · 35d ago
I assume the email server you are referring to is the one Elon installed and then fed all sorts of peoples private information to
chris_wot · 33d ago
Sheesh, false equivalence much? An unencrypted mail server is also awful.
arbitrary_name · 34d ago
>charismatic public persona
You have weird taste in men.
riehwvfbk · 31d ago
Discrimination much?
ferguess_k · 35d ago
I actually think the major powers mostly know what the others are doing.
unyttigfjelltol · 35d ago
And should! That's how we remain, figuratively, minutes to midnight for generations, and not closer.
monksy · 35d 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.
> 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 · 35d ago
I'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.
SantalBlush · 35d ago
Their 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.
Aeolun · 35d 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.
georgeplusplus · 35d 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 · 35d ago
It's not shocking but it is unacceptable. The president should be held to a higher standard, not a lesser one.
bambax · 35d ago
No accountability or consequences for anyone is the motto of the Trump administration (or indeed Trump himself, who is a convicted felon).
dylan604 · 35d ago
First 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 · 35d ago
It's all about the $$$.
SSLy · 35d ago
The consequences will arrive by the will of the Trumpist administration.
Levied on the Undesirables only.
ulfw · 35d ago
Trump 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 · 35d ago
Trump 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.
excalibur · 35d ago
> I'm not suggesting punishment, or even prosecution, for the people involved.
At 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 · 35d ago
It 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 · 35d ago
English isn't my first language so I might've misunderstood what you wrote, but isn't that contradicting?
bleuarff · 34d ago
Yes it is, but it's my understanding that this is the actual testimony from Tulsi Gabbard, part of the conversation.
parrellel · 34d ago
Yes. Yes it is.
adamtaylor_13 · 35d ago
Do 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.
angrydev · 35d ago
The 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.
Centigonal · 35d ago
I 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.
jimt1234 · 35d ago
Updated Hanlon's razor: Never attribute to intelligence that which is adequately explained by stupidity
tonyhart7 · 35d 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
zdragnar · 35d ago
CISA 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.
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.
hyperhello · 35d ago
“the rest of the story seems overblown” sounds like a thought-terminator to minimize impact.
tailefer · 35d ago
You 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.
What classified info was in the chat? The only reference I saw to classified info was explicit references to getting out of that medium to discuss classified info
jandrese · 35d ago
I have not verified this, but reporting suggests they had targeting data down to the names of individuals in Yemen, as well as flight times and originating sources for the airstrikes, which if leaked would be very valuable to whatever air defenses were in the country. It is not clear if intelligence sources were also potentially compromised.
Is this false? I see it's being downvoted, leading me to believe people question its veracity
No comments yet
atonse · 36d ago
Setting aside the obvious shock of the actual subject, I'm going to try the herculean task of bringing this back to being a HN-related topic...
My guess is that there is someone named Jeffrey Goldberg in the NatSec team (or high up, it seems like a common combination of first and last name at least), and likely that they meant to add him, rather than the EDITOR IN CHIEF of the Atlantic of all people. Could this be a UI/UX thing with Signal? (not differentiating between two Jeffrey Goldbergs on your contact list?).
bsimpson · 35d ago
This sounds less like a Signal problem than an information organization problem. Signal can only show what's in its datastore (your contact list).
I just checked on Android - if you try to add someone to a group chat, it shows their name and profile pic.
One potential Signal-side wrinkle is that it allows you to add people to a group chat who are in another chat you're in, but who aren't in your contacts list. There are strangers I was apparently at a dinner party with years ago who are eligible to be added to a group chat. If Jeffrey Goldberg has his Signal profile name set to JG and he wasn't in Mike Waltz's phone with a more specific name, that could lead to this mistake.
petre · 35d ago
Then it's a good thing there's not an Abdul-Malik al-Houthi in the administration, as they might have included the wrong person on the private group chat.
tehjoker · 35d ago
They should add one then, because the operation described is illegal under international law and should not have been executed. They are punishing Yemen for resisting the US backed Israeli genocide in Gaza. It is ghastly.
stogot · 35d ago
I have empathy for civilians, but you’re having empathy to self-declared murders and terrorists. It’s in their Houthi motto. That’s ghastly
dttze · 34d ago
The US and Israeli governments are murderers and terrorists via their actions. You're complaining about a slogan.
kulahan · 32d ago
Well no, he’s complaining about their actions which is shown (in part, relevant to this comment) easily by their enthusiastic acceptance of said slogan.
tehjoker · 34d ago
The blockade of the red sea is a humanitarian operation that is fulfilling yemen's obligations under international law. Genocide prevention rises above all other obligations including the protection of commerce. The united states is facilitating a genocide, we are a bad actor.
If you have empathy for civilians regardless, the United States bombed a civilian residence and killed many bystanders to get at a Houthi official engaged in genocide prevention. This is a war crime.
lmm · 35d ago
> This sounds less like a Signal problem than an information organization problem. Signal can only show what's in its datastore (your contact list).
Signal's insistence on punting on the trust/identity problem is a Signal problem IMO, particularly when its advocates make such a fuss (when it suits them) about being a properly end-to-end cryptosystem and not just a toolbox of algorithms. Most of the systems it's competing with make at least some attempt at providing a chain of trust so you don't have to individually verify everyone you want to talk to.
GoblinSlayer · 35d ago
Skype solves it with an invite link. If you want to send an account, you take its invite link and send it, thus making a manual web of trust without search.
lbarron6868 · 35d ago
I believe they meant to contact Jamieson Greer (JG), and maybe Waltz had both of them listed by initials? That's the leading theory.
i think this is likely what happened, though i also find it just as plausible that he was fat-fingered or drunk-added into the group (i’ve been added to group chats accidentally by both these “methods”)
No comments yet
ChuckMcM · 35d ago
Entirely possible. Which is why Government services for 'chat' explicitly don't allow contacts to appear who aren't already in the government. You've also no doubt seen email as it appears in Government inboxes with the big red banner "Came from outside, don't trust this" kinds of things will all the links disabled.
Two things that are really troublesome. The first, as Josh Marshall of TPM points out, "No one on that chat asked 'Why are we doing this on Signal?'" which suggests that it isn't the first time Signal was used for 'off books' stuff and that perhaps there are many such conversations. The second is that the conversation was set up while one of the participants was in the Kremlin waiting to talk to Putin. So either 'Kremlin Free WiFi' or the local cell tower providing connectivity?
Most pundits feel like this administration is trying to keep things out of FOIA and discoverability reach which has its own problems.
So yes, tools for Government communications don't have this problem, hell even Microsoft Teams on their US cloud get better protection than this.
mullingitover · 35d ago
> Most pundits feel like this administration is trying to keep things out of FOIA and discoverability reach which has its own problems.
I don't think we need to ponder so hard about this.
This administration is headed by a man who kept stolen TS/SCI national secrets in a bathroom at his house.
A fish rots from the head.
rahkiin · 35d ago
Keeps*. He took them back some weeks ago
stogot · 35d ago
Where was this reported?
judahmeek · 34d ago
Wouldn't it be faster just to google search "trump fbi evidence return" than to ask such a question on HN?
stogot · 33d ago
I used a different engine, but yes I searched and nothing came up
Kept* What is the likelihood they are still there?
croisillon · 35d ago
> "Came from outside, don't trust this"
meanwhile every company and their dog do this, for 2 lines worth of text you have to go through this litter and "think of the trees" and "if this email was not intended for you we will deny ever having written it" etc...
sethammons · 34d ago
> So either 'Kremlin Free WiFi' or the local cell tower providing connectivity
Or just let someone look over your shoulder?
DrScientist · 35d ago
> Most pundits feel like this administration is trying to keep things out of FOIA and discoverability reach which has its own problems.
Similar issues have come up in the UK about Boris Johnson et al using Whatsapp etc during Covid, and one of the things they said in their defence did have some value - at least in relation to the idea of unminuted discussions.
ie these chat's are what used to be corridor/bar/cafe conversations - ie unminuted discussions are old as government - it's just they are now happening on various messaging apps rather than in person, at much faster pace, and with more people involved.
So I think it's a mistake to think its reasonable that all discussions should be recorded - the real question here is how to get the right balance - and make sure any decision making meetings are recorded - rather than the chat around the decision.
The way it worked in the past - was to get a proper decision you needed all the people in the same room - and so it was automatically minuted as it was an official meeting ( but not the chat at coffee before the meeting ) - now it's possible to get people together virtually that distinction is blurred.
Not sure what the answer is - but just saying it's probably unreasonable to expect all communications to be recorded - people need space to float ideas, or bitch like normal people - however on the other hand it is essential key meetings are minuted - not just for transparency - but for the study of history.
snickerbockers · 35d ago
I'm putting my money on somebody fat-fingering the wrong contact. Maybe it's just me but I swear every phone I've ever owned has had extremely unreliable UIs, stemming from a combination of phantom touches being detected, and the phone moving buttons around as I'm trying to interact with it, as if it's on dialup line struggling to load somebody's Sonic the Hedgehog fanpage on GeoCities one gif at a time in 1996. And it's just phones too, this never happens on my PCs.
Of course, none of this excuses the failure to verify the identities of everybody in their chat, the choice to use a (probably) unvetted app on a (probably) unvetted personal device, or any other of a number of basic opsec rules that should be obvious to anybody who is vested with the authority to order an airstrike on the other side of the planet.
abeyer · 35d ago
Agree, though I 100% see it on PC too, when web pages try to override standard scroll behavior to do some visual trick at the expense of well tested platform and browser scrolling support.
Alupis · 35d ago
I don't use Signal, and am unfamiliar with the UI/UX.
However, it seems more plausible to me that Jeffrey Goldberg is in someone's contact list from previous on-purpose leaks (to control narrative, etc, typical "anonymous sources say" stuff) - and was accidentally added to this group.
Zak · 35d ago
When adding people to a chat, it shows the contact list from the device, with avatars. It is also possible to manually enter a phone number or username.
It's very likely that senior government officials have a phone with journalists saved in the contacts. It's easy to imagine why there are rules against using the same phone for secret war stuff, yet here we are.
GoblinSlayer · 35d ago
It could be just a different profile.
Zak · 35d ago
That would solve the problem of accidentally adding journalists to chats, but phones belonging to high level officials are surely targets for the intelligence services of hostile nations. A phone that's used casually, taken to foreign countries, and not actively managed by security professionals is at high risk of being compromised given that threat model.
Vox_Leone · 35d ago
It could happen on Whatsapp. I've seen a lot of groups where everybody is an admin.
jredwards · 36d ago
There is someone with the same initials, not with the same name. I saw someone else point out a potential candidate here but I don't recall the exact name.
nkurz · 36d ago
I've seen Jamieson Greer as US Trade Representative (same initials) and Jeffrey Kruse of the Defense Intelligence Agency (same first name) mentioned as possibly being the intended invitee.
roughly · 36d ago
I mean, I expect the actual approved governmental secure messaging apps would make it much harder to accidentally add a journalist to the thread, so I don’t know if this is a Signal problem per se.
runamok · 36d ago
100%. Let's not blame Signal where it's on you to only invite the proper potentially anonymous contact you want to communicate with. Very different goals.
ocdtrekkie · 35d ago
This also highlights why the conversation being held on Signal is so bad. Imagine if "J G" expressed concerns about going forward with the attack. Making actual decisionmaking on go or no go over a non-classified system is insanely stupid.
ttyprintk · 35d ago
Signal could fundraise on new flair for DOGE implants, cabinet members, and folks who have side-loaded FSB certs.
jajko · 35d ago
> Setting aside the obvious shock of the actual subject, I'm going to try the herculean task of bringing this back to being a HN-related topic...
Is that so shocking? I watch often some forums on reddit related to combat footage, not frequently but enough to see various patterns. Before houthis started attacking shipping lanes, there were tons of videos of them kicking ass of Saudi military but way more often some subsaharan African mercenaries in their uniforms. Like, really badly kicking ass, smart ambushes, devastating results even on heavy machinery. The opposite side had almost nothing.
Then with change of this, the tone and content turned 180 degrees. Almost always absolutely precise laser guided bomb strikes even if for 1-2 guys seemingly in the middle of nowhere, and a lot of them popping up all the time (to the tune of few every single day). Always titled cca 'Saudi air force doing XYZ'. Like sure, if you are clueless and don't know state of their army, their discipline, level of training and so on you can believe that.
I didn't believe this since the switch was sharp, US is simply flying there for quite some time, together with Saudi air force. TBH I don't care, just sharing observations. No way we can know hard facts obviously, but its easy to connect those very few dots. A bit of failure from opsec point of view - if you do this stuff, at least keep it secret and not broadcasting to whole world so politicians can keep big smiles and grand statements, at least for clueless civilians who barely know where Yemen lies on the map.
What others write it matches my observation - “Houthi PC small group”, seemingly short term group about specific attack. US attacks themselves are already happening for a year and something.
nopelynopington · 35d ago
I think the poster was talking about the shock of the lapse in security, not the shock of houthi air strikes
ineedasername · 36d ago
Can users in a group add/invite others in? My firth though was someone doing it on the sly, to leak deliberately.
fzzzy · 35d ago
This is what I started thinking last night. Any of the people who were added to the chat could be disgruntled and add a reporter to the chat to leak it. Is there even any log of who added who to a chat? There might not even be any way to pin it on the leaker. If the leaker had been involved in several such chats and knew the intent was to intentionally violate federal recordkeeping laws, not only would this accomplish the leak, but there might not even be any record of who caused the leak.
LorenzoGood · 34d ago
I don't think that new people added to group chats are able to see past messages on signal.
anigbrowl · 35d ago
If they have admin privileges. The person who creates a group has them by default, and can grant them to anyone else, admins can add, remove, and grant or revoke admin privileges and set group name/description parameters, and disappearing message configuration. Yes, you could have a group where the founder revokes admin privileges for themselves and then nobody can make changes to the group (although individual members can leave and delete the history on their own devices). Signal users can also delete their own messages.
crtasm · 35d ago
By default, yes. You can change the permissions so only group admins can add people.
readthenotes1 · 35d ago
Goldberg is not a fan of Trump
I did not believe there was any way this was done accidentally...
petre · 35d ago
Hanlon's razor begs to differ.
Trump sent his golf buddy Waltz to negotiate with Putin and he came back brainwashed with Russian propaganda. Russian psyops is either really good or some of these people in the administration are just morons.
ineedasername · 34d ago
Hanlon’s razor still has to account for why Goldberg was in Walt’z phone to begin with. If you’re going to butt dial or fat finger the editor of a publication into your super classified bombing plans I don’t think even Hanlon could reconcile it to random number dialing instead of just hitting the wrong contact.
petre · 34d ago
Sorry I meant golf buddy Wiktoff, not Waltz.
Dunno about Waltz, seems like he is himself quite puzzled about how Goldberg ended up in the group, denied any connection with him and called the Atlantic journalist 'scum'. He also spoke with his buddy Elon and they've got the best minds looking at it right now.
Maybe he's better at handling firearms than mobile chat apps, dunno. The Chinese, which he dislikes, are definitely not going to have a hard time with people like him running the show. I read they were trying to recruit some of the laid off federal workers.
Balgair · 36d ago
If anything, I'm a bit surprised that Jeff Goldberg burned this source.
If anything, I'd suspect that he'd keep the channel open as long as he could.
Or, he's got other channels that work better.
All the same, I mean, wow. These guys are just morons here, there's really no other way around it. I'm trying to think of a charitable way to spin this and I've got nothing.
Like, very clearly, these people are going to get service-members killed due to their idiocy
tptacek · 36d ago
As soon as he realizes (or a reasonable person would realize) that the group chat is not a hoax, and that he is getting confidential military information over that channel, his continued membership in the channel demonstrates intent to receive the information, which makes anything he writes about it in the future legally problematic. It's complicated and it's not like just receiving classified information from a source is intrinsically criminal, but it'll be the entire fact pattern he'd be confronted with by prosecutors.
overfeed · 36d ago
The fourt cases related to Watergate established that receiving classified information is not illegal, and affirmed 1A rights. I'd argue it's a exactly the same as a journalist overhearing this motley crew discussing the war plan in the halls of the White House without being aware there's a journalist nearby. I wouldn't bank on the current supreme court to uphold precedence, or the current administration persecuting the journalist for "hacking" into a "secure" government chat group - which is what they'll allege without evidence. I suspect the journalist cares more about national security than the cowboys in the chat group, and is acutely aware that they are a target for hacking by nation-states, which would leak classified information.
chimeracoder · 36d ago
> I would bank in the current supreme court to uphold precedence
Counting on SCOTUS to respect precedent at this point is either extremely optimistic or extremely naive.
overfeed · 36d ago
Oh, that was a typo. I do not trust the current supreme court to uphold precedence over naked partisanship.
milesrout · 36d ago
The US Supreme Court hews close to precedent. The only two significant overturned decisions in the last decade are Roe v Wade, which regardless of your views on abortion was a poorly reasoned decision, which was really judicial legislation, that had to be essentially amended several times (whether abortion should be permitted is a separate question from whether Roe was good law, which it obviously wasn't) and Chevron, which was contrary to the most fundamental principles of the rule of law (that is, that the interpretation of the law is a fundamentally judicial function).
Neither were really political decisions. The SCOTUS doesn't split along ideological or party lines all the time. It often splits in different ways, and often makes decisions on very politically heated topics unanimously. You should have more confidence in it. It is the least bad of your three major institutions of government by far.
To go back to Chevron, you have to look beyond the US and understand that for anyone else anywhere else in the world, the idea of the courts deferring in their interpretation of the law to executive agencies is just ridiculous. It never made any sense. Its result was inevitable: a new government was elected and suddenly the law changed overnight because government departments all published their new "interpretations" of the law. That is just silly, it makes a mockery of the principles of the rule of law, and it gives too much power to the government. Law should be made by parliament (which you call congress, for some reason) and rulemaking powers should be explicitly delegated to executive agencies where appropriate. Vagueness in the law should be interpreted and resolved by the courts, not by the executive in a way that is subject to political whimsy.
dragonwriter · 36d ago
> The only two significant overturned decisions in the last decade are Roe [...] and Chevron
That's really not true; just a couple of the other major decisions overturned in the last decade:
Apodaca v. Oregon, holding that while the 14th Amendment did incorporate the right to jury trial against the States, it did not incorporate the unanimity requirement that the Supreme Court has found against the federal government in the 6th Amendment against the states. (reversed in Ramos v. Louisiana, 2020.)
Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, holding that a certiied public-sector union could collect an “agency fee” attributable to representational activities but not other union functions to represented non-member employees. Reversed by Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees Council 31 (2018).
_DeadFred_ · 35d ago
Snyder v. United States, where it was decided that 'gratuities' after the fact are not bribes.
Maybe instead of significant I should have said significantly publicly controversial, or something along those lines.
thecopy · 36d ago
>To go back to Chevron, you have to look beyond the US and understand that for anyone else anywhere else in the world, the idea of the courts deferring in their interpretation of the law to executive agencies is just ridiculous
My interpretation is difficult and complex domain specific regulation were handled by agency experts, and not lawyers. It is now up to congress to detail very specifically this potentially difficult regulation and to quickly adjust when research changes.
Is my interpretation incorrect? Since to me this current approach sounds terrible, inflexibly and set-up to fail.
yummypaint · 36d ago
Yes, it's about attacking the means by which we collectively hold bad actors in check. Also other countries absolutely do delegate regulatory minutae to experts. If we can delegate law making to elected representatives, we can do the same for regulations to ensure they do what is intended.
milesrout · 36d ago
No, it is about decent lawmaking. Nothing stops Congress from delegating regulation-making powers to agencies. Chevron isn't about that. Chevron didn't involve any delegation of anything.
Chevron is about the statute saying something vague like "a term in a consumer credit contract is void if it is oppressive" and then the effective definition of the word "oppressive" being able to be "interpreted" by executive agencies at their whim with the courts being powerless to intervene. That is contrary to the rule of law. If there is a vagueness, that should be filled by a court supplying an interpretation and that precedent is then established. Law should be stable and predictable.
Remember the original Chevron case was based on the EPA changing its interpretation of "source" of air pollution under the Clean Air Act 1963 to make it much narrower. There was no statutory power for it to do so. Nothing in the Act authorised it. It unilaterally changed its interpretation of the law, and the Court said "that is fine, it is ambiguous, you decide what the law is and as long as it is a reasonable interpretation that is fine". Nothing to stop them turning around the next day and changing their interpretation again.
vel0city · 35d ago
> being able to be "interpreted" by executive agencies at their whim with the courts being powerless to intervene.
This isn't accurate though. You're arguing these things could literally change day to day, but there were established procedures for rule changes. Those procedures required posting reasons for the change, a notice published in the register, the chance for people to comment on the change, etc. When regulations changed without notice and without any reason given they got blocked from making the change.
See the debates around net neutrality and FCC decisions. Took a lot of notices, a lot of back and forth, etc. They couldn't just arbitrarily change the rules from one day to the next.
pintxo · 35d ago
> Nothing to stop them turning around the next day and changing their interpretation again.
Why describes mostly every law enacted by a parliament? They clearly have that power to change the laws they enacted at any time.
So where is the problem if parliament delegates this power to some executive entity?
Now, if delegation is not clearly defined, this is another issue I can understand. And I am not interested enough in the minutia of US legislation to have an opinion on that.
lmm · 35d ago
> Why describes mostly every law enacted by a parliament? They clearly have that power to change the laws they enacted at any time.
They don't have the power to reinterpret their laws. They can repeal laws and pass new laws, but interpretation is up to the courts, if they don't like the interpretation the court gives to a law then their recourse is to pass a new law.
> So where is the problem if parliament delegates this power to some executive entity?
The problem is firstly that the executive isn't supposed to have the power to make or repeal laws, "delegating" it to them breaks the separation of powers, and secondly allowing a law to be "reinterpreted" rather than rewritten breaks the whole system of precedence that the rule of law depends on.
floor2 · 35d ago
> then the effective definition of the word "oppressive" being able to be "interpreted" by executive agencies
I don't get how this could ever be resolved though. You can complain about how "oppressive" is "interpreted" so they can add more words, they can say "people are harmed" and then it's up to interpretation about who is "people" and what is "harm" so then you add more words to define "people" as living homo-sapiens and then it's up to interpretation about what is "living" and on and on.
> If there is a vagueness
There is literally always vagueness. "I never said she took his money" can have 7 different interpretations just based on which word is emphasized.
It's a meaningless tautology that any English sentence has some amount of vagueness and that people will be interpreting its meaning.
lmm · 35d ago
Which is exactly why it's important to have a separation of powers where the legislature writes the laws and the courts interpret them. When the same entity is both writing the rules and interpreting the ambiguity in them, that's ripe for abuse.
BurningFrog · 35d ago
Chevron was not about deciding regulation details.
It was about who interprets what a law an agency administers means.
Before Chevron, an agency could say "we interpret this law to mean we can do X", and then no one could stop it from doing X. That's a huge amount of unchecked power!
Now an impartial court get to interpret what laws mean. Seems like the obviously right thing to me.
milesrout · 36d ago
Here are two examples.
First, a made up but illustrative one. The statute says something vague like "a term in a standard form consumer contract that is oppressive or unconscionable is void." In a common law system (anything derived from English law, including US, Australia, etc) the meaning of these terms, if they aren't defined elsewhere in the statute, is figured out based on decided cases. Someone will argue that it covers a particular clause, and the judge will decide if it does. The judge might give a detailed test for what constitutes "oppressive" or might reuse an existing one from a different context or whatever. The decision might be appealed and a panel of judges decide the meaning. But over time, and as cases are decided, the meaning becomes clear. You can point to half a dozen examples of clearly oppressive clauses and a dozen that clearly aren't, there is a legal test for what counts, etc. The law develops towards certainty and the doctrine of precedent also means it stabilises: it isn't going to change its meaning just because new judges are appointed, because they generally follow precedent pretty closely.
Under the Chevron doctrine, there is an extra step. If a government agency says that its interpretation is that "oppressive" means X, then if that interpretation is reasonable, if it is open on the wording of the statute, then the inquiry stops there. The court defers to the government agency. This has the benefit, admittedly, that the definition can change over time according to changing conditions. But it has downsides. It is giving the job of deciding what laws mean to the government, rather than the judiciary. The government is meant to act according to law, not to interpret it. That isn't the executive's proper function. But quite apart from the philosophical objections, it is no good for stability. A new government is elected and the official interpretation changes. This happens a lot. A new government is elected and it is decided that now "restraint of trade" clauses in employment contracts are legal. Four years later they're unenforceable. Four years layer they're enforceable again. No laws changed, no regulations are passed, a government agency just releases a new statement of its official interpretation of the law.
That is quite different to, e.g., there being a statute saying "terms in consumer contracts must accord with the regulations promulgated by the department of consumer protection as in force at the date of execution of the contract" because:
1. It is clear what is delegated to the executive and what is not.
2. It is clear that the definition applied is the definition at the time the contract was signed, and the "interpretation" is not retrospective.
3. It is still up to the court to give a clear, consistent, precedential ruling as to the meaning of the regulations themselves.
This example is real: Chevron itself. There, the EPA changed the definition of "source" of air pollution, without Congressional approval, so that "source" was much narrower (making pollution harder to regulate).
mullingitover · 35d ago
> The SCOTUS doesn't split along ideological or party lines all the time.
It happens enough on cases that matter that it's farcical not to put (R) and (D) after the names of the justices, for clarity, when discussing them in the press.
psunavy03 · 35d ago
The fact that this is getting downvoted into the ground really shows the delta between reality and what the members of this site want to convince themselves is reality.
And as the article says the courts have been increasingly looking at narrowly scoped cases that are less precedent changing.
itbeho · 36d ago
There should be protection for people that receive information in this manner that is equivalent to whistleblower protection. No law abiding citizen should ever be prosecuted in favor of protecting a government fuck up.
tptacek · 36d ago
I agree. I'm remarking positively, not normatively.
danesparza · 35d ago
"his continued membership in the channel demonstrates intent to receive the information"
Nope. His authority as a journalist prevails. He published the article -- so his intent was to do his job as a journalist, and the public has a right to know.
National security or institutional trust was not damaged by the journalist -- only by the ignorance of the politicians now running our military.
The information was newsworthy and in the public interest.
Publication did not cause harm (and you might argue that dropping actual bombs caused much more harm).
The information was obtained legally and without foresight.
The journalist has an obligation to report the information if it serves the public interest, especially if it reveals systemic failures, endangers democracy, or impacts public policy.
codethief · 35d ago
I think you are talking past each other. OP's point was about future publications (possibly including confidential information only shared through that Signal group).
CyberDildonics · 36d ago
That's the part you're concerned with? Criminal liability of the journalist while the alcoholic was sending government secrets over a signal group chat to unverified members?
lapcat · 36d ago
> If anything, I'm a bit surprised that Jeff Goldberg burned this source.
> If anything, I'd suspect that he'd keep the channel open as long as he could.
> Or, he's got other channels that work better.
The Signal chat group was called the “Houthi PC small group.” It appeared to be a short-term, mission-specific group rather than a long-term, open-ended group. Thus, it's unlikely that much more information would be gained in the future. Goldberg's inclusion in the chat was the main story here, not the specific details revealed to Goldberg, many of which he kept confidential.
mercurywells · 35d ago
They've been bombing the Houthis for quite a few days now
bayarearefugee · 36d ago
He was probably worried about the legal ramifications of not doing so, though these days he may be more likely to get sent off to some El Salvadoran prison for writing the article and exposing their staggering incompetence than he would be for continuing to knowingly listen in on the chat.
itbeho · 36d ago
He did the right thing. He's obviously of a certain political bent, but recognized this kind of leak could lead to the loss of American service member lives. He didn't share everything from the chat. I respect him for what he did.
And I agree with your assessment. Morons...
ty6853 · 36d ago
Hard to say. Sharing it may have lead to saving of servicemen lives since it may cause an abort. Not like it is a self defense mission, attacks on Houthi is totally optional meddling that likely breeds more 'terrorists'.
9dev · 36d ago
Trying to assess the consequences of publishing highly classified information on military operations is a ridiculously reckless idea. None of us have enough data about the full picture to even try to guess correctly here. The only sane thing to do is to maintain confidentiality and leave it to the involved agencies to draw consequences as they see fit.
ty6853 · 35d ago
A group of idiots who share battle plans with journalists under commander in chief Trump have clearly displayed their incompetence in drawing consequences. That the idiots who illegally sent it know best was not even on my radar of possibilities and is a ridiculously reckless idea imo.
It is not even clear to me that preserving serviceman is one of the goals of these agencies, given they've marched them off to die in several needless wars. Sure maybe the agencies might have more information, that doesn't mean they're more likely to make decisions that preserve life. Deference to 'experts' in government has lead to much bloodshed.
9dev · 35d ago
Ah, I didn’t phrase this properly; I was referring to the broader military organisation orchestrating the actual long-Running operations, not the clowns in charge. They probably know best which information should be classified to protect deployed soldiers, and I would find it questionable to assume you know better than them about what may endanger individual servicemen abroad.
mostafah · 36d ago
My guess is that he was consulting their lawyers during this. IANAL but it might have been a crime if he did not leave the group as soon as he was sure it was real. He keeps mentioning that he was not certain this is real until the first attacks. After the first attack, he could not continue this argument.
herzigma · 36d ago
Jeff Goldberg loves his country more than he cares about a "source."
weebull · 35d ago
He might serves his country better by waiting for them to incriminate themselves more.
freejazz · 35d ago
By what, sending another message to him?
anigbrowl · 36d ago
My theory is that he had to balance the journalistic scoop of the century with the risk of being arrested for illegally accessing/storing classified information. If they had noticed before he published the story then he could have been vanned and the public told that he had infiltrated a secure channel, and who would be able to say otherwise? MAGA people would cheerfully call for his execution.
nradov · 36d ago
Under US federal law it is generally not a crime for a person without a security clearance to receive or store classified information. The legal problems come in when they solicit it or take some other action to obtain it.
zeven7 · 36d ago
Laws matter less than they used to. When the President regularly uses the term "retribution" to describe his mode of operation, I don't blame someone for taking a more careful approach in a case like this. It shouldn't be that way, for a journalist. But a lot of things shouldn't be the way they are today.
anigbrowl · 36d ago
Would you trust the current DOJ to handle this fairly if it landed in your lap?
jzb · 35d ago
"If anything, I'd suspect that he'd keep the channel open as long as he could."
The real story is that he was added to the channel, so it doesn't surprise me that he didn't try to lurk indefinitely. I'm guessing these things are also ad-hoc, so perhaps the well was already dry after the attack?
But this is some truly amateur-hour shit. I've seen better communications discipline from volunteer open source projects than this.
matwood · 35d ago
> I've seen better communications discipline from volunteer open source projects than this.
Because those people are likely competent. The problem with hiring mostly yes-men/women is competence is secondary.
malshe · 36d ago
One lawyer I follow on Bluesky mentioned the longer he stayed on more exposed he became to legal ramifications. Also, this involves national security which courts may treat differently than other issues.
I am more surprised that he did not save this incident for a future book
cocacola1 · 36d ago
Might boost their subs. This legit got me to resubscribe to the Atlantic.
malshe · 36d ago
I think that's a fair assessment. Goldberg seems to have strong journalistic ethics too. Again, from Bluesky,
David Graham asks Jeffrey Goldberg about possible retaliation
Jeffrey: It's not my role to care about the possibility of threats or retaliation. We just have to come to work and do our jobs to the best of our ability. Unfortunately, in our society today—-we see this across corporate journalism and law firms and other industries--there's too much preemptive obeying for my taste. All we can do is just go do our jobs.
throw0101c · 36d ago
> there's too much preemptive obeying for my taste.
From historian Timothy Snyder's book On Tyranny, chapter/lesson number one:
Are you saying it's a crime for someone else to accidentally add you to their chat?
dragonwriter · 35d ago
Yeah, there is a crime defined for intentionally gathering national defense information, and that crime is called "espionage"; while the courts have found constitutional limits beyond what is in the text of the law that restrict when it can be applied, the application of those limits isn't super consistent in practice and the formal boundary could be changed by the courts at any time when the government is pushing it, and a journalist knowingly taking advantage of someone else's mistake to continue gathering such information would not be out of line of the situations in which the government has pursued charges for that in the last decade.
refurb · 35d ago
and a journalist knowingly taking advantage of someone else's mistake to continue gathering such information would not be out of line of the situations in which the government has pursued charges for that in the last decade.
Yes, that would be a crime, but that's not what the original comment said.
> mentioned the longer he stayed on more exposed he became to legal ramifications
I'm asking "if someone was added in error, why do legal ramification increase"?
Clearly being added in error then publishing a bunch of stories in a series would be a crime.
dragonwriter · 35d ago
> I'm asking "if someone was added in error, why do legal ramification increase"?
No, that's exactly what I answered: the ramifications increase the longer he stays on, because the longer he stays on the greater chance it is seen as exploiting the error with intent to gain national defense information.
refurb · 35d ago
So if someone accidentally adds me to a Signal chat, which I stopped using so no longer check, and it goes on for years, I’m guilty of a crime?
hnaccount_rng · 35d ago
I think you are arguing a moot point. It's not really about what happened, the law is mainly about the intent. He did not immediately leave because he did not believe this to be a genuine group. So he has no intend to do harm at this point. But once he becomes convinced this is real he now _intentionally_ receives classified information he's not authorised to have. So now it is _necessarily_ also a legal problem for him.
So in your case: Getting added to a random signal chat where you are not exposed to anything? You should be fine. At least it will be very hard to show any intent to violate anything. Though that isn't necessarily true either. E.g. one could imagine Signal usernames belonging to operatives being in that group. And starting to post or investigate those could still get you in legitimate trouble.
And yes, ignorance of the law does not necessarily save one either. But a central point in all prosecutions is some portion of criminal intent
dllthomas · 34d ago
No, the crime isn't staying in. The crime (if it is one) is choosing to stay in. If he reports on messages from 6mo ago with an auto-delete of 1wk, he was aware of it roughly 6mo ago (and taking it seriously enough to preserve things).
evantbyrne · 35d ago
The Atlantic is not a typical publication. It is run by serious people.
garfield_light · 35d ago
This is the type of thing that can get you on jail or even (quietly) killed during a normal US administration. I'm not surprised Goldberg GTFO intermediately.
GoblinSlayer · 35d ago
Dunno, I was surprised how digitally literate these old dudes are to the point of writing long autistic messages in Signal, so long that the author can quote them only as "wrote a lengthy message". Even normie programmers of all people can communicate only with meat sounds.
Who complained here that email can't be replaced by messengers, because you can't write long messages there? Here's a counterexample.
spacechild1 · 35d ago
Maybe they used the desktop client?
seatac76 · 35d ago
He could have continued for weeks, imho he did the good citizen and responsible journalist thing here. Made the public aware before it really got out of hand.
fatbird · 35d ago
I'm betting that Goldberg realized, once it was confirmed real, that his only feasible defense was exiting the chat and going public immediately. Otherwise, someone notices he's there, and he's arrested by ICE and disappeared to El Salvador, or worse.
In many ways, being a public enemy of the Trump Admin is the safest enemy to be.
The ABC had a public interest duty to publicise everything, instead they left 99% unread and returned the contents to the government.
Pathetic.
namaria · 36d ago
Knowingly keeping sensitive US national security data on a personal phone would be a very bad idea.
reverius42 · 35d ago
So, like the other 18 people in the chat?
namaria · 35d ago
Yes. But we haven't heard from them what they did with it.
Zak · 35d ago
I thought that at first, but the group was clearly temporary, intended for this particular military action. There was likely little value to staying, and as other comments note, a nonzero risk of (likely unsuccessful) prosecution.
educasean · 36d ago
Imagine if he stays and obtains some critical information that later happens to get leaked. You're now a prime suspect for the leak, possibly facing charges of something like treason. I think leaving was the wise choice.
sharpshadow · 36d ago
Sounds like he received the message purposefully and pretends it was an mistake?
2h is a lot but also not that much time, everything is prepared already it’s more a countdown I would say. What would be a usual timeframe to inform the people you want to inform about an immediate event which is going to happen?
Jtsummers · 36d ago
> Sounds like he received the message purposefully and pretends it was an mistake?
Why would he have been added to the group? For what purpose would the current National Security Advisor have to bring in an outsider to discussions that ended up involving almost certainly classified data?
> 2h is a lot but not that much time
He was added to the group two days (13 March) before the strikes (15 March), not two hours.
iszomer · 36d ago
My guess is as a honeypot: see who would publish this alleged "leak" and give the administration justification to "open an investigation" on them.
Jtsummers · 36d ago
That would make a lot more sense if the information hadn't been accurate. You don't leak real operational data deliberately to try and catch someone who might publish it. Because if they do, you've compromised your real mission (the attacks on the Houthis in this case).
iszomer · 36d ago
I meant it from the common assumption for mass media propagation: get it out there as fast as possible and correct later if needed. On a related note, how often do consumers of news go back to read on retractions, if any?
simonh · 35d ago
Steve Witkoff was on the chat while he was in Russia.
There’s a vulnerability in Signal where you can set up linked devices that replicate your signal messages. You can do this by just scanning a QRcode. This is known to be used by Russian hackers.
What are the chances the Russians duped Witkoff into scanning a QR code while he was in Moscow?
HumblyTossed · 35d ago
> What are the chances the Russians duped Witkoff into scanning a QR code while he was in Moscow?
What are the chances this admin had him do it ON PURPOSE?
Why must a Signal attack take place only in Russia? If Russia intelligence operations can operate freely in the US, they can attack US Officials in the US as well.
simonh · 35d ago
Good point. I was just thinking Witkoff must be dealing with Russian functionaries all the time in Moscow so they have near constant direct access. There’s nothing to stop them duping one of them in the US though, and it doesn’t seem like duping these guys would be a stretch.
bb88 · 35d ago
Honestly, the Russians probably already have done so. It's just a matter of who's phone in that group has been compromised.
In a previous world, some three letter agency (FBI maybe?) would seize the phones in the chat to investigate the leak.
beefnugs · 34d ago
Man in the middle attacks require access to the mobile or networking infrastructure (so not necessary, but much more likely and easy)
lucb1e · 34d ago
> There’s a vulnerability in Signal where you can set up linked devices that replicate your signal messages.
You mean the desktop linking feature? If that's considered a vulnerability, then so is being able to chat with someone after getting their public key unverified from an overseas server, the primary mode in which everyone uses it (including the people in this chat, evidently, since no out-of-band key exchange was performed)...
Not to mention the "vulnerability" where you copy the phone's storage and get the key material onto another device to do with what you will, which may be harder or easier depending on the hardware but I'd trust any sufficiently funded security agency to be able to do this for common devices
remus · 34d ago
If you're part of the US government, with access to the most sensitive information which will put people's lives at risk if compromised, then yes this is a vulnerability because "russian GRU agent nicks your phone and scans your signal QR code" is a real threat.
regularjack · 34d ago
If you're part of the US government, you're not supposed to use signal to discuss this kind of stuff.
lucb1e · 34d ago
Bringing in a phone with decryption keys for this conversation is a risk, then, not just Signal's featureset...
I agree it could be hardening to allow users/organizations to disable this feature, and also other features such as automatic media decoding and other mechanisms that are trade-offs between security and usability, but simply does not meet the definition of a vulnerability (nobody will assign this a CVE number to track the bug and "resolve" it)
uberdru · 35d ago
Totally! Probably for a restaurant menu or something. . . It also seems likely that they added Jeffrey Goldberg, (the Atlantic's editor-in-chief) to the chat as the outlet, so the whole thing would become public. . . .
bb88 · 35d ago
How about a restaurant that doesn't have menus and requires patrons to scan a QR code?
Acrylic table menus have inserts which can be easily replaced.
stavros · 35d ago
You guys are forgetting that you have to scan the QR code from Signal's "link new device" menu, and then approve the new device, which is a somewhat uncommon thing for a restaurant menu to ask you to do.
“… the threat actors, including one it's tracking as UNC5792, have resorted to malicious QR codes that, when scanned, will link a victim's account to an actor-controlled Signal instance.”
“ These QR codes are known to masquerade as group invites, security alerts, or legitimate device pairing instructions from the Signal website.”
Also
“ Last week, Microsoft and Volexity also revealed that multiple Russian threat actors are taking advantage of a technique called device code phishing to log into victims' accounts by targeting them via messaging apps like WhatsApp, Signal, and Microsoft Teams.”
Zak · 35d ago
That's just phishing.
Signal could make the pairing attack impossible by eliminating the device pairing feature, but that would also reduce its appeal and harm its mission of bringing secure communication to a broad audience. It could add steps to setting up a group chat and inviting additional members to make it less likely users will invite the wrong person, but that, too would hurt its popularity.
Security is a process and a spectrum, not a binary that can be guaranteed by using a certain product or service.
bb88 · 35d ago
The goal of US information security is not making an app more popular. It's keeping secrets safe.
In that view, Signal is the wrong app to use for US Officials.
Zak · 35d ago
I agree. There are official channels that already exist for discussing sensitive information, and it does not appear Signal is one of them. These officials using any device or software not approved for that purpose constitutes a serious breach of protocol.
Signal probably shouldn't be approved for that purpose because it does trade some foolproofness for convenience. Secure communication should also be limited to dedicated devices, which probably wouldn't have journalists stored in their contacts.
bb88 · 35d ago
The CIA was approved to use signal but for certain applications. Probably because it was better than SMS. But not good enough for classified information.
You could see a CIA agent being in Russia needing to use Signal with an informant, e.g. But that wouldn't be the same level of security needed to hold nuclear secrets.
Zak · 35d ago
I imagine Signal itself is secure enough that it wouldn't be unreasonable for a government to develop a procedure to use it to transmit classified information under certain conditions.
That list of conditions would likely be quite restrictive compared to how we saw it used here. It would certainly include using a dedicated device for classified information, and would forbid taking that device to an unfriendly country. The US government doesn't need to do that though; it already has its own systems for secure communication.
belter · 35d ago
What are the chances Trump portrait[1] has a passive microphone? [2]
Right. So the problem is not that everyone in the chat was using an unsanctioned app to exchange classified information, but these insidious Ruskies who tricked Witkoff and hacked his personal Signal account.
simonh · 34d ago
That's the White House line, apparently they did nothing wrong. It's that Journalists's fault. It can't be the Russians though, they're trusted allies now.
anthomtb · 35d ago
This hypocrisy reminds me of one of my former lead developers. He required everyone on the team to go through multi-person code reviews and pass an extensive CI suite before merging changes into our mainline.
But him? Half that time he'd approve his own changes without review, the other half he would force-push and bypass the CI system entirely.
He knew the system well and seemed to do enough local testing to avoid major breakage but still. Why have a bunch of rules and policies that you do not follow yourself?
theoryofx · 35d ago
He knew the system well and seemed to do enough local testing to avoid major breakage but still. Why have a bunch of rules and policies that you do not follow yourself?
Because these rules and policies are for people that are judged to need them by the person with the authority and responsibility for making the decision.
Policies like these always have a cost and (hopefully) a benefit. Presumably this lead dev judged that the cost vs benefit didn't make sense for themselves but did for others. It's entirely possible they were correct.
tdeck · 35d ago
One of the main purposes of code review is to ensure that your code is understandable to other people. Good lead developers understand this. Bad ones find a way to push through their changes without review or get them rubber stamped, in my experience. Then you end up with big parts of the codebase that only the lead dev can work in productively.
bdangubic · 35d ago
the whole team has to review every single line of code to make sure everyone understands it? or is there a threshold like “we good if 7 out of 79 understand it?” almost 3 decades hacking and have never heard anyone saying that purpose of the code review (in the top 987 reasons teams may institute it) is to ensure your code is understandable by other people… wild :)
tdeck · 35d ago
This page is literally the second result when you Google "benefits of code review":
> Code Review enhances the maintainability of the Code. It ensures that multiple people are aware about the code logic and functioning, which makes it easy to maintain in case the original author of the code is unavailable.
The fact that you've been "hacking" for three decades and never considered this isn't something to wear as a badge of honor. As for your absurd straw man about everyone on the team reviewing every line of code, I've never seen one organization that does that.
bdangubic · 35d ago
are aware about the code logic and functioning
awareness does not imply understanding :)
RealityVoid · 35d ago
No, but it's a minimal threshold. In the end, following the same rules prevents you from doing dumb mistakes and prevents a feeling of unfairness such as OP felt. And, if you can't follow your own rules because they're too annoying, maybe you should change them. So, really, there are multiple benefits. Just follow the rules.
bdangubic · 34d ago
which rules specifically are you talking about?
RealityVoid · 33d ago
The rules of the code review that the top level OP was talking about.
Buttons840 · 35d ago
As long as authority and responsibility land on the same person, I see no problem with it.
If, however, a junior develop is responsible for making a change, but has no authority to make the change, then there is a problem.
bdangubic · 35d ago
lord help all people that work in places where you need “authority” to make a change…
altairprime · 35d ago
Code reviews are often used as an excuse to disclaim responsibility when problems occur, and as a way to deny authority under the guise of mandatory review requests. They do also have many benefits for e.g. continuity of service, but those two drawbacks remain relevant today.
regularjack · 34d ago
Rules are to be followed by everyone without exception, otherwise they should not be called rules.
idle_zealot · 35d ago
> Why have a bunch of rules and policies that you do not follow yourself?
If you can get away with it, why wouldn't you set things up this way? Rules for thee, not for me. You can't try to view power plays like this through the lenses of ethics or morality. The point is to use rules to bind and punish your enemies and to make sure that only your friends can get away with breaking them. You do this with media capture and twisted narratives, taking advantage of the erosion of rule of law as a respected concept among the public.
dragonwriter · 35d ago
> If you can get away with it, why wouldn't you set things up this way?
Ethics and morality.
> You can't try to view power plays like this through the lenses of ethics or morality.
Yes, you can, that's the entire point of ethics and morality.
> The point is to use rules to bind and punish your enemies and to make sure that only your friends can get away with breaking them.
Well, yes, that's the point of the specific actions being discussed; that doesn't make it impossible to look at them through a lens of ethics and morality, it just makes them look bad through such a lens.
idle_zealot · 35d ago
Perhaps rather than "can't try to view" it's more accurate to say that it's an ineffective lense to try to understand the motivations and dynamics at play. You can, and should, analyse the ethics of just about everything in order to make value judgements. Those judgements just have very little to do with people's motivations, and to assume a principled moral stance on the part of an observed actor will leave you baffled more often than enlightened.
useless_foghorn · 35d ago
Power is less appealing if you aren't seeking to abuse it. I agree that an ethics and morality lens is both useful and necessary, but I fear it doesn't illuminate the actions and motivations of the powerful. Perhaps in contrast or relief, but not directly.
zmgsabst · 35d ago
You want a better outcome.
Culture transmission is more effective when followers can emulate leaders — so you’ll have an easier time getting people to obey when your goal is to get them to act the way you do. In this case, you’ll expend less political capital on enforcing your policy regarding code reviews and testing if you adhere to the same policy. (And accordingly, have an easier time avoiding disgrace like public failures if your service.)
If you want to view it purely through the lens of power politics, saving your political capital on issues like this preserves it for things with better rewards — eg, you’ll have an easier time getting your projects approved if your manager isn’t constantly having to deal with the fallout of your policy double standards impacting morale. Or for setting a standard that working fewer hours is acceptable if you’re meeting your quotas — which nobody can dispute you’re doing, as the whole teams is validating that you are.
This kind of petty power game is rarely an optimal exercise of power.
conductr · 35d ago
I think it's more likely a trust issue. He didn't trust the other devs to push things directly, but ofc he trusts himself. I do this with somethings myself. But I also do the inverse, where I don't want to trust myself so I setup a bunch of checks and tests to save my future self from my present self
I think when you're the 'architect' or know the full stack very well, to where you fully repl/grok it and occasionally need to do hot patch type work, the former approach is nice. But, my brain has limited memory and time erodes quickly, so I also know when to rely on the latter approach and I try to do it as much as possible
authorfly · 35d ago
That's a real difference when something is your final responsibility too (as team lead or an architect). You think of it differently, you predict and anticipate changes better. It's like taking care of your kid vs your kids friend.
shaneoh · 35d ago
I think he could have just been a bit lazy.
t-writescode · 35d ago
That’s the definition of authoritarianism.
csomar · 35d ago
Apples and Oranges? If he is the person responsible should a system break then it's totally up to him. In that case, he made sure you did not break his system (because he'd be responsible). And if he broke his system himself then it's on him.
I don't see a problem with it (as long as he can't transfer the blame somewhere else).
boringg · 35d ago
The example you give is about control - he wanted control over everyone else's inputs but trusted himself. Not a great look as a leader.
duxup · 35d ago
That’s one of the reasons I always worry about high level employees who “still write code”. It’s just too much opportunity for them to make bad choices and many ICs are afraid to speak up to avoid it.
Same goes for some “10x developers” who are fast because the rules don’t apply to them. Meanwhile the rules slow everyone else down (yea big surprise he is faster). And everyone else has to clean up after these guys when they get sloppy.
jiggawatts · 35d ago
My personal pet peeve is network admins that have unfettered Internet access from their workstation IP, but everyone else has to traverse half a dozen “security” appliances that break developer CLI tools and slow down everything else.
Glyptodon · 35d ago
I relate to this a bit...
But for me the foundational issue is that my coworkers aren't holding up the bar when reviewing contractor code. And reviewing all the code isn't my job description.
Meanwhile my job description does include maintaining a system my coworkers don't really know anything about, and so I mostly make sure it's tests pass and let me manager know about anything I need to do to it.
charcircuit · 35d ago
>Why have a bunch of rules and policies that you do not follow yourself?
Because the goal is to keep risk to a reasonable level, not necessarily minimize it as much as possible.
AWebOfBrown · 35d ago
Another interpretation of this is that the lead developer adequately mitigated the risk of errors while also managing the risk of not shipping fast enough. It's very easy to criticise when you're not the one answering for both, especially the latter.
manquer · 35d ago
As one such developer, it is a powerful ability to be able to bypass restrictions meant to be used sparingly for a good reason
I rarely commit the same kind of code the full time professional developer do(when bypassing policies).
Typically it is stuff like urgent patch in prod that may not have coverage , or partial long running refactor which breaks existing tests but better to be able merge quickly than keep the branch constantly free of merge conflicts , or experimental exploratory new type of code(new lang , stack whatever )for which we have to yet evolve processes, part of what the lead is supposed to be exploring and so on.
Although In my experience junior leads more often than not abuse their privileges than use it well.
dudefeliciano · 35d ago
At least he knew the system well, this is more akin to a bunch of junior devs writing an app by editing their code on a shared plain text file
wood_spirit · 35d ago
I’m not seeing the parallels.
Trump went on about Hillary’s mail and made it a big thing for political points, not because he was particularly caring or didn’t have infamously bad opsec when he got in.
You lead dev trusted himself more than the team. He was probably right.
anthomtb · 35d ago
The parallel is senior leaders ignoring secure communication rules that their rank-and-file must follow. Hillary's email server did not immediately spring to my mind.
Edit: Its safe to say that this story involves multiple levels of hypocrisy by the current administration.
snickerbockers · 35d ago
You're correct that Trump's entire cabinet are hypocrites and they deserve to be raked over the coals for this and have their past statements thrown back in their faces. At this point there's no reason to believe Trump or anyone in his circle ever saw the email scandal as anything but a cudgel with which to rhetorically bash their opponents.
But the problem with them being hypocrites in this regard is that it follows from them doing the same thing Hillary did, and in that case the "fair" way to punish them would be the same way she was punished, which is not at all. So I don't see any real accountability ever coming from this beyond maybe trump firing a couple of sacrificial lambs from his administration.
ctrlp · 35d ago
In my opinion there are at least two ways to interpret this:
a) It's an unintentional opsec failure. Perhaps there was an address book collision with another intended user. Perhaps it was fat-fingered. This seems likely.
b) It was an intentional leak. Perhaps overtly, perhaps covertly, by one or more of the channel members for unknown purposes. This seems less likely as there are better ways to leak with less blowback risk.
Regarding using Signal in the first place. Yes, this seems like bad opsec, but it's possible that the current admin working groups don't trust the official secure channels and assume they are compromised and they are being spied upon by their own or foreign agencies. That seems very likely, given the circumstances. In which case, it is still a possible opsec failure, but perhaps a less bad risk than trusting operational security to known adverse agencies. This is the more interesting case, imho, since the assumption on here is largely that these types of coordination should be happening on official government channels. But "government" is not necessarily a unified collective working towards the same goals. If you have a strong suspicion that agents within your own team are acting against your goals, then of course, you have to consider communicating on alternative channels. Whether that's to evade legal restrictions or transparency, like with the Clinton email servers, or to evade sabotage, I'm not judging the ethics, just considering the necessity of truly secure communication.
Is that trust in Signal justified? It suggests members at the highest security clearances believe Signal is not compromised. Are they correct? In any case, clearly there are more ways to fail opsec than backdoors.
GVIrish · 35d ago
Using Signal in this case is wrong and foolish full stop, and the extremely likely reason they did so is so they could escape standard government record keeping compliance (NARA).
To start with, classified information is ONLY supposed to viewed in a SCIF. Secondly, it should never be loaded onto private devices. The private phones of national security leadership would be prime targets for every hostile intelligence agency in the world. It matters little if the information was encrypted in transit if the host device is compromised.
One would have to be a fool to not trust all of the classified tools and safeguards the US government uses only to then use a commercial app on commercial phones to communicate classified data in public while stateside and abroad. Just the fact that someone could accidentally add an unauthorized person to the chat is but one reason it was crazy for them to do this.
kelipso · 35d ago
The most likely reason is convenience, not escaping record keeping.
Libcat99 · 35d ago
The report includes notes on certain messages having durations set before they would disappear. This indicates intent.
Aeolun · 35d ago
Sure, but I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt on that count. I’m fairly sure that’s because they felt it would be safer if the confidential info they sent wouldn’t stay around.
matwood · 35d ago
It can certainly be both. Just like they have already tried to shield DOGE from FOIA transparency requests.
anigbrowl · 35d ago
Then why would you enable the disappearing messages functionality?
KerrAvon · 35d ago
Avoiding government record keeping is literally part of the Project 2025 plan.
No comments yet
lesuorac · 35d ago
Avoiding FOIA requests is the reason every secretary of state since Collin Powell uses private email to conduct business.
bobtheborg · 35d ago
"classified information is ONLY supposed to viewed in a SCIF"
No.
No, no, no.
Most classified information is NOT designated SCI. When classified info was mostly paper, it was placed in GSA approved safes in regular 'ole office buildings. You'd get to work, open your safe, and do your work. Most SIPRNet computers are not in SCIFs.
Heck, you can even mail classified documents via USPS. Confidential and secret documents can be sent registered mail.
GVIrish · 34d ago
SCIFs are for viewing TS materials, whether or not they are SCI. Even then, SCIFs are often employed for processing things that are only marked Secret or systems only handling Secret. But yes, if we want to be specific, Secret has a lower bar and can be worked on outside of SCIFs but still not in public or at home.
bobtheborg · 33d ago
Again, no. Not all TS material is SCI. You only need a SCIF for SCI.
"SCIFs are often employed for processing things that are only marked Secret or systems only handling Secret"
No. SCIFs are expensive. They are not built when they are not needed. They are only needed for SCI materials.
GVIrish · 22d ago
That hasn't been my experience over 20 years. I've worked in multiple SCIFS that didn't handle SCI at all.
heyflyguy · 35d ago
There are a ton of assumptions in here that have yet to be proven true.
zdragnar · 35d ago
CISA explicitly promoted the use of signal by all top government officials.
bglazer · 35d ago
This is true, but lacks specificity. Do you think CISA would recommend sharing details of imminent military operations via signal?
acdha · 35d ago
Where? They recommended it for members of the public as part of their general recommendation for end-to-end encryption but that’s a very different scenario than government employees who have official systems.
quadragenarian · 35d ago
[citation needed]
Assuming this is true, how did they determine what a "top" government official is? So if you're the SecDef you should use it but not the deputy SecDef? How would this guidance not pertain to all government officials?
ctrlp · 35d ago
Sure, those are the reasons for, but would be interesting for you to address the salient point of not trusting those government systems. I'm sure you can make the counterargument.
GVIrish · 35d ago
That doesn't really make sense. If they had strong reason to believe that the secure comms systems they were supposed to be using were compromised, using personal phones to communicate outside of SCIFs is very, very far from what any competent person who understands and is briefed on the threat environment would do. Note that none of the people involved are making that argument because it would make them look even more incompetent.
ctrlp · 35d ago
Not arguing it was the best choice. But, I'm curious, if you were in the position where you had strong reasons to believe the official secure channels available to you were compromised by your political opponents who were leaking information received via those channels to undermine your policy initiatives, and needed to act and coordinate nonetheless, what would you do?
digdugdirk · 35d ago
Follow the SOP (and the law) and use a SCIF.
What they did is illegal. Any rank and file that did the same would be in prison for a decade, no questions asked.
In general, it seems like you're trying to "3d chess" incompetence into strategy, but try taking a step back and looking at it with clear eyes. This was a bad decision, plain and simple. Nobody is taking responsibility for it, and that makes it worse - these people are in charge of the largest intelligence and war machine on the planet. This is not okay.
jandrewrogers · 35d ago
The reality, which people are not acknowledging here, is that what they did may not have been according to official policy but it has been normal and pervasive for decades. It isn’t partisan, everyone does it. This is how DC works and the American public just got an education.
As a consequence, any enforcement now would be viewed as extremely selective.
I have been exposed to a lot of classified information in meetings in DC that were supposed to be unclassified. This isn’t an isolated incident, it has been a systemic issue across every administration for as long as I’ve worked in DC.
People should focus less on the incident and more on why this has been normal for decades.
The underlying tension is that doing things the official way is extremely slow and speed matters. There is a longstanding bias toward taking more risks in terms of information exposure because being slow carries its own significant risks. Speed of decision making is critical and that has proven to be impossible if every interaction has to happen inside a SCIF. It is a tension the intelligence community is still grappling with.
rcpt · 35d ago
I don't believe this is normal.
jandrewrogers · 35d ago
Have you operated in DC as a part of this world? Your belief isn’t important, I am reporting my first-hand experience.
rcpt · 35d ago
Sharing details about upcoming airstrikes over Signal on your personal phone is normal? You're sitting on top of the story of the century here
tucnak · 33d ago
You're embarrassing yourself, brother. Nobody is asserting that this is OK. It was naive to assume the government was secure in the first place. Privacy advocates and whistleblowers have whistleblowers have been saying this for decades! You just weren't paying attention. WikiLeaks and Snowden leaks wasn't a "fun" news cycle, it was revealing everything you need to know about how the government operates truly. With no concern for security
tucnak · 35d ago
Of course they haven't. Every think-tank moron knows political opsec is a joke (this is why sigint works in the first place) let alone people actually working in politics
ctrlp · 35d ago
I'm not doing anything of the sort. The kind of problem I'm flagging in is experienced every day by governments all over the world. Would anyone disagree? People on here who want to put their heads in the sand about it are just being political when there is a legitimate technical topic to discuss. The point is these aren't "rank and file" actors. They are at the top of political leadership. Those rules don't apply at this level of power politics so why get bogged down in such thinking?
Hojojo · 35d ago
Because laws should matter. Laws should apply to members of government too. Unless you're suggesting it's totally fine for Trump and his administration to be above the law. In which case the whole discussion is moot, because then it's not a democracy with a functioning rule of law anymore.
ctrlp · 35d ago
Law is a tool, and some tools are appropriate for some contexts and others are not. Do you think there is such a thing as "International Law"? If so, I would ask you what you think that actually is and where its legitimacy comes from and who enforces it? Politics and Law are two separate spheres of human conflict. You actually degrade the law by trying to weaponize it for political purposes. I would hope the past 10 years have shown that to everyone.
lesuorac · 35d ago
> What they did is illegal. Any rank and file that did the same would be in prison for a decade, no questions asked.
IIUC, the "rank and file" go to prison for violating their NDA. At the highest level these people are appointed and don't have an NDA which is why senators / representatives can leak without punishment.
giantrobot · 35d ago
> But, I'm curious, if you were in the position where you had strong reasons to believe the official secure channels available to you were compromised by your political opponents who were leaking information received via those channels to undermine your policy initiatives, and needed to act and coordinate nonetheless, what would you do?
Here's a pretty good order of operations when your policy breaks the law or is so odious as to feel the need to hide it from other duly elected representatives in government:
1. Stop breaking the fucking law.
ctrlp · 35d ago
"The law" is for you and me. It can resolve contract disputes and punish some crimes. This is politics. It's a different order, and a category error to conflate the two. The sooner one disabuses oneself of having no distinction between the political and the legal, the sooner the world starts to make sense. Law at this level is lawfare (law as political weapon), not the normal proceedings of justice. Justice at this level is the rule of the stronger. Accept it and move on to more interesting political analysis. Or be trapped in an inescapable despair about the violations of the "rule of law."
Hojojo · 35d ago
Why would you put rule of law in quotations like that?
The rule of law matters. Even if it doesn't matter to you or Trump.
ctrlp · 35d ago
Because I'm emphasizing the vacuity of simply asserting "the law" as if it's something we all agree on. It is not. I would be as if I said "the Pope" or "the King" or "God" says. I'm sure you would acknowledge that "the law" itself embodies conflict and there is constantly in flux, so how can anyone appeal to it in good faith as if it had an obvious meaning.
chihuahua · 35d ago
I would use a private service like Signal, and make sure to add a journalist that will leak information to undermine my policy initiatives - obviously! (because I'm a genius)
GVIrish · 34d ago
So you're using the word 'compromised'. In this context that would mean malware, unauthorized access, circumvented logging, etc. If someone thought this was happening the answer would be to lock the system down, perform forensic audits, and prosecute anyone who compromised these systems.
If you're talking about fear of leakers, the response to that is to tighten the distribution of information and start a counterintelligence investigation.
In any case the simple risk calculus is, what is the risk of adversaries getting a hold of this information and causing grave and lasting damage to national security and death vs the risk of political rivals leaking something. Pretty simple decision there and one that any cabinet member should get right.
lmm · 35d ago
So what would the smart move have been in that case?
matthewdgreen · 35d ago
If the CIA and NSA (let alone Russian and Chinese intelligence) are illegally spying on you, your civilian phone is toast. You shouldn't be ordering DoorDash on the thing.
mmooss · 35d ago
Imagine the resources the Chinese and Russian governments devote to accessing these phones. The value to them could be trillions of dollars and/or existential differences in national security outcomes. The owners have to assume they are hacked, and that China and Russia know where they are going to dinner (which itself is a problem - they know who is meeting with who and when).
threeseed · 35d ago
The administration has not made this argument though. You have.
So why should we default to the position of not trusting those systems when every previous administration has used it without issus.
ctrlp · 35d ago
Many people are making the argument that this administration is unlike all previous administrations. I infer you disagree with that.
No comments yet
kelipso · 35d ago
The argument is that there are many organizations in the current government, a lot of them independent agencies, that are politically aligned against the Trump administration. Many people in these organizations have backdoor or spying access to government communications, and so members of the Trump admin can't trust government systems for communication.
abeyer · 35d ago
I'd be interested in knowing which independent agencies have backdoored the military's operational communication channels. Wasn't aware that was a well known thing.
unholythree · 35d ago
So why did this conversation needed to be kept from malign rogue anti-Trumpers in the NSA (who would be risking very real jail time) but did not require the basic level of OPSEC that would keep the editor of the Atlantic out?
kelipso · 35d ago
Is this really such a strange thing to be concerned about? Snowden, NSA, etc...people remember. It’s well known that Trump’s campaign team was spied on by the FBI. Government is just a bunch of people, some of whom have strong political leanings, so intra-government leaks, spying, sabotage can happen and in all likelihood do happen.
ctrlp · 35d ago
You're trying to reason with the unreasonable. There are some very short memories on here. Or people being willfully obtuse.
threeseed · 35d ago
But this is an unfounded conspiracy theory you’ve made up.
There is no evidence, reporting etc that says the government has deliberately compromised the government’s own secure systems. And for what purpose is beyond me.
kelipso · 35d ago
It’s straightforward logic though.
1. Trump’s team was spied on by the FBI.
2. Government employees have access to government systems.
Conclusion? There is a possibility that Trump’s team again be spied upon through the government systems and consequently have sabotage done upon them. Therefore, avoid government systems as much as possible.
Calling this unfounded conspiracy theory is just running away from this very straightforward and simple argument.
Also, is there proof that these government systems are completely secure? Without that proof, why should they be using those systems? (He who controls the null hypothesis and all..)
jimt1234 · 35d ago
I respectfully reject the first premise, specifically "spied on". The FBI wasn't spying. They were investigating communications between many Republicans, including the Trump Campaign, and known Russian intelligence operatives. I would expect the FBI to do this.
kelipso · 34d ago
Whatever the justifications were and whatever you call it, it was functionally the same thing as spying.
ctrlp · 35d ago
Yes. Thank you for making it succinctly.
hkpack · 35d ago
So they choose worse - to use untrusted channels?
This is a phenomenal level of stupidity - to use illegal channels of communication because of the bad vibes they are feeling from other people?
Did it help? How many adversary spy agencies has duplicate signal accounts for these officials and see all of the communication live?
I think some foreign leaders probably are reading summaries of these messages in complete disbelief and amusement.
threeseed · 35d ago
Once again you are making this assertion.
No one in the Trump administration has come out and said the secure systems can’t be trusted.
nitwit005 · 35d ago
They are the government. You're suggesting trusting a third party over trusting themselves.
ctrlp · 35d ago
The government is not a unitary entity. The Constitution provides for three branches of government explicitly to offset each other's power. And the civil service is essentially a 4th branch of government. Just replacing the titular heads of government does not guarantee any ability to control the body. Witness the outpouring of protest at "the government's" attempts to control "the government" via DOGE. They are not the same.
unethical_ban · 35d ago
I'd love to hear how a modern national elected government can function without executive agencies, and how those agencies resist strongman corruption and ensure stability without guaranteeing the independence of some roles.
nitwit005 · 35d ago
I'm aware of the branches of government. It's not relevant. Neither is protests, as no one is in the streets protesting about government secure communication policies.
anigbrowl · 35d ago
I mean, the conversation included references to materials sent on 'the high side' (classified-material email systems). If they consider those systems secure, what's the point of using Signal instead?
ctrlp · 35d ago
I don't think it was a particularly good tactic, but if there was some motivation, it may have been more about political sabotage than foreign adversaries. I think that is the more interesting conversation, personally. What do you do if your political (domestic) antagonists control your comms? This question applies to all sides politically. Signal itself is promoted for "activist" use cases to protect comms from domestic antagonists. I'm presenting a similar dilemma. If one part of the government, (e.g., the military) controls secure comms, then another (e.g., the political) may have no choice but to opt-out. This problem is maybe better seen in the context of another country. It may be "too close" for us to see it clearly in the U.S. Other countries face this problem all the time, and Signal is used for the same reasons. I find it an interesting security problem.
No comments yet
dogman144 · 35d ago
For a tech forum, this take is pretty darn close to once again giving bad/dumb actors benefit of the doubt backed up by zero.zero% technical logic by claiming they’re actually playing 4D OPSEC chess.
They replace “ideologically compromised SCIFs” with…… 18 separate iOS devices that I’m sure are on 18 separate OS/app versions and device postures and…
Got news for you - want to compromise e2e encryption and Signal? You do it via what they did. So no, they are not correct.
AdamN · 35d ago
Yeah Signal isn't the issue - it's the phones. In the end Signal was probably easier and faster to use while a bit more secure than WhatsApp but one has to presume that a chunk of those phones have been compromised for months.
bastardoperator · 35d ago
They can bake any Tom Clancy style excuse they want. They broke the law and they're incompetent. Even if you want to ignore one, they still need to go. Making mistakes like this anywhere else would cost you your job.
anigbrowl · 35d ago
It may or may not be bad security (I lean toward a rather than b), but it definitely violates record-keeping requirements. Deliberations of public officials might need to be classified, but they should definitely be recorded. If you're using disappearing messages to auto-erase records of conversations, it's a kind of fraud upon the public.
myvoiceismypass · 35d ago
Using Signal is very very very intentional. They may have fat fingered an invite but that does not excuse the whole skirting-all-natsec-protocols.
boringg · 35d ago
Option (a) 100%.
This is an abysmal mistake on the big stage for a bunch of new people on the job. That it is the intelligence community makes it feel so much worse.
alistairSH · 35d ago
"abysmal mistake" makes it sound like this wasn't a considered action and willful disregard for both op-sec and the law. There is zero chance these guys didn't know what they were doing...
At minimum, Mike Waltz is retired special ops, Rubio has had high-level clearance for ages from his time in the Senate, same for Gabbard in the House. None of them responded "Hey, this is poor op-sec and illegal, perhaps take this to an approved messaging service?"
boringg · 35d ago
Im not defending anything here but i also know how unsophisticated executives are and these guys are for sure not technical savvy people. Normally handlers do all the orchestration. I mean it looks pretty clear they chose to work outside the standard operating channels.
sethammons · 34d ago
you know what execs are not un-savvy about? Things that can put them in jail. They take financial reporting seriously.
refurb · 35d ago
“Abysmal” mistake seems excessive.
Basically a journalist was added to a discussion group of high ranking politicians.
This journalist is well known within those circles and has plenty of access to those people regardless.
The conversation may have been war plans, but the action is pretty uncontroversial across both parties, and went off without a problem so the impact of the leak was nil.
Seems like a great topic for making political hay, but twins that a mistake that can be easily corrected.
boringg · 34d ago
Fine, deeply embarrassing on an international front that your highest level intelligence agency can't do Op Sec securely.
I can't imagine having my personal secure commentary being put out into the public and I don't have national security under my belt.
CSMastermind · 35d ago
> Is that trust in Signal justified? It suggests members at the highest security clearances believe Signal is not compromised. Are they correct? In any case, clearly there are more ways to fail opsec than backdoors.
If you new that Signal was secretly a front by the CIA/NSA then you'd feel pretty comfortable using it.
ctrlp · 35d ago
Secretly? Surely you're not suggesting people on Signal Foundation's board are intelligence assets? Surely, you're joking. That could never, ever, ever be the case. Why would you say such things.
jandrewrogers · 35d ago
FWIW, Signal has been the de facto semi-informal chat app throughout the US intelligence community for many years. I first started using Signal several years ago because I needed it to chat with people in DC.
European governments do the same but with WhatsApp.
ctrlp · 35d ago
I've had a similar experience.
ludicrousdispla · 35d ago
stop lying
analog31 · 35d ago
They are being spied upon, by the future, on purpose. That's why we have laws regarding records retention, open meetings, etc.
ctrlp · 35d ago
Lincoln famously suspended the law of habeas corpus (due process) for the purposes of preserving the Union and his ability to govern, and many consider him to be one of our greatest statesmen. There is no government on earth that can function "in the open". Secrecy is a requirement. Go ahead and try to plan an office party without some "need to know" organizers and see what kind of trouble and interference you stir up.
unethical_ban · 34d ago
You missed the part about "spied on by the future".
matthewdgreen · 35d ago
"it's possible that the current admin working groups don't trust the official secure channels and assume they are compromised and they are being spied upon by their own or foreign agencies"
Jesus Christ, this is dumb. Using a civilian app with civilian phones is literally the best way to get spied on, by either "your own" or foreign agencies. These people are going to get us all killed in a nuclear first strike.
WinstonSmith84 · 35d ago
> These people are going to get us all killed in a nuclear first strike.
Not sure how leaking state secrets is risking nuclear annihilation - unless they invite Putin or Xi mistakenly in their Signal Group and plan to bomb Moscow or Beijing but the coziness of the current administration with these 2 countries is certainly not making this scenario realistic at all.
Instead the reality is likely more boring: they just accelerate American decline
matthewdgreen · 35d ago
Don’t kid yourself that coziness makes anyone safe. We’re always one radar fluke away from a mistaken launch. And the more confident any adversary is that they can eliminate leadership, the higher the probability something terrible happens.
Please don’t reassure yourself by thinking that putting total incompetents in power is making anyone safer.
echoangle · 35d ago
> It was an intentional leak
I don't see how this would work. If you're the leaker, do you just add the journalist to the group yourself? How are you going to explain that? I think there are more anonymous ways to leak stuff than adding someone else to the group chat. Or does signal not show who added someone?
chasil · 35d ago
I have not read this article, but I saw the headline this morning.
"So, is Signal App owned by China? The answer is no... Signal is run by the Signal Foundation, a non-profit based in San Francisco... Amidst this controversy, it's crucial to remember that Signal's roots are firmly planted on American soil, dispelling any notion of Chinese ownership."
wat10000 · 35d ago
This leak proves that the trust in Signal is not justified. Yes, their crypto didn’t fail, but the system did. If you’re having a classified conversation electronically, you really want the system to check that the participants are supposed to be privy to this information. If some rando is in the chat, there should be a big, loud “some rando is in the chat, don’t share any secrets” alert.
Obviously, Signal is not meant for this sort of thing, so it has no reason for such a feature. It’s not a failing of Signal, but it’s not fit for this purpose.
rimeice · 35d ago
With the level of disdain for Europe in the leak, it’s hard not to think b.
WinstonSmith84 · 35d ago
There are other ways to "fake leak" information than having to look like an incompetent idiot at the end. Plus, what they said on Europe is not breaking news, they say pretty much the same on open channels - even when they face directly Europeans (e.g. last Munich conference)
rimeice · 35d ago
Yeh, not quite the same level of frankness though. The trouble is this vaporises the veil of pretence that stern words on the surface were really backed by an unshakable relationship at it's foundation, and that leaves European leaders with nothing to hide behind to convince their electorate it's worth placating the US as they'll look pathetic. So, they're now left with no choice but to fight fire with fire.
Zak · 35d ago
I don't think using Signal is the biggest problem in terms of security, though it's against the rules to use something not explicitly approved.
The bigger security problem is that it was being run on devices that evidently weren't limited to secure communication tasks (such devices wouldn't have a journalist in their contacts). That suggests at least some people were using personal phones, which seems like a terrible idea.
markhahn · 35d ago
if you think the national security infrastructure is untrustworthy, you need to fix the national security infrastructure. getting elected doesn't mean you get to create your own private government - we call that a revolution, not an election.
but of course, this lot thinks the existing government is all corrupt / deepstate.
ctrlp · 35d ago
Democratic elections are always potentially mini-revolutions. That's the risk of democracy.
scythe · 35d ago
>It was an intentional leak. Perhaps overtly, perhaps covertly, by one or more of the channel members for unknown purposes.
It was Mike Waltz who invited Jeff Goldberg to connect on Signal. It seems inordinately unlikely that he would have been uninvolved if it was an intentional leak.
whynotminot · 35d ago
None of your conjecture matters: it is blatantly illegal to use commercial apps to discuss classified information.
You can debate the seriousness of this sometimes. When it comes to impending military action though, revealing when and where US personnel will be conducting an operation in the future, there really is no debate. This is gravely serious.
hatradiowigwam · 35d ago
> Is that trust in Signal justified? It suggests members at the highest security clearances believe Signal is not compromised. Are they correct? In any case, clearly there are more ways to fail opsec than backdoors.
Once upon a time, I was visited very forcefully by the FBI at 0600. They used a battering ram to gain access to my domicile.
During the "interview" that took place later that morning, they requested some information from me. I told them that the information was contained in Signal conversations between two recipients, and the messages in question have "disappearing messages" turned on. tldr; the messages are no longer available.
Relevant parts of conversation that followed:
me: "Do you have signal?"
agent: "I have it on my phone if that's what you mean."
me: "No, do you HAVE it - as in, do you have access to messages sent between other parties?"
agent: "If we do, I am unaware of it, and we certainly don't 'have it' with regard to this matter."
Take that for what it's worth.... my takeaway was that they(the FBI at least) have not compromised Signal. This was late in 2019 for context.
The other takeaway...be careful who you trust. That all happened because I trusted someone I shouldn't have.
viccis · 35d ago
I think there is likely a difference between what the FBI does to someone they want info pretty badly from vs what <insert state actor> does to someone that they have determined is a keystone to one of their national adversaries.
If they did have some kind of collection capability around Signal, they likely would not have risked burning it on you.
hatradiowigwam · 35d ago
> If they did have some kind of collection capability around Signal, they likely would not have risked burning it on you.
I've always thought the exact same thing. The harm was ~800m USD to a private company. Sounds big, but it's nothing compared to actual state sponsored anything.
Just to add some more (possibly useful) context from the encounter....
The FBI was not able to unlock many LUKS secured devices - at all. They had zero success over approx 30 days, and had to explore alternative methods to obtain key material.
The FBI was not able to decrypt blowfish2 (ie vim -x).
The FBI was not able to decrypt ccrypt secured files (ie aes256).
TechDebtDevin · 35d ago
Wtf were you up to :rubschin:
garfield_light · 35d ago
I'm a nobody, but I imagine the feds or spooks would never use anything like that on someone they have physical access on. If the target is in their jurisdiction or a blacksite and it's that important, a lead pipe is easier.
IF they can decrypt stuff, they'll only use it when it's has an actual benefit beyond a conviction and the keys are truly inaccessible. (e.g., person is dead, the keys are in an enemy state HSM, etc.)
Izkata · 35d ago
I'd go with b: They've been talking for a while about finding information leaks, and the messages themselves seem a bit staged. They probably did it intentionally with different people, with slightly different wording, and because of which version got published they just identified a leak.
anigbrowl · 35d ago
A barium meal is for finding leakers within an organization. IF you send material to a journalist, unsolicited, and they report on it, what exactly have you established?
Like, do you think they did the same thing with multiple journalists in an attempt to see who would publish and who would keep their mouths shut?
Bear in mind, when you join a Signal group you don't see the conversation history from before you arrived, only the live updates that take place during the time you're a member. Also, anyone in the group can view the list of group members and receives notifications about people being added to/removed from/leaving the group.
Izkata · 35d ago
My guess would be the journalist wasn't the one being tested, it was one of the other members. Adding the journalist would be how it was leaked.
anigbrowl · 35d ago
I can't buy this, because everyone in the group can see who added other members (at least until disappearing messages time out that information). If it was just someone leaking they could do that by taking screenshots of the government group and then sending them to Jeffrey Goldberg in a separate chat.
jml7c5 · 35d ago
This doesn't make any sense. They were the ones who added the journalist to the chat. The chat wasn't covertly relayed to a journalist by one of the members.
rahkiin · 35d ago
That would require coordinated competence. Testing for these kind of leaks is much easier with paper than live chats too
„Among the topics the officials discussed in their conversation, conducted using standard commercial Cisco Webex video conferencing software, were the presence of UK and US military personnel in Ukraine and the potential use of Taurus missiles to blow up the Crimean Bridge.“
yencabulator · 35d ago
A thing using authorized channels that was spied on by a different state has practically nothing in common with this.
(Yes, it probably shouldn't have been an authorized channel, but it was.)
realityking · 35d ago
Though the channel wasn’t cleared for the level of information that was discussed.
WebEx was cleared up to the equivalent of Restricted. The conversation likely reached the level of Secret or Top Secret.
Two of the generals were disciplined. (4-figure fine)
lenerdenator · 35d ago
The behavior will continue until an effective negative stimulus is introduced.
Here's how Eisenhower dealt with a similar leak.[1]
General Henry Miller made public comments about the secret date of the Allied invasion of Normandy in May 1944. He was a personal friend of Eisenhower. Eisenhower demoted him and sent him back to the US in disgrace. He wasn't court-martialed.
I'm sorry but how in the hell is that a similar leak other than they are in the same category ?
Not justifying Trump administration but just seems like a whole different level of stakes.
dontparticipate · 35d ago
Today's bombing of Yemen is tomorrow's landing of Marines on Taiwan, or I guess these days marching into Montreal and landing in Greenland. All of these require complete OPSEC from the entire chain of command.
nitwit005 · 35d ago
People could, obviously, die from leaking a military operation. You're right that more people would die in a larger operation, but I'd assume most of us are okay with firing or prosecuting people for risking lives for not following basic policies.
rafaelmn · 35d ago
Yes, but one is involving hundred thousand lives on a land invasion by a military general, another is about long range bombing being less effective by warning the target hours in advanced by a civilian/politician.
The level of potential impact, expectations and repercussions are very very different between the two. He should absolutely get fired because you cant do that sort of thing at that position - but equating the two is disingenuous. The general should have been court-martialed in that situation.
jdcasale · 35d ago
Without commenting on the (important) political or reputational considerations here, I want to talk a bit about the operational risk presented by this practice. There is a somewhat sizable "So what? Signal is e2e encrypted. Nothing bad happened and you're all overreacting." narrative floating around. (not so much in this thread, but in the general discourse)
If this operation was planned in Signal, then so were countless others (and presumably so would countless others be in the future).
If not for this journalist, this would likely have continued indefinitely. We have high confidence that at least some of the officials were doing this on their personal phones. (Gabbard refused to deny this in the congressional hearing -- it does not stand to reason that she'd do that unless she was, in fact using her personal phone).
At some point in the administration, it's likely that at least one of their personal phones will be compromised (Pegasus, etc). E2E encryption isn't much use if the phone itself is compromised. This is why we have SCIFs.
There was no operational fallout of this particular screwup, but if this practice were to continue, it's likely certain that an adversary would, at some point, compromise these communications. Not through being accidentally invited to the chat rooms, but through compromise of the participants' hardware. An APT could have advance notice of all manner of confidential and natsec-critical plans.
In all likelihood this would lead to failed operations and casualties. The criticism/pushback on this is absolutely justified.
dgacmu · 35d ago
Or not even the device: The other reason we have SCIFs is they provide a secure location. These personal devices could have been in use anywhere, including places where they were subject to observation. Including but not limited to Moscow. :)
grahar64 · 35d ago
Something I havnt seen discussed is that you can get the information from signal without compromising the phone or person. Just reading the texts "over the shoulder" would be enough of a leak. Being in Moscow is bad, but even a Starbucks has security cameras good enough to read text on a phone. A SCIF would fix that
jdcasale · 35d ago
Another excellent point.
rurp · 35d ago
I agree with all of this, my only quibble is that I would bet there have already been costs associated with this idiocy. Hostile powers knew going in that this would be an incompetently run administration and I'm sure were looking at gaining access to personal devices out of the gate. It's possible that a great many highly sensitive conversations have already been read by adversaries. I also expect that similar sloppiness like adding the wrong person to a Signal chat has already happened without being reported on.
guerrilla · 35d ago
Yes, this was one of the main points on infosec Mastodon today. While everyone is aware enough to be concerned with encryption over the wire, it's the endpoints that matter. Personal Android devices capable of running Signal are going to be some of the easiest to compromise for a sufficiently motivated attacker. I've seen n00b cops do it for drug gangs here. There's no question that Russia, China, et al. can do it just as well and we have as good as much as confirmation that that's what's going on in at least Tulsi Gabbard's case.
anigbrowl · 35d ago
Exactly. Signal on Android uses your phone PIN, for some insane reason.
branko_d · 35d ago
> Signal on Android uses your phone PIN, for some insane reason.
The reason is simple: 95% of people would just set-up the same PIN anyway.
In unrelated news: Password reuse is rampant: nearly half of observed user logins are compromised
Not on Android. You can set your Signal PIN, which is a recovery code for if you lose your phone and are locked out of your Signal account. You cannot change the lock screen PIN, which is the same as that of your phone.
ModernMech · 35d ago
I suspect we won't know the true damage until all these people are gone, kind of like how Apollo 13 didn't know the true damage to the service module until they jettisoned it.
lokar · 35d ago
It seems one of the people (and thus the phone) was actually in Moscow during the chat!
wood_spirit · 35d ago
That counts as a friendly country these days =(
ModernMech · 35d ago
> if this practice were to continue
My prediction is, given the way the narrative is shifting to digging in their heels and insisting they did nothing wrong, the lesson they are learning from all this is that they should have hid their activity better. Nothing will happen to them, they will continue with impunity, and they'll just be more careful about not inviting outsiders. I suspect this isn't the last leaked top-secret group chat we'll see.
aucisson_masque · 35d ago
How is trump staff using signal for classified military actions different from Clinton use of private email account ?
Back then he said she should be put in jail but now he is downplaying it. How can Americans take this guy seriously is beyond my mind.
fransje26 · 35d ago
I would argue that at least Signal is end-to-end encrypted. By default, email is not.
Now, how secure and backdoor-proof that encryption is, is an other story..
gizzlon · 35d ago
Encryption doesn't really help when you add "random" people to your group ..
Also, I haven't followed the email thing, but emails are by design insecure, so one should hope stuff like this was not discussed over emails (regardless server..)
EasyMark · 34d ago
Plus the stuff in those emails weren't even really dangerous to the well being of th country or military unlike if the Russians/iranians go their hand on notice of an imminent attack on the Houthis with lots of details on the attack and strikes
austin-cheney · 35d ago
People are focusing too much on accountability that will likely never happen. This is Trump 2.0. People knew exactly what they were getting and they voted him back into office anyways.
Perhaps a better answer is to separate accountability from the executive branch, possibly:
* Provide journalistic publication businesses super first amendment protections that cannot be restricted by a president, but news sources that contain opinion pieces separate from witness testimony and/or third party expert analysis as entertainment, thus restricted from journalistic venues.
* Transfer the justice department to congress. The president can still appoint the attorney general. The president should have no ability to determine criteria or persons for investigation or denial thereof.
mehphp · 35d ago
For whatever reason norms/laws just don’t apply to Trump. He’s above the law; it’s baffling.
rco8786 · 35d ago
Yes exactly. Not sure why either. But laws do not apply to him, they never have, and they never will. He knows that, too.
kjkjadksj · 34d ago
The reason is he’s positioned himself perfectly to have shared benefit and shared destruction in many other’s incentive structures.
thewileyone · 34d ago
It's not baffling. He just thinks that laws don't apply to him.
EasyMark · 34d ago
To be fair the Supreme Court just gave him an out to all but the most heinous crimes conducted as "official acts". He can do almost anything he wants and not worry about going to prison, and he can pardon all of his underlings.
mehphp · 33d ago
Sure, I’m not baffled that he think that, I’m baffled that society allows it.
n1b0m · 36d ago
In 2023, Hegseth had his own critique of the Biden administration handling classified documents “flippantly”, remarking on Fox News that “If at the very top there’s no accountability”, then we have “two tiers of justice”.
Everyone crying about the opsec failure and not that these people were cheering murdering women and children in one of the world's poorest country.
hypeatei · 35d ago
Caring about people in a far away country is not a winning strategy. Showing that this admin is harming national security and risking American lives is what gets voter attention.
webninja · 33d ago
I wish to highlight the pointlessness in your timing of your leftist activism. Trump cannot run for a third term due to the 22nd amendment to the constitution.
Therefore even if you found evidence that a small subset of the members held national security worse than Hillary secured her emails, (in this case, leaking a Yemen bombing attack 2 hours before it happened), there’s nothing left for voters to vote on.
The only thing far-left activists can do to change this administration is to wait 4 years for Harris, Hillary, or Bernie to run again. But they’ll need a winning platform to run on. Maybe campaigning on making America Great Again or putting America first will work better.
All this left-leaning activism is doing is helping other liberals lose even more of their sanity than they’ve already lost. One reason the democrats lost this election because they didn’t even care about their own American people, let alone other American people.
hypeatei · 31d ago
> Trump cannot run for a third term due to the 22nd amendment to the constitution
Given he started a riot to interrupt congressional proceedings and tried to insert fake electors in 2021, I don't have much hope that he won't try something in 2028.
> there’s nothing left for voters to vote on
Oh really, so MAGA will just disappear in 2028? The point is to expose the incompetence and the harm that hiring loyalists over qualified people introduces.
> Maybe campaigning on making America Great Again or putting America first will work better.
I don't think populism is a good strategy, personally. It always devolves into a "us vs them" tribalism battle, where you're going against the "elite" but the "elite" is a moving target and not set in stone. Lots of conspiracies arise and you're less effective as a bloc.
> One reason the democrats lost this election because they didn’t even care about their own American people
What specifically do you think showed that they didn't care? Incumbents lost globally due to inflation from COVID and the voter population misplacing the blame. I think Dems could have done better before the election (e.g. Joe should've dropped out sooner) but to say that they lost on policy is a bit asinine.
greenie_beans · 34d ago
JD vance saying that he was gonna pray for victory. aka pray for bombing / killing. disgraceful to what jesus taught.
jimnotgym · 35d ago
I guess Signal is pretty safe, but the phone you are using it on is far from safe. Then there is the issue of being able to accidently add unvetted people to the chat. Is that pretty much the size of the technological issue here?
xuhu · 35d ago
Yes. Then there's the fact that they do this on a daily basis to avoid accountability.
yodsanklai · 35d ago
And these guys have been in power for only a few months, they're still finding out about their new tools. What will happen in the next 4 years? will they even leave power peacefully?
nopelynopington · 35d ago
Trump has already been president and already demonstrated to us that he will not leave power peacefully. He's openly discussing serving a third term. I think it's highly unlikely that the transfer of power will happen peacefully unless
1) he dies in office (of natural causes)
Or
2) the republicans win in 2028 and a different republican president is sworn in.
nopelynopington · 34d ago
Btw I specified natural causes because if he dies in any unusual way I'm sure his lackeys will try to use it to cling to power.
Hell even if he just chokes on a pretzel I'm sure they'll blame the radical left
serpix · 35d ago
There are more options than this.
nopelynopington · 35d ago
If you can think of more options that lead to a peaceful transfer of power, I'd love to hear them
watwut · 35d ago
Conservatives or Trump will not give power back peacefully. The most likely is that they will prevent fair elections, but they also may simply refuse to give out power. They are attacking justice now and placed loyalist in power agencies.
They cant afford giving away power now. Just in the last three months, there were multiple very clear law breaking acts. Musk is giving government contracts to himself. They do not worry about these, because they do not intend to give out power.
garfield_light · 35d ago
The real test will be the midterms.
yieldcrv · 35d ago
is it though? the senate has been ~50-50 for a decade straight and every 2 years this same algorithm fueled coping mechanism resurfaces for some partisan recovery (newsflash - the other side believes the same thing, no matter which side you're reading this from), and there is zero - and diminishing - data to lean upon for anything different to happen except every demographic in this country drifting right for a 53 seat majority.
no party is going to pass the filibuster, so it doesn't even matter what happens in the house, we're still going to be getting budget reconciliations, and post offices renamed as the only things passed.
partisan areas aren't going to flip. the only 'solution' anyone will come up with is another runner-up from the same party.
garfield_light · 33d ago
Ehhh, I meant there's a non zero chance you guys aren't getting free elections, with plausible deniability of course. He tried before, maybe Trump achieves it this time.
nopelynopington · 35d ago
I had a read of the upcoming seat changes in the midterms. Most of them look likely to remain the same colour, with only a handful flippable. And even then there are a few previously flipped to Dem that might revert. Could easily have even more red Senate or Congress in two years
fanatic2pope · 33d ago
This is "just" a state senate race, but it swung pretty hard to the Democrats.
That's a good question, for a lot of them, and especially Musk.
What's his endgame now ? If Trump is no longer in power, even if Musk doens't land directly in prison, I have a hard time imagining the new government collaborating in any way with him or his companies. And they sure behave like this is not an issue.
yowzadave · 35d ago
What are the odds that Goldberg was included in the Signal chat intentionally by a whistleblower? I.e., someone who had reservations about what was about to take place (either the bombing action itself, or the intentional avoidance of government recordkeeping) and so included him as a witness?
simmerup · 35d ago
Sounds like youre desperately searching for competence where none exists
anigbrowl · 35d ago
I'd give it about 10%
DrNosferatu · 35d ago
The reason?
I would put my chips on (an attempt at) avoiding the duty to keep records.
t0rst · 33d ago
Great take from Timothy Snyder, including…
“Signal is attractive not because it is secure with respect to foreign adversaries, which it is not, but because it is secure with respect to American citizens and American judges.”
(…maybe his article should be a top level HN post)
legitster · 36d ago
The whole thread is WILD, and the fact that it was verified is crazy. But the actual text of the thread is horrifying:
On one hand, they say they complain about "bailing out Europe". But on the other hand, they explicitly moved up the timeline so they could move before other actors and take credit.
> "If the US successfully restores freedom of navigation at great cost there needs to be some further economic gain extracted in return."
So to be clear, when presented with the option to wait a month, they instead explicitly choose to act decisively for political reasons. And then they want to turn around and extort European allies over it.
dtquad · 36d ago
The US is primarily attacking Houthis to support Israel and not Europe. Vance knows that.
J.D. Vance comes of as a rabid anti-Europeanist in his speeches, tweets, and apparently also his private messages. Here in Denmark the authorities reported that his wife, Usha Vance, is tied to an unusual money transfer and upcoming meeting with Greenlandic separatists.
tptacek · 36d ago
No, I'm pretty sure this is actually about shipping lanes and freedom of navigation. Israel doesn't need the help.
If you read the story, one of their concerns is that if they don't act, Israel was going to instead.
jacquesm · 36d ago
So no, then it clearly wasn't about shipping lanes and freedom of navigation but just about taking the credit. After all if Israel was going to do it instead it could simply be solved by waiting a little bit. These guys are super transactional and they were afraid they missed the moment that would allow them to take credit and use it as coin for exchange.
yubblegum · 36d ago
Israel tried already if you recall and clearly they couldn't though they certainly tried their hand at shock and awing. The transactional aspect is vis-a-vis Egypt.
Egypt is bleeding money because of loss of transit fees. However, this Muslim Brotherhood wary nation is not keen on the announced ethnic cleansing in Gaza (to Sinai). So this could be inducement to have them host an open air concentration camp with guarantees that navigation through the Suez Canal will resume.
tptacek · 36d ago
I'm not interested in litigating Israel with you, sorry.
J.D. Vance is less of a person and more of a living proxy for the will of Peter Theil.
margalabargala · 36d ago
> So to be clear, when presented with the option to wait a month, they instead explicitly choose to act decisively for political reasons.
This feels like a pretty reasonable thing for a nation-state actor to take into consideration, no? Is there any country on earth where the government altering timing of something for political convenience would be surprising?
The rest of this story is hilariously egregious. The part about the government discussing its own best interests and acting in them is the least abnormal thing here.
amarcheschi · 36d ago
Bailing out europe when us is the cause of so many troubles in middle east (and not only that, or at least contributed to it) is deeply ironic
ChocolateGod · 36d ago
The US has veto'd ceasefire calls in the UN Security Council which European countries have been in favour of (or at least abstained).
Yes, Europe benefits from the strait more than the US, but it isn't Europe's mess in the first place.
Neonlicht · 36d ago
I disagree. The root cause is obviously Israel founding which was the the last colonial project that Western European countries undertook.
I predict that in the next decades Europe will cut ties with Israel completely but until then we reap what we sow.
ChocolateGod · 35d ago
True, but they can only do it with the US backing.
ActorNightly · 36d ago
The wilder thing is people are surprised this is happening.
It's been acknowledged by the government that this happened. They aren't denying anything, and are saying it was just a mistake. From WSJ:
> House Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.) dismissed questions about whether Waltz should face consequences for discussing the Yemen operation on an unclassified chat group that included a journalist. “Clearly I think the administration has acknowledged it was a mistake and they’ll tighten up and make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
> [National Security Council] statement: "At this time, the message thread that was reported appears to be authentic, and we are reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain. The thread is a demonstration of the deep and thoughtful policy coordination between senior officials. The ongoing success of the Houthi operation demonstrates that there were no threats to our servicemembers or our national security." - NSC Spokesman Brian Hughes
And from the article, practical verification:
> According to the lengthy Hegseth text, the first detonations in Yemen would be felt two hours hence, at 1:45 p.m. eastern time. So I waited in my car in a supermarket parking lot. If this Signal chat was real, I reasoned, Houthi targets would soon be bombed. At about 1:55, I checked X and searched Yemen. Explosions were then being heard across Sanaa, the capital city.
> "Michael Waltz has learned a lesson, and he’s a good man," Trump said Tuesday in a phone interview with NBC News.
> When asked what he was told about how Goldberg came to be added to the Signal chat, Trump said, “It was one of Michael’s people on the phone. A staffer had his number on there.”
solid_fuel · 35d ago
Well, this is distressing.
Question: how many people here who are concerned about this behavior have actually contacted their senators or representatives to voice an opinion on this?
codedokode · 36d ago
I wonder whether the phones and software used were certified for discussing such sensitive issues and if there are risks of leaking the data because of this.
ttyprintk · 35d ago
Before the phrase “good with the Cyber” I believed opsec was teachable.
asdff · 36d ago
304 votes, 75 comments 3 hours after posting and this is already being thrown all the way back to 134 rank on the front page with some 2-3 day old posts. This is very clearly hacker news: a case of opsec slipup in easily the worst fashion coming straight from the SecDef (or one representing the SecDef). A shame it is probably getting flamed and downvoted over partisan reasons, although I know there are many conservatives here who probably don't enjoy these constant leopards eating face moments they've unleashed and am not surprised they'd be acting out and flagging embarrassing posts.
jml7c5 · 35d ago
People often flag politics-related posts because the comments are invariably of low quality. The interesting discussion is generally about technical issues, but that is usually overwhelmed by political opinions. This happens on both sides of the spectrum.
There are lots of other places to discuss politics.
sethammons · 35d ago
this site has some governors in place to prevent a flood of low quality engagement. If things rise too fast, they get pushed down a little and cool off and rise back up. No great conspiracy as I found this thread at the top of HN a day later.
bcye · 35d ago
Is there a place where all these rules are written? There's so much supposed meta-HN knowledge in the discussions
On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
lcc · 36d ago
Like the parent said, a tech-related opsec failure at this level is absolutely something a 'good hacker' would find interesting.
hnburnsy · 36d ago
>tech-related opsec failure
Not sure that 'fat fingering' on a mobile device rises to the level of tech-related opsec. The choice to use a non-government approved device certainly is news, but not necessarily Hacker News. Plenty of better places to debate it.
cmilton · 36d ago
>Plenty of better places to debate it.
I often see this comment, but there are never any sources provided. Any links to share?
lemon_zest · 36d ago
There was a post about George Foreman in the front page the other day so why not this one?
bitbasher · 35d ago
If anything, this is a hell of a "social proof" for Signal :)
It just came out one of the chat members was in Russia at the time.
voodooEntity · 36d ago
I mean im not shocked by neither the fact this happend nor the content. it portraits the staff exactly as i would imagine them.
Tho i still find it kinda amusing that this is the finally proofs that the average security invested joe has a better opsec than the highest ranking us gov officials.
breatheoften · 35d ago
How exactly do you accidentally add a reporter to a signal group chat ...? That's a pretty bizarre sequence of events if it's actually what happened isn't it?
guerrilla · 35d ago
The most popular theory is that he has the same initials as someone else. Notice that most of their usernames were just their initials.
awaymazdacx5 · 35d ago
>"The Houthi-run Yemeni health ministry reported that at least 53 people were killed in the strikes, a number that has not been independently verified."
weird chat, surprised Waltz was active in planning strikes. 18 confidantes - closer knit cabinet from internal coms. was under the impression that signal log was leaked to emulate Spinoza's excommunication decree.
nanna · 35d ago
Relatively minor side point, but still: for people who chastise "European freeloading", it's interesting to note that none of Signal group's members' usernames have the badge Signal gives users who pay for the service. Users like me, from Europe. Sure, they might all be paying but have opted out, but let's be honest that's unlikely.
Madhouse61 · 35d ago
Jeffrey Goldberg mentioned in an interview with MSNBC his Signal Alias was "JG." I wonder if JD Vance goes by JD?
lapcat · 36d ago
> Waltz set some of the messages in the Signal group to disappear after one week, and some after four. That raises questions about whether the officials may have violated federal records law: Text messages about official acts are considered records that should be preserved.
I suspect that this was the point of their using Signal, to avoid preservation of records.
neverokay · 36d ago
The DoD or Pentagon don’t have their own messaging apps? Maybe our government doesn’t spend enough on tech. To me this is the same as if this were happening on Zoom or Discord, since these are not exactly world war level apps.
Finally, the echoes of Dr Strangelove are strong with this one. A veritable board room of talking heads that don’t ever really talk about life or death, but just the material numbers of raw commerce or messaging (deterrence) .
burkaman · 36d ago
Of course they do, but you can't set official government apps to illegally delete messages after a week.
> When mission needs or the effective conduct of DoD business cannot be adequately supported by Microsoft Teams Chat, SMS texting may be used in accordance with DoDI 8170.01. In such cases, a complete copy of the record must be forwarded to an official DoD electronic messaging account of the user within 20 days of the record's original creation or transmission in accordance with Section 2911 of Title 44 U.S.C, and Component processes. The complete copy of the record includes the content of the message and required metadata, and the record must be retrievable and usable in compliance with the applicable retention schedule approved by the Archivist of the United States. DoD Component heads shall ensure that DoD users are provided guidance on their Component's processes for forwarding complete copies of records originating in SMS texts.
themaninthedark · 35d ago
Weren't they told to stop using SMS due to Salt Typhoon?
nunez · 36d ago
They do, and they are certified for this kind of communication.
Is Signal even FedRAMP? I don't think it is.
dzhiurgis · 36d ago
> not exactly world war level apps.
And what is?
neverokay · 36d ago
A face to face meeting in a bunker. But seriously, we pondered the psychological damage of those who are drone operators. How is this different? There should be more ceremony when making decisions like this, not an afternoon group chat. Dress for it, look yourself in the face for it. Be present.
I’ll just say one thing about this administration. It is often true that when one thing is wrong with a man, then it’s possible all things are wrong with the man. We keep adding to the list, but I’m suggesting the inductive proof here. All things may be wrong with these men, which is scary.
ttyprintk · 35d ago
The smartest people who ever lived worked on mid-century Cold War strategy, which was non-partisan. Von Neumann, Thomas Schelling, etc. The Secretary of Defense is supposed to be the best possible communicator of those ideas to the President, at all hours of the day. You and I and everyone else in this thread know what crystal-forming pressure that meant for SECDEF in the 1960s. Nowadays, half of those potential qualities (for this President) come from just being seen on Fox News; he's already "dressed for it".
But Hegseth is such an average person. With charisma, he could aw-shucks his way past the media. Unlike McNamara, Hegseth is not charged with proving how important a competent SECDEF is. Maybe even demonstrating how arbitrary the standard can be given such an average person can just, well, phone it in.
While it's true that no sum of such average people will ever approach one John Von Neumann, it's not fair to blame an average person with some self-awareness for their every flaw. Which is why Hegseth's denials move the needle from "forgivable mistakes expected from Joe Blow" to "history-making example of Dunning-Kruger".
cteiosanu · 36d ago
And women
AlecSchueler · 36d ago
They removed all the women several weeks ago.
DFHippie · 35d ago
Tulsi Gabbard was in the chat.
anigbrowl · 36d ago
SO much for 'the most transparent administration in history', not that I bought into that claim in the first place. Seems like a violation of multiple public record-keeping laws.
throw0101c · 36d ago
"But her e-mails."
> It’s best to understand that fascists see hypocrisy as a virtue. It’s how they signal that the things they are doing to people were never meant to be equally applied.
> It’s not an inconsistency. It’s very consistent to the only true fascist value, which is domination.
> It’s very important to understand, fascists don’t just see hypocrisy as a necessary evil or an unintended side-effect.
> It’s the purpose. The ability to enjoy yourself the thing you’re able to deny others, because you dominate, is the whole point.
> For fascists, hypocrisy is a great virtue — the greatest.
Using the insult "Fascist" in every other sentence really diminishes whatever message was in there
piva00 · 35d ago
When are people allowed to call this administration fascist? What's the exact line they have to cross for you to stop gatekeeping it?
beeflet · 35d ago
I can't think of anything trump has done in this term which is that authoritarian. Maybe that's just the "tan suit" syndrome where the media reports on every little thing it drowns out the big picture, but nothing really comes to mind for me.
fzeroracer · 35d ago
I'd consider discharging an entire minority group from the military on the basis of their identity to be pretty damn fascist. Also the whole y'know, threatening to invade and annex Canada thing.
piva00 · 35d ago
Attacking the free press isn't anything authoritarian?
aubanel · 35d ago
How does it match the definition of facism? From what I know fascism has components like having the collective prime over the individual, and cult of personality, that Trump's administration does not have.
(Before you think I'm a Trump supporter/fascist, I'm not even American, and my great-grandparents fought Nazis)
piva00 · 35d ago
> and cult of personality, that Trump's administration does not have.
What? It clearly has a cult of personality, MAGA people are absolutely in a cult.
GOP politicians can't go against Trump at any point, even in the most ridiculous of cases, in fear of losing their seat since Trump can activate his cult of personality against any GOP figure.
The absolute definition of Fascism is only reached at the end of the process, fascist tendencies are pretty clear right now: attacking the free press, persecution of minorities, rejection of modernism, anti-intellectualism, appeal to a frustrated middle class, machismo, selective populism, I'd invite you to just read the 14 points of Ur-Fascism and come back to me saying that the Trump admin is not matching most points: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ur-Fascism
Perhaps you need a primer on how it is to be inside the spiral into Fascism:
> Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don’t want to act, or even talk alone; you don’t want to “go out of your way to make trouble.” Why not?—Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty.
> Uncertainty is a very important factor, and, instead of decreasing as time goes on, it grows. Outside, in the streets, in the general community, “everyone” is happy. One hears no protest, and certainly sees none. You speak privately to your colleagues, some of whom certainly feel as you do; but what do they say? They say, “It’s not so bad” or “You’re seeing things” or “You’re an alarmist.”
> And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this, and you can’t prove it. These are the beginnings, yes; but how do you know for sure when you don’t know the end, and how do you know, or even surmise, the end? On the one hand, your enemies, the law, the regime, the Party, intimidate you. On the other, your colleagues pooh-pooh you as pessimistic or even neurotic. You are left with your close friends, who are, naturally, people who have always thought as you have.
> But your friends are fewer now. Some have drifted off somewhere or submerged themselves in their work. You no longer see as many as you did at meetings or gatherings. Now, in small gatherings of your oldest friends, you feel that you are talking to yourselves, that you are isolated from the reality of things. This weakens your confidence still further and serves as a further deterrent to—to what? It is clearer all the time that, if you are going to do anything, you must make an occasion to do it, and then are obviously a troublemaker. So you wait, and you wait.
> But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds of thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions, would have been sufficiently shocked—if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the “German Firm” stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all of the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.
> And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying “Jewish swine,” collapses it all at once, and you see that everything has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in—your nation, your people—is not the world you were born in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way.
> Suddenly it all comes down, all at once. You see what you are, what you have done, or, more accurately, what you haven’t done (for that was all that was required of most of us: that we do nothing). You remember those early morning meetings of your department when, if one had stood, others would have stood, perhaps, but no one stood. A small matter, a matter of hiring this man or that, and you hired this one rather than that. You remember everything now, and your heart breaks. Too late. You are compromised beyond repair.
brazzy · 35d ago
It's not an insult any more than "rapist" or "fraudster" is. These have all factual definitions, and Trump meets all of them.
aubanel · 35d ago
Please elaborate. From what I know fascism has components like having the collective prime over the individual, and cult of personality, that Trump's administration does not have.
(Before you think I'm a Trump supporter/fascist, I'm not even American, and my great-grandparents fought Nazis)
diputsmonro · 35d ago
You don't think Trump commands a cult of personality? I don't know where to begin with that.
justanotheratom · 32d ago
HN is simply deranged about Trump and now Elon, and want to slap Fascism on everything.
scheeseman486 · 35d ago
Unfortunately the kind of people who support Trump aren't smart and only see adjectives as either complementary or as a pejorative. They don't care about what the words actually mean. See: "woke".
beeflet · 35d ago
I think it is pretty obvious that trump doesn't have any real political ambitions besides being popular and powerful, and seeking personal retribution against those who tarnish his reputation. In fact, he increasingly just seems like a tired old man fulfilling his political obligations he made in his last campaign. Even when he was running, he would pretty much cosy up to any political group that held him in high regard. He has always been a sleazy businessman who takes advantage of his brand name — not much has changed.
The idea that trump cares about "fascism", or is even capable of holding such high-minded political beliefs is some hysterical leftist nonsense. Trump is the type of politician that would support any topic "X" as long as you campaigned on the basis of "X is cool and trump is also cool". In our timeline X was cryptocurrency, antivax, Qanon, charlottesville protesters, etc. but it could have just as easily been environmentalists, gay rights activists, BLM, etc.
When most people talk about facism, they are referring to a regime like those under hitler or mussolini. I am pretty sure hitler and mussolini had actual political goals they cared about. There will never be a "night of the long knives" because there is nothing that trump even wants that's worth backstabbing his allies over. To use the word fascist is ridiculous, because he is just acting as a ouija board for his dopey supporters.
edc117 · 34d ago
I hope you're right, because his dopey supporters have destroyed any balances or opposition to him other than the courts (which he is also busy attacking and undermining).
Non-hysterical people aren't concerned that there's a night of the long knives imminent, but are concerned that there now could be. It's the breakdown of the rule of law - if he won't punish legitimate law breaking, provides pardons to people that support him, uses the government and justice department to go after people who don't agree with him...what will stop him if he decides to, short of popular uprising? And let's be clear, that's civil war/domestic terrorism territory.
diputsmonro · 35d ago
The word "fascist" still applies as a descriptive term, even if Trump doesn't identify with or intentionally pursue it.
I mostly agree with your characterization of him, but those tendencies of sleazy egoism naturally lead to authoritarian policies. When your ego must be stroked and your word must be last, you naturally fight against important democratic safeguards that would restrain you, like apolotical bureaucracies and separation of powers, both of which we're seeing play out literally right now. Trump is defying Congress's sole authority of appropriating government funds, and has strongly signaled intent to defy court orders (and only hasn't technically defied them yet because decisions are still pending). DOGE is a thin excuse to purge federal agencies and fill them with partisan yes-men (or simply destroy them altogether and give Trump full control).
Despite Trump's personal politics, it's obvious that those in his orbit (including several cabinet appointees and his VP) do have intentionally fascist ideals and goals. Whether Trump personally cares or not is a distinction without a difference. He may not care about pursuing a "night of long knives", but many who have influence in his administration do, and Trump probably won't care to stop them, especially if it makes him seem like a strong, no-nonsense leader.
Fascism is coming to America and Donald Trump is the one commanding the cult of personality that is making it happen. That alone is worthy of criticism. It should be concerning to anyone who opposes fascism, regardless of who exactly is to blame or how exactly it is being done. Arguments like yours are mostly a distraction.
reverius42 · 35d ago
It's like a Chinese Room of fascism: Trump has the cult of personality and the power, Stephen Miller has the fascist ideals. Neither has to individually implement fascism in order for it to be reality so long as they are working together.
xnx · 36d ago
On the other hand, directly sharing war plans with the press is about as transparent as you can get.
ttyprintk · 35d ago
A corollary here is that maximum pressure is being put on DoD to find “leakers”. It now appears that to the normal people in DoD, what looks like evidence of regular leaking to the press might be incompetence at the appointee level.
more_corn · 36d ago
I would love for them to say that. Awe heck it was about transparency, we’re doing that from now on.
hypeatei · 36d ago
You can already guess what consequences they're going to face: none.
anigbrowl · 36d ago
Nevertheless, the Democrats should move to impeach. The fact that they probably won't be able to get a vote taken (never mind win one) is beside the point.
nine_k · 36d ago
Why only Democrats? Any patriots, which, I suppose, should be somehow represented among Republicans, too.
diputsmonro · 36d ago
Duh, but we're obviously past the point of Republicans acting in good faith.
entropic88 · 35d ago
I'd hope those currently toeing the line but know deep down we're at the point of ludicrous egregiousness would shoot their shot, if given the opportunity. I'd like to believe at least 20% of elected Republicans lack brain damage.
diputsmonro · 35d ago
There were several prime opportunities during his last term when those elusive "deeply concerned" (remember that meme?) Republicans could have chosen to act. We could have nipped this all in the bud, convicted him during his impeachment, and moved on from all of this. But those Republicans failed to act. Now even more congressional Republicans have been primaried and replaced by MAGA sycophants. I am, regrettably, past the point of having faith that the Republicans will do the right thing "this time"
watwut · 35d ago
If they would be inclined to do so, it would already happened, here and there in small issues.
nine_k · 35d ago
Some people put their conscience above their party affiliation. There's a ton of Republicans unhappy with, and even infuriated by Trump. Not many of them in Congress though.
hdjjhhvvhga · 35d ago
If you are a Republican but don't like Trump, they will call you a RINO and ostracize, that's the strategy.
jillyboel · 35d ago
Why isn't anyone protesting?
jillyboel · 34d ago
Instead of rage smashing that downvote button, maybe think for a moment and answer this question?
anigbrowl · 35d ago
That's be nice, but I'm not holding my breath. Sad to say I'm not holding my breaths on Democrats actually doing anything about it either.
psunavy03 · 35d ago
At this point, it's blatantly obvious that no one should ever file articles of impeachment without a reasonable certainty that the votes to convict exist in the Senate.
Otherwise, it's just political theater that's going to further discredit the idea of impeachment and give Trump and future Presidents more confidence that they can do anything they want and never be held to account.
anigbrowl · 35d ago
I strongly disagree. Even if the votes aren't there, the accusation can be put on the public record. Doing nothing until there are sufficient votes is far more 'stage management' that obscures the legislative decision-making process from the public. You are asking for the appearance of consensus and dismissing actual conflict/disagreement as 'theater'.
psunavy03 · 35d ago
Every failed impeachment encourages future bad actors not to worry about impeachment.
genter · 35d ago
> further discredit the idea of impeachment
Will it? If done correctly by the Democrats (and this is a big if), it can educate people on the current situation. A big problem right now is that a lot of people aren't fully aware how fucked up and how dangerous Trump and his cronies are.
_DeadFred_ · 36d ago
Please FOIA the administration's process for meeting records requirements while using Signal. People need to call them out on this or nothing happens.
It is such a horror that this government is operating off the books, that this administration will again leave behind only empty pages in the history book where normally the government would have ownership of what transpired.
matwood · 35d ago
Hahaha...it has always been a farce, just like Twitter and Musk are for free speech and DOGE is about transparency.
mindslight · 36d ago
But they are extremely transparent. All of their actions are clearly in furtherance of corruption, stealing, and helping Russia (and China) destroy the United States.
Unfortunately we also live in the time with the largest mass media consumption (social media), all but guaranteeing their followers keep rationalizing their actions with a litany of talking points rather than understanding straightforward criticism said by someone on the "other" team.
Philadelphia · 36d ago
It's not just social media. What enabled things to get to this point was Fox News, which was created specifically to do that.
"
In 1970, political consultant Roger Ailes and other Nixon aides came up with a plan to create a new TV network that would circumvent existing media and provide "pro-administration" coverage to millions. "People are lazy," the aides explained in a memo. "With television you just sit — watch — listen. The thinking is done for you." Nixon embraced the idea, saying he and his supporters needed "our own news" from a network that would lead "a brutal, vicious attack on the opposition."
"
For sure there is a much longer sweeping arc to the rabid anti-American performative politics of the modern Republican party. My point was that social media now means that people are saturated in more media consumption than ever, with the double punch of much of it being cast as coming from many other people they know.
For example, I feel that in the early 2000's, it would have been possible to get across the point that Breonna Taylor (Kenneth Walker) was really a 2nd amendment issue [0]. You may or may not care about 2A issues. I do care, although it's not a huge focus of mine. But they purport to care greatly, so it should be possible to engage on that, right? But now the reflexive emotional revulsion to the topic created by continual tribal priming (all day every day) is just too great.
[0] if a probable response to defending yourself in your home at night is government agents unleashing a state-sanctioned hail of bullets into your family, how has defending your home not been effectively prohibited?
mrtesthah · 36d ago
>…all but guaranteeing their followers keep rationalizing their actions with a litany of talking points rather than understanding any criticism said by someone on the "other" team
To me, the one-sided right wing media bubble seems to be the root of how we got here in the first place. It allows politicians to avoid any and all accountability for their actions. Popular rule cannot function in this environment, and if it continues, nothing will stand in the way of this administration destroying what’s left of the country.
anigbrowl · 35d ago
I think 'blatant is a better word to describe this than transparent. Not keeping records of government business makes accountability (political or legal) impossible. But yes, I basically agree with your view.
IgorPartola · 36d ago
They are transparent! They give the info directly to the press before anyone else! /s
ludicrousdispla · 36d ago
transparent but also ephemeral
turnsout · 36d ago
Wait, you’re saying the Trump administration might be breaking a rule? Pretty wild accusation
kccoder · 36d ago
Trump's razor: The opposite of what he says is closer to the truth.
Someone only looks behind the door if they have stood there themselves.
hoistbypetard · 35d ago
I'd have phrased it a bit differently. If he accuses an "enemy" of doing something, he's saying he did that.
JohnTHaller · 36d ago
It's the whole point of using Signal and Starlink WiFi.
maronato · 36d ago
The obvious follow up is what else do they illegally delete?
If they’re doing it so blatantly to plan for attacks that will eventually be public, contain no conspiracies or illegal activity, and will be used to dunk on Biden, then what else are they automatically deleting?
Plus, if China/Russia/Iran/NK weren’t targeting US officials phones and Signal, now they certainly are.
pstuart · 36d ago
> what else do they illegally delete?
Likely everything they can. Rules are for fools in this admin.
No comments yet
MPSFounder · 35d ago
The funny thing is I heard the head of the CIA testify today and say they use Signal because it is E2E encrypted. Are they that confident that no other country like China can crack those? I sure hope our intelligence officers are using better systems than effing Signal
The level of incompetence and lack of accountability is mind-boggling.
collyw · 35d ago
Seems a bit unlikely. Seems more like a deliberate "leak".
nickthegreek · 36d ago
Is it wild that a 3rd party app like Signal is used for this type of communication? I feel like that's crazy.
danso · 36d ago
From the story:
I have never seen a breach quite like this. It is not uncommon for national-security officials to communicate on Signal. But the app is used primarily for meeting planning and other logistical matters—not for detailed and highly confidential discussions of a pending military action. And, of course, I’ve never heard of an instance in which a journalist has been invited to such a discussion.
Conceivably, Waltz, by coordinating a national-security-related action over Signal, may have violated several provisions of the Espionage Act, which governs the handling of “national defense” information, according to several national-security lawyers interviewed by my colleague Shane Harris for this story. Harris asked them to consider a hypothetical scenario in which a senior U.S. official creates a Signal thread for the express purpose of sharing information with Cabinet officials about an active military operation. He did not show them the actual Signal messages or tell them specifically what had occurred.
All of these lawyers said that a U.S. official should not establish a Signal thread in the first place. Information about an active operation would presumably fit the law’s definition of “national defense” information. The Signal app is not approved by the government for sharing classified information.
neverokay · 36d ago
If you want to put a tinfoil hat on, one could argue external state actors could have convinced the Trump admin their provided forms of communication are tapped, so they should consider alternatives. Such a state actor would know the alternatives are compromised well in advance by them.
outer_web · 35d ago
"Your comms are tapped by records laws."
"Good enough for me!"
richardatlarge · 36d ago
that’s tinker tailor soldier spy
burkaman · 36d ago
Yes, it is illegal (because of the auto-deleting messages) and explicitly against the rules that every one of these people mandates for their own employees. All of them know that federal records must be preserved, and you have to manually turn on Signal's auto-deletion feature, so this is obviously intentional criminal activity.
cmurf · 36d ago
Early on they fired the national archivist, and deputy archivist.
If what you're doing isn't wrong, why not record all of it for history?
nunez · 36d ago
Yes.
When you get a clearance, it is inculcated upon you that you absolutely do not leak cleared information. If you THINK something cleared, it's best to treat it like it is.
It's possible that there is some 10D chess happening here, but I wouldn't expect details like this to be approved for apps like Signal.
9dev · 36d ago
Can we stop with the nth-D chess nonsense? This administration proves day by day that no advanced tactics are going on, it’s literally just clueless idiots improvising because they’re way out of their league but are too self-absorbed to step back.
cmurf · 36d ago
Can we stop with the clueless idiots nonsense? Some are that. The POTUS is also insane. Many more are much, much worse.
Marco Rubio absolutely knows due process is a right for all persons subject to U.S. law. It's not only a right for citizens, and having taken this right away from persons, in no meaningful way can it be said it's preserves for citizens.
The federal government is at best in abeyance. And an adversary at worst.
matwood · 35d ago
People often mysteriously turn into idiots when their job depends on it.
bamboozled · 35d ago
Clueless is the wrong word. Calculated is.
Propelloni · 35d ago
Remember Hanlon's Razor, never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
anigbrowl · 35d ago
While I like this razor, it's overbroad. Malicious people can always say 'oopsie, I have no clue what I'm doing lol'. Also, you can have people who are both malicious and stupid.
Conversely, we know some people are not stupid. I dislike marco Rubio's politics for example, but he's a smart guy and widely considered to be competent. And as an attorney and a US Senator of long experience in intelligence matters, there's no way he's unaware of the legal implications of using a self-destructing messaging channel.
cmurf · 33d ago
Remember Dietrich Bonhöffer, Lutheran pastor who considered stupidity a greater threat to good than malice.
That was me reaching REALLY REALLY deeply to find _any_ reason why some of our most powerful leaders would make an obvious blunder like this.
bamboozled · 35d ago
Initially it’s exactly now I thought they would try spin it. They still might.
yubblegum · 36d ago
No worries. DNI was in the chat room. Also we have no idea nor can we know if this is the first use of Signal by this or other administrations. We only know because someone goofed up.
So, let me say the quiet part aloud, the presence of DNI & NSC heavies indicates to me that Signal is possibly not really a "3rd party".
matt3210 · 35d ago
Who really believes this isn't an intentional "leak".
bobsoap · 35d ago
To what end? To gain a casus belli for a terminal crackdown on the "woke" press?
I mean, if something is imaginable, there's a chance it is indeed so, but still - this would be on a whole other level.
TomK32 · 35d ago
Isn't there some new agency offering tech support? Can't they focus on helping the Pentagon to sort out some internal secure messaging with strict ACL?
boringg · 35d ago
How much of a bump is signal seeing as a result of this?
al_hag · 35d ago
Legality is certainly not just to do with breaking rules; this is more true the further up in the hierarchy you are.
Why don't we see appropriate questions? Like how was the number added accidentally? It would have had to be in the contacts already? Was it? That seems highly unlikely. It's the ATLANTIC! Why would they have the Atlantic in their contacts.
And Signal is not an approved app afaik.
The whole thing just seems like it is highly likely it is fake/engineered.
tempestn · 35d ago
You find it implausible that someone highly placed in the government would have the editor of a major news publication in their contacts?
la_mezcla · 24d ago
Who is that theater for? Coulnd't he have been deliberately included in a chat?
itbeho · 36d ago
Colossal fuckup on many levels. Heads should roll. This kind of thing puts people in our military service at undue risk.
mherkender · 35d ago
Nothing will happen. If something does happen, it will be an attack on the author of the article.
DrNosferatu · 35d ago
Indirect strong hint:
Signal is uncompromised.
…at least at the moment.
Or of course, that’s what they want you to think :D
bambax · 35d ago
> The Signal chat group, I concluded, was almost certainly real. Having come to this realization, one that seemed nearly impossible only hours before, I removed myself from the Signal group
Why? Why not stay in the group indefinitely (or until found) and write stories sourced from a mysterious individual deep in the entrails of the Trump administration? That would have been absolutely specacular and could have resulted in a hilarious purge while the culprits searched in vain for a traitor in their ranks.
rdsubhas · 35d ago
Are you suggesting he knowlingly convert into a hacker and get prosecuted as a traitor?
He exited and correctly disclosed himself as a victim of being unknowingly added. This is exactly what anyone who values the rest of their life should do.
wnevets · 35d ago
Having people preaching the glorious benefits of a meritocracy and how this white house is gonna spear head it all while these geniuses break the law and operational security the dumbest way possible is simply amazing.
financetechbro · 35d ago
This story lacks substance and is a perfect of example of medias complacency to the state in the name of “national security”… total BS. Ken Klippenstein has a great take on this reporting.
So can we now stop hearing "lock her up" and "what about her email server?!".
ThisRealLife · 34d ago
After reflecting on this for a day, it seems the best case scenario is Waltz decided to blow the whistle on a bunch of useful idiots.
Most likely scenario he decided to blow the whistle on a bunch of traitors.
It seems least likely that the journalist was accidentally included. The question is why? Seems like our defense personnel are now foreign agents acting against the US.
LWIRVoltage · 36d ago
<tangent opening line of my comment> From people on Reddit: Something that blows my mind- but is fully true
"Hell, I've been in fucking EVE Online alliances that had better opsec than this."
"I'll raise you one: I've never been in any EVE alliance that didn't have better opsec than this."
..I noted Board Games(Secret Hitler, for example) require better opsec. So do card games- it's mindblowing to note this too...
[Main comment by me - technical outlook]
This is not a surprise at all- there were reports that the first Trump administration was using Signal to communicate, and that it was a a risk as messages can be totally wiped and not kept for records keeping.
-From an infosec standpoint- this is more notable than I think people are giving it credit- the fact that the Vice President(Well, maybe not him, he notably admittted in interviews during the presidential campaign, that he'd been briefed by three letter agencies on Salt Typhoon tageting him, but that he was secure because he used Signal) - the director of national intelligence- and several others- use Signal.
it's one thing for Congress, Sweden's Military, and apparently our own military branches to push Signal heavily for non-sensitive stuff-
But when those around three letter agencies -and the groups that would be interested in finding compromises- are using it, that screams to me that it's considered not that easy to attack- which is a point towards Signal
So then the final thing to secure are the endpoints- and of course the risk is a zero day exploit targeting someone. As for subtle push app updates by Signal themselves being a vector- i'd think the Open Source nature of the app prevent that - if the infrastructure for pushing updates is open source as well especially.
Again though- if the White House is using Signal- they likely KNOW most of what their own Three Letter agencies can and can't do(to a point)- so when people in the know are using it- that is telling.
A lot of it may be for the auto disappearing messages, admittedly- but that's notable. And yes, I'm aware Mark Zuckerberg has been known to move conversations off of WhatsApp, to Signal - again, maybe for the disappearing messages(and lack of a report function which would send part of a convo to FB/Meta to my understanding)- but possibly, for the security and lack of meta data being better from a attack surface standpoint
bayarearefugee · 36d ago
Even if we are generous and assume Signal's protocols and entire communication infrastructure are 100% safe and cannot be compromised, any one single person in the group chat using Signal on a compromised device invalidates all of that.
The fact that Signal was used is less concerning to me personally than the fact that they had this group chat outside of the overall safety umbrella of fully end-to-end vetted systems.
Though the use of Signal is still concerning in that any official system they would otherwise use would have (one would hope) made it far harder if not impossible to accidentally leak the conversation to a random third party.
LWIRVoltage · 36d ago
This is true absolutely
One would hope indeed- I do wonder on that ......
There's another observation though- Salt Typhoon compromised wiretap infrastructure - before Signal, there's no doub't some stuff like this occured over text messages-
Because of everyone's efforts to go to Signal- even if it's for the message disappearing- with this, with military branches pushing it hard- with Sweden's Miltary pushing it, etc(for non sensitive stuff)- there's so much of that , that the attack surface overall is massively reduced. In short, if there's going to be stuff outside of vetted systems- running that sort of stuff Signal- likely still helps.
(I'm reminded again, of the JD Vance interviews where he let slip that he'd been targeted ,and was informed about it by agencies- but that he was good because of his Signal usage. Now, I don't know what measures he takes to avoid zero day exploits and whatnot- the TLAs would inform him of that- but from what he was saying, it sounds like they were sure he wasn't compromised by that.)
(I'm aware a serious targeted effort would be more intricate than Salt Typhoon/ Trying to use the country's own general Wire tapping capability to target the VP)
Edit: Also, this reveals a bit about psyche- J.D.Vance somewhat ribbed the president- there is probably pressure TO use Signal, so a record of him criticizing the President can't be found out by the President or those more allied with the President who could then start retribution- I imagine dynamics like that, which are human behavior- -ultimately are what absolutely drive all of this.
blitzar · 36d ago
I has long been fashionable with the kids to use screenshots for "proofs" - I don't believe there is any screenshot protections in signal.
The iCloud accounts of anyone ambitious in that chat will be filled with in and out of context screenshots to show to daddy when they are in trouble next time.
tailspin2019 · 36d ago
> As for subtle push app updates by Signal themselves being a vector- i'd think the Open Source nature of the app prevent that
The lack of reproducible builds for Signal’s apps has been a topic of discussion for quite some time:
It's not that secure. If someone has a desktop signal client it has been possible to just access attachments via the file system; they were stored with obfuscated names but no encryption. They may have fixed this since I tested it ~6 months ago.
codedokode · 36d ago
On desktop you can just read process memory and extract all the keys and tokens.
whymeogod · 35d ago
> A lot of it may be for the auto disappearing messages,
except that the conversation in question, and similar such conversations, are required by federal law to be archived.
So explicitly choosing a communication channel that violates federal law for conducting federal business is, umm, sketchy?
hnthrow90348765 · 35d ago
><tangent opening line of my comment> From people on Reddit: Something that blows my mind- but is fully true "Hell, I've been in fucking EVE Online alliances that had better opsec than this." "I'll raise you one: I've never been in any EVE alliance that didn't have better opsec than this."
Major alliance infrastructure and security is probably better than most US corporations but doesn't come close to secure government systems, obviously
LWIRVoltage · 32d ago
AI spotted those comments on reddit- note: those were not my words about Eve(which i'm unfamiliar with!)
Point taken though , the commenters who said that were ...obviously..anecdotal, -though possibly still more the norm...)
rambambram · 34d ago
Normalizing war. With emojis and all. Cool.
danso · 36d ago
Staggering display of incompetence and carelessness. And unfortunately, one that we’re unlikely to get much transparency about, in terms of how such an operational screwup was allowed to happen.
> At 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.
> …The Signal chat group, I concluded, was almost certainly real. Having come to this realization, one that seemed nearly impossible only hours before, I removed myself from the Signal group, understanding that this would trigger an automatic notification to the group’s creator, “Michael Waltz,” that I had left. No one in the chat had seemed to notice that I was there. And I received no subsequent questions about why I left—or, more to the point, who I was
ipython · 36d ago
Don’t worry - this massive fuckup will surely spark numerous congressional investigations, resignations, and trigger serious reflection by the administration on their security protocols so they will comply with the necessary recordkeeping laws, confidentiality and proper handling of classified information in the future.
Despite the fact that the NSC already said it appears to be legitimate, Hegseth is going into full attack mode against the "discredited, so-called journalist".
bayarearefugee · 36d ago
Would be great to live in a world where nearly every voter that saw the NSC response and then the Hegseth response could see the clear contradiction in responses and then make the correct interpretation that whenever these clowns are crying about hoaxes and lying media they are full of shit and 100% in CYA-mode so you should never trust them when they do this on any topic.
Of course, we don't live in that world.
therealpygon · 35d ago
Sadly, were this a different administration, they would have already declared an investigation with a goal to impeach a president. Such a ridiculous double-standard with clear partisanship on display. “Both sides”…
kayge · 35d ago
I've already seen at least two posts on X with claims that this was actually all intentional and that "Trump is playing 5D chess"... and I think they were serious.
esalman · 36d ago
Move fast and break things bro
AbstractH24 · 36d ago
Why Silicon Valley and Washington DC should stay on different sides of the country
esalman · 35d ago
Agree. Washington DC in fact provides all the incentives silicon valley needs to flourish. It's just that silicon valley needs more self awareness and stay out of politics.
ToucanLoucan · 36d ago
> Staggering display of incompetence and carelessness. And unfortunately, one that we’re unlikely to get much transparency about, in terms of how such an operational screwup was allowed to happen.
I have a theory that's well backed by history: when your sole qualification for applicants for important positions in any organization is how well they fondle your balls, you often miss other important data points: for example, if they can use messaging apps correctly.
belter · 36d ago
Is this worst than using Top Secret documents as toilet paper?
Possibly, yes, as these messages leaked details of ongoing military operations.
asdff · 36d ago
I never realized before with this photo, but space was actually made to still use the toilet sitting in that room with the tower of boxes 6 inches from your face. Straight out of a comedy sketch, almost too perfectly staged with the gaudy lights, stool colored formica, and $2 walmart shower curtain with the pressure fit rod right into the plaster. A shame for all of us that the photo came out of real life and not satire.
ornornor · 36d ago
Pardon my ignorance but what’s the context of this picture? I don’t watch the news fwiw.
Jtsummers · 36d ago
After he left office in 2021, it was found that Trump kept boxes and boxes of top secret files at his residence, including in the bathroom among other places. Somehow this is not an issue for the GOP.
aweiland · 34d ago
In a bathroom that had a copy machine no less.
nerdix · 36d ago
I believe that is a picture the FBI took when they raided Mar-a-Lago and found the top secret documents that Trump took when he left office after his first term.
sorcerer-mar · 36d ago
These are files that he took, said he returned, refused to return, denied the existence of, then claimed that he declassified telepathically, in that order
There's a lot of useless junk that's cleared by association
outer_web · 36d ago
Are you saying he only took meaningless stuff? Lol.
nunez · 35d ago
No; I'm saying that there is a lot of useless junk that has a clearance. I did not say that taking boxes and boxes and boxes of cleared materials into a likely-uncleared site was okay (it most definitely isn't).
outer_web · 35d ago
I appreciate the clarification. I hope you'll understand the confusion created by offering a fact that does not apply to the current discussion.
impendingchange · 36d ago
Almost as bad as a private email server being used for governmental business.
ohthatsnotright · 35d ago
Oh this administration does that, too.
Braxton1980 · 35d ago
“People have gone to jail for 1/100th of what – even 1/1,000th of what Hillary Clinton did.” -Hegseth
“How is it Hillary Clinton can delete 33,000 government emails on a private server yet President Trump gets indicted for having documents he could declassify?” - Waltz
“Nobody is above the law. Not even Hillary Clinton – even though she thinks she is,” -Rubio
anigbrowl · 35d ago
I always ask MAGA people why Clinton wasn't prosecuted by the Trump administration over this, and have never received a clear reply, if I got a reply at all.
No comments yet
giardini · 35d ago
No, that was intentional.
This incident was an accident.
Epa095 · 35d ago
How was the signal group an accident? It's not (just) adding the journalist which is the problem, it's using a non-approve communication platform for sensitive information.
> In his text detailing aspects of the forthcoming attack on Houthi targets, Hegseth wrote to the group—which, at the time, included me—“We are currently clean on OPSEC.”
Simply incredible. This is wild.
rasz · 36d ago
he said similar thing on his confirmation hearing
"My commitment is to not touch alcohol while I have this position"
outer_web · 35d ago
Lol the most liar-y way to phrase it.
iteratethis · 36d ago
This is bad news for entire genres of books, TV shows and movies that are based on the supreme competence, sophistication and wealth of the Pentagon, NSA and CIA.
Turns out US military strategy is the same as me and my mates setting up a bar date.
It's a disturbing leak in itself but i take issue with the journalist obsessing over the tool of choice whilst ignoring the actual strategizing.
The casual way in which a mass murder is planned. The emphasis on "messaging" and how to spin this on Biden and Europe. The teenage-like emojis to celebrate acts of war.
This administration looks bad from the outside but through this leak we can see that their shocking press moments are still the polished and spun versions of a reality that is far more sick.
outer_web · 36d ago
Film and tv are safe, this was done by political appointees. The civil servants (you know, the "deep state") are much better about it because it's their job.
Aurornis · 35d ago
> Turns out US military strategy is the same as me and my mates setting up a bar date.
Typically these positions are filled by highly qualified people with decades of experience.
This administration is not typical. They deliberately chose inexperienced people who would be loyal above all else.
Selecting for incompetence was part of the plan, and it’s been obvious from the start.
Hegseth was a Fox News host, not someone qualified for this position.
This story is stranger than fiction.
9dev · 36d ago
The most excellent steak can be ruined by an amateur chef easily.
I agree with your point on the spin, although I wonder if the Signal angle is the only thing even republicans can agree with to be kinda bad, given that even the most egregious reports on the current administration don’t really cause as much as a raised brow there. So to make it a story that doesn’t just resonate in the liberal echo chamber, include something despicable to both camps.
timewizard · 35d ago
> on the supreme competence, sophistication and wealth of the Pentagon, NSA and CIA.
Agencies with no oversight are seen as competent? That's news to me. There's a definite waste of taxpayer dollars on propaganda to try to make this point publicly but I didn't think anyone was poorly educated enough to actually believe it.
outer_web · 35d ago
Sorry are you claiming that the United States intelligence community is incompetent and that anyone who things otherwise is poorly educated?
What are you basing this on?
timewizard · 35d ago
Yes.
History.
Are you genuinely incredulous?
outer_web · 35d ago
Yeah man, you sound like a 14-year old edgelord who just learned about the Bay of Pigs. How many contemporary security professionals would call them 'competent' versus 'incompetent'?
outer_web · 34d ago
"This concrete, unambiguous example contradicts my worldview so I am going to report it."
nunez · 36d ago
A normal govvie sending cleared materials to unapproved recipients over unapproved channels? 20 years in federal prison.
A govvie with status doing the same? A slap on the wrist.
Embarrassing.
CapricornNoble · 35d ago
Yeah, the next time I have to submit a SAAR form for military network access, and they request my Information Awareness Annual Training certification as an attachment, it's going to be hard to not laugh in their face. We were getting scolded about "not even searching the 'Net for the content of the Teixeira leaks because possessing classified info could be prosecuted" and these guys are discussing upcoming strike packages in their Signal chat? Un-fucking-real.
WorldWideWebb · 36d ago
A Trump cabinet member doing the same? Not even a slap on the wrist.
enceladus06 · 35d ago
Basically confirming what we knew all along that it is security theater. IMO we should keep the nukes & drone force to secure the borders and make sure that these are competent to maintain security.
But the rest of the military/DOD/ABCD/USAID is legacy bloat left over from the cold war and should be cut. Then we can finally get rid of the income tax for most if not all of the country.
Edit: I say this as an independent who does not support either "side".
ahaferburg · 36d ago
That is absolutely wild. How is this not on the front page?
4ndrewl · 36d ago
To what end? How is this newsworthy any more? It has the President's blessing - that's all you need now.
If literally storming your government building, threating your representatives and injuring police officers isn't punishable any more what is?
neverokay · 36d ago
It does really feel like we are men watching our women and children accosted. We feel impotent as the public currently.
_tk_ · 36d ago
As far as I know, if submissions get flagged they get downranked. Not sure about the details.
AnimalMuppet · 36d ago
It's not currently flagged, though. (Or at least, it's not currently marked [flagged].)
llm_nerd · 36d ago
dang has detailed this before. After so many flags vs upvotes, a post is pushed to the bottom of the third page or top of four page of results. This is is before the [flagged] state is reached. You can often find highly upvoted but "politically contentious" submissions at position 90 or above.
[Edit: I interpreted "curated manually" to mean that dang picks each story that is on the front page. tptacek interpreted it to mean that, since users upvote and comment on stories, that's "manual curation". I interpret that as being "automatic curation", that is, an algorithm picks the front page stories, even though it's based on users' upvotes and comments. I cannot prove which of these two forms belter meant. Naturally, I prefer to think that it was the one I read it as, but I can squint hard enough to see tptacek's version.]
belter · 36d ago
In the front page number 8 is
19 points - 3 hours ago | 1 comment
number 30 is
38 points 16 hours ago | 0 comments
number 7 is
13 points | 3 comments
This one
has 142 points and 35 comments in 2 hours. Is neither on the first or second page.
What is the logic?
Jtsummers · 36d ago
> What is the logic?
The logic is that people have flagged it, but not enough for it to be marked [flagged], which downranks it. dang, if notified or interested in it himself, could turn off flagging for this submission which would likely bring it back to the front page (given comment activity, age, and current score). You could email him and ask nicely.
You've been on this site for 4 years with 57k karma so you must be very active here, I'm surprised you don't know this yet.
neverokay · 36d ago
It’s not about whether the person knows or not. It’s more about that the person can’t believe this is happening even if it follows all the norms that we’re all supposed to know about, apparently.
In other words, just because such a system could be used in this way, is it good that it is being used this way? That’s the energy this is coming from.
But I agree with your premise, even in its snark, none of us are stupid - we should already know.
tptacek · 36d ago
It is (it's a combination of manual and community inputs) but almost certainly the reason this isn't on the front page is that lots of people flag stories about the Trump administration. I didn't flag this one (it's too juicy, and has a Signal connection) but I flag most of the other ones.
asdff · 36d ago
Why flag any and not just see what the community engages with? You don't have to participate in threads about subjects you aren't interested in, you know. And the expectation that this is somehow taking time from the community who would otherwise be engaging in threads you are more interested in yourself, is a little, well, self centered to me.
tptacek · 36d ago
I'm going to keep flagging all of them, because these stories are all activating and attract tons of upvotes and comments, filling the front page with repetitive recapitulations of the same tired arguments. It's not what HN is for.
asdff · 36d ago
Is it not for discussing topics of interest to the community?
tptacek · 36d ago
It's for discussing on-topic topics of interest to the community, where on-topic specifically excludes "most stories about politics", which is a very easy to bar to clear when the stories you're flagging are literally duplicative of stories with hundreds or thousands of comments on them already.
neverokay · 36d ago
Because they are long-running discussions, it’s not repetitive. When we allow Rust or JS threads to keep popping up, it’s because we evolve with the topic over time and continuously discuss it.
What the HN shadow mod team is doing is killing the possibility of a long-running, evolving discourse on important topics.
pvg · 36d ago
Rust and JS threads are on topic for the site, most current events stuff is not.
is killing the possibility of a long-running, evolving discourse on important topics.
These topics have been the most discussed topics on HN the last couple of months by a massive margin. The quality of 'discourse' has been abysmal so we know empirically the 'evolution' theory/hope is misplaced.
MegaButts · 36d ago
> These topics have been the most discussed topics on HN the last couple of months by a massive margin.
Have any of these topics managed to not be censored via flagging? From my perspective, I have very much wanted to talk about these things on HN and despite checking multiple times a day I have never been able to engage in an ongoing discussion (by which I mean the post wasn't removed from the front page due to flagging, effectively limiting the visibility it would otherwise get from organic upvotes).
You're entitled to dislike these topics and to flag them. And I'm entitled to think you're actively making HN worse with your gatekeeping. The problem with flagging is it gives more weight to a smaller group. I don't know the weighing exactly, but I'd guess flagging is 10-100x more effective than regular voting. So in theory just 1-10% of people have the ability to censor topics they don't like. Kinda seems like the antithesis of what's "interesting" to me. And yes, I absolutely 100% would prefer contentious "go fuck yourself" arguments on politics than not being allowed to discuss it in good faith at all.
defrost · 36d ago
A better question is:
Have any of these topics managed to be censored via flagging?
They are all still present, a good many are still active .. you seem to equate "not on front page" with "censored".
“On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.”
“That’s the display department.”
“With a flashlight.”
“Ah, well, the lights had probably gone.”
“So had the stairs.”
“But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
tptacek · 36d ago
The "smaller group" here is anyone with over 500 karma. You're going to have to find some other place to have "contentious go-fuck-yourself arguments" --- about literally anything --- because they are anathema to curious conversation, which is the overriding goal of this site. That goal isn't changing just because we're all activated about politics right now, just like it wasn't in 2017.
MegaButts · 36d ago
We just fundamentally disagree. From my perspective you are the antithesis of curious conversation by censoring topics you don't want to discuss. I don't want to read the latest update on some dumb framework but I don't flag the post.
Also getting 500 karma on HN isn't hard.
tptacek · 36d ago
Right, my point is, it's not in fact a small group of people.
MegaButts · 36d ago
Getting 500 karma is a trivial task and not some tiny group. Are there any HN regulars (that don't just lurk) that don't have that much karma?
The point is a flag has higher weight than an upvote, and it's easy to get the ability to flag posts.
tptacek · 36d ago
Right, again, my point: the cohort of people who can be flagging these articles is quite large. It's not a small number of gatekeeping old-timers.
MegaButts · 36d ago
dang has admitted that flagging carries more weight than voting, we just don't know what the weighing is.
tptacek · 36d ago
Sure, sounds right.
MegaButts · 36d ago
So then it's not an equal flagging vs equal upvoting, it's fewer flags by fewer people being able to derail a post off the front page which may have been upvoted by 10x or 100x as many people as flagged it.
The fact that it's easy to get the ability to flag just makes it easier to abuse by people who want to censor certain topics.
tptacek · 36d ago
It's worked this way for 1,492 years (in Internet years) and mostly for the best. When stories get flagged inappropriately, you email Dan, and he usually fixes it. Seems good to me.
Because it's very longstanding precedent, you're going to have to do more than just notice it out loud for the first time to change it.
For what it's worth, I didn't just not flag this story, or even just upvote it; I submitted it (and was beaten to the punch). It's a good HN story! But I can absolutely understand why the Trump-Story-Flaggers would have reflexively flagged this story. These threads are incredibly tedious and corrosive to the community.
MegaButts · 36d ago
I realize this website has operated more or less the same for a long time. But as it becomes increasingly popular it's going to become a bigger target for abuse by people wanting to push a narrative. I'm just commenting on why it's been more frustrating for me lately than it has in the past.
There is no correct answer to this problem. I'm just critiquing it in its current form and explaining why, to me (and many other people who have complained about it recently), it's getting worse.
pvg · 36d ago
Another thing it's been it's been for a long time is "increasingly popular". If anything, groupthink and common narrative are easier on a smaller site.
Teever · 36d ago
There's this strain of navel gazing on this size where people think that they talk about productive shit and this is somehow a better site than other social media sites because 'we don't talk about politics or celebrities, we talk about curiousity!'
But people on HN upvote and argue about California zoning laws or San Francisco drug policy here, AI policies from the US federal government or the DMA from the EU. Or the SLS rocket. It's all politics.
Sam Altman and PG are the celebrities here, not the Kardashians and people never stop talking about poops on San Francisco streets as if this is an important issue for the US or international community of the site.
'political' is just used as a euphemism for 'taboo' and there are many unspoken taboos about what is talked and not talked about here.
tptacek · 36d ago
I would be shocked if anyone came up with a new argument about this dynamic, which has been argued about since the earliest days of the site.
Teever · 36d ago
I'll tell you the new argument about this dynamic -- the US is tanking hard and the influence of sites like HN is going to wane and will inevitably be replaced by European sites.
People outside of the bay area and outside of the US are tired of this crap.
CapricornNoble · 35d ago
> I'll tell you the new argument about this dynamic -- the US is tanking hard and the influence of sites like HN is going to wane and will inevitably be replaced by European sites.
I'd much prefer it be replaced by something led/focused/moderated out of the Global South....if I didn't loathe the idea of doing content moderation myself, maybe I'd fire up a HN-clone marketed in those other regions...
Teever · 33d ago
I'm totally down with that, I just think that it will probably originate from Europe because of inertia with money.
If anything it'll be from some middle ground in that it will originate from a country like Estonia that has a lot going on with startups and the whole digital democracy thing figured out.
tptacek · 36d ago
Don't threaten me with a good time! I'd love it if there were more places like HN. I like Lobsters, but it's too insular. Start Euro-HN!
I think Dan is an amazing moderator, one of the all-time greats, but there are lots of different moderation arrangements that can work, and different goals for forums to have. What I like are forums! Not just this forum.
pvg · 36d ago
My argument isn't about 'political' at all, neither are the public moderator's main arguments.
pvg · 36d ago
These stories have been on the front page multiple times, yes.
You're entitled to dislike these topics and to flag them. And I'm entitled to think you're actively making HN worse with your gatekeeping.
I like these topics just fine. I don't particularly like them filling up HN because HN is pretty bad at them and it's bad at them in a pointedly tedious, repetitive way. "pointedly tedious and repetitive" is the most offtopic thing on HN. But for any story you feel should get more exposure, you can email the site mods and make the case for it. This happens all the time.
And yes, I absolutely 100% would prefer contentious "go fuck yourself" arguments on politics
Well, as you say, you're entitled to prefer that but that's not the sort of messageboard this is. But again, you can make the case for changing that but it seems pretty uphill. Yelly messageboards are a dime a dozen and many HN participants are here because this one is slightly less yelly.
Teever · 36d ago
Dude there was a post about George Foreman's obituary the other day...
Like c'mon.
I'm pretty sure that your pretentiousness just invited a shitstorm of people who are going to flag your posts from now on.
CyberDildonics · 36d ago
Yeah everyone gets self righteous about being on topic when it's something they don't like, meanwhile hacker news is filled with cheap self promotion and pop culture news that people use as a writing prompt to have a competition for who can claim it impacted them the most.
tptacek · 36d ago
Feels like the flaggers aren't the ones being self-righteous here. We're just flagging and getting on with our day. One of them took the time to explain what they were doing for you, and, well, (looks around).
CyberDildonics · 36d ago
just flagging and getting on with our day
You have about, well, 30 comments in this thread.
One of them took the time to explain what they were doing for you
They took their precious time and explained it just for me? I thought you said "We're just flagging and getting on with our day."
You might want to (looks around) and count up your, well, comments. Seems like you're trying to claim both not caring at all and benevolent enlightenment, which is, well, a little self righteous.
tptacek · 36d ago
I do care! I'm just not feeling especially self-righteous about it. I can reliably report how the site works, without composing Rage Against The Machine lyrics in the process.
CyberDildonics · 36d ago
I can reliably report how the site works, without composing Rage Against The Machine lyrics in the process.
These don't seem to have any relevance to what I've said, are you getting me mixed up with someone else?
defrost · 36d ago
That was likely just a generic wave at the general level of histronic hairshirt brigading on either side of the aisle that threads of political nature can attract.
Admittedly I have little talent for extracting wasps from stings in flight.
timeon · 36d ago
Omerta.
originalvichy · 36d ago
The nickname Stupid Watergate will never die
apical_dendrite · 36d ago
This would be unbelievable in a normal administration. The combination of flagrant lawbreaking and incompetence is just so characteristic of these clowns.
No, nothing in the Clinton email scandal comes close to cabinet secretaries accidentally real-time texting imminent war plans to journalists using a non-governmental system with auto-deleting messages.
dang · 35d ago
Could you please stop using HN primarily for political battle? That's not allowed here, regardless of what politics you're for or against.
(This is not a comment on the current story, or any story.)
krapp · 36d ago
¯\(ツ)/¯ Plenty of people in Trump's own cabinet used private email servers too, but no one cared.
As always, it's only a problem when a Democrat does it.
cocacola1 · 36d ago
I’m sort of surprised Democrats haven’t snapped yet.
4ndrewl · 36d ago
Democrat what? There's no power anywhere outside of the Trump circle.
cocacola1 · 36d ago
?
dekhn · 36d ago
The republicans hold the presidency, have a majority in congress, and a majority (depending how you interpret the moderate members) of the supreme court. Even the more moderate republicans are afraid of the Trumpets so they mostly vote in-line (see for example Cassidy voting for RFK Jr).
There are some things the democrats can do but it's mostly "spanner-in-the-works" slow-downs of the process, or mid-level judges. At the same time, the democrats are in disarray with no clear leader or message.
Probably the best strategy for the democrats is to let Trump make more mistakes until even his base questions his presidency.
archagon · 36d ago
Democrats could do a lot with their physical bodies if they wanted to. Take a page out of classic American protest strategies: strikes, marches, sit-ins, etc.
dekhn · 36d ago
You mean the democratic leadership, or members of the party/people-who-vote-democratic?
Protests happen in the summer mostly, and they always have a small amount of violence and property destruction (even when the protest is organized to be peaceful). Trump is just waiting around for that so he can have the military shut them down (at least, that's what he said).
Unless the protests are large enough (say, 1/4 the population of the US), and persistent, and affect business heavily. Maybe that would be enough to dispel the reality distortion/enforcement shield Trump has cast on the republicans.
archagon · 36d ago
People-who-vote-democratic need leaders to organize them. Their elected representatives need to be the ones heading marches and organizing rallies, not just AOC and Sanders shouldering the entire burden.
Yes, the administration will try violence, but it’s a lot harder to justify when elected officials are on the firing line.
4ndrewl · 36d ago
Won't happen - Erdogan has written Trump's playbook for that. You'll end up in Guantanamo.
archagon · 36d ago
Tens of thousands out in the streets in Turkey right now. Still possible there. Still possible here.
4ndrewl · 35d ago
WH comms director is now literally calling people who are talking about this "enemies of America, spreading lies"
timeon · 36d ago
> Probably the best strategy for the democrats is to let Trump make more mistakes until even his base questions his presidency.
Also known as "strategy of Paul von Hindenburg".
thechao · 35d ago
Republicans can't vote against Trump, because the vast majority of Congressional districts are gerrymandered; this means the candidate can be easily outprimaried with just a little bit of cash. The original red map project (2010) cost about 40 million; the last map (2020) was quite a bit more expensive — perhaps 10x as much — but still quite cheap considering the benefit (functional control of the U.S. government). One of the unintended effects of the deep 2010 gerrymanders that project red map discovered was that it also distorts the Senate map (this was unknown effect, at the time). Until gerrymandering is fixed, and the legislative powers ceded to the executive are clawed back, there is no "fixing" the current situation. It was always just a waiting game for a well-heeled (for primaries) autocratically-leaning president to come along.
lemon_zest · 36d ago
They can impeach. That’s their only political tool. And have it on the record who votes against it. But they are useless
dragonwriter · 36d ago
> They can impeach.
No, they can't.
> And have it on the record who votes against it.
They cannot force a vote to actually occur on a proposed impeachment. They can file it and let it die, that's as close as they can come.
dredmorbius · 35d ago
The Democrats can neither pass bills of impeachment (minority in the House, which introduces such bills), nor convict (a supermajority is required within the Senate, the Democrats don't even hold a majority).
Democrats can introduce bills of impeachment, but those would simply die without consideration given GOP control of the House. So far as I'm aware, none have done so since 20 Jan 2025.
consteval · 36d ago
A few of them held up signs and some were kicked out. Yes, actually - some of our legislatures were removed from the premises for silently protesting!
dylan604 · 36d ago
The individual kicked out was not silently protesting. At least get the facts straight
ipython · 36d ago
Honestly, I think a lot have just given up at this point.
krapp · 36d ago
The Democrats really are the Charlie Brown of politics, and the Republicans are Lucy with the football.
JumpCrisscross · 36d ago
> surprised Democrats haven’t snapped yet
There is no Democrat in the singular. There is a left-wing bloc defined, first and foremost, by identity politics and foreign policy views (namely, Palestine). There is a centrist bloc focussed on employment and wages (historically pro-union). And there is a free-trading bloc focussed on American enterprise and industry (historically pro Wall Street and the party's dominant wing through 2016 to 2020).
The second and third used to be aligned. Then, briefly, the first and second. Currently, nobody is aligned. The financial crisis cost the third group its moral standing. The third group's affiliation with the second lost corporate America and Silicon Valley to the Republicans. Then the middle group's alignment with the first lost its base to the anti-woke pitch. The first group remains cohesive, but it's too small and uncoordinated (e.g. voting for Trump for Palestine) to move the policy needle on its own.
text0404 · 36d ago
to clarify: the leftmost bloc eschews identity politics because they are first and foremost anti-capitalist and believe that identity politics are a wedge issue designed to distract from class struggle (which is to say, they still address issues like systemic racism/misogyny/bigotry/etc which perpetuate wide-scale societal inequality but care less about politics which center individual identity). because they are anti-capitalist, they also focus on wages and are heavily pro-worker and pro-union (pro-labor). in foreign policy, they advocate for liberation movements which they believe are part of a global class struggle.
the second bloc is liberals, which are more center-right as they frequently side with conservative policies and are pro-capitalist. in recent years, this has come to include DSA (AOC) and other progressives like Bernie Sanders, who believe that the current system of politics under capitalism can be reformed instead of abolished. these people are very much for identity politics because they believe idpol will bring the leftmost bloc into the fold (it won't). this bloc sometimes supports leftmost causes but will abandon them when it is politically expedient (AOC, Bernie).
the third bloc is just right-wing. Bush Jr-era neocons. the party has always catered to these folks but more recently has come to embrace them as it moves rightward. this bloc will continue to grow as we see more of a rightward shift as more Democrats embrace the far right because they believe it will lead to electoral gains (Gavin Newsom, Chuck Shumer, etc) - once again, it won't.
the first bloc absolutely is not part of the Democratic party, and in fact despise the Democrats. they largely do not participate in federal electoral politics.
JumpCrisscross · 36d ago
> the leftmost bloc eschews identity politics because they are first and foremost anti-capitalist and believe that identity politics are a wedge issue designed to distract from class struggle
This is a very narrow slice of urban leftists. When it comes to electioneering, the messaging is almost always about identity politics and anti-corporatism more than class-struggle politics.
> they largely do not participate in federal electoral politics
Then it isn’t a bloc. Non-voter non-donors are politically irrelevant.
text0404 · 36d ago
yeah fair, the leftmost folks are not really involved in party-level messaging at all.
i disagree that they're a narrow slice and aren't a bloc, though. in federal politics sure but in local politics they're more active and there's much more alignment with Democratic politicians (and more pragmatism).
Aloisius · 35d ago
Anti-corporatocracy, not anti-corporatism. A fair chunk of the left, if not the majority, is very much in favor of Corporatism (Tripartism and/or social corporatism like the Nordic model).
llm_nerd · 36d ago
This is an insane story demonstrating extraordinary incompetence, not to mention revealing some rather comical beliefs about American exceptionalism.
It's on the bottom of the third page, pushed down by flags. During any other administration, such a disastrously, criminally incompetent use of technology would have been top of the front page for days, but this administration is so cosmically incompetent that pointing it out is "partisan" now. Everyone is just tired of people commenting on the fact that this criminal bunch of Fox News host miscreants clearly have zero idea what they're doing.
Also...but her emails!
Who do you think will sponsor the Egg roll? They just need to move the Tesla infomercial out of the way, and maybe Trump can feature some of his garbage shitcoin crypto.
Jesus Christ. What a fallen idiocracy.
UncleMeat · 36d ago
Not just days - months.
We saw A1 headlines for months about Clinton's emails. Often daily.
Thanks, and also thanks to moderators for offering it
otterley · 36d ago
The top story on Fox News right now is "Trump allies move to prevent 'activist judges' from overstepping presidential authority." This story isn't even on the front page.
vwcx · 36d ago
To be fair, it broke as an exclusive to the Atlantic about 180 minutes ago. The NYT now has it "above the fold" on their front page. Unlike a story coming directly from a public source, it sometimes takes a bit longer to spin up re-reporting on another outlet's scoop like this.
otterley · 36d ago
Good point. It's now the top story on WSJ as well.
alistairSH · 36d ago
And FoxNews has the Hegseth “nuh uh, no we didn’t” statement above the fold and the actual news in small print. Le Sigh.
dekhn · 36d ago
It was a couple hours later (on Fox).
notadoomer236 · 36d ago
They use signal. They added the wrong person to the chat. Oh well. There’s no real disaster here. No real operational details exposed. Just some politicking that surprises no one.
ipython · 36d ago
Did you read TFA? Operational details were shared on the chat but the journalist, out of concern for exactly what you describe, redacted those details from his report.
frenchman_in_ny · 35d ago
In the banking world, employees have been fined significant sums, or even forced from their jobs [0], for unauthorized use of messaging platforms. And here, it's barely a shrug. Unbelievable.
In the government world, people have been jailed for it. Not people so directly connected to a president, though.
StefanBatory · 35d ago
Laws no longer apply to them - laws bound people below. If you're interested what will follow, look into Russia or Hungary.
billy99k · 35d ago
Heh. Like when they arrested someone for running their own mail server and sending classified information through it? Oh wait...
jjeaff · 35d ago
yes, after months and months of investigations and hearing and non-stop new coverage and a Republican led committee that admitted in their final report that while there was negligence, they couldn't find any wrong doing.
PokestarFan · 35d ago
Who's going to arrest them?
downrightmike · 35d ago
Fun fact, initially when places were setting up police forces, people railed that it was an infringement on their right to do a Citizen's Arrest.
basisword · 35d ago
This is why you have a constitution, codified laws, judicial system, separation of powers, etc. We're just learning now none of these things are worth the paper they're written on.
fergbrain · 35d ago
The issue is that there’s nothing that requires prosecution, just allows it.
This is the doubled edged nature of prosecutorial discretion.
johannes1234321 · 35d ago
Well, in the idea of the system there is: The system is built around the assumption that Congress would impeach a president who fails to to the right™ thing (or fails to make his administration do ...)
However once the legislative branch surrenders oversight over executive there isn't much left keeping the system in balance. Even if judicial branch would call a measure unconstitutional, who'd execute that ruling?
The system is built around the assumption that a notable part of the system wants to keep it alive.
ChocolateGod · 35d ago
It's just as useful and effective as the international law and order that was setup after WW2.
So nada.
johannes1234321 · 35d ago
As long as you build an order around independence of countries and diplomacy (instead of, say, force) any organisation will only be as useful as countries are willing to follow and any structure can only be as good as the ones in charge are willing to go.
In consequences there are many flaws and a lot is stuck in post WW2 thinking, but I doubt there is a realistic chance of anything overall better.
The current U.S. administration tries to reshape things by disruption, we will see how this goes, but I doubt this will earn trust and buy-in from others. Thus not lead to a stable and "better" system. (While better, of course, is not globally objective, which again is key to the problem)
bamboozled · 35d ago
Would you say that was always the case, or just a more recent development?
groby_b · 35d ago
Our entire civilization has always rested on a tacit "it's nice to have civilization, so we play by the rules" by everybody involved. Voluntary restraint is what keeps us from being animals, not nature or laws.
As Hobbes wrote so eloquently, we keep that compact because the alternative is "continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short"
We're currently exploring how many of those rules are really necessary, and, as a society, have decided to mostly shrug off that exploration.
That is the part that's changed. A willingness to ignore the rules by some, and a collective shrug by most.
basisword · 33d ago
I think it's partly the way the US state is set up. When the president picks the Supreme Court judges and they have lifetime appointments you don't truly have separation of powers. Then the whole thing is meaningless. When you have "liberal" and "conservative" courts based on the make up of the judges you need to start again.
jillyboel · 35d ago
Rules for thee but not for me. Now get back to work, peasant.
swiftymon · 35d ago
it's not unauthorized use of signal;
"Government officials have used Signal for organizational correspondence, such as scheduling sensitive meetings, but in the Biden administration, people who had permission to download it on their White House-issued phones were instructed to use the app sparingly, according to a former national security official who served in the administration."
It absolutely is an unauthorized use. Authorize use is "let's go to lunch". This was "let's bomb these people at this time".
Big difference.
sjsdaiuasgdia · 35d ago
Let's assume for the moment that the discussion of military plans on Signal was covered by this policy. That's debatable as others have said. Other parts of that policy would seem to suggest this kind of conversation is expressly forbidden on Signal and similar unofficial chat apps, while other less sensitive conversations are permitted.
How does that excuse the lack of attention and validation that resulted in an unintended party being added to the chat?
Regardless of Signal usage policy, that is a massive fuck up.
wholinator2 · 35d ago
Did you read the article? Signal is not approved for this kind of communication and has long been advised against. They also had messages set to autodelete which violates the records act. It's blatantly illegal
ChrisMarshallNY · 35d ago
Buttery Males!
EgregiousCube · 35d ago
It's too bad that this is being downvoted - swiftymon is trying to provide some context. It's useful to the discussion and well sourced. I'd love to read counterarguments rather than have this fade away :)
Jtsummers · 35d ago
Because their claim is false and unsupported by their quote. It is absolutely unauthorized for government employees to conduct discussions like this on services like Signal. It's not even allowed for CUI level discussions, and war planning pushes into Secret and TS territory very quickly.
Organizational discussions means things like, for a standard fed on a TDY with others, "Meet in the lobby at 0700 so we can drive to the site for the meeting at 0800." Not "So we're going to use ... to attack ... at ...", which is almost certainly Secret or TS once aggregated.
EgregiousCube · 35d ago
This is the sort of counterargument I'd have liked to see instead of disagreement-driven downvoting, yes.
Jtsummers · 35d ago
swiftymon created an account just to post a lie. That comment absolutely should be downvoted, with or without rebuttals. This isn't about disagreement.
You disagree over opinions. Should Signal be an appropriate system for discussing classified data? I'd say no, you might say yes, we disagree and debate.
Legally, is Signal an appropriate system for discussing classified data? No. Unless you believe in alternative facts, there is no point to disagree on, it's just a fact that it is not legally an appropriate system for what they did.
And then swiftymon lied and used "evidence" to bolster their lie that didn't even agree with their lie.
EgregiousCube · 35d ago
You assert things strongly, but you are not an arbiter of truth about data classification in the federal government - this is certainly an area where discussion can be had and where becoming more informed increases the quality of discussion. Interestingly enough, many of the people in charge of data classification in the federal government were on said Signal thread!
I could assert that you're lying, etc - as you're effectively committing the same sin as the poster who originally got downvoted - but that wouldn't be having a conversation; it'd be a rude refusal to tolerate a conversation. I encourage you to assume good intent and engage instead of hurling accusations at people - even if they're new accounts.
andelink · 35d ago
TFA article discusses how officials have long used Signal for routine logistics, contrasting that with the national defense plans being discussed in a group chat with a journalist
scyzoryk_xyz · 36d ago
It’s actually kind of a relief to at least confirm that these cronies would work like this. I.e. whatever they have in store they will probably end up shooting themselves in the foot.
Well, themselves and the 53 humans who were blown up in a distant country by Star War technology.
Actually, now that I think about it, no - this is terrifying and awful and just so so so stupid.
anigbrowl · 36d ago
Is that a SCIF in your pocket or are you just displeased to see me
alistairSH · 36d ago
Even worse, Trump wasn't aware of this leak (or denies knowledge of it) until questioned at a press conference earlier today. And instead of promising an investigation, the best he can do is throw some weak insults at The Atlantic.
BUTTERY MALES indeed.
dragonwriter · 36d ago
> Trump wasn't aware of this leak (or denies knowledge of it) until questioned at a press conference earlier today.
Trump routinely denies knowledge of things he doesn't want to talk about, even things that he has previously demonstrated knowledge about. It's a standard deflection that he never gets called out on or significant pushback on the implications of his claimed lack of knowledge, so he keeps doing it.
gitaarik · 36d ago
Well I think it's very common for representatives to not directly reply after a certain incident, because they don't have all the details yet and they want to take time to form a proper response. Don't see how this is specific to Trump.
dragonwriter · 36d ago
I didn't say being evasive immediately after an incident (either to gather facts or put together a strategy) was specific to Trump, I said feigning ignorance including of material he has previously demonstrated awareness when he doesn't want to talk about something is a repeated pattern for Trump.
Those are distinct, though potentially overlapping, behavioral patterns.
It was almost a meme on his last presidency. If there’s a scandal involving someone from inner circle - trump’s replies often were “I barely know him/her”/“Never met him/her”, etc.
alabastervlog · 35d ago
Separately, he'll not-infrequently claim he doesn't remember recently saying something insane/stupid when a reporter asks him about it a day or two later. Sometimes he'll kinda smirk when he does it, so I'm pretty sure this one's also him lying, not genuinely forgetting, at least much of the time (if he's really forgetting all of these, that's a separate serious problem). In these cases, also, he rarely gets much push-back, so it's another example of "yes he's bullshitting, but also we're letting him get away with it and get what he wants, so why would he stop?"
gitaarik · 36d ago
Aha ok, but I don't think it's very applicable to this situation. The people he has denied to know he might have met them once or twice, but it's not like part of his administration. This situation is different.
ttyprintk · 35d ago
> “I don’t know who Putin is,” “I have no relationship with Putin” and “I don’t know Putin.”
Good examples and I believe that’s a Bill-Clinton-under-oath use of carnal “is”. Nobody has the patience to wonder whether it’s true or false that Trump knows of the existence of Putin. Bill Clinton didn’t get away with it, so I’m willing to say this is specific to Trump.
ttyprintk · 35d ago
The list of lies under oath. In particular, the libel case he lost.
ttyprintk · 35d ago
To circumlocute his habitual evasion, try offering an active phrasing: “Do you have a replacement in mind for Secretary Hegseth?” would be one way to prevent the passive-aggressive “I don’t really know Peter B. Hegseth”. When Trump “doesn’t know” someone, it’s a very final thing.
fatbird · 35d ago
By the revealed content of the chat, Trump wasn't aware of the decision his subordinates made. They just intuited Trump's wishes and dropped bombs based on that.
dvh · 35d ago
When they say VP do they mean Vice President or Vladimir Putin?
codedokode · 36d ago
Mr. Trump's return into White House made news about America interesting again.
The level of incompetence in this administration is laughable — well it would be if it wasn’t so sad
telez · 36d ago
seems like a UI design failure
rchaud · 36d ago
"Don't make me think" was certainly the guiding principle at play here.
timeon · 35d ago
UI could be considered failure if we were talking about casual gossip. Particular UI shouldn't be the issue because the App was not supposed to be used for this.
These should be professionals. Issue was between keyboard and chair.
Neonlicht · 36d ago
This Yemen situation is quite interesting. In 1948 nobody could have conceived a situation in which white people wouldn't be running the world, Dutch people were still religious and public opinion was pro Israel.
Hopefully when the last boomers die we can finally extricate ourselves from this self imposed fuck up.
Ylpertnodi · 35d ago
Did only boomers vote?
sharpshadow · 35d ago
He may have just received screenshots from a compromised phone and wrapped himself into the story.
Frederation · 36d ago
False Flag, perchance?
Jtsummers · 36d ago
What? What are you saying was a false flag?
ctrlp · 35d ago
It would be interesting and valuable to have additional security controls in Signal group chats. It's frustrating that the platform is so feature limited.
guerrilla · 35d ago
Can you expand on what you'd like to see?
ctrlp · 35d ago
Some layer of ACL and better controls over group membership and message visibility. In this case, if it were an inadvertent added member, then there could be a group/role level restrictions on channels that restrict members from a pool of approved members depending on the security context. Classic security stuff, really. I'm sure others could think of more interesting use cases, but preventing mistaken group adds feels like low-hanging fruit.
guerrilla · 35d ago
Yeah, that's what I thought you meant. This situation is what MAC and specifically MLS are actually for, so that exactly this doesn't happen. There must be mobile devices and texting apps that actually support that but as far as I understand it Android is very far from being able to implement that kind of policy (despite heavy use of SELinux).
It's actually weird we don't see this in the corporate world either. These problems, as many of us know personally, exist everywhere, not just at the White House and it's going to lead to huge issues down the road.
Anyone here know if the DoD actually has their own stuff for this? It was they who came up with these technologies back in the rainbow books days.
ctrlp · 35d ago
A stupid simple way to do it would be to use control groups as security pools. If you are not a member some master control group, then you can't be added to related spawned "child" groups. Better than what is there now, which is nothing. Would have to be client level controls, maybe a smart contract could govern, but could Signal build on the current abstractions by having groups be members of groups and inherit the same "phonebook" as the group they are a member of. Just spitballing.
evanjrowley · 36d ago
Who is surprised the US is planning on military action in Yemen?
ttyprintk · 35d ago
The journalist declined to give any details after “UPDATE”, so that the story is not about Suez shipping but about opsec.
dzhiurgis · 36d ago
Could've been a setup to get The Atlantic to leak government secrets...
ttyprintk · 35d ago
But the backfire is catastrophic: every leaker in DoD can now claim as a defense that their leak must be a political appointee up there attaching docs to now-expunged Signal chats. That is now both Occam and Bayes rational.
StefanBatory · 35d ago
And then, the natural course of action is to ban them.
outer_web · 35d ago
I don't think you deserve the downvotes considering that would be very in character for this administration. That said, it does not seem plausible considering the number of officials they'd have to incriminate to burn Goldberg, not to mention the airing of so much dirty laundry. Seems like a better plan would be to go to him directly with a phony leaker.
jeffbee · 35d ago
Amazing that with H.N.'s doctrinaire application of the exact original title rule, this is the title that the mods chose to editorialize.
dang · 35d ago
HN has no "doctrinaire" rule about exact original titles. The rule is this: "Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize." - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. Note that word "unless". Since the original title was linkbaity, I replaced it in accordance with the rule.
That's not editorializing, because it's using the article's own language and is a more accurate and neutral description of the article. Editorializing is when a submitter takes advantage of the title field to convey their own view of an article.
thunkingdeep · 35d ago
Remember: every comment on here is implicitly directed to dang, and every link is implicitly approved of by dang.
This is really his website at this point. The rules are mainly just his tools for shaping the content of discussions and submissions to his liking.
A decade ago it was different. I mean, he was still way overbearing and biased, but I don’t think it really had the same power-steering effect on the shapes of discussions as it does today. Over time, this is where we’ve come to.
dang · 35d ago
Oh you guys. If HN were to my liking, I promise you it would be an entirely different place.
Suppressing my own like/dislike responses is where most of my energy goes when doing this job.
slater · 34d ago
dang, we should maybe set aside ONE day where you're allowed to just let loose and blast us all with zero suppression on your end. April 1st ...? :D /s
guerrilla · 35d ago
I happen to know first hand that the thread is not going quite to dang's liking at the moment. I'm hoping it improves, but people are having a hard time sticking to the technical and security aspects.
jeffbee · 35d ago
There are zero technical issues to discuss in this affair.
Der_Einzige · 35d ago
Thank you for proving that other HN members can call out bad HN policies and the way its applied by its de-facto leader. N-gate died far too soon.
dbl000 · 36d ago
This was such a weird news story to read. At least they used Signal? That's gotta be a plus at some level.
Unrelated, but I wonder how the gray hat market for Signal vulns is doing now?
alistairSH · 36d ago
How is that a plus? Maybe vs plain old SMS...
But, it's a flagrant leak of classified info. Using a medium explicitly prohibited by policy. And likely now lost to time (Signal messages can be configured to auto-delete on a timer), when all of this sort of correspondence is legally required to be retained.
yks · 36d ago
> How is that a plus?
They could've used Telegram /s. It's popular with the crypto crowd after all.
Manafort used Telegram extensively. The only messages used against him in court were iCloud backups of WhatsApp.
ratg13 · 36d ago
Signal is primarily for end-to-end encryption.
If a device has been compromised, the database can be extracted with all messages and contacts
stefan_ · 36d ago
The basic Signal vulnerability even if the protocol is perfectly sound is that they can push effectively silent automatic app updates to do whatever. Presumably they didn't want to signup for this but that's how app distribution works nowadays, and it's certainly not fit for classified information.
tptacek · 36d ago
It's unlikely that there is one.
e44858 · 36d ago
How can we know this group chat was really comprised of government officials and not some bored teenagers? Signal allows you to set your profile name to anything you like.
n2d4 · 36d ago
From the article:
> Brian Hughes, the spokesman for the National Security Council, responded two hours later, confirming the veracity of the Signal group. “This appears to be an authentic message chain, and we are reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain,”
e44858 · 36d ago
Is there an official statement of this on a government website?
Ylpertnodi · 35d ago
They used signal and included a journo...a web-page highlighting an 'error', may take a while to appear. Especially as some poor mf has to make a page that doesn't criticize la presidentino.
jfim · 36d ago
Have you read the article? The author mentions this exact concern.
sjsdaiuasgdia · 35d ago
Watch the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing from earlier today. You can hear one of the participants in that chat acknowledge that he's in it and it's real in response to the questions of committee members.
This is not in question, at all.
alabastervlog · 35d ago
The natural and insider language of the chat, and (especially) the perfect timing of the strikes with the planning in the tread, also make it extremely unlikely this was anything but a genuine conversation, even without confirmation. The alternative is a combination of a very-prepared fraudster with either their own source of privileged information (to get the timing right) or else an incredible coincidence such that their entirely fake and uninformed planning matched the timing set out in the real planning. That it was genuine is far, far more likely than either of those (one of which raises its own, different security concerns, anyway)
sharpshadow · 34d ago
Excuse me folks but is there any evidence that he was really in the group?
Going through the reporting a couple of times it could very well be that he was never part of the group. Screenshots of the group members including him or a screen recording nowhere to see. He didn’t write anything in the group but immediately wrote each individual after he left the group.
If he never was in the group and only received intel about it, the people which provided him with the intel would be able to tell him that critical information was posted in the group, which was accurate, but he wouldn’t have seen it.
0x_rs · 34d ago
The Atlantic has published the entirety of the chat logs including the members list, so yes.
One of my takeaways is that "national security secrets" really aren't that important. The Secretary of Defense was in on this. Whatever was in that chat just doesn't matter, except to manage the reporting on it.
I call on Bart Gellman to dump the Snowden document repository he's got. Clearly nothing in it matters, if this was so casually compromised.
alistairSH · 36d ago
It only "didn't matter" because the journalist had the good sense to keep quiet until after the operation was complete. And continues to keep some of the conversation secret. Imagine if Hegseth had accidentally CC'ed somebody aligned with Iran?
Independent of anything else, I do see the overton window shifting in the US, the most subtle of which are norms and expectations around acts of corruption.
Every nation has it's minor acts of corruption, small favours between friends, which I've always thought of as being functionally impossible to remove as they also allow for a flexible environment which allows things to get done.
However the norms seem to be shifting more towards the idea that those in power can act as they will, and in fact the expected thing is they will act to enrich themselves. I hope this does not happen, because this is death to entrepreneurship, this is one of those things that will poison the economy, when people no longer trust that what they make can be theirs, that others can look on in envy at the work they have built on their blood and sweat and can take it as their due because they have power.
That will create a chilling effect for anyone who wishes to create and will make them wonder as myself and many others have considered, whether it's better to create their life's work elsewhere.
I sincerely hope this doesn't happen here, once this mindset becomes a norm, it's incredibly hard thing to stamp out.
“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”
― Isaac Asimov, 1980
This relativism is encouraged, not because people genuinely believe all views are equal, but because it neutralizes inconvenient truths. If no one can claim authority, then no one can hold power accountable.
Perhaps part of the problem is that snooty intellectual elitists want everyone to be geopolitical geniuses and socially activist and fight for their hobby horses, when every nation, especially large ones, are in desperate need of people who mind their own business, keep their heads down, and contribute humbly to the common good.
Rather than being pushed through university and having technology shoved everywhere into their faces and bombarding them with messages from liars and hucksters at every step.
I honestly regret gaining knowledge about a lot of things that concern me because while “knowledge is power” it’s also known that “ignorance is bliss” because curiosity killed the cat.
If we’re a nation that stands and falls on the strength of social media disputes then perhaps it’s time to let the best bots win.
What do you even mean by this? Unless I'm misunderstanding, your comment sounds like you are advocating for a "let them eat cake" ideology.
Do you think our current administration exemplifies the three things you say we are in desperate need of?
And you’ve hit the nail on the head there, because rather than placing our family first, community and local concerns ahead of all else, or loving who we are and where we’re at,
we’re wrapped up in a self-inflicted TDS dystopia that surely consists of a 7-layer burrito of illusions and fantasy, because politics is a reality show that is often scripted.
This is a very common colloquial phrase assuming you are from the US - it refers to the President and their administration.
Can you answer the question now?
I'm tired of blaming people far away and quite distant from us for stuff. At a National Security Level, none [hopefully] of us know what's really going on and none of us can actually DO anything about it, except kvetch and moan and whine into our keyboards. Surely all you spycraft fans could admit that there may be a 7-layer burrito of fake-outs and misdirection and Fog of War involved with a fuckin' Signal chat that got a scoop for a single news outlet? We're literally on social media discussing a... single report... about a thread on social media that was seen by one too many people. Since MySpace was founded, the lamestream media reporters have made entire careers out of digging stuff out of someone's profile or their friends posts and splaying it out in a Film At Eleven. But is there anything new under the Sun?
I personally admire our President [although he's got some unattractive personal traits] and I love the administration's progress since his first election, but it's all such big-picture stuff that really affects you and me so little, in the here and now. What matters much more is what's going on next door, in my home parish, in my municipality, and then there's diocese and county and state all above that. What also matters is the Finger of God, his angels and his saints, and their participation in what's going on, when "spiritual autists" need to hold men accountable and attack and blame humans--your sisters and brothers--for events and occurrences which are surely beyond human power to control or even correctly perceive. You believe that "knowledge is power" so is your knowledge absolute? Does your knowledge confer absolute power to know and act? Is there no higher knowledge or wider justice than the knowledge wielded by your philosophy, Horatio?
https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/27761/pg27761-images.ht...
Name-calling, finding fault, spreading rumors and exposing scandalous gossip. When you get involved the Politics Reality Show and the Lamestream Media, that is your currency in trade. The media rakes muck and the politicians wallow in it and fling it back at them in the same briefing room, but it sullies not their impeccable blonde tresses nor designer Prada soles that you picked up in the 90210.
No comments yet
"The statements by Hegseth, Gabbard, Ratcliffe, and Trump—combined with the assertions made by numerous administration officials that we are lying about the content of the Signal texts—have led us to believe that people should see the texts in order to reach their own conclusions. There is a clear public interest in disclosing the sort of information that Trump advisers included in nonsecure communications channels, especially because senior administration figures are attempting to downplay the significance of the messages that were shared..."
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/03/signal-...
"Here are the Attack Plans That Trump's Advisers Shared on Signal" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43481521
And Europe is most certainly not an exception to this, especially in current times. For instance 65% of EU citizens do not believe that high level corruption is sufficiently pursued. [1] And basically every EU country (outside of Scandiland) has a majority to vast majority who believe that corruption is widespread in their country.
[1] - https://europa.eu/eurobarometer/surveys/detail/3217
IMO, this is more important.
That was once different, with Berlusconi at the helm in Italy while owning the major TV outlets.
Like most things in life, I suppose it is all relative? Diabetes sucks, but it sure sucks less than cancer.
Of course it would be lovely if there is zero corruption, zero pollution, zero nepotism etc. Which is highly unlikely to happen?
Which brings the question - what is the best country to live, relatively speaking?
And she is just the tip of the iceberg of EU corruption. In general such politicians only get repercusions selectively, and usually only when the political direction changes and they're no longer useful to the establishment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pfizergate
https://www.politico.eu/article/5-things-to-know-about-ursul...
So in the US you have a corrupt, authoritarian takeover of a society – and in Europe you have well-meaning, but somewhat annoying, regulations that still need some work to function perfectly.
They could've just respected a browser's do-not-track header but chose not to. The EU legislators should've done that too, that is, dictate a standardized method for people to opt in.
Btw, I can dig up 3 dozen of other state institutions with cookie banners, if you so wish?
https://www.reddit.com/r/neoliberal/s/1Fn23uYVxK
The data depicts the exact opposite of what you are saying. As an entrepreneur, you can be “safe” knowing you will have far less chance to succeed in the EU.
Now compare companies by actual revenue:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_companies_in_E...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_companies_in_t...
I omitted the 50 years distinction because, unsurprisingly, the companies in the US are younger.
None of these are actually relevant for founders, however, as even in the US you only have a couple dozen large cap companies, but millions of founders.
What is relevant is the share of employers per capita, as that shows us how many founders actually exist.
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.EMP.MPYR.ZS?most_rec...
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.EMP.MPYR.ZS?most_rec...
You can’t call a region a “safe haven for entrepreneurs” if all the globally relevant entrepreneurs from that region are dead from old age.
Remember, Europe has double the population of the US. To lag behind so dramatically in the last 50 years is absolutely something to be concerned about.
Having to move the goalposts to the 1850s to make a point about relevant European businesses should be alarming to you.
A big part of it is obviously the relative effects of twentieth century wars, both hot and cold. However, we also need to be aware that in recent decades, the US has just offered a better deal for entrepreneurs than Europe. By that I mean it has been a democratic, rule-of-law-based country with relatively easy access to capital and relatively low taxes.
It still has the last two things, of course. But the first two are also essential, long-term, and if they're eroded then the US might stop looking like a better deal.
On the one hand, studies have suggested that nearly half of highly successful entrepreneurs/founders in the US are immigrants or children of immigrants. As the US becomes more authoritarian and more corrupt, its easy to imagine people choosing to do their new startup from, say, Berlin.
On the other hand, lots of people choose Singapore, too; rule-of-law-based country with relatively easy access to capital and relatively low taxes — but without actual democracy.
I'm aware of my own inherent bias of wanting democracy to be important to people when making this kind of calculation, but I'm not sure that we have any real evidence of that.
I do agree on Singapore, though. It's an interesting case in that the benevolent dictatorship offers most of the advantages of Western democracies in terms of a law-based contract between rulers and the ruled, but with (arguably) a more solid promise of long-term social stability. There's definitely a chance that we all end up in that situation.
If we try to steer the ship back to the topic at hand...here's why we should be concerned that Europe's private sector isn't growing much or innovating much.
It turns out, Europeans entire way of life is funded by taxing the activity of the private sector and redistributing that money to things like healthcare, education, pensions, etc. Innovation (increased productivity) is the only way to reliably grow this pie, and innovation is exclusively the domain of the private sector due to the competitive pressures of markets.
If our private sector is entirely composed of aging industrial-age conglomerates waiting to be disrupted by more dynamic and innovative Chinese competitors (China is rapidly becoming better at the things European industrial companies used to dominate), our entire society is at risk. Militarily, we're sitting ducks, and economically, we are as well.
Modern Europe is economically heading the way of the Soviet Union, with an increasing share of GDP driven via centrally controlled government spending (we're now at over 50% on average in the EU, the Soviets were around 70-85% at peak).
Meanwhile, The Chinese Communist Party has ironically created one of the most dynamic, capitalist systems on the planet. The Chinese supposedly "communist" economy is in fact more market-driven than even the US economy (33% government-driven vs 36% government-driven), and you can see this in the numbers: https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/exp@FPP/USA/FRA/JPN/...
It doesn't take a Phd to understand that a much larger and more unified population in China, with a more unleashed private sector, is going to eat the lunch of the smaller, disjointed micro-economies in Europe. And this doesn't even factor in the rise of industrial investment in the US in recent years.
This is why the rule of law is so important. It's a Maslow's Hierarchy type situation, and if the choice is between creating value in a system which will tax a good proportion of it away (current EU) and creating value in a system which may capriciously confiscate it (current China) then I argue that people are more incentivised in the first case.
Hard to say for sure about Jack Ma, did anything actually happen to him, and if so, was what happened to him fair? He seems better off than me.
China still has many billionaire and millionaire entrepreneurs, so it does appear that they have the concept of markets and capitalism on a leash in such a way that wins for the people of the China, the central government, and the entrepreneurs. Even if some of that isn't perfect, they live in a country of rising prosperity, and I live in a country of 30 years of stagnation where billionaires just bought the government to turn us into an impoverished 3rd world feudal state.
Even if I'm completely wrong about about China and it's all a lie or bubble, my country isn't exactly offering a future.
You are able to read this very comment (and write your own) in large part specifically because of public-sector innovation.
But thank god for the US department of Y combinator for taking a risk on all those evil private startups so they'd be able to support this government website.
I say "GDP doesn't matter that much" and you pivot back to how GDP isn't growing and that's a problem.
You say the future will be like the present except that China will replace the USA in the position the USA currently occupies. So what? The present is pretty good.
You say that the USSR is when the government does stuff and that's really bad. That's going to need more evidence.
Funding is a way of keeping track of the things that are done, not a way of doing things. Different economies put more or less importance on the accounting and more or less importance on the actual doing. Facts about funding cannot be conflated with facts about actual doing, especially in economies that are more likely to override the funding if they don't like the way the funding is causing doing. (That's something like what the "government fraction of GDP" is - it's the percentage of times the people didn't like the free market results and chose to override them)
> Having to move the goalposts to the 1850s to make a point about relevant European businesses should be alarming to you.
Please actually have a look at the EU list and click through to the companies. They are all directly linked in Wikipedia. The majority is from the 1980s and younger.
* Volkswagen: Founded on May 28, 1937, as Gesellschaft zur Vorbereitung des Deutschen Volkswagens mbH, later renamed Volkswagenwerk.
* Shell: Formed in April 1907 through the merger of Royal Dutch Petroleum Company (established in 1890) and The "Shell" Transport and Trading Company (founded in 1897).
* TotalEnergies: Established in 1924 as Compagnie Française des Pétroles (CFP).
* Glencore: Originated as Marc Rich + Co AG in 1974.
* BP: Incorporated on April 14, 1909, as the Anglo-Persian Oil Company.
* Stellantis: Formed on January 17, 2021, from the merger of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles and PSA Group. Fiat Chrysler Automobiles was established through the merger of Fiat S.p.A. (founded July 11, 1899) and Chrysler Group LLC (originally Chrysler Corporation, founded June 6, 1925). PSA Group was Established as Peugeot Société Anonyme in 1966, but its roots trace back to Peugeot's original founding in 1810 as a family industrial business.
* BMW: Traces its origins to Bayerische Flugzeugwerke AG, established on March 7, 1916.
* Mercedes-Benz Group: Resulted from the merger of Benz & Cie. (founded in 1883) and Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft (founded in 1890) in 1926.
* Électricité de France (EDF): Established in 1946 following the nationalization of France's electricity sector.
* Banco Santander: Founded on May 15, 1857, as Banco de Santander.
We could do the full list and then weight by revenue or something but broadly, I think the point that 'pembrook is making is proven.
As an aside, one feature of LLMs that I genuinely do enjoy is the ability to ask for intern-level research like this.
If this were true, 15 years would definitely be enough time to show up in some form of data you can cite about the death of American startup culture.
America has jut installed a corrupt autocratic government that has immediately become mired in corruption, graft and defiance of the rule of law.
That will have a negative effect going forward.
American media is just as innovative as the rest of their economy, meaning they are constantly finding ways to prey on your emotions and your eyeballs with stories and content.
In reality, the US government is one of the most static, unchanging organizations on the planet.
The US government has been trying to get Europe to invest in its own defense for 50+ years. It's been trying to solve immigration for 50+ years. It's been trying to come to a solution on healthcare for 50+ years. Nothing is going to happen in the next 4 decades let alone the next 4 years.
How naive are you? I mean seriously.
Your post is one of the worst faux savvy takes I have seen. A true classic of the genre. The US Government is not an independent thing: it is made up of people. And if you haven't notice the current set of people are doing lots of gigantic, unprecedented things.
You either have a truly massive case of normalcy bias, or you approve of their lawlessnes and are running cover.
But I totally get it, this time is different! The US is in crisis! How could I not see the obvious signs?? It's all over the headlines!
https://reason.com/2025/03/17/allies-cancel-orders-of-f-35s-...
How do you not see that this time is different?
Blatantly untrue. America has spent 50 years ensuring europe is reliant on America for security, because America likes the economic benefits that brings.
https://www.ft.com/content/ad16ce08-763b-11e9-bbad-7c18c0ea0...
> The US has warned that greater military co-operation between EU countries would be a “dramatic reversal” of three decades of transatlantic defence integration, in the latest sign of the fraying relationship between Washington and Brussels.
That's 2019. When Trump was in power.
> It said that Washington was “deeply concerned” that approval of the rules for the European Defence Fund and the Permanent Structured Cooperation, or Pesco, launched in 2017 to plug gaps in Europe’s military power, would “produce duplication, non-interoperable military systems, diversion of scarce defence resources and unnecessary competition between Nato and the EU”.
Uh, Joe, it was a pretty bad scene the last time that happened.
At the same time, they complained about Europe not doing enough and shouldering enough of the burden, and I find it plausible that they legitimately did wish Europe would do that, the above paragraph notwithstanding.
Except whenever Europe did try to, America used its soft power to dissuade Europe from this course of action, and instead continue funneling money into American arms manufacturers.
> In reality, the US government is one of the most static, unchanging organizations on the planet.
The changes in that past couple of months are, objectively, enormous disruptions to the previous status quo (of the last 50+ years).
NATO may still exist on paper, but not in the world. The US has estranged almost all of its closest allies that it's had for my entire lifetime — I'm 50 — and in ways that are offensive, threatening, and simultaneously weirdly petty, and which would take a decade or more to repair even in the unlikely event that somehow the current administration was somehow replaced today, and efforts began immediately.
The US president has also opened up avenues for corruption and out-in-the-open bribe-taking (meme coin, banks of hotel rooms, his wife's vanity projects, etc etc etc) that are absolutely unprecedented in US history, of the ilk historically seen more in places like Malaysia, Peru, or the Philippines under Marcos. (Even Silvio Berlusconi was substantially more tactful and less obvious about it.)
At the same time, the administration is performatively flouting the rule-of-law, in ways completely unprecedented in the past 50 years. Openly defying judicial orders. Disappearing people without due process (yes, like all fledgling autocracies, they are starting with the already marginalized; purported gang members, brown-skinned or Asian permanent residents).
The childhood parables like "The Emperor's New Clothes" never actually, like, literally occurred in the America I knew, until this guy. Last time it was just "my crowd was bigger than Obama's" but this time it's "Ukraine started the war" (somehow arranging to be invaded by a murderous dictatorship waging a campaign of rape, torture, and mass child abduction).
> Nothing is going to happen in the next 4 decades let alone the next 4 years.
Way more than "nothing" has already happened. More substantial, self-directed change has already happened in 2-3 months than in Trump's entire first term, or any term of any president, in 50-100 years. I strongly suspect this trend will continue.
As you can no doubt infer, I am not a huge fan of this administration. But neither am I a partisan; I would characterize this administration as worse than any administration, Republican or Democrat, of my lifetime — and by a lot. (I include Trump's first term in that, but only because that static, glacial-pace US government you think still exists did still exist then, so even though the graft and weird dictator-fetish/emulation was present then, too, it didn't have the impact that it's already had in this term.)
Whether you think it is worse or better, I mean, we all have different priorities but it is unarguably very different — and has already made the US government very different — than anything seen in the past 50+ years.
Washington is and always has been corrupt, and political battles no matter how hilariously trivial in context to history have always been "the most important of our lifetimes."
Everything is fine and going to be fine.
Sure, the TV and social media will tell you that every year's crisis is "the most important of our lifetimes", and that isn't true. But obviously, it sometimes has to be true, right? I mean, at least once, and probably several times, depending from when to when we are alive.
"Important" is a matter of perspective, and also desired outcome, so YMMV but in my 50+ years of life there have been 3 such events driven by or pertaining to the US government:
- the collapse of the USSR and the end of the Cold War
- response to 9/11 and the aftermath
- 2025 US table-flip of the post-WW2 world order, pursuit of autocracy, and assault on the rule of law
Every government is corrupt; it's a matter of degree, and the reason you can't name a US government as corrupt as this one is because there hasn't been one. Watergate? Iran/Contra? B.J. Clinton? It's not close to the same degree.
Lesser disruptions have included the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2007 financial crisis, the internet, AIDS, maybe crack cocaine in the 80s, ... but those are more emergent side effects of human behavior than things done with intent. Things we deal with, not things we do.
Everything is fine? Disagree. Everything is going to be fine? Well, whew, good to know.
But I understood your point to be that everything is the same, and will be the same, broadly speaking, as it's been for the past 5 decades.
But it's not. It's wildly different, already. And even if, as you suggest, the 2026 elections somehow happened without egregious interference from the ruling administration (unlikely), and flipped control of congress to the opposition (maybe) — there's still no way to go back to the "before" times.
I think it's also important to say every public company is corrupt. It's a consequence of size.
Very unlikely, just based on the math. Even less likely now that Trump is overhauling the federal election system.
I am European, and every time I open one of those stupid locked-on bottle caps, I feel pain for my country, for Europe (and for my face).
Sure, Europe has some red tape that should be removed but don't paint it as some kind of Kafka's universe because it's not that bad. I'm from east side of Iron Curtain and I remember how bad that was.
Also, most of the businesses will do what's needed to be done because the market is big.
Personally, I prefer to live a life in a slightly over regulated place that at least keeps common people in mind than whatever is US turning into.
Cookies stuff is indeed badly made and should be fixed. The should just mandate websites to accept a http header with relevant option (no-cookies, no-advertisment, no-tracking etc.).
Still, it's not the problem of regulator in itself. Rather, companies are taking advantage of the current version of the law because it's favorable to them - they know most people with quickly accept whatever to close the popup.
I am honestly curious. If you are willing to go as far as they have, why not go that relatively tiny extra step?
I think it is a problem with the regulator. The cookie agreement mandate has legitimately fucked up the web for everybody. It's also done it in a way that mostly neutralizes the intended benefit of the law (because everybody just clicks the "fine! stuff your cookies up my arse or whatever, just get on with it!" button).
But a competent regulator must both measure the impacts of their regulations, and take action based on that data. It seems a weird place to stop.
The problem is that every other company thinks they are Google or Meta. So they start overcollecting user data, in hope that one day they will be able to generate revenue from them. So they end up with overcomplicated compliance solutions and GDPR consulting fees, but without any actual use for the data they collect.
I need to record names and address across the European Union. What character encodings are illegal for such fields in a database?
No comments yet
Is life so bad in Europe that’s what you have to complain about? Sounds truly like a nightmare - caps attached to bottles? Barbaric.
https://cointelegraph.com/news/whatsapp-signal-eu-chat-contr...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrest_and_indictment_of_Pavel...
So you replied about the UK specifically. I catered to that, and then reconnected it back to Europe as a whole, which I was originally discussing.
If someone here is derailing the conversation, it isn't me. Especially now that we're discussing the meta and not even the original subject.
You know that it is easy to remove the plastic locking the caps on? (Just twist them) And to me it is also easy to drink with them locked on, just have it side ways.
So I also do have lots of complaints about the EU, but this ain't it.
Yes, the bottle caps annoy me, but if the beverage companies stuck to the much more recyclable glass bottles we wouldn't be in this mess in the first place.
Yes, the GDPR popups annoy me, but the law also punishes companies for being creepy exploitative bastards. If they had any morals, we wouldn't have the popups either.
So yes, Europe is sometimes frustrating, but at least it does some government. The US simply doesn't. It's a free-for-all hellscape and I'd much rather be lightly scraped on the face by a little plastic cap that one time a month I need to drink from a disposable plastic bottle than live in...that...
The popups are there for companies that ignore basic data sovereignty of "don't use my personal data until I say you can"
Yes, plastic bottles (and caps) are likely a major environmental disaster.
The alternative to regulation is innovation: force bottle makers to invest x% of their profit or revenue into actual research on plastic recycling or capture.
That's a very easy but hand-wavy thing to say.
How exactly would your suggestion work? Are the companies supposed to share their findings from this forced research with the world? What happens if they happen to discover something that doesn't help with the plastic problem but does improve their bottom line somehow? I can't see this functioning in any way whatsoever.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/consent-o-mat...
It will click no no no no no to all cookie prompts for you, and hide the popup. It's sad that we need to do this, the companies could just not track you at all. But I haven't had a need to manually click these popups for quite a some time now.
The internet is borderline unusable without extensions like "I don't care about cookies". And in situations where you care about them, you can not, because something has to record that I've seen the GDPR consent form. Recently, in the name of... who knows what, it's become a pain in the ass to access Google maps from Google search.
The idea that Europe can become a safe haven for entrepreneurs is beyond laughable. The vaunted "rule of law" has degraded into nothing more than fetishizing arbitrary and irrational rules.
Look here: https://gdpr.eu/cookies/ > Receive users’ consent before you use any cookies except strictly necessary cookies
If you don't use cookies or they're stricly necessary, no need for a banner.
Many websites work perfectly fine without a banner, for example, Hacker News.
Grade school needs rank choice voting activities to help make it feel familiar.
It's a combination of AI being owned from these mega corporations and corruption at the highest level that I'm losing sight of what is the purpose building my startup business in an authoritarian landscape.
Trump illegally promoting Elon's corporation with a yard sale, kissing his feet for donating millions to his campaign thanks to citizens united, allowing him to ransack the federal government as an unelected official, to making vandalism a domestic terrorist act for people fed up when him,and now putting Elon in charge of investigating Signalgate.
People need to stand up now before they cannot.
We just need liberals to embrace the 2nd with as much fervor as the right.
This does not follow. Even in highly corrupt authoritarian countries entrepreneurship can flourish. Just consider Turkey or Russia. In such places one quickly learn whom to pay with corruption payouts becoming business expenses.
Just seems logical to me that if entrepreneurship was flourishing, we would see more economic growth as a result.
I do not know about entrepreneurship, but I do know that a Russian’s average purchase power is significantly higher than what you might expect from just looking at the GDP
GDP to US dollar is only works IF your export and import is only traded with US dollar which doesn't to be the case since Russia is trade with Brics partner that bypass all sanction and not using US dollar
And that's ignoring other externalities.
Or like building companies switched to Russian military contracts to build factories for drone, ammunition etc. to make weapons to kill Ukrainians.
If one has no moral compass, one can absolutely flourish as a businessman in Russia.
Scams and frauds are going to flourish under Trump because the guy himself is keen on running scams and frauds from the White House. Who is going to investigate crypto scams when POTUS is launching his own pump and dump shitcoin? It's going to be scams and frauds from the top all the way down.
Exactly also already happening in the US and with Law Firms.
"Trump rescinds executive order after law firm agrees to provide $40m in free services" - https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/20/trump-rescin...
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.
Sure, but short of something similar to the UH CEO, do you think anything will actually happen to them?
If they’re doing this then the president presumably knows and does too. Even if they get prosecuted and convicted (after years of legal nonsense) they’d just get pardoned.
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.
This is the United States of America.
There's nothing wrong with writing a new constitution. France is at its 5th iteration, and some candidates propose a 6th republic, nothing dictates that you're supposed to get it right on the first try.
France has been toppled by internal revolutions and external enemies multiple times in the time that the U.S. has existed. It's not an example to aspire to.
And give France a bit more credit; they were instrumental in the US’s own internal revolution against the British.
These morons are going to get American citizens killed due to gross incompetence. I'm still trying to wrap my head around the fact that half my country said "yep, let's go with these guys" when they saw a bunch of bungling Nazis yelling at clouds like something out of Hogan's Heroes. I'd laugh at the absurdity of it all if I didn't think we were in genuine danger.
I'm still trying to square how 98% of American voters went for candidates promising to continue arming the world's most live-streamed genocide, even with all those protests; even with all the footage we've seen.
How it didn't end after the Al-Nasr babies story, or after Biden was caught laundering lies about beheaded babies, or the NYT laundering lies about mass rape, I just don't know. And still the Greens couldn't get 5%?
There's something deeply dark and disturbed across the entirety of American society, and it seems like most of us can't even see it... Well, the consequences will arrive regardless.
in case you’re not being flippant and genuinely believe what you’re saying, it’s because we had only two viable candidates, one of whom should never have been legitimized. the line of thinking you present throws the baby out with the bathwater and represents a false choice. it comes across as saying that you’d rather do nothing than do something to—if not move things in the right direction—at least make it easier to permit the right direction in the future. no, instead you or others like you choose to exercise your cynical blend of moral superiority, demonstrating that you care more about your own sense of self worth than actually, you know, holding your nose and doing something. holders of that philosophy can’t seem to stand the smell of ‘imperfect’, regardless of how much damage they’ll allow to happen in the name of some false standard.
> we had only two viable candidates
That's a major part of the problem, and not one to be ignored or accepted.
> the line of thinking you present throws the baby out with the bathwater and represents a false choice.
Nope. It's simple facts. Both 'viable' candidates promised to continue arming a nation which is currently conducting genocide, as confirmed by basically every major human rights group and even some Israeli genocide scholars. That's thoroughly illegal by long-held, hard-won domestic and international law.
You can argue as to why that is, or accuse people who say so of "cycnicism" and "moral superiority", but it's a fact and needs to be said.
There is NO good reason for Harris to have ignored the wishes of the vast majority (77%) of her voter base in order to keep arming mass slaughter. Turning around on that one choice would have won her the election in a landslide, and anyone who looked at the polls knew it.
> you care more about your own sense of self worth
Again, it's simple facts. America is so thoroughly depraved that 98% of voters chose to go for someone arming an active genocide.
Not about me, not about my self worth (bro, I'm an anonymous account with basically no reputation to win or lose here). It's about America, and how a large part of it got conned into thinking that voting for a genocidaire was the right and practical thing to do somehow.
If genocide was properly considered as beyond the pale; far, far over any basic red line for human decency, then Americans would have gone for a third party candidate, or forced a change in nominations from the two 'viable' parties. It's up for debate why they didn't do that, but the simple fact is that 98% of US voters voted for continuing a live-streamed series of atrocities.
> holders of that philosophy can’t seem to stand the smell of ‘imperfect’,
The gulf between 'perfect' and 'complicit in genocide' is so, so vast. I refuse to believe that you can't understand that.
We don't like this any more than you do, yet you point the finger and offer no solutions, plan, or course of action. Your obstinacy and that of people like you served only to hand the election to those you so vehemently stand against, but rather than admit your own part in this mess we are now in, you chose to attack the people who made a rational choice to vote for Kamala given the circumstance.
I'm sorry, but you're part of the problem, here. Accept that and heal.
Were they better options? Probably. I personally was a fan of Stein. Were they available to us on any realistic level in our broken "democratic" system? No. Had I voted for her, my vote would have counted for nothing.
They had zero backing when thrown up against the two candidates that the very real and present two-party system pushed in front of us, and that was that.
Every time someone wants to whine about Harris supporting genocide, I feel like I'm talking to a bunch of bots who have never seen a US ballot, have no idea how our party system works and are incapable of comprehending the vast network of chicanery that results in two major parties drowning every other option we might actually want to vote for.
The illusion of a choice is not actually a choice, is it? So, at the time, the best plan was "NOT TRUMP AGAIN" leaving Harris as our strongest option _even though most of us did not agree with 100% of her policies_. We had a knife to our throat, and a knife at our back. We tried to get everyone on board with the knife at our back since, sure it would hurt, but at least it wouldn't kill us and we could work to move closer to a better solution.
Instead, we're now getting slit ear-to-ear because of impetuous fools who can't see past their own blind outrage.
When you feel like that for a couple decades and you start to look for the best possible outcomes that everyone will actually agree to, things start to look really, really bleak. Again, it's a War of Attrition and historically speaking, the people with the most resources win those.
Rally. Protest. Please. I have no idea what else to do. I'd lead the damned charge in the revolution if I thought anyone would follow, but my experience has been the opposite. The liberals of the world all seem to hate each other just as much as the conservatives do, so I'll be dipped if they ever really come together on anything, these days.
I don't like my conduct in the earlier comments, but after being that guy who tried to tell everyone the two-party system has no power without us for so damned long, I am not going to sit idly and listen to someone accuse me of supporting genocide when I made the most rational choice I could have with what was presented while they did nothing, as though Gaza's horrifying reality is the only thing the American people have to worry about right now. We live in a zero-sum game, and I hate it, but that's it.
Anyway, sorry to anyone I offended.
Voter: I will vote for you, because the only alternative that our party have allowed [0] a chance to win is even worse somehow.
Other voter: Hey, you know that candidate promised to continue to arm genocide, right?
Voter: Supporting her was the most rational choice. You whine. It feels like you're a bot. You don't understand the complex zero-sum game we are in. You, who I know nothing about, did nothing; while I voted. Also you're cynical and think you're morally superior.
Other voter: O-kay.
Like I said: 98% of America voted for a candidate who promised to arm genocide. We should be sanctioned by the world, and the only reason we aren't is because we threaten to either fuck their economy, ie [1], or literally invade them [2].
0 - https://sarahkendzior.substack.com/p/servants-of-the-mafia-s...
1 - https://www.irishtimes.com/politics/2024/12/16/occupied-terr...
2 - https://www.hrw.org/news/2002/08/03/us-hague-invasion-act-be...
Stein actually aligns far better with the real opinions of the majority of the American people; on affordable housing, on healthcare, on the military industrial complex, on the environment, on taxing the rich, on fracking, on education, and indeed on arming genocide.
However, the entire political and media class united to smear her as a "Russian stooge". Despite a complete lack of evidence, American voters ate that slop up and asked for seconds. It still disturbs me, how easy they made that look.
A Senate investigation ran from 2016 to 2019, investigating Stein. They found absolutely nothing, and completely cleared her in 2019... But try and find a corporate media article which acknowledges this. Many Americans still believe it; like WMDs in Iraq, or the Earth being 6,000 years old.
Try and find a Democrat who stood up for her this entire time. Nope - accusing Harvard-educated Jewish doctor ladies of being Russian assets without a shred of proof didn't seem to bother anyone.
Democrats went to extreme and even illegal lengths to take Greens off the ballot everywhere they could, and then accused the Greens of never winning elections (not true btw [0, 1]).
The media refused to cover any of those Green wins, then smeared the Greens as only appearing for Presidential elections as a "grift". A grift! In a race where that same media presented *Donald 'TrumpCoin' Trump as a serious candidate!
Let's see who was grifting:
Harris raised more than a billion dollars, and received 48.3% of the vote.
Stein raised $2.7m, 370 times less, and received 1% of the vote; in other words, her campaign dollars were more than 7 times more effective than Harris' despite rabid media bias.
But you can't explain any of this to a Harris voter. The real problem, I believe, is that once you've been conned into actively supporting genocide and ethnic cleansing, you can't really acknowledge that and still think of yourself as a good person. So people just lash out instead with personal attacks. The ones above are about the mildest I've seen, to be fair; usually bringing up Harris' complicity in genocide gets you called an asshole. Go figure.
0 - https://www.gpelections.org/election-history/victories/
1 - https://www.gpelections.org/greens-in-office/2024-july-01/
I assume you're referring to the livestreamed October 7th attacks?
But yeah, I agree with you. Nothing is going to happen. Just like no one at the top has been held to any kind of a standard at all since maybe Nixon. Who knows, if he had just stuck it out maybe he would have gotten off too.
"Trump’s crypto empire set to expand with new stablecoin and investment fund offerings" - https://apnews.com/article/trump-crypto-world-liberty-truth-...
"...Witkoff and his father, Trump’s special diplomatic envoy Steve Witkoff, helped launch World Liberty Financial with Trump and his sons last year. Under the terms outlined on the company’s website, a Trump-owned company has the “right to receive 75% of the net protocol revenues” from World Liberty Financial after expenses..."
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18077789-dying-every-day
But it's not clear that will progress to anything further.
The exact legal advice passed on to me around answering questions in a deposition played out live; wild.
1. The conversation didn't include the President. Here's the full participant list for that thread: https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_fullsize/plain/did:plc:on5oeyw...
2. There was tons of classified material shared including specific flight times and weapons systems. Here's a helpful side-by-side on what operational details are by default classified as Secret: https://bsky.app/profile/secretsandlaws.bsky.social/post/3ll...
How were the staffers archiving the disappearing messages?
What evidence do you have that the Biden administration conducted official government business on Signal?[1]
If they were above board and legal with this they wouldn’t have forced their republican congressional oversight committee to drag them into hearings.
[1] https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-cia-director-blames-biden-2...
Here is CISA page updated last under Biden's admin:
https://www.cisa.gov/resources-tools/resources/mobile-commun...
In the PDF on that page you'll see Signal recommended for communication.
> Former Biden officials, though, said that Signal was never permitted on their government phones.
> “We were not allowed to have any messaging apps on our work phones,” said one former top national security official on the condition of anonymity. “And under no circumstances were unclassified messaging apps allowed to be used for transmission of classified material. This is misdirection at its worst.”
The CISA advice wasn't telling public employees to use Signal for classified communications or communications subject to FOIA.
You're going to be completely unable to show me evidence that this was ever okay, because it wasn't.
"General Recommendations Apply these best practices to your devices and online accounts. 1. Use only end-to-end encrypted communications. Adopt a free messaging application for secure communications that guarantees end-to-end encryption, such as Signal or similar apps. CISA recommends an end-to-end encrypted messaging app that is compatible with both iPhone and Android operating systems, allowing for text message interoperability across platforms. Such apps may also offer clients for MacOS, Windows, and Linux, and sometimes the web. These apps typically support one-on-one text chats, group chats with up to 1,000 participants, and encrypted voice and video calls. Additionally, they may include features like disappearing messages and images, which can enhance privacy. When selecting an end-to-end"
Nothing in that chat was classified and to the extent that any of it would be, the President and his cabinet members ultimately have final say over what is and is not classified. They are the leadership.
The chat was a discussion mostly concerning opinions on the actions and high level logistics. Actual plans were distributed through CENTCOM.
It's completely ok because it's the President's cabinet. They run the government.
There is no authority higher than the president to determine the status of information.
Yes, you are showing nothing in that quote authorizes or recommends using Signal for official communications subject to sunshine laws. Certainly not authorizing it for classified data.
> Nothing in that chat was classified and to the extent that any of it would be, the President and his cabinet members ultimately have final say over what is and is not classified. They are the leadership.
Hand-waving is not evidence, so my assertion you'd be unable to provide evidence stands. People far above my pay grade say obviously this was classified and while the president can de-classify, and he can pardon them for mishandling classified information, what they did was illegal and there's no un-ringing that particular bell.
That they gave themselves the authority to endanger national security doesn't change the fact they endangered national security, and in fact makes what they did worse as it's intentional.
That doesn't mean they're being archived according to the law.
This is like ripping the warning sticker off an oxygen tank and pretending that makes it safe to use while smoking.
It's still not too late to impeach that entire shack of clowns.
https://dowhatmatters.medium.com/dei-to-dui-cronyism-undermi...
No comments yet
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.
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.
People demanded this and they got it eventually.
Also I suppose it’s crucial to point out that it’s not just controlling the marketplace for news, it also needed one party to be absolutely focused only on winning elections, and eschewing bipartisanship.
So on one side yes, people demanded it. But on the other side, they were manipulated to think one issue is more important than the other, to think that "the whole system is broken" etc.
Even 10 organized people with no weapons are _way_ more dangerous than one armed person. That's why all autocratic regimes firstly jail/kill organizers (right now it's Turkey). Just having eyes in 10 different places is more important.
As Jefferson really liked (proposed by Franklin): "Rebellion against tyrants is obedience to God."
* assassinate the president of Japan
* assassinate health care CEO
* nearly assassinate the soon to be president
Firstly, he has an insatiable desire for attention, admiration, and generally benefitting himself. That’s what causes his drive.
Secondly, he has no scruples or adheres to any morals or ethics whatsoever, he is completely ruthless. This allows him to do and say whatever serves him the most in any given situation.
Lastly, he has a specific type of charisma that has purchase with a certain segment of the people.
That’s is the full extent of it. He has no other skills or useful attributes. Anything else, especially if it’s at all technical or practical, comes from the people he’s surrounded himself with.
To interact with your point, he’s not even particularly adept at enlisting sycophants. Remember his first administration, when numerous aides and associates had both public and private disagreements with him (as one example out of many, I’ll refer to Rex Tillerson calling him a ”fucking moron”). The reason things are different this time is that another set of people are running the show, and they’ve realized that including old establishment Republicans, that have to at least pretend to be serious members of society, would have been a barrier to their agenda.
Turning the judiciary red across the country is especially not something you can attribute to Trump. It’s been a systematic effort by the Republicans (and adjacent organizations such as the Heritage Foundation) over the span of decades. He just happened to be in the position to make the appointments.
Sure, to some extent. Trump is an extreme outlier though, at least on the first two. And my main point was mainly that he doesn’t have anything else.
> Obama, Reagan, Clinton were the same, no?
Again, to some degree. Obama and Clinton especially were also shrewd politicians and had skills and strengths in addition to the attributes mentioned above.
Now, an elected official friend who is a former teacher is fond of saying the following: when people get elected, they come with three tiers of knowledge. There's what they know personally - their career field, maybe their hobby, maybe they are ex-military, etc. Then there's secondary: something they observed in a parent or spouse. Finally, there's everything else. In any given session - legislative, congressional, etc, there are going to be thousands of complicated topics thrown at these people, where the issues are way outside their wheelhouse. The best politicians are the ones who not only are really good at synthesizing information, but they surround themselves with quality policy staff - that is, they build a good team to overcome their own lack of background.
But in saying what I did, in no way did I imply politicians are "attention seekers in Congress who make outrageous statements to keep their names in the headlines", because that's not a description of what a sociopath is, as sociopaths can be quiet, calculating people.
It's not necessarily bad to be a sociopath, we need them in politics to be sure.
I cannot understand at all the complete lack of self respect he must have, solely for the acquisition of power.
The rest retired or got primaried.
Donald Trump "is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I've ever known in my life."
I don't know what those are. I'm sure they're whatever you think they are.
Even though it really kills the joke when you have to explain it, I'm guessing there are generational and national barriers to getting that reference.
I was comparing Donald Trump to Raymond Shaw[0]. You can assume I'm doing so facetiously or you can assume I'm serious. I'm not sure myself.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Manchurian_Candidate_(1962...
Those aren't leaders, quite the opposite, nothing but typical Trump-like non-leaders disgracing leadership positions.
>those 18 people are just random folks
OTOH if you picked 18 random patriotic Americans, odds are none would be that far below average at defending what normal Americans have always held dear.
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.
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.
> 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.
That cuts both ways though. Any exploit for iPhone works on a lot of high value targets. An exploit for one android phone may well not apply to another. If we're talking about state actors, well, probably both are compromised, but the iPhone would be the priority IMO.
No comments yet
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.
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.
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.
No comments yet
"Whoever, being entrusted with or having lawful possession or control of any document, writing ... through gross negligence permits the same to be removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of his trust ... and fails to make prompt report of such loss, theft, abstraction, or destruction to his superior officer—
Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both."
We can only guess about the "prompt reporting of the issue", but from what I've seen and heard I'm willing to put money on the fact that, no, this was not reported.
"Speaker Mike Johnson floats eliminating federal courts as GOP ramps up attacks on judges" - https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/speaker-mike-johns...
"Donald Trump widens war on legal industry with order targeting Jenner & Block" - https://www.ft.com/content/4f1aca93-62b5-419f-9182-a3a10bbe7...
"Legal community shaken by a powerful law firm's decision to give in to Trump's demands" - https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-administration/legal-...
"Trump’s crackdown on top law firms spreads to Congress" - https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/24/retribution-big-law...
"The person predicted the impact could extend beyond Congress: “If you’re Google or Meta or Apple – you’re thinking, ‘Do I really want to use these firms?’ That could make it harder to work with the White House...."
These are all smart people, so it boggles the mind to wonder how they can install a totalitarian regime without knowing the next two steps in the playbook.
I have learned about it this week.
https://gingrich360.com/2025/03/18/an-intolerable-judicial-d...
Obviously the dude had a lot of good ideas, but just grabbing anything he said and acting like it's gospel is flawed for dare I say a pretty glaring reason...
His flaws certainly belie such an assertion.
I'm saying that what Jefferson did was to remove problematic judges.
Congress had, has, and will have the power to reshape the federal judiciary as they choose. They can erase all courts below the supreme, and they can add or remove justices to the highest court as they choose (excepting present members, which are lifetime). Thus the saying "pack the court."
To challenge an executive that has friends in congress is a dangerous proposition for a federal judge.
It could end badly.
This implies that the courts cannot be an effective check and balance on the other branches. Aren't they meant to be?
It's always been controversial whether a court can disparage a law of broad application or impugn the president directly. The "effectiveness" of those functions was always a little speculative.
Lower courts typically deal with questions of fact and how they intersect with questions of law; higher courts (appeals courts and Supreme Court) typically deal with questions of law (ambiguity/interpretation) exclusively. Courts as an institution don't serve a "truth-finding function" so much as a "law-ambiguity removing function".
> disparage > impugn
Everyone seems focused on whether a court has the right to, like, insult the president personally. But that's not really the important part of what they're doing. They _of course_ have the right to question whether the law allows what the president is doing -- and questioning this is not disparagement or impugning.
I also hesitate why anyone would want a 360 degree view of Newt Gingrich. In real life or otherwise. /s
Clinton fared poorly under Democratic control of the house in his first two years, which was lost in the midterms.
Clinton prospered with Gengrich, and the .com era occurred under their aegis.
Some bad decisions were made by them, no doubt.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/12/newt-gi...
It is advocated by both sides, to this day.
The obvious case in modern point is Schumer.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/23/chuck-schume...
This is why bothsidism is ridiculous. Both sides are the same! Both are accusing the other one of something wrong! Oh, it does not matter than one is lying and other is saying the truth.
The capable adults from the 45th administration are gone because they were too responsible. You can see what happens when you draw from a pool of nothing but drooling sub-80s.
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/03/26/us/trump-news
> “1215et: F-18s LAUNCH (1st strike package),” Hegseth wrote in the chat. “1345: Trigger Based F-18 Strike Window Starts (Target Terrorist is @his Known Location so SHOULD BE ON TIME—also, Strike Drones Launch (MQ-9s).”
If I were a potential "target terrorist" and this chat had leaked before the strikes, I'd make damned sure I wasn't at my "known location" that day.
No comments yet
No comments yet
Wait, there's more!! https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/cummings-jared-kushner...
https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2023/12/politics/missing-rus...
How much of the administration, for how long, and for what, is using hackable systems and without mandated audit trails for protected communications? Whether external hackers are already successfully snooping, or internal cover-ups are happening of ongoing corruption, both are deeply problematic, and can be happening in parallel to stupid leaks like this. Likewise, we can't even investigate and cleanup properly because these people are illegally deleting the forensic data for their illegal and insecure actions.
It's not even a surprise. Ex: It's already pretty well documented to embarrassing extents like the president flushing official documents down toilets and clogging them. Ex: The admins use of signal was a thing in the first term as well. The only new thing afaict is the public and checks-and-balances people have the evidence in front of them of illegal use when accepting the lies and criminality.
This time. We also have no idea how many times this has happened without the unique circumstances where the person incorrectly included would draw attention to the leak as part of their job as a journalist.
Generally speaking, if something like this can happen once, it has probably happened more than once.
We probably are very lucky that the time it very publicly happened was fairly early on in the tenure of this dumpster fire of a Presidential cabinet.
Of course instead of them seeing it this way they are certain to keep going after the journalist in an attempt to make him the bad guy of the story to project blame away, because that is what incompetent people do.
Does the FBI make this determination? Wouldn’t that be the Attorney General’s call?
Now did they investigate it? Probably not.
What's interesting to me is that personal phones were not seized for forensic examination though.
Were the phones hacked by foreign agents? What other uses was signal used for?
Now whether or not said charges are prosecutable is the job of the DoJ.
The demarcation line between the two is when the charges are filed in federal court.
Hillary Clinton was famously not charged by the FBI director Comey back in 2016. Not because she committed any crime, but because they wouldn't likely get a conviction at trial.
No, they don't.
> The FBI has to be the one to investigate charges.
They investigate before there are charges.
> Now whether or not said charges are prosecutable is the job of the DoJ.
The FBI is part of the DoJ, but there aren't charges until a prosecutor—not an FBI agent—either gets a grand jury to return an indictment or files a criminal information (the latrer only an option for minor offenses or if the defendant waives indictment, usually as part of a plea bargain.) Prosecution isn't a separate thing from charges, it is what charges are.
> Hillary Clinton was famously not charged by the FBI director Comey back in 2016.
No, famously Comey announced that the FBI recommended that no charges be filed. Like I said, you have it backwards: FBI makes recommendations, federal prosecutors decide to charge, or not.
https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/fbi-recommends-no-charges-f...
“FBI Director James B. Comey said today that the Bureau has recommended to the Department of Justice that no charges are appropriate following an extensive investigation of Hillary Clinton’s use of a personal e-mail system during her time as Secretary of State.”
Have you ever seen law and order? They explain it succinctly in the intro: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMalvNeJFLk
Might not even be the first time already, just the first time they messed up and we found out...
"The Biden administration installed the Signal messaging app on CIA computers and approved it for official government use."
https://pjmedia.com/matt-margolis/2025/03/25/has-the-staffer...
Here's the important relevant quote:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/cia-director-john-ratcliffe-defen..."My communications weren't classified" — my is doing some work there.
But honestly most of the people in the group will be loyal to the US regardless of leader's political affiliation.
But what they do ask is that classified information remain secret -- particularly if you're in harms way.
'My communications weren't classified at the time I made them.'
If you're in that intelligence community, you know exactly what is classified and what is not. I could imagine some information being so secretive it's not written down -- but instead passed verbally in person.
If a CIA agent has intelligence on an Israeli operation, it's classified, regardless of whether it was written down or not.
Then there is another group of consumers of this story, with the same access to all of the same evidence, and all of the same first person confirmations, who confidently declare the argument that this might be illegal null and void because Joe Biden allowed the CIA to use signal, and are persuaded away from accepting all of that evidence by articles with that contain such gems as "what the media wont tell you about the Atlantic hit piece", "Democrats talking points on this story quickly unraveled", and "help us continue to expose the lefts desperate attempts to manufacture scandals".
How can propaganda be so effective that people lose the skill of object permanence?
So, was he added to the conversation inadvertently, or was it deliberate?
On the question of whether the use of the application was negligent, well, that is now moot.
We need to stop thinking these guys are playing 3D chess when they try to shove the pieces up their nose
They also got a loyalty test with their own people. Everyone is saying "not my problem" and accepting no responsibility. They've passed that test.
Then the final loyalty test is of their voters. When this first broke, the script was "Oof. This is bad. Heads will roll because of this." When it became apparent that, no, heads will not roll, the script amongst them changed. "This doesn't matter. Why would it matter? Everyone uses insecure things and makes mistakes. Why did the journalist embarrass our country?" It's very obvious that the breaking point with their base is very far away, assuming there is one.
And the final result is seeing whether there will be consequences. A small time guy can get pinched for this and the president and everyone else will remain completely void of responsibility no matter what. But it's pretty obvious that even a small time guy won't be facing consequences.
So they've gained something very valuable from this: the realization that there really are no consequences. They're going to keep pushing things like this and they'll get bigger and bigger each time. And each time it sets a new standard for a tolerable level of bad. And any time someone supportive of them starts to think "maybe this isn't good", they'll be quick to rush in and say "it's a nothingburger, just like the last thing they were whining about." And they'll fall back in line.
These people are just brutes lumbering through a government the fully control now, smashing and doing whatever they want. There's no 4D chess.
It's a win on government efficiency I guess (no more year long investigations). But also, this is clearly not the first time they used Signal, and it won't be the last.
Couldn't every whistleblower and double agent from now on just make sure to do their leaking over signal, and therefore receive the magical immunity your logic claims signal usage provides?
Move against those that approved its use.
That would be an interesting turn of events.
And you've simply incorporated this as additional straw for your strawman.
Does this mornings additional confirmation in the form of messages including times, planes, and weapons further solidify your feelings that this is all Bidens fault?
"Clinton has said that she never used her personal email to send information that was marked classified at the time, although some of her emails had been retroactively classified.
Comey says that's not true. Of 30,000 emails Clinton turned over to the State Department in 2014, FBI investigators found 110 emails containing information that was classified at the time the email was sent. Eight of those were top secret, the highest level of classification."
"Another 2,000 emails have been retroactively classified since they were sent, Comey said."
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/07/05/484785586...
Clinton argued at the time that such emails aren't and shouldn't be classified, since she didn't discuss any information sourced from the CIA, but only the publicly available news article. That seems to me to be at least a reasonable stance.
It's absolutely a reasonable stance. However, the rules aren't reasonable. For instance, as someone who held a clearance at the time, discussing/disseminating the Snowden leaks that were published in national news was considered a violation.
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.
~ 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".
You have weird taste in men.
Potential penalty of death as well.
Also lets not forget those messages had a 4w expiary date.
https://youtu.be/ihHU3IVVrfM?t=477
https://youtu.be/isNlC0RYOyE?t=565
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.
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.
I mean, I understand the ‘burn the world down’ perspective. I just don’t think it’s particularly productive.
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?
Levied on the Undesirables only.
I am. Throw the book at them.
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.
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.
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
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.
https://www.cisa.gov/sites/default/files/2024-12/guidance-mo...
Which says:
And goes on to say: But concludes: 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.
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-mo...
No comments yet
My guess is that there is someone named Jeffrey Goldberg in the NatSec team (or high up, it seems like a common combination of first and last name at least), and likely that they meant to add him, rather than the EDITOR IN CHIEF of the Atlantic of all people. Could this be a UI/UX thing with Signal? (not differentiating between two Jeffrey Goldbergs on your contact list?).
I just checked on Android - if you try to add someone to a group chat, it shows their name and profile pic.
One potential Signal-side wrinkle is that it allows you to add people to a group chat who are in another chat you're in, but who aren't in your contacts list. There are strangers I was apparently at a dinner party with years ago who are eligible to be added to a group chat. If Jeffrey Goldberg has his Signal profile name set to JG and he wasn't in Mike Waltz's phone with a more specific name, that could lead to this mistake.
If you have empathy for civilians regardless, the United States bombed a civilian residence and killed many bystanders to get at a Houthi official engaged in genocide prevention. This is a war crime.
Signal's insistence on punting on the trust/identity problem is a Signal problem IMO, particularly when its advocates make such a fuss (when it suits them) about being a properly end-to-end cryptosystem and not just a toolbox of algorithms. Most of the systems it's competing with make at least some attempt at providing a chain of trust so you don't have to individually verify everyone you want to talk to.
US Trade Representative
No comments yet
Two things that are really troublesome. The first, as Josh Marshall of TPM points out, "No one on that chat asked 'Why are we doing this on Signal?'" which suggests that it isn't the first time Signal was used for 'off books' stuff and that perhaps there are many such conversations. The second is that the conversation was set up while one of the participants was in the Kremlin waiting to talk to Putin. So either 'Kremlin Free WiFi' or the local cell tower providing connectivity?
Most pundits feel like this administration is trying to keep things out of FOIA and discoverability reach which has its own problems.
So yes, tools for Government communications don't have this problem, hell even Microsoft Teams on their US cloud get better protection than this.
I don't think we need to ponder so hard about this.
This administration is headed by a man who kept stolen TS/SCI national secrets in a bathroom at his house.
A fish rots from the head.
Or just let someone look over your shoulder?
Similar issues have come up in the UK about Boris Johnson et al using Whatsapp etc during Covid, and one of the things they said in their defence did have some value - at least in relation to the idea of unminuted discussions.
ie these chat's are what used to be corridor/bar/cafe conversations - ie unminuted discussions are old as government - it's just they are now happening on various messaging apps rather than in person, at much faster pace, and with more people involved.
So I think it's a mistake to think its reasonable that all discussions should be recorded - the real question here is how to get the right balance - and make sure any decision making meetings are recorded - rather than the chat around the decision.
The way it worked in the past - was to get a proper decision you needed all the people in the same room - and so it was automatically minuted as it was an official meeting ( but not the chat at coffee before the meeting ) - now it's possible to get people together virtually that distinction is blurred.
Not sure what the answer is - but just saying it's probably unreasonable to expect all communications to be recorded - people need space to float ideas, or bitch like normal people - however on the other hand it is essential key meetings are minuted - not just for transparency - but for the study of history.
Of course, none of this excuses the failure to verify the identities of everybody in their chat, the choice to use a (probably) unvetted app on a (probably) unvetted personal device, or any other of a number of basic opsec rules that should be obvious to anybody who is vested with the authority to order an airstrike on the other side of the planet.
However, it seems more plausible to me that Jeffrey Goldberg is in someone's contact list from previous on-purpose leaks (to control narrative, etc, typical "anonymous sources say" stuff) - and was accidentally added to this group.
It's very likely that senior government officials have a phone with journalists saved in the contacts. It's easy to imagine why there are rules against using the same phone for secret war stuff, yet here we are.
Is that so shocking? I watch often some forums on reddit related to combat footage, not frequently but enough to see various patterns. Before houthis started attacking shipping lanes, there were tons of videos of them kicking ass of Saudi military but way more often some subsaharan African mercenaries in their uniforms. Like, really badly kicking ass, smart ambushes, devastating results even on heavy machinery. The opposite side had almost nothing.
Then with change of this, the tone and content turned 180 degrees. Almost always absolutely precise laser guided bomb strikes even if for 1-2 guys seemingly in the middle of nowhere, and a lot of them popping up all the time (to the tune of few every single day). Always titled cca 'Saudi air force doing XYZ'. Like sure, if you are clueless and don't know state of their army, their discipline, level of training and so on you can believe that.
I didn't believe this since the switch was sharp, US is simply flying there for quite some time, together with Saudi air force. TBH I don't care, just sharing observations. No way we can know hard facts obviously, but its easy to connect those very few dots. A bit of failure from opsec point of view - if you do this stuff, at least keep it secret and not broadcasting to whole world so politicians can keep big smiles and grand statements, at least for clueless civilians who barely know where Yemen lies on the map.
What others write it matches my observation - “Houthi PC small group”, seemingly short term group about specific attack. US attacks themselves are already happening for a year and something.
I did not believe there was any way this was done accidentally...
Trump sent his golf buddy Waltz to negotiate with Putin and he came back brainwashed with Russian propaganda. Russian psyops is either really good or some of these people in the administration are just morons.
Dunno about Waltz, seems like he is himself quite puzzled about how Goldberg ended up in the group, denied any connection with him and called the Atlantic journalist 'scum'. He also spoke with his buddy Elon and they've got the best minds looking at it right now.
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5214186-waltz-at...
Maybe he's better at handling firearms than mobile chat apps, dunno. The Chinese, which he dislikes, are definitely not going to have a hard time with people like him running the show. I read they were trying to recruit some of the laid off federal workers.
If anything, I'd suspect that he'd keep the channel open as long as he could.
Or, he's got other channels that work better.
All the same, I mean, wow. These guys are just morons here, there's really no other way around it. I'm trying to think of a charitable way to spin this and I've got nothing.
Like, very clearly, these people are going to get service-members killed due to their idiocy
Counting on SCOTUS to respect precedent at this point is either extremely optimistic or extremely naive.
Neither were really political decisions. The SCOTUS doesn't split along ideological or party lines all the time. It often splits in different ways, and often makes decisions on very politically heated topics unanimously. You should have more confidence in it. It is the least bad of your three major institutions of government by far.
To go back to Chevron, you have to look beyond the US and understand that for anyone else anywhere else in the world, the idea of the courts deferring in their interpretation of the law to executive agencies is just ridiculous. It never made any sense. Its result was inevitable: a new government was elected and suddenly the law changed overnight because government departments all published their new "interpretations" of the law. That is just silly, it makes a mockery of the principles of the rule of law, and it gives too much power to the government. Law should be made by parliament (which you call congress, for some reason) and rulemaking powers should be explicitly delegated to executive agencies where appropriate. Vagueness in the law should be interpreted and resolved by the courts, not by the executive in a way that is subject to political whimsy.
That's really not true; just a couple of the other major decisions overturned in the last decade:
Apodaca v. Oregon, holding that while the 14th Amendment did incorporate the right to jury trial against the States, it did not incorporate the unanimity requirement that the Supreme Court has found against the federal government in the 6th Amendment against the states. (reversed in Ramos v. Louisiana, 2020.)
Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, holding that a certiied public-sector union could collect an “agency fee” attributable to representational activities but not other union functions to represented non-member employees. Reversed by Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees Council 31 (2018).
https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/06/supreme-court-limits-scop...
My interpretation is difficult and complex domain specific regulation were handled by agency experts, and not lawyers. It is now up to congress to detail very specifically this potentially difficult regulation and to quickly adjust when research changes.
Is my interpretation incorrect? Since to me this current approach sounds terrible, inflexibly and set-up to fail.
Chevron is about the statute saying something vague like "a term in a consumer credit contract is void if it is oppressive" and then the effective definition of the word "oppressive" being able to be "interpreted" by executive agencies at their whim with the courts being powerless to intervene. That is contrary to the rule of law. If there is a vagueness, that should be filled by a court supplying an interpretation and that precedent is then established. Law should be stable and predictable.
Remember the original Chevron case was based on the EPA changing its interpretation of "source" of air pollution under the Clean Air Act 1963 to make it much narrower. There was no statutory power for it to do so. Nothing in the Act authorised it. It unilaterally changed its interpretation of the law, and the Court said "that is fine, it is ambiguous, you decide what the law is and as long as it is a reasonable interpretation that is fine". Nothing to stop them turning around the next day and changing their interpretation again.
This isn't accurate though. You're arguing these things could literally change day to day, but there were established procedures for rule changes. Those procedures required posting reasons for the change, a notice published in the register, the chance for people to comment on the change, etc. When regulations changed without notice and without any reason given they got blocked from making the change.
See the debates around net neutrality and FCC decisions. Took a lot of notices, a lot of back and forth, etc. They couldn't just arbitrarily change the rules from one day to the next.
Why describes mostly every law enacted by a parliament? They clearly have that power to change the laws they enacted at any time.
So where is the problem if parliament delegates this power to some executive entity?
Now, if delegation is not clearly defined, this is another issue I can understand. And I am not interested enough in the minutia of US legislation to have an opinion on that.
They don't have the power to reinterpret their laws. They can repeal laws and pass new laws, but interpretation is up to the courts, if they don't like the interpretation the court gives to a law then their recourse is to pass a new law.
> So where is the problem if parliament delegates this power to some executive entity?
The problem is firstly that the executive isn't supposed to have the power to make or repeal laws, "delegating" it to them breaks the separation of powers, and secondly allowing a law to be "reinterpreted" rather than rewritten breaks the whole system of precedence that the rule of law depends on.
I don't get how this could ever be resolved though. You can complain about how "oppressive" is "interpreted" so they can add more words, they can say "people are harmed" and then it's up to interpretation about who is "people" and what is "harm" so then you add more words to define "people" as living homo-sapiens and then it's up to interpretation about what is "living" and on and on.
> If there is a vagueness
There is literally always vagueness. "I never said she took his money" can have 7 different interpretations just based on which word is emphasized.
It's a meaningless tautology that any English sentence has some amount of vagueness and that people will be interpreting its meaning.
It was about who interprets what a law an agency administers means.
Before Chevron, an agency could say "we interpret this law to mean we can do X", and then no one could stop it from doing X. That's a huge amount of unchecked power!
Now an impartial court get to interpret what laws mean. Seems like the obviously right thing to me.
First, a made up but illustrative one. The statute says something vague like "a term in a standard form consumer contract that is oppressive or unconscionable is void." In a common law system (anything derived from English law, including US, Australia, etc) the meaning of these terms, if they aren't defined elsewhere in the statute, is figured out based on decided cases. Someone will argue that it covers a particular clause, and the judge will decide if it does. The judge might give a detailed test for what constitutes "oppressive" or might reuse an existing one from a different context or whatever. The decision might be appealed and a panel of judges decide the meaning. But over time, and as cases are decided, the meaning becomes clear. You can point to half a dozen examples of clearly oppressive clauses and a dozen that clearly aren't, there is a legal test for what counts, etc. The law develops towards certainty and the doctrine of precedent also means it stabilises: it isn't going to change its meaning just because new judges are appointed, because they generally follow precedent pretty closely.
Under the Chevron doctrine, there is an extra step. If a government agency says that its interpretation is that "oppressive" means X, then if that interpretation is reasonable, if it is open on the wording of the statute, then the inquiry stops there. The court defers to the government agency. This has the benefit, admittedly, that the definition can change over time according to changing conditions. But it has downsides. It is giving the job of deciding what laws mean to the government, rather than the judiciary. The government is meant to act according to law, not to interpret it. That isn't the executive's proper function. But quite apart from the philosophical objections, it is no good for stability. A new government is elected and the official interpretation changes. This happens a lot. A new government is elected and it is decided that now "restraint of trade" clauses in employment contracts are legal. Four years later they're unenforceable. Four years layer they're enforceable again. No laws changed, no regulations are passed, a government agency just releases a new statement of its official interpretation of the law.
That is quite different to, e.g., there being a statute saying "terms in consumer contracts must accord with the regulations promulgated by the department of consumer protection as in force at the date of execution of the contract" because:
1. It is clear what is delegated to the executive and what is not.
2. It is clear that the definition applied is the definition at the time the contract was signed, and the "interpretation" is not retrospective.
3. It is still up to the court to give a clear, consistent, precedential ruling as to the meaning of the regulations themselves.
This example is real: Chevron itself. There, the EPA changed the definition of "source" of air pollution, without Congressional approval, so that "source" was much narrower (making pollution harder to regulate).
It happens enough on cases that matter that it's farcical not to put (R) and (D) after the names of the justices, for clarity, when discussing them in the press.
The majority of SCOTUS decisions are unanimous.
And as the article says the courts have been increasingly looking at narrowly scoped cases that are less precedent changing.
Nope. His authority as a journalist prevails. He published the article -- so his intent was to do his job as a journalist, and the public has a right to know.
National security or institutional trust was not damaged by the journalist -- only by the ignorance of the politicians now running our military.
The information was newsworthy and in the public interest.
Publication did not cause harm (and you might argue that dropping actual bombs caused much more harm).
The information was obtained legally and without foresight.
The journalist has an obligation to report the information if it serves the public interest, especially if it reveals systemic failures, endangers democracy, or impacts public policy.
> If anything, I'd suspect that he'd keep the channel open as long as he could.
> Or, he's got other channels that work better.
The Signal chat group was called the “Houthi PC small group.” It appeared to be a short-term, mission-specific group rather than a long-term, open-ended group. Thus, it's unlikely that much more information would be gained in the future. Goldberg's inclusion in the chat was the main story here, not the specific details revealed to Goldberg, many of which he kept confidential.
And I agree with your assessment. Morons...
It is not even clear to me that preserving serviceman is one of the goals of these agencies, given they've marched them off to die in several needless wars. Sure maybe the agencies might have more information, that doesn't mean they're more likely to make decisions that preserve life. Deference to 'experts' in government has lead to much bloodshed.
The real story is that he was added to the channel, so it doesn't surprise me that he didn't try to lurk indefinitely. I'm guessing these things are also ad-hoc, so perhaps the well was already dry after the attack?
But this is some truly amateur-hour shit. I've seen better communications discipline from volunteer open source projects than this.
Because those people are likely competent. The problem with hiring mostly yes-men/women is competence is secondary.
I am more surprised that he did not save this incident for a future book
David Graham asks Jeffrey Goldberg about possible retaliation
Jeffrey: It's not my role to care about the possibility of threats or retaliation. We just have to come to work and do our jobs to the best of our ability. Unfortunately, in our society today—-we see this across corporate journalism and law firms and other industries--there's too much preemptive obeying for my taste. All we can do is just go do our jobs.
From historian Timothy Snyder's book On Tyranny, chapter/lesson number one:
> Do not obey in advance.
* https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/558051/on-tyranny-by...
* https://timothysnyder.org/on-tyranny/
Are you saying it's a crime for someone else to accidentally add you to their chat?
Yes, that would be a crime, but that's not what the original comment said.
> mentioned the longer he stayed on more exposed he became to legal ramifications
I'm asking "if someone was added in error, why do legal ramification increase"?
Clearly being added in error then publishing a bunch of stories in a series would be a crime.
No, that's exactly what I answered: the ramifications increase the longer he stays on, because the longer he stays on the greater chance it is seen as exploiting the error with intent to gain national defense information.
So in your case: Getting added to a random signal chat where you are not exposed to anything? You should be fine. At least it will be very hard to show any intent to violate anything. Though that isn't necessarily true either. E.g. one could imagine Signal usernames belonging to operatives being in that group. And starting to post or investigate those could still get you in legitimate trouble.
And yes, ignorance of the law does not necessarily save one either. But a central point in all prosecutions is some portion of criminal intent
Who complained here that email can't be replaced by messengers, because you can't write long messages there? Here's a counterexample.
In many ways, being a public enemy of the Trump Admin is the safest enemy to be.
Very similar to this case in Australia.
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/feb/02/abc-agrees-to-...
The ABC had a public interest duty to publicise everything, instead they left 99% unread and returned the contents to the government.
Pathetic.
2h is a lot but also not that much time, everything is prepared already it’s more a countdown I would say. What would be a usual timeframe to inform the people you want to inform about an immediate event which is going to happen?
Why would he have been added to the group? For what purpose would the current National Security Advisor have to bring in an outsider to discussions that ended up involving almost certainly classified data?
> 2h is a lot but not that much time
He was added to the group two days (13 March) before the strikes (15 March), not two hours.
There’s a vulnerability in Signal where you can set up linked devices that replicate your signal messages. You can do this by just scanning a QRcode. This is known to be used by Russian hackers.
What are the chances the Russians duped Witkoff into scanning a QR code while he was in Moscow?
What are the chances this admin had him do it ON PURPOSE?
In a previous world, some three letter agency (FBI maybe?) would seize the phones in the chat to investigate the leak.
You mean the desktop linking feature? If that's considered a vulnerability, then so is being able to chat with someone after getting their public key unverified from an overseas server, the primary mode in which everyone uses it (including the people in this chat, evidently, since no out-of-band key exchange was performed)...
Not to mention the "vulnerability" where you copy the phone's storage and get the key material onto another device to do with what you will, which may be harder or easier depending on the hardware but I'd trust any sufficiently funded security agency to be able to do this for common devices
I agree it could be hardening to allow users/organizations to disable this feature, and also other features such as automatic media decoding and other mechanisms that are trade-offs between security and usability, but simply does not meet the definition of a vulnerability (nobody will assign this a CVE number to track the bug and "resolve" it)
Acrylic table menus have inserts which can be easily replaced.
https://thehackernews.com/2025/02/hackers-exploit-signals-li...
“… the threat actors, including one it's tracking as UNC5792, have resorted to malicious QR codes that, when scanned, will link a victim's account to an actor-controlled Signal instance.”
“ These QR codes are known to masquerade as group invites, security alerts, or legitimate device pairing instructions from the Signal website.”
Also
“ Last week, Microsoft and Volexity also revealed that multiple Russian threat actors are taking advantage of a technique called device code phishing to log into victims' accounts by targeting them via messaging apps like WhatsApp, Signal, and Microsoft Teams.”
Signal could make the pairing attack impossible by eliminating the device pairing feature, but that would also reduce its appeal and harm its mission of bringing secure communication to a broad audience. It could add steps to setting up a group chat and inviting additional members to make it less likely users will invite the wrong person, but that, too would hurt its popularity.
Security is a process and a spectrum, not a binary that can be guaranteed by using a certain product or service.
In that view, Signal is the wrong app to use for US Officials.
Signal probably shouldn't be approved for that purpose because it does trade some foolproofness for convenience. Secure communication should also be limited to dedicated devices, which probably wouldn't have journalists stored in their contacts.
You could see a CIA agent being in Russia needing to use Signal with an informant, e.g. But that wouldn't be the same level of security needed to hold nuclear secrets.
That list of conditions would likely be quite restrictive compared to how we saw it used here. It would certainly include using a dedicated device for classified information, and would forbid taking that device to an unfriendly country. The US government doesn't need to do that though; it already has its own systems for secure communication.
[1] "Putin gave Trump portrait to envoy, Kremlin confirms" - https://thehill.com/policy/international/5212691-putin-trump...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_(listening_device)
But him? Half that time he'd approve his own changes without review, the other half he would force-push and bypass the CI system entirely.
He knew the system well and seemed to do enough local testing to avoid major breakage but still. Why have a bunch of rules and policies that you do not follow yourself?
Because these rules and policies are for people that are judged to need them by the person with the authority and responsibility for making the decision.
Policies like these always have a cost and (hopefully) a benefit. Presumably this lead dev judged that the cost vs benefit didn't make sense for themselves but did for others. It's entirely possible they were correct.
https://www.browserstack.com/guide/code-review-benefits
> Code Review enhances the maintainability of the Code. It ensures that multiple people are aware about the code logic and functioning, which makes it easy to maintain in case the original author of the code is unavailable.
The fact that you've been "hacking" for three decades and never considered this isn't something to wear as a badge of honor. As for your absurd straw man about everyone on the team reviewing every line of code, I've never seen one organization that does that.
awareness does not imply understanding :)
If, however, a junior develop is responsible for making a change, but has no authority to make the change, then there is a problem.
If you can get away with it, why wouldn't you set things up this way? Rules for thee, not for me. You can't try to view power plays like this through the lenses of ethics or morality. The point is to use rules to bind and punish your enemies and to make sure that only your friends can get away with breaking them. You do this with media capture and twisted narratives, taking advantage of the erosion of rule of law as a respected concept among the public.
Ethics and morality.
> You can't try to view power plays like this through the lenses of ethics or morality.
Yes, you can, that's the entire point of ethics and morality.
> The point is to use rules to bind and punish your enemies and to make sure that only your friends can get away with breaking them.
Well, yes, that's the point of the specific actions being discussed; that doesn't make it impossible to look at them through a lens of ethics and morality, it just makes them look bad through such a lens.
Culture transmission is more effective when followers can emulate leaders — so you’ll have an easier time getting people to obey when your goal is to get them to act the way you do. In this case, you’ll expend less political capital on enforcing your policy regarding code reviews and testing if you adhere to the same policy. (And accordingly, have an easier time avoiding disgrace like public failures if your service.)
If you want to view it purely through the lens of power politics, saving your political capital on issues like this preserves it for things with better rewards — eg, you’ll have an easier time getting your projects approved if your manager isn’t constantly having to deal with the fallout of your policy double standards impacting morale. Or for setting a standard that working fewer hours is acceptable if you’re meeting your quotas — which nobody can dispute you’re doing, as the whole teams is validating that you are.
This kind of petty power game is rarely an optimal exercise of power.
I think when you're the 'architect' or know the full stack very well, to where you fully repl/grok it and occasionally need to do hot patch type work, the former approach is nice. But, my brain has limited memory and time erodes quickly, so I also know when to rely on the latter approach and I try to do it as much as possible
I don't see a problem with it (as long as he can't transfer the blame somewhere else).
Same goes for some “10x developers” who are fast because the rules don’t apply to them. Meanwhile the rules slow everyone else down (yea big surprise he is faster). And everyone else has to clean up after these guys when they get sloppy.
But for me the foundational issue is that my coworkers aren't holding up the bar when reviewing contractor code. And reviewing all the code isn't my job description.
Meanwhile my job description does include maintaining a system my coworkers don't really know anything about, and so I mostly make sure it's tests pass and let me manager know about anything I need to do to it.
Because the goal is to keep risk to a reasonable level, not necessarily minimize it as much as possible.
I rarely commit the same kind of code the full time professional developer do(when bypassing policies).
Typically it is stuff like urgent patch in prod that may not have coverage , or partial long running refactor which breaks existing tests but better to be able merge quickly than keep the branch constantly free of merge conflicts , or experimental exploratory new type of code(new lang , stack whatever )for which we have to yet evolve processes, part of what the lead is supposed to be exploring and so on.
Although In my experience junior leads more often than not abuse their privileges than use it well.
Trump went on about Hillary’s mail and made it a big thing for political points, not because he was particularly caring or didn’t have infamously bad opsec when he got in.
You lead dev trusted himself more than the team. He was probably right.
Edit: Its safe to say that this story involves multiple levels of hypocrisy by the current administration.
But the problem with them being hypocrites in this regard is that it follows from them doing the same thing Hillary did, and in that case the "fair" way to punish them would be the same way she was punished, which is not at all. So I don't see any real accountability ever coming from this beyond maybe trump firing a couple of sacrificial lambs from his administration.
a) It's an unintentional opsec failure. Perhaps there was an address book collision with another intended user. Perhaps it was fat-fingered. This seems likely.
b) It was an intentional leak. Perhaps overtly, perhaps covertly, by one or more of the channel members for unknown purposes. This seems less likely as there are better ways to leak with less blowback risk.
Regarding using Signal in the first place. Yes, this seems like bad opsec, but it's possible that the current admin working groups don't trust the official secure channels and assume they are compromised and they are being spied upon by their own or foreign agencies. That seems very likely, given the circumstances. In which case, it is still a possible opsec failure, but perhaps a less bad risk than trusting operational security to known adverse agencies. This is the more interesting case, imho, since the assumption on here is largely that these types of coordination should be happening on official government channels. But "government" is not necessarily a unified collective working towards the same goals. If you have a strong suspicion that agents within your own team are acting against your goals, then of course, you have to consider communicating on alternative channels. Whether that's to evade legal restrictions or transparency, like with the Clinton email servers, or to evade sabotage, I'm not judging the ethics, just considering the necessity of truly secure communication.
Is that trust in Signal justified? It suggests members at the highest security clearances believe Signal is not compromised. Are they correct? In any case, clearly there are more ways to fail opsec than backdoors.
To start with, classified information is ONLY supposed to viewed in a SCIF. Secondly, it should never be loaded onto private devices. The private phones of national security leadership would be prime targets for every hostile intelligence agency in the world. It matters little if the information was encrypted in transit if the host device is compromised.
One would have to be a fool to not trust all of the classified tools and safeguards the US government uses only to then use a commercial app on commercial phones to communicate classified data in public while stateside and abroad. Just the fact that someone could accidentally add an unauthorized person to the chat is but one reason it was crazy for them to do this.
No comments yet
No.
No, no, no.
Most classified information is NOT designated SCI. When classified info was mostly paper, it was placed in GSA approved safes in regular 'ole office buildings. You'd get to work, open your safe, and do your work. Most SIPRNet computers are not in SCIFs.
Heck, you can even mail classified documents via USPS. Confidential and secret documents can be sent registered mail.
"SCIFs are often employed for processing things that are only marked Secret or systems only handling Secret"
No. SCIFs are expensive. They are not built when they are not needed. They are only needed for SCI materials.
Assuming this is true, how did they determine what a "top" government official is? So if you're the SecDef you should use it but not the deputy SecDef? How would this guidance not pertain to all government officials?
What they did is illegal. Any rank and file that did the same would be in prison for a decade, no questions asked.
In general, it seems like you're trying to "3d chess" incompetence into strategy, but try taking a step back and looking at it with clear eyes. This was a bad decision, plain and simple. Nobody is taking responsibility for it, and that makes it worse - these people are in charge of the largest intelligence and war machine on the planet. This is not okay.
As a consequence, any enforcement now would be viewed as extremely selective.
I have been exposed to a lot of classified information in meetings in DC that were supposed to be unclassified. This isn’t an isolated incident, it has been a systemic issue across every administration for as long as I’ve worked in DC.
People should focus less on the incident and more on why this has been normal for decades.
The underlying tension is that doing things the official way is extremely slow and speed matters. There is a longstanding bias toward taking more risks in terms of information exposure because being slow carries its own significant risks. Speed of decision making is critical and that has proven to be impossible if every interaction has to happen inside a SCIF. It is a tension the intelligence community is still grappling with.
IIUC, the "rank and file" go to prison for violating their NDA. At the highest level these people are appointed and don't have an NDA which is why senators / representatives can leak without punishment.
Here's a pretty good order of operations when your policy breaks the law or is so odious as to feel the need to hide it from other duly elected representatives in government:
1. Stop breaking the fucking law.
The rule of law matters. Even if it doesn't matter to you or Trump.
If you're talking about fear of leakers, the response to that is to tighten the distribution of information and start a counterintelligence investigation.
In any case the simple risk calculus is, what is the risk of adversaries getting a hold of this information and causing grave and lasting damage to national security and death vs the risk of political rivals leaking something. Pretty simple decision there and one that any cabinet member should get right.
So why should we default to the position of not trusting those systems when every previous administration has used it without issus.
No comments yet
There is no evidence, reporting etc that says the government has deliberately compromised the government’s own secure systems. And for what purpose is beyond me.
1. Trump’s team was spied on by the FBI. 2. Government employees have access to government systems.
Conclusion? There is a possibility that Trump’s team again be spied upon through the government systems and consequently have sabotage done upon them. Therefore, avoid government systems as much as possible.
Calling this unfounded conspiracy theory is just running away from this very straightforward and simple argument.
Also, is there proof that these government systems are completely secure? Without that proof, why should they be using those systems? (He who controls the null hypothesis and all..)
This is a phenomenal level of stupidity - to use illegal channels of communication because of the bad vibes they are feeling from other people?
Did it help? How many adversary spy agencies has duplicate signal accounts for these officials and see all of the communication live?
I think some foreign leaders probably are reading summaries of these messages in complete disbelief and amusement.
No one in the Trump administration has come out and said the secure systems can’t be trusted.
No comments yet
They replace “ideologically compromised SCIFs” with…… 18 separate iOS devices that I’m sure are on 18 separate OS/app versions and device postures and…
Got news for you - want to compromise e2e encryption and Signal? You do it via what they did. So no, they are not correct.
This is an abysmal mistake on the big stage for a bunch of new people on the job. That it is the intelligence community makes it feel so much worse.
At minimum, Mike Waltz is retired special ops, Rubio has had high-level clearance for ages from his time in the Senate, same for Gabbard in the House. None of them responded "Hey, this is poor op-sec and illegal, perhaps take this to an approved messaging service?"
Basically a journalist was added to a discussion group of high ranking politicians.
This journalist is well known within those circles and has plenty of access to those people regardless.
The conversation may have been war plans, but the action is pretty uncontroversial across both parties, and went off without a problem so the impact of the leak was nil.
Seems like a great topic for making political hay, but twins that a mistake that can be easily corrected.
I can't imagine having my personal secure commentary being put out into the public and I don't have national security under my belt.
If you new that Signal was secretly a front by the CIA/NSA then you'd feel pretty comfortable using it.
European governments do the same but with WhatsApp.
Jesus Christ, this is dumb. Using a civilian app with civilian phones is literally the best way to get spied on, by either "your own" or foreign agencies. These people are going to get us all killed in a nuclear first strike.
Not sure how leaking state secrets is risking nuclear annihilation - unless they invite Putin or Xi mistakenly in their Signal Group and plan to bomb Moscow or Beijing but the coziness of the current administration with these 2 countries is certainly not making this scenario realistic at all.
Instead the reality is likely more boring: they just accelerate American decline
Please don’t reassure yourself by thinking that putting total incompetents in power is making anyone safer.
I don't see how this would work. If you're the leaker, do you just add the journalist to the group yourself? How are you going to explain that? I think there are more anonymous ways to leak stuff than adding someone else to the group chat. Or does signal not show who added someone?
I am reading it now.
https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/signal-app-owned-china-it-safe-use...
Edit: nothing to see here.
"So, is Signal App owned by China? The answer is no... Signal is run by the Signal Foundation, a non-profit based in San Francisco... Amidst this controversy, it's crucial to remember that Signal's roots are firmly planted on American soil, dispelling any notion of Chinese ownership."
Obviously, Signal is not meant for this sort of thing, so it has no reason for such a feature. It’s not a failing of Signal, but it’s not fit for this purpose.
The bigger security problem is that it was being run on devices that evidently weren't limited to secure communication tasks (such devices wouldn't have a journalist in their contacts). That suggests at least some people were using personal phones, which seems like a terrible idea.
but of course, this lot thinks the existing government is all corrupt / deepstate.
It was Mike Waltz who invited Jeff Goldberg to connect on Signal. It seems inordinately unlikely that he would have been uninvolved if it was an intentional leak.
You can debate the seriousness of this sometimes. When it comes to impending military action though, revealing when and where US personnel will be conducting an operation in the future, there really is no debate. This is gravely serious.
Once upon a time, I was visited very forcefully by the FBI at 0600. They used a battering ram to gain access to my domicile.
During the "interview" that took place later that morning, they requested some information from me. I told them that the information was contained in Signal conversations between two recipients, and the messages in question have "disappearing messages" turned on. tldr; the messages are no longer available.
Relevant parts of conversation that followed:
me: "Do you have signal?"
agent: "I have it on my phone if that's what you mean."
me: "No, do you HAVE it - as in, do you have access to messages sent between other parties?"
agent: "If we do, I am unaware of it, and we certainly don't 'have it' with regard to this matter."
Take that for what it's worth.... my takeaway was that they(the FBI at least) have not compromised Signal. This was late in 2019 for context.
The other takeaway...be careful who you trust. That all happened because I trusted someone I shouldn't have.
If they did have some kind of collection capability around Signal, they likely would not have risked burning it on you.
I've always thought the exact same thing. The harm was ~800m USD to a private company. Sounds big, but it's nothing compared to actual state sponsored anything.
Just to add some more (possibly useful) context from the encounter....
The FBI was not able to unlock many LUKS secured devices - at all. They had zero success over approx 30 days, and had to explore alternative methods to obtain key material.
The FBI was not able to decrypt blowfish2 (ie vim -x).
The FBI was not able to decrypt ccrypt secured files (ie aes256).
IF they can decrypt stuff, they'll only use it when it's has an actual benefit beyond a conviction and the keys are truly inaccessible. (e.g., person is dead, the keys are in an enemy state HSM, etc.)
Like, do you think they did the same thing with multiple journalists in an attempt to see who would publish and who would keep their mouths shut?
Bear in mind, when you join a Signal group you don't see the conversation history from before you arrived, only the live updates that take place during the time you're a member. Also, anyone in the group can view the list of group members and receives notifications about people being added to/removed from/leaving the group.
„Among the topics the officials discussed in their conversation, conducted using standard commercial Cisco Webex video conferencing software, were the presence of UK and US military personnel in Ukraine and the potential use of Taurus missiles to blow up the Crimean Bridge.“
(Yes, it probably shouldn't have been an authorized channel, but it was.)
WebEx was cleared up to the equivalent of Restricted. The conversation likely reached the level of Secret or Top Secret.
Two of the generals were disciplined. (4-figure fine)
General Henry Miller made public comments about the secret date of the Allied invasion of Normandy in May 1944. He was a personal friend of Eisenhower. Eisenhower demoted him and sent him back to the US in disgrace. He wasn't court-martialed.
[1] https://youtu.be/fD0IlFPTopA?t=269
Not justifying Trump administration but just seems like a whole different level of stakes.
The level of potential impact, expectations and repercussions are very very different between the two. He should absolutely get fired because you cant do that sort of thing at that position - but equating the two is disingenuous. The general should have been court-martialed in that situation.
If this operation was planned in Signal, then so were countless others (and presumably so would countless others be in the future).
If not for this journalist, this would likely have continued indefinitely. We have high confidence that at least some of the officials were doing this on their personal phones. (Gabbard refused to deny this in the congressional hearing -- it does not stand to reason that she'd do that unless she was, in fact using her personal phone).
At some point in the administration, it's likely that at least one of their personal phones will be compromised (Pegasus, etc). E2E encryption isn't much use if the phone itself is compromised. This is why we have SCIFs.
There was no operational fallout of this particular screwup, but if this practice were to continue, it's likely certain that an adversary would, at some point, compromise these communications. Not through being accidentally invited to the chat rooms, but through compromise of the participants' hardware. An APT could have advance notice of all manner of confidential and natsec-critical plans.
In all likelihood this would lead to failed operations and casualties. The criticism/pushback on this is absolutely justified.
The reason is simple: 95% of people would just set-up the same PIN anyway.
In unrelated news: Password reuse is rampant: nearly half of observed user logins are compromised
https://blog.cloudflare.com/password-reuse-rampant-half-user...
My prediction is, given the way the narrative is shifting to digging in their heels and insisting they did nothing wrong, the lesson they are learning from all this is that they should have hid their activity better. Nothing will happen to them, they will continue with impunity, and they'll just be more careful about not inviting outsiders. I suspect this isn't the last leaked top-secret group chat we'll see.
Back then he said she should be put in jail but now he is downplaying it. How can Americans take this guy seriously is beyond my mind.
Now, how secure and backdoor-proof that encryption is, is an other story..
Also, I haven't followed the email thing, but emails are by design insecure, so one should hope stuff like this was not discussed over emails (regardless server..)
Perhaps a better answer is to separate accountability from the executive branch, possibly:
* Provide journalistic publication businesses super first amendment protections that cannot be restricted by a president, but news sources that contain opinion pieces separate from witness testimony and/or third party expert analysis as entertainment, thus restricted from journalistic venues.
* Transfer the justice department to congress. The president can still appoint the attorney general. The president should have no ability to determine criteria or persons for investigation or denial thereof.
https://x.com/MattGertz/status/1904228588414464167
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/24/journalist-t...
No comments yet
Therefore even if you found evidence that a small subset of the members held national security worse than Hillary secured her emails, (in this case, leaking a Yemen bombing attack 2 hours before it happened), there’s nothing left for voters to vote on.
The only thing far-left activists can do to change this administration is to wait 4 years for Harris, Hillary, or Bernie to run again. But they’ll need a winning platform to run on. Maybe campaigning on making America Great Again or putting America first will work better.
All this left-leaning activism is doing is helping other liberals lose even more of their sanity than they’ve already lost. One reason the democrats lost this election because they didn’t even care about their own American people, let alone other American people.
Given he started a riot to interrupt congressional proceedings and tried to insert fake electors in 2021, I don't have much hope that he won't try something in 2028.
> there’s nothing left for voters to vote on
Oh really, so MAGA will just disappear in 2028? The point is to expose the incompetence and the harm that hiring loyalists over qualified people introduces.
> Maybe campaigning on making America Great Again or putting America first will work better.
I don't think populism is a good strategy, personally. It always devolves into a "us vs them" tribalism battle, where you're going against the "elite" but the "elite" is a moving target and not set in stone. Lots of conspiracies arise and you're less effective as a bloc.
> One reason the democrats lost this election because they didn’t even care about their own American people
What specifically do you think showed that they didn't care? Incumbents lost globally due to inflation from COVID and the voter population misplacing the blame. I think Dems could have done better before the election (e.g. Joe should've dropped out sooner) but to say that they lost on policy is a bit asinine.
1) he dies in office (of natural causes)
Or
2) the republicans win in 2028 and a different republican president is sworn in.
Hell even if he just chokes on a pretzel I'm sure they'll blame the radical left
They cant afford giving away power now. Just in the last three months, there were multiple very clear law breaking acts. Musk is giving government contracts to himself. They do not worry about these, because they do not intend to give out power.
no party is going to pass the filibuster, so it doesn't even matter what happens in the house, we're still going to be getting budget reconciliations, and post offices renamed as the only things passed.
partisan areas aren't going to flip. the only 'solution' anyone will come up with is another runner-up from the same party.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/26/james-malone...
What's his endgame now ? If Trump is no longer in power, even if Musk doens't land directly in prison, I have a hard time imagining the new government collaborating in any way with him or his companies. And they sure behave like this is not an issue.
I would put my chips on (an attempt at) avoiding the duty to keep records.
“Signal is attractive not because it is secure with respect to foreign adversaries, which it is not, but because it is secure with respect to American citizens and American judges.”
https://open.substack.com/pub/snyder/p/signalgate-violating-...
(…maybe his article should be a top level HN post)
On one hand, they say they complain about "bailing out Europe". But on the other hand, they explicitly moved up the timeline so they could move before other actors and take credit.
> "If the US successfully restores freedom of navigation at great cost there needs to be some further economic gain extracted in return."
So to be clear, when presented with the option to wait a month, they instead explicitly choose to act decisively for political reasons. And then they want to turn around and extort European allies over it.
J.D. Vance comes of as a rabid anti-Europeanist in his speeches, tweets, and apparently also his private messages. Here in Denmark the authorities reported that his wife, Usha Vance, is tied to an unusual money transfer and upcoming meeting with Greenlandic separatists.
If you read the story, one of their concerns is that if they don't act, Israel was going to instead.
https://www.newarab.com/news/israeli-officials-warn-egypts-m...
https://www.jns.org/israel-challenges-egypt-on-secret-sinai-...
Egypt is bleeding money because of loss of transit fees. However, this Muslim Brotherhood wary nation is not keen on the announced ethnic cleansing in Gaza (to Sinai). So this could be inducement to have them host an open air concentration camp with guarantees that navigation through the Suez Canal will resume.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-fcpa-anti-bribery-law-exe...
This feels like a pretty reasonable thing for a nation-state actor to take into consideration, no? Is there any country on earth where the government altering timing of something for political convenience would be surprising?
The rest of this story is hilariously egregious. The part about the government discussing its own best interests and acting in them is the least abnormal thing here.
Yes, Europe benefits from the strait more than the US, but it isn't Europe's mess in the first place.
I predict that in the next decades Europe will cut ties with Israel completely but until then we reap what we sow.
what I noticed is that even at the highest level people think prayers can be effective:
> JD Vance
> I will say a prayer for victory
> House Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.) dismissed questions about whether Waltz should face consequences for discussing the Yemen operation on an unclassified chat group that included a journalist. “Clearly I think the administration has acknowledged it was a mistake and they’ll tighten up and make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/trump-us-war-...
> [National Security Council] statement: "At this time, the message thread that was reported appears to be authentic, and we are reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain. The thread is a demonstration of the deep and thoughtful policy coordination between senior officials. The ongoing success of the Houthi operation demonstrates that there were no threats to our servicemembers or our national security." - NSC Spokesman Brian Hughes
And from the article, practical verification:
> According to the lengthy Hegseth text, the first detonations in Yemen would be felt two hours hence, at 1:45 p.m. eastern time. So I waited in my car in a supermarket parking lot. If this Signal chat was real, I reasoned, Houthi targets would soon be bombed. At about 1:55, I checked X and searched Yemen. Explosions were then being heard across Sanaa, the capital city.
And today, confirmation from Trump:
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/trump-stands-na...
> "Michael Waltz has learned a lesson, and he’s a good man," Trump said Tuesday in a phone interview with NBC News.
> When asked what he was told about how Goldberg came to be added to the Signal chat, Trump said, “It was one of Michael’s people on the phone. A staffer had his number on there.”
Question: how many people here who are concerned about this behavior have actually contacted their senators or representatives to voice an opinion on this?
There are lots of other places to discuss politics.
Is this the forum for this type of news?
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html...
Not sure that 'fat fingering' on a mobile device rises to the level of tech-related opsec. The choice to use a non-government approved device certainly is news, but not necessarily Hacker News. Plenty of better places to debate it.
I often see this comment, but there are never any sources provided. Any links to share?
Tho i still find it kinda amusing that this is the finally proofs that the average security invested joe has a better opsec than the highest ranking us gov officials.
weird chat, surprised Waltz was active in planning strikes. 18 confidantes - closer knit cabinet from internal coms. was under the impression that signal log was leaked to emulate Spinoza's excommunication decree.
I suspect that this was the point of their using Signal, to avoid preservation of records.
Finally, the echoes of Dr Strangelove are strong with this one. A veritable board room of talking heads that don’t ever really talk about life or death, but just the material numbers of raw commerce or messaging (deterrence) .
Edit: Seems like they are supposed to use Microsoft Teams https://dodcio.defense.gov/Portals/0/Documents/Library/Memo-.... Also -
> When mission needs or the effective conduct of DoD business cannot be adequately supported by Microsoft Teams Chat, SMS texting may be used in accordance with DoDI 8170.01. In such cases, a complete copy of the record must be forwarded to an official DoD electronic messaging account of the user within 20 days of the record's original creation or transmission in accordance with Section 2911 of Title 44 U.S.C, and Component processes. The complete copy of the record includes the content of the message and required metadata, and the record must be retrievable and usable in compliance with the applicable retention schedule approved by the Archivist of the United States. DoD Component heads shall ensure that DoD users are provided guidance on their Component's processes for forwarding complete copies of records originating in SMS texts.
Is Signal even FedRAMP? I don't think it is.
And what is?
I’ll just say one thing about this administration. It is often true that when one thing is wrong with a man, then it’s possible all things are wrong with the man. We keep adding to the list, but I’m suggesting the inductive proof here. All things may be wrong with these men, which is scary.
But Hegseth is such an average person. With charisma, he could aw-shucks his way past the media. Unlike McNamara, Hegseth is not charged with proving how important a competent SECDEF is. Maybe even demonstrating how arbitrary the standard can be given such an average person can just, well, phone it in.
While it's true that no sum of such average people will ever approach one John Von Neumann, it's not fair to blame an average person with some self-awareness for their every flaw. Which is why Hegseth's denials move the needle from "forgivable mistakes expected from Joe Blow" to "history-making example of Dunning-Kruger".
> It’s best to understand that fascists see hypocrisy as a virtue. It’s how they signal that the things they are doing to people were never meant to be equally applied.
> It’s not an inconsistency. It’s very consistent to the only true fascist value, which is domination.
> It’s very important to understand, fascists don’t just see hypocrisy as a necessary evil or an unintended side-effect.
> It’s the purpose. The ability to enjoy yourself the thing you’re able to deny others, because you dominate, is the whole point.
> For fascists, hypocrisy is a great virtue — the greatest.
* https://mastodon.social/@JuliusGoat/109551955251655267
What? It clearly has a cult of personality, MAGA people are absolutely in a cult.
GOP politicians can't go against Trump at any point, even in the most ridiculous of cases, in fear of losing their seat since Trump can activate his cult of personality against any GOP figure.
The absolute definition of Fascism is only reached at the end of the process, fascist tendencies are pretty clear right now: attacking the free press, persecution of minorities, rejection of modernism, anti-intellectualism, appeal to a frustrated middle class, machismo, selective populism, I'd invite you to just read the 14 points of Ur-Fascism and come back to me saying that the Trump admin is not matching most points: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ur-Fascism
Perhaps you need a primer on how it is to be inside the spiral into Fascism:
> Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don’t want to act, or even talk alone; you don’t want to “go out of your way to make trouble.” Why not?—Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty.
> Uncertainty is a very important factor, and, instead of decreasing as time goes on, it grows. Outside, in the streets, in the general community, “everyone” is happy. One hears no protest, and certainly sees none. You speak privately to your colleagues, some of whom certainly feel as you do; but what do they say? They say, “It’s not so bad” or “You’re seeing things” or “You’re an alarmist.”
> And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this, and you can’t prove it. These are the beginnings, yes; but how do you know for sure when you don’t know the end, and how do you know, or even surmise, the end? On the one hand, your enemies, the law, the regime, the Party, intimidate you. On the other, your colleagues pooh-pooh you as pessimistic or even neurotic. You are left with your close friends, who are, naturally, people who have always thought as you have.
> But your friends are fewer now. Some have drifted off somewhere or submerged themselves in their work. You no longer see as many as you did at meetings or gatherings. Now, in small gatherings of your oldest friends, you feel that you are talking to yourselves, that you are isolated from the reality of things. This weakens your confidence still further and serves as a further deterrent to—to what? It is clearer all the time that, if you are going to do anything, you must make an occasion to do it, and then are obviously a troublemaker. So you wait, and you wait.
> But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds of thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions, would have been sufficiently shocked—if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the “German Firm” stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all of the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.
> And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying “Jewish swine,” collapses it all at once, and you see that everything has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in—your nation, your people—is not the world you were born in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way.
> Suddenly it all comes down, all at once. You see what you are, what you have done, or, more accurately, what you haven’t done (for that was all that was required of most of us: that we do nothing). You remember those early morning meetings of your department when, if one had stood, others would have stood, perhaps, but no one stood. A small matter, a matter of hiring this man or that, and you hired this one rather than that. You remember everything now, and your heart breaks. Too late. You are compromised beyond repair.
The idea that trump cares about "fascism", or is even capable of holding such high-minded political beliefs is some hysterical leftist nonsense. Trump is the type of politician that would support any topic "X" as long as you campaigned on the basis of "X is cool and trump is also cool". In our timeline X was cryptocurrency, antivax, Qanon, charlottesville protesters, etc. but it could have just as easily been environmentalists, gay rights activists, BLM, etc.
When most people talk about facism, they are referring to a regime like those under hitler or mussolini. I am pretty sure hitler and mussolini had actual political goals they cared about. There will never be a "night of the long knives" because there is nothing that trump even wants that's worth backstabbing his allies over. To use the word fascist is ridiculous, because he is just acting as a ouija board for his dopey supporters.
Non-hysterical people aren't concerned that there's a night of the long knives imminent, but are concerned that there now could be. It's the breakdown of the rule of law - if he won't punish legitimate law breaking, provides pardons to people that support him, uses the government and justice department to go after people who don't agree with him...what will stop him if he decides to, short of popular uprising? And let's be clear, that's civil war/domestic terrorism territory.
I mostly agree with your characterization of him, but those tendencies of sleazy egoism naturally lead to authoritarian policies. When your ego must be stroked and your word must be last, you naturally fight against important democratic safeguards that would restrain you, like apolotical bureaucracies and separation of powers, both of which we're seeing play out literally right now. Trump is defying Congress's sole authority of appropriating government funds, and has strongly signaled intent to defy court orders (and only hasn't technically defied them yet because decisions are still pending). DOGE is a thin excuse to purge federal agencies and fill them with partisan yes-men (or simply destroy them altogether and give Trump full control).
Despite Trump's personal politics, it's obvious that those in his orbit (including several cabinet appointees and his VP) do have intentionally fascist ideals and goals. Whether Trump personally cares or not is a distinction without a difference. He may not care about pursuing a "night of long knives", but many who have influence in his administration do, and Trump probably won't care to stop them, especially if it makes him seem like a strong, no-nonsense leader.
Fascism is coming to America and Donald Trump is the one commanding the cult of personality that is making it happen. That alone is worthy of criticism. It should be concerning to anyone who opposes fascism, regardless of who exactly is to blame or how exactly it is being done. Arguments like yours are mostly a distraction.
Otherwise, it's just political theater that's going to further discredit the idea of impeachment and give Trump and future Presidents more confidence that they can do anything they want and never be held to account.
Will it? If done correctly by the Democrats (and this is a big if), it can educate people on the current situation. A big problem right now is that a lot of people aren't fully aware how fucked up and how dangerous Trump and his cronies are.
It is such a horror that this government is operating off the books, that this administration will again leave behind only empty pages in the history book where normally the government would have ownership of what transpired.
Unfortunately we also live in the time with the largest mass media consumption (social media), all but guaranteeing their followers keep rationalizing their actions with a litany of talking points rather than understanding straightforward criticism said by someone on the "other" team.
" In 1970, political consultant Roger Ailes and other Nixon aides came up with a plan to create a new TV network that would circumvent existing media and provide "pro-administration" coverage to millions. "People are lazy," the aides explained in a memo. "With television you just sit — watch — listen. The thinking is done for you." Nixon embraced the idea, saying he and his supporters needed "our own news" from a network that would lead "a brutal, vicious attack on the opposition." "
https://theweek.com/articles/880107/why-fox-news-created
For example, I feel that in the early 2000's, it would have been possible to get across the point that Breonna Taylor (Kenneth Walker) was really a 2nd amendment issue [0]. You may or may not care about 2A issues. I do care, although it's not a huge focus of mine. But they purport to care greatly, so it should be possible to engage on that, right? But now the reflexive emotional revulsion to the topic created by continual tribal priming (all day every day) is just too great.
[0] if a probable response to defending yourself in your home at night is government agents unleashing a state-sanctioned hail of bullets into your family, how has defending your home not been effectively prohibited?
To me, the one-sided right wing media bubble seems to be the root of how we got here in the first place. It allows politicians to avoid any and all accountability for their actions. Popular rule cannot function in this environment, and if it continues, nothing will stand in the way of this administration destroying what’s left of the country.
If they’re doing it so blatantly to plan for attacks that will eventually be public, contain no conspiracies or illegal activity, and will be used to dunk on Biden, then what else are they automatically deleting?
Plus, if China/Russia/Iran/NK weren’t targeting US officials phones and Signal, now they certainly are.
Likely everything they can. Rules are for fools in this admin.
No comments yet
https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2025/03/jeff...
I have never seen a breach quite like this. It is not uncommon for national-security officials to communicate on Signal. But the app is used primarily for meeting planning and other logistical matters—not for detailed and highly confidential discussions of a pending military action. And, of course, I’ve never heard of an instance in which a journalist has been invited to such a discussion.
Conceivably, Waltz, by coordinating a national-security-related action over Signal, may have violated several provisions of the Espionage Act, which governs the handling of “national defense” information, according to several national-security lawyers interviewed by my colleague Shane Harris for this story. Harris asked them to consider a hypothetical scenario in which a senior U.S. official creates a Signal thread for the express purpose of sharing information with Cabinet officials about an active military operation. He did not show them the actual Signal messages or tell them specifically what had occurred.
All of these lawyers said that a U.S. official should not establish a Signal thread in the first place. Information about an active operation would presumably fit the law’s definition of “national defense” information. The Signal app is not approved by the government for sharing classified information.
"Good enough for me!"
If what you're doing isn't wrong, why not record all of it for history?
When you get a clearance, it is inculcated upon you that you absolutely do not leak cleared information. If you THINK something cleared, it's best to treat it like it is.
It's possible that there is some 10D chess happening here, but I wouldn't expect details like this to be approved for apps like Signal.
Marco Rubio absolutely knows due process is a right for all persons subject to U.S. law. It's not only a right for citizens, and having taken this right away from persons, in no meaningful way can it be said it's preserves for citizens.
The federal government is at best in abeyance. And an adversary at worst.
Conversely, we know some people are not stupid. I dislike marco Rubio's politics for example, but he's a smart guy and widely considered to be competent. And as an attorney and a US Senator of long experience in intelligence matters, there's no way he's unaware of the legal implications of using a self-destructing messaging channel.
https://hn.algolia.com/?q=bonhoeffer
So, let me say the quiet part aloud, the presence of DNI & NSC heavies indicates to me that Signal is possibly not really a "3rd party".
I mean, if something is imaginable, there's a chance it is indeed so, but still - this would be on a whole other level.
And Signal is not an approved app afaik.
The whole thing just seems like it is highly likely it is fake/engineered.
Signal is uncompromised.
…at least at the moment.
Or of course, that’s what they want you to think :D
Why? Why not stay in the group indefinitely (or until found) and write stories sourced from a mysterious individual deep in the entrails of the Trump administration? That would have been absolutely specacular and could have resulted in a hilarious purge while the culprits searched in vain for a traitor in their ranks.
He exited and correctly disclosed himself as a victim of being unknowingly added. This is exactly what anyone who values the rest of their life should do.
https://open.substack.com/pub/kenklippenstein/p/trump-admin-...
Most likely scenario he decided to blow the whistle on a bunch of traitors.
It seems least likely that the journalist was accidentally included. The question is why? Seems like our defense personnel are now foreign agents acting against the US.
..I noted Board Games(Secret Hitler, for example) require better opsec. So do card games- it's mindblowing to note this too...
[Main comment by me - technical outlook] This is not a surprise at all- there were reports that the first Trump administration was using Signal to communicate, and that it was a a risk as messages can be totally wiped and not kept for records keeping.
-From an infosec standpoint- this is more notable than I think people are giving it credit- the fact that the Vice President(Well, maybe not him, he notably admittted in interviews during the presidential campaign, that he'd been briefed by three letter agencies on Salt Typhoon tageting him, but that he was secure because he used Signal) - the director of national intelligence- and several others- use Signal.
it's one thing for Congress, Sweden's Military, and apparently our own military branches to push Signal heavily for non-sensitive stuff-
But when those around three letter agencies -and the groups that would be interested in finding compromises- are using it, that screams to me that it's considered not that easy to attack- which is a point towards Signal
So then the final thing to secure are the endpoints- and of course the risk is a zero day exploit targeting someone. As for subtle push app updates by Signal themselves being a vector- i'd think the Open Source nature of the app prevent that - if the infrastructure for pushing updates is open source as well especially.
Again though- if the White House is using Signal- they likely KNOW most of what their own Three Letter agencies can and can't do(to a point)- so when people in the know are using it- that is telling.
A lot of it may be for the auto disappearing messages, admittedly- but that's notable. And yes, I'm aware Mark Zuckerberg has been known to move conversations off of WhatsApp, to Signal - again, maybe for the disappearing messages(and lack of a report function which would send part of a convo to FB/Meta to my understanding)- but possibly, for the security and lack of meta data being better from a attack surface standpoint
The fact that Signal was used is less concerning to me personally than the fact that they had this group chat outside of the overall safety umbrella of fully end-to-end vetted systems.
Though the use of Signal is still concerning in that any official system they would otherwise use would have (one would hope) made it far harder if not impossible to accidentally leak the conversation to a random third party.
One would hope indeed- I do wonder on that ......
There's another observation though- Salt Typhoon compromised wiretap infrastructure - before Signal, there's no doub't some stuff like this occured over text messages- Because of everyone's efforts to go to Signal- even if it's for the message disappearing- with this, with military branches pushing it hard- with Sweden's Miltary pushing it, etc(for non sensitive stuff)- there's so much of that , that the attack surface overall is massively reduced. In short, if there's going to be stuff outside of vetted systems- running that sort of stuff Signal- likely still helps. (I'm reminded again, of the JD Vance interviews where he let slip that he'd been targeted ,and was informed about it by agencies- but that he was good because of his Signal usage. Now, I don't know what measures he takes to avoid zero day exploits and whatnot- the TLAs would inform him of that- but from what he was saying, it sounds like they were sure he wasn't compromised by that.)
(I'm aware a serious targeted effort would be more intricate than Salt Typhoon/ Trying to use the country's own general Wire tapping capability to target the VP)
Edit: Also, this reveals a bit about psyche- J.D.Vance somewhat ribbed the president- there is probably pressure TO use Signal, so a record of him criticizing the President can't be found out by the President or those more allied with the President who could then start retribution- I imagine dynamics like that, which are human behavior- -ultimately are what absolutely drive all of this.
The iCloud accounts of anyone ambitious in that chat will be filled with in and out of context screenshots to show to daddy when they are in trouble next time.
The lack of reproducible builds for Signal’s apps has been a topic of discussion for quite some time:
https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-iOS/issues/641
except that the conversation in question, and similar such conversations, are required by federal law to be archived.
So explicitly choosing a communication channel that violates federal law for conducting federal business is, umm, sketchy?
That is some seriously selective memory
https://old.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/4cdmmc/wtf_is_going_on...
https://old.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/4dvoj5/sma_diplosleade...
https://old.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/4f3epd/a_different_kin...
And here's some more recent ones
https://old.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/1f6t1vw/your_relays_ar...
https://old.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/1g3p232/alcoholic_sata...
Major alliance infrastructure and security is probably better than most US corporations but doesn't come close to secure government systems, obviously
Point taken though , the commenters who said that were ...obviously..anecdotal, -though possibly still more the norm...)
> At 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.
> …The Signal chat group, I concluded, was almost certainly real. Having come to this realization, one that seemed nearly impossible only hours before, I removed myself from the Signal group, understanding that this would trigger an automatic notification to the group’s creator, “Michael Waltz,” that I had left. No one in the chat had seemed to notice that I was there. And I received no subsequent questions about why I left—or, more to the point, who I was
Oh who am I kidding.
Less than 8h later: “it’s just an oopsie right? No harm no foul- nothing to see here folks” https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2025/03/24/congress/mi...
Oh, much worse than that. https://x.com/Acyn/status/1904309995019411933
Despite the fact that the NSC already said it appears to be legitimate, Hegseth is going into full attack mode against the "discredited, so-called journalist".
Of course, we don't live in that world.
I have a theory that's well backed by history: when your sole qualification for applicants for important positions in any organization is how well they fondle your balls, you often miss other important data points: for example, if they can use messaging apps correctly.
https://d3i6fh83elv35t.cloudfront.net/static/2023/06/FyM1h-C...
“How is it Hillary Clinton can delete 33,000 government emails on a private server yet President Trump gets indicted for having documents he could declassify?” - Waltz
“Nobody is above the law. Not even Hillary Clinton – even though she thinks she is,” -Rubio
No comments yet
This incident was an accident.
Simply incredible. This is wild.
"My commitment is to not touch alcohol while I have this position"
Turns out US military strategy is the same as me and my mates setting up a bar date.
It's a disturbing leak in itself but i take issue with the journalist obsessing over the tool of choice whilst ignoring the actual strategizing.
The casual way in which a mass murder is planned. The emphasis on "messaging" and how to spin this on Biden and Europe. The teenage-like emojis to celebrate acts of war.
This administration looks bad from the outside but through this leak we can see that their shocking press moments are still the polished and spun versions of a reality that is far more sick.
Typically these positions are filled by highly qualified people with decades of experience.
This administration is not typical. They deliberately chose inexperienced people who would be loyal above all else.
Selecting for incompetence was part of the plan, and it’s been obvious from the start.
Hegseth was a Fox News host, not someone qualified for this position.
This story is stranger than fiction.
I agree with your point on the spin, although I wonder if the Signal angle is the only thing even republicans can agree with to be kinda bad, given that even the most egregious reports on the current administration don’t really cause as much as a raised brow there. So to make it a story that doesn’t just resonate in the liberal echo chamber, include something despicable to both camps.
Agencies with no oversight are seen as competent? That's news to me. There's a definite waste of taxpayer dollars on propaganda to try to make this point publicly but I didn't think anyone was poorly educated enough to actually believe it.
What are you basing this on?
History.
Are you genuinely incredulous?
A govvie with status doing the same? A slap on the wrist.
Embarrassing.
But the rest of the military/DOD/ABCD/USAID is legacy bloat left over from the cold war and should be cut. Then we can finally get rid of the income tax for most if not all of the country.
Edit: I say this as an independent who does not support either "side".
If literally storming your government building, threating your representatives and injuring police officers isn't punishable any more what is?
It's not linked from the homepage though.
No comments yet
[Edit: I interpreted "curated manually" to mean that dang picks each story that is on the front page. tptacek interpreted it to mean that, since users upvote and comment on stories, that's "manual curation". I interpret that as being "automatic curation", that is, an algorithm picks the front page stories, even though it's based on users' upvotes and comments. I cannot prove which of these two forms belter meant. Naturally, I prefer to think that it was the one I read it as, but I can squint hard enough to see tptacek's version.]
number 30 is 38 points 16 hours ago | 0 comments
number 7 is 13 points | 3 comments
This one has 142 points and 35 comments in 2 hours. Is neither on the first or second page.
What is the logic?
The logic is that people have flagged it, but not enough for it to be marked [flagged], which downranks it. dang, if notified or interested in it himself, could turn off flagging for this submission which would likely bring it back to the front page (given comment activity, age, and current score). You could email him and ask nicely.
You've been on this site for 4 years with 57k karma so you must be very active here, I'm surprised you don't know this yet.
In other words, just because such a system could be used in this way, is it good that it is being used this way? That’s the energy this is coming from.
But I agree with your premise, even in its snark, none of us are stupid - we should already know.
What the HN shadow mod team is doing is killing the possibility of a long-running, evolving discourse on important topics.
is killing the possibility of a long-running, evolving discourse on important topics.
These topics have been the most discussed topics on HN the last couple of months by a massive margin. The quality of 'discourse' has been abysmal so we know empirically the 'evolution' theory/hope is misplaced.
Have any of these topics managed to not be censored via flagging? From my perspective, I have very much wanted to talk about these things on HN and despite checking multiple times a day I have never been able to engage in an ongoing discussion (by which I mean the post wasn't removed from the front page due to flagging, effectively limiting the visibility it would otherwise get from organic upvotes).
You're entitled to dislike these topics and to flag them. And I'm entitled to think you're actively making HN worse with your gatekeeping. The problem with flagging is it gives more weight to a smaller group. I don't know the weighing exactly, but I'd guess flagging is 10-100x more effective than regular voting. So in theory just 1-10% of people have the ability to censor topics they don't like. Kinda seems like the antithesis of what's "interesting" to me. And yes, I absolutely 100% would prefer contentious "go fuck yourself" arguments on politics than not being allowed to discuss it in good faith at all.
Have any of these topics managed to be censored via flagging?
They are all still present, a good many are still active .. you seem to equate "not on front page" with "censored".
See:
https://news.ycombinator.com/newcomments
https://news.ycombinator.com/active
and (for example DOGE, last month): https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastMonth&page=0&prefix=fa...
“On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.”
“That’s the display department.”
“With a flashlight.”
“Ah, well, the lights had probably gone.”
“So had the stairs.”
“But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Also getting 500 karma on HN isn't hard.
The point is a flag has higher weight than an upvote, and it's easy to get the ability to flag posts.
The fact that it's easy to get the ability to flag just makes it easier to abuse by people who want to censor certain topics.
Because it's very longstanding precedent, you're going to have to do more than just notice it out loud for the first time to change it.
For what it's worth, I didn't just not flag this story, or even just upvote it; I submitted it (and was beaten to the punch). It's a good HN story! But I can absolutely understand why the Trump-Story-Flaggers would have reflexively flagged this story. These threads are incredibly tedious and corrosive to the community.
There is no correct answer to this problem. I'm just critiquing it in its current form and explaining why, to me (and many other people who have complained about it recently), it's getting worse.
But people on HN upvote and argue about California zoning laws or San Francisco drug policy here, AI policies from the US federal government or the DMA from the EU. Or the SLS rocket. It's all politics.
Sam Altman and PG are the celebrities here, not the Kardashians and people never stop talking about poops on San Francisco streets as if this is an important issue for the US or international community of the site.
'political' is just used as a euphemism for 'taboo' and there are many unspoken taboos about what is talked and not talked about here.
People outside of the bay area and outside of the US are tired of this crap.
I'd much prefer it be replaced by something led/focused/moderated out of the Global South....if I didn't loathe the idea of doing content moderation myself, maybe I'd fire up a HN-clone marketed in those other regions...
If anything it'll be from some middle ground in that it will originate from a country like Estonia that has a lot going on with startups and the whole digital democracy thing figured out.
I think Dan is an amazing moderator, one of the all-time greats, but there are lots of different moderation arrangements that can work, and different goals for forums to have. What I like are forums! Not just this forum.
You're entitled to dislike these topics and to flag them. And I'm entitled to think you're actively making HN worse with your gatekeeping.
I like these topics just fine. I don't particularly like them filling up HN because HN is pretty bad at them and it's bad at them in a pointedly tedious, repetitive way. "pointedly tedious and repetitive" is the most offtopic thing on HN. But for any story you feel should get more exposure, you can email the site mods and make the case for it. This happens all the time.
And yes, I absolutely 100% would prefer contentious "go fuck yourself" arguments on politics
Well, as you say, you're entitled to prefer that but that's not the sort of messageboard this is. But again, you can make the case for changing that but it seems pretty uphill. Yelly messageboards are a dime a dozen and many HN participants are here because this one is slightly less yelly.
Like c'mon.
I'm pretty sure that your pretentiousness just invited a shitstorm of people who are going to flag your posts from now on.
You have about, well, 30 comments in this thread.
One of them took the time to explain what they were doing for you
They took their precious time and explained it just for me? I thought you said "We're just flagging and getting on with our day."
You might want to (looks around) and count up your, well, comments. Seems like you're trying to claim both not caring at all and benevolent enlightenment, which is, well, a little self righteous.
These don't seem to have any relevance to what I've said, are you getting me mixed up with someone else?
Admittedly I have little talent for extracting wasps from stings in flight.
No, nothing in the Clinton email scandal comes close to cabinet secretaries accidentally real-time texting imminent war plans to journalists using a non-governmental system with auto-deleting messages.
https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
(This is not a comment on the current story, or any story.)
As always, it's only a problem when a Democrat does it.
There are some things the democrats can do but it's mostly "spanner-in-the-works" slow-downs of the process, or mid-level judges. At the same time, the democrats are in disarray with no clear leader or message.
Probably the best strategy for the democrats is to let Trump make more mistakes until even his base questions his presidency.
Protests happen in the summer mostly, and they always have a small amount of violence and property destruction (even when the protest is organized to be peaceful). Trump is just waiting around for that so he can have the military shut them down (at least, that's what he said).
Unless the protests are large enough (say, 1/4 the population of the US), and persistent, and affect business heavily. Maybe that would be enough to dispel the reality distortion/enforcement shield Trump has cast on the republicans.
Yes, the administration will try violence, but it’s a lot harder to justify when elected officials are on the firing line.
Also known as "strategy of Paul von Hindenburg".
No, they can't.
> And have it on the record who votes against it.
They cannot force a vote to actually occur on a proposed impeachment. They can file it and let it die, that's as close as they can come.
Democrats can introduce bills of impeachment, but those would simply die without consideration given GOP control of the House. So far as I'm aware, none have done so since 20 Jan 2025.
There is no Democrat in the singular. There is a left-wing bloc defined, first and foremost, by identity politics and foreign policy views (namely, Palestine). There is a centrist bloc focussed on employment and wages (historically pro-union). And there is a free-trading bloc focussed on American enterprise and industry (historically pro Wall Street and the party's dominant wing through 2016 to 2020).
The second and third used to be aligned. Then, briefly, the first and second. Currently, nobody is aligned. The financial crisis cost the third group its moral standing. The third group's affiliation with the second lost corporate America and Silicon Valley to the Republicans. Then the middle group's alignment with the first lost its base to the anti-woke pitch. The first group remains cohesive, but it's too small and uncoordinated (e.g. voting for Trump for Palestine) to move the policy needle on its own.
the second bloc is liberals, which are more center-right as they frequently side with conservative policies and are pro-capitalist. in recent years, this has come to include DSA (AOC) and other progressives like Bernie Sanders, who believe that the current system of politics under capitalism can be reformed instead of abolished. these people are very much for identity politics because they believe idpol will bring the leftmost bloc into the fold (it won't). this bloc sometimes supports leftmost causes but will abandon them when it is politically expedient (AOC, Bernie).
the third bloc is just right-wing. Bush Jr-era neocons. the party has always catered to these folks but more recently has come to embrace them as it moves rightward. this bloc will continue to grow as we see more of a rightward shift as more Democrats embrace the far right because they believe it will lead to electoral gains (Gavin Newsom, Chuck Shumer, etc) - once again, it won't.
the first bloc absolutely is not part of the Democratic party, and in fact despise the Democrats. they largely do not participate in federal electoral politics.
This is a very narrow slice of urban leftists. When it comes to electioneering, the messaging is almost always about identity politics and anti-corporatism more than class-struggle politics.
> they largely do not participate in federal electoral politics
Then it isn’t a bloc. Non-voter non-donors are politically irrelevant.
i disagree that they're a narrow slice and aren't a bloc, though. in federal politics sure but in local politics they're more active and there's much more alignment with Democratic politicians (and more pragmatism).
It's on the bottom of the third page, pushed down by flags. During any other administration, such a disastrously, criminally incompetent use of technology would have been top of the front page for days, but this administration is so cosmically incompetent that pointing it out is "partisan" now. Everyone is just tired of people commenting on the fact that this criminal bunch of Fox News host miscreants clearly have zero idea what they're doing.
Also...but her emails!
Who do you think will sponsor the Egg roll? They just need to move the Tesla infomercial out of the way, and maybe Trump can feature some of his garbage shitcoin crypto.
Jesus Christ. What a fallen idiocracy.
We saw A1 headlines for months about Clinton's emails. Often daily.
No comments yet
[0] https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/morgan-stanley-hit-...
This is the doubled edged nature of prosecutorial discretion.
However once the legislative branch surrenders oversight over executive there isn't much left keeping the system in balance. Even if judicial branch would call a measure unconstitutional, who'd execute that ruling?
The system is built around the assumption that a notable part of the system wants to keep it alive.
So nada.
In consequences there are many flaws and a lot is stuck in post WW2 thinking, but I doubt there is a realistic chance of anything overall better.
The current U.S. administration tries to reshape things by disruption, we will see how this goes, but I doubt this will earn trust and buy-in from others. Thus not lead to a stable and "better" system. (While better, of course, is not globally objective, which again is key to the problem)
As Hobbes wrote so eloquently, we keep that compact because the alternative is "continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short"
We're currently exploring how many of those rules are really necessary, and, as a society, have decided to mostly shrug off that exploration.
That is the part that's changed. A willingness to ignore the rules by some, and a collective shrug by most.
"Government officials have used Signal for organizational correspondence, such as scheduling sensitive meetings, but in the Biden administration, people who had permission to download it on their White House-issued phones were instructed to use the app sparingly, according to a former national security official who served in the administration."
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/heres-what-to-know-about...
Big difference.
How does that excuse the lack of attention and validation that resulted in an unintended party being added to the chat?
Regardless of Signal usage policy, that is a massive fuck up.
Organizational discussions means things like, for a standard fed on a TDY with others, "Meet in the lobby at 0700 so we can drive to the site for the meeting at 0800." Not "So we're going to use ... to attack ... at ...", which is almost certainly Secret or TS once aggregated.
You disagree over opinions. Should Signal be an appropriate system for discussing classified data? I'd say no, you might say yes, we disagree and debate.
Legally, is Signal an appropriate system for discussing classified data? No. Unless you believe in alternative facts, there is no point to disagree on, it's just a fact that it is not legally an appropriate system for what they did.
And then swiftymon lied and used "evidence" to bolster their lie that didn't even agree with their lie.
I could assert that you're lying, etc - as you're effectively committing the same sin as the poster who originally got downvoted - but that wouldn't be having a conversation; it'd be a rude refusal to tolerate a conversation. I encourage you to assume good intent and engage instead of hurling accusations at people - even if they're new accounts.
Well, themselves and the 53 humans who were blown up in a distant country by Star War technology.
Actually, now that I think about it, no - this is terrifying and awful and just so so so stupid.
BUTTERY MALES indeed.
Trump routinely denies knowledge of things he doesn't want to talk about, even things that he has previously demonstrated knowledge about. It's a standard deflection that he never gets called out on or significant pushback on the implications of his claimed lack of knowledge, so he keeps doing it.
Those are distinct, though potentially overlapping, behavioral patterns.
It was almost a meme on his last presidency. If there’s a scandal involving someone from inner circle - trump’s replies often were “I barely know him/her”/“Never met him/her”, etc.
Good examples and I believe that’s a Bill-Clinton-under-oath use of carnal “is”. Nobody has the patience to wonder whether it’s true or false that Trump knows of the existence of Putin. Bill Clinton didn’t get away with it, so I’m willing to say this is specific to Trump.
It's actually weird we don't see this in the corporate world either. These problems, as many of us know personally, exist everywhere, not just at the White House and it's going to lead to huge issues down the road.
Anyone here know if the DoD actually has their own stuff for this? It was they who came up with these technologies back in the rainbow books days.
That's not editorializing, because it's using the article's own language and is a more accurate and neutral description of the article. Editorializing is when a submitter takes advantage of the title field to convey their own view of an article.
This is really his website at this point. The rules are mainly just his tools for shaping the content of discussions and submissions to his liking.
A decade ago it was different. I mean, he was still way overbearing and biased, but I don’t think it really had the same power-steering effect on the shapes of discussions as it does today. Over time, this is where we’ve come to.
Suppressing my own like/dislike responses is where most of my energy goes when doing this job.
Unrelated, but I wonder how the gray hat market for Signal vulns is doing now?
But, it's a flagrant leak of classified info. Using a medium explicitly prohibited by policy. And likely now lost to time (Signal messages can be configured to auto-delete on a timer), when all of this sort of correspondence is legally required to be retained.
They could've used Telegram /s. It's popular with the crypto crowd after all.
If a device has been compromised, the database can be extracted with all messages and contacts
> Brian Hughes, the spokesman for the National Security Council, responded two hours later, confirming the veracity of the Signal group. “This appears to be an authentic message chain, and we are reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain,”
This is not in question, at all.
Going through the reporting a couple of times it could very well be that he was never part of the group. Screenshots of the group members including him or a screen recording nowhere to see. He didn’t write anything in the group but immediately wrote each individual after he left the group.
If he never was in the group and only received intel about it, the people which provided him with the intel would be able to tell him that critical information was posted in the group, which was accurate, but he wouldn’t have seen it.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43481521
I call on Bart Gellman to dump the Snowden document repository he's got. Clearly nothing in it matters, if this was so casually compromised.