[HN Gopher] How the US defense secretary circumvents official Do...
___________________________________________________________________
How the US defense secretary circumvents official DoD
communications equipment
Author : Harvesterify
Score : 413 points
Date : 2025-04-30 22:54 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.electrospaces.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.electrospaces.net)
| nneonneo wrote:
| Site's being hugged hard - mirror: https://archive.is/kMZ2A
| JohnTHaller wrote:
| Of course, there will be no consequences for his complete lack
| of... everything
| mlinhares wrote:
| Oh there will be, just not for him. We'll never know how many
| state secrets have been leaked through these shenanigans.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _there will be, just not for him_
|
| Everyone in this administration has to know they're spending
| the decade after Trump in front of the Congress and various
| investigators.
| gmac wrote:
| Let's hope so. But of course this is also a heavy incentive
| for all of them to make sure their regime never leaves
| power.
| xp84 wrote:
| Nah, because the Dems can't win elections, and Republicans
| will never hold any Trump ally accountable.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| This is probably what the DOGE kids are being pitched.
| There is a reason the most wantonly criminal conduct is
| coming from those too stupid or naive to understand we
| haven't transitioned to a one-party state.
| xp84 wrote:
| We haven't? What power do the Dems hold, and what power
| do they have a serious chance of getting back in '26 or
| '28?
|
| The DNC would have to make some serious changes, because
| the 2024 election was a perfect opinion poll on whether
| they have enough voters onboard the platform they've
| adopted to win a national election or a swing-state
| election. Running against a joke of a man, they lost. And
| the entire Democratic Party still hasn't admitted to
| themselves why that happened.
|
| I do hope a good third party moves into the massive power
| vacuum left by the DNC when it chased itself out of the
| mainstream into irrelevancy.
| CapricornNoble wrote:
| Can't Trump just pull a Biden, and toss a blanket decade-
| long pardon to his entire staff? Would anyone bother to
| investigate them after that?
| collingreen wrote:
| He can do that - presidents have a long history of
| abusing pardons. Trump has shown he is happy to pardon
| people without much thought either for media attention
| (j6?) or for money (levandowski?).
|
| On the other hand trump isn't very loyal to his people so
| far - remember the wasteland of trump advisors and
| officials in the first term getting convicted of various
| frauds without getting pardoned (or the lawyer on tape
| saying he needs a pardon for trying to overturn the
| election and him not getting it).
|
| Not that it matters but I don't think Biden gave a
| blanket pardon to his entire staff I think he pardoned
| people who he thinks are dangerously and unfairly
| targeted by some extreme media like fauci and Bidens son
| hunter.
|
| At the end of the day pretty much all of the limits of
| presidential power come from restraint, especially (but
| not exclusively) in todays world of a tame judiciary. If
| the president cares about or wants to be seen as caring
| about the rule of law it is a bad look to wantonly
| disregard it too often.
|
| Yes, there are a lot of folks who want to believe
| everything their chosen guy does is absolutely right but
| realistically each bad thing chips away at their ability
| to ignore the evidence. I know several people who have
| lost faith in trump as the evidence continues to
| absolutely pile up that he doesn't match the values they
| were told to appreciate (rule of law, respect for the
| constitution, human rights, fairness, Christian values,
| intelligence). If he gives a blanket pardon to everyone
| that worked for him a few more people will say "wait,
| maybe the other side was right and this IS a huge abuse"
| so it's possible, especially if we continue to have
| elections, that we won't see this kind of thing.
| lobotomizer wrote:
| I'm sure they're absolutely terrified. I mean look at what
| happened to James Clapper, straight to the gulag of a cushy
| CNN gig.
| mmooss wrote:
| There will be none if you do nothing.
| iambateman wrote:
| I wish more people, especially media writers, would start with
| the presumption that "circumventing the state-approved security
| machine" is a _feature_ of this administration.
|
| Not to pick on this in particular - nearly all the reporting on
| this starts and ends with "Signal is insecure" as if that was all
| it took to be wrong. And in other eras, that was enough.
|
| The man likes Signal. For better or worse, he is the Secretary of
| Defense...The man we've entrusted to help coordinate our national
| defense.
|
| There's so many questions I genuinely don't have an answer for...
|
| Has Congress made it illegal to use an off-brand messaging app
| for secure communications? _Why_ is it insecure? What is the
| probability that China is reading these messages in real-time?
| 100%? 25%? 0.2%?
|
| We need to start from the presumption that the people-in-power
| don't care that it's always been done this way...in fact, they
| have a ton of pressure to be different. But, in some cases, these
| people may be willing to listen to reasonable arguments which
| clearly establish _why_ using Signal is unreasonably worse than
| using US Government Issue messaging.
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| I think one of the issues is that at least some of the Signal
| war-plans chat group participants had their messages set to
| auto-delete. If that's the reason that they're using Signal, it
| is indeed a problem, even if Signal is secure.
| sudahtigabulan wrote:
| nitpick: disappearing messages are either enabled for
| everyone in the group or for no one.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| It doesn't only matter if its secure or not.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidential_Records_Act
| patrickhogan1 wrote:
| He is not the president or vice president. This law would be
| more relevant
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Records_Act
|
| Here, his signal comms are likely top secret and we would
| have no way of knowing if his office followed the legally
| allowed step of forwarding after the fact for many years.
| godelski wrote:
| There's similar record keeping for lots of officials.
| Government loves keeping records
| collingreen wrote:
| And now we won't know, ever. Which is exactly the point of
| avoiding the system.
| patrickhogan1 wrote:
| Bingo. If a hacker did this it would be understood as a sign
| that the comms aren't secure and praised. He was clearly
| briefed on Salt Typhoon.
|
| The thing I am more bothered by is why would he take a picture
| of his desk, thereby narrowing the attack profile.
| curiousgal wrote:
| > help coordinate our national defense
|
| I mean, thinking the DoD is actually defending the U.S. is
| where you went wrong. The stakes are so incredibly low that
| none of this actually matters.
| grimpy wrote:
| > There's so many questions I genuinely don't have an answer
| for...
|
| > Has Congress made it illegal to use an off-brand messaging
| app for secure communications? _Why_ is it insecure? What is
| the probability that China is reading these messages in real-
| time? 100%? 25%? 0.2%?
|
| Is your point that, in the space of your own lack of knowledge,
| that reasonable rational may exist? Could you share what gives
| you trust in this administration to be so generous?
| zmgsabst wrote:
| I see this as partisan:
|
| - one side ignored Clinton using a private server as sec of
| state
|
| - this one ignores using Signal
|
| I haven't seen arguments about what the standard is supposed
| to be or why this in particular is egregious. That would be
| more convincing than hyperventilating.
|
| Edit:
|
| If you read the article, there are both classified/secured
| and unsecured lines available at the station. So what
| specifically is the problem the administration uses Signal
| together with unsecured comms?
|
| I don't follow the allegation its mere presence is
| problematic, when discussing general communications with
| other parts of the administration. Especially when accessed
| via separate/dedicated machine (distinct from secured
| systems).
|
| If you want to talk about the specifics of, eg, the Yemen war
| plans then do that -- but this article does not.
| freddie_mercury wrote:
| How was an FBI and DOJ and investigation by the Obama
| administration "one side ignoring it"?
| collingreen wrote:
| This. So much this. The fantasy land behind these
| "Clinton's emails" takes is bizarre enough to seem
| intentional.
| zmgsabst wrote:
| How did Democrats respond to that information?
|
| > Federal agencies did, however, retrospectively
| determine that 100 emails contained information that
| should have been deemed classified at the time they were
| sent, including 65 emails deemed "Secret" and 22 deemed
| "Top Secret".
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillary_Clinton_email_contr
| ove...
|
| That sounds a lot worse than what Hegseth is accused of,
| but didn't derail her nomination nor draw widespread
| condemnation from Democrats.
|
| That's what I mean by "ignoring it": the conclusion was
| bad but largely ignored by the party.
| jorts wrote:
| Sharing details as he has done would put my brother who
| works for the Navy in the brig. As someone in his role he
| should know better but he's only in his role as he will do
| whatever Trump asks him to. He was a O4, there's a zero
| percent chance of him being knowledgeable enough to be
| competent in his role.
| CapricornNoble wrote:
| I know some pretty competent O-4s...but also a TON of
| mouth-breathing field grade officers too. Hegseth sucks
| on his own merits (or lack thereof) as a person.
|
| SecDef Lovett only rose to O-4 before going into the NYC
| business community and then becoming a Special Assistant
| to SecWar Stimpson in 1940. https://history.defense.gov/M
| ultimedia/Biographies/Article-V...
|
| SecDef McElroy came up through Proctor & Gamble, no
| government or military experience. https://history.defens
| e.gov/Multimedia/Biographies/Article-V...
|
| Just as a few examples of adequately-successful SecDefs
| coming from "unimpressive" paper resumes.
| collingreen wrote:
| He knew better when saying Clinton's behavior amounted to
| treason.
|
| We don't need to argue about if he knew better; he did,
| from his own mouth. We need to argue about if it is ok
| and if it is ok for the people in power to do nothing
| about it because it's "their team".
|
| At some point soon we need to realize we the people are
| on one team and everyone saying otherwise is trying to
| hurt us.
| trealira wrote:
| > At some point soon we need to realize we the people are
| on one team and everyone saying otherwise is trying to
| hurt us.
|
| This might be good for a generic politician running for
| an election to say, but it's not true. We're not on the
| same team; we're different groups of people with
| different values who hate each other. Our politicians are
| the people we've voted to represent us. It's not like
| Trump, for example, hoodwinked Republicans; they like
| everything he's doing, and have for ten years, and a lot
| of it is because people like me hate him. We're not on
| the same team.
| godelski wrote:
| What if you believe both Clinton and Hegseth are in the
| wrong?
|
| I hold this position and I don't think it's uncommon.
| Plenty of people think if something is wrong then it
| doesn't matter who does it.
|
| There's definitely perception bias. Usually conversations
| are short when we're in agreement. Doesn't create
| engagement. Doesn't make for good news
| watwut wrote:
| There was whole massive campaign against her
| comparatively much milder infraction. It is crickets now.
| It was huge.
|
| So, maybe 10 of you care, but the assymetry is beyond
| apparent.
|
| For that matter, I remember when Obamas tan suit was
| horrible unpresidential infraction amd lack of respect.
| Same people voted for Trump not a peep about
| respectability.
| sokoloff wrote:
| How many people were complaining about "her emails" 28
| days after the first one was sent? You're looking at two
| very different points on the timeline of each event and
| concluding that everyone thinks they're different because
| of the difference in magnitude of discourse on the
| topics.
|
| Do you think the difference will remain at this level
| through the next election cycle?
|
| I think plenty of people see massive amounts of
| equivalence and are more caught up in other, more urgent
| piles in Washington's reinvention of the Augean Stables.
| watwut wrote:
| Donald Trump literally said she should be in prison her
| for the email server thing. Literally during campaign. It
| was cheered on.
|
| The emails scandal was on for months and got invoked
| during election by conservative pundits, politicians.
| Again and again and again and again. They made it a whole
| big thing, pretending to care about security.
|
| So yeah, it matters. The consistent track record of just
| extremely one sided care for security, respectability,
| lies and what not actually matter a lot. Now we know that
| conservatives complaining about X does not mean they care
| about X. They dont, they are ok when one of them does
| worst. It is just hypocrisy.
| sokoloff wrote:
| That's almost exactly my point. Four weeks into scandal
| B, it's not getting as much coverage and discussion as
| scandal A did _during a campaign_.
|
| None of that is surprising, and I expect the current
| $SHITSTORM_DU_JOUR to get a lot more amplification in
| 2028 than in May of 2025, which is the same pattern as
| happened in scandal A's emails.
|
| She was Secretary of State from 2009 to 2013. We heard a
| ton about the scandal in the 2016 election cycle [when it
| was convenient and useful politically], not in 2009-2013.
|
| I'm friends with several retired military officers. They
| tend towards red, but they're _absolutely incensed_ over
| the Hegseth topic, especially the ones who flew pointy
| jets.
|
| N-gram viewer: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?cont
| ent=Clinton+email+...
| 2419410794 wrote:
| > If you read the article, there are both
| classified/secured and unsecured lines available at the
| station. So what specifically is the problem the
| administration uses Signal together with unsecured comms?
|
| There are two issues. First, official communications about
| the workings of government ought to occur on government
| platforms, so that there's a permanent record for the
| communication. (As others have mentioned, this is required
| by the Federal Records Act.)
|
| Second, the Pentagon has limited phone service and limited
| public internet access by design. The other computers in
| the office, while for unclassified material, are not (as I
| understand it) connected to the public internet like
| Hegseth's personal laptop is.
|
| That said, I have no issue if Hegseth wants to use Signal
| to make dinner plans with other government officials.
| logifail wrote:
| > First, official communications [..]
|
| Unfortunately the list of politicians who either don't
| care about records of their communications being properly
| kept, or who went out of their way to keep their comms
| "off the books" is long.
|
| We should want to hold all of them to account, not just
| this one.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _We should want to hold all of them to account, not
| just this one_
|
| We should and do. FBI investigated Clinton because of her
| emails.
| logifail wrote:
| > We should and do
|
| The European Commission ended up in court trying to keep
| Ursula von der Leyen's messages secret 'claiming that the
| texts were "by [their] nature short-lived" and were not
| covered by the EU's freedom of information law'
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/feb/10/i-a
| ske...
|
| https://www.politico.eu/article/ursula-von-der-leyen-eu-
| comm...
|
| Outcome? A(nother) nothingburger.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _European Commission ended up in court trying to keep
| Ursula von der Leyen 's messages secret 'claiming that
| the texts were "by [their] nature short-lived" and were
| not covered by the EU's freedom of information law'_
|
| Sure. They still wound up in court. Hegseth hasn't had to
| go to court to defend himself because he hasn't even been
| investigated. You really have to go back to the Austro-
| Hungarian Empire to find these levels of exploitable
| ineptitude at the highest ranks of a major military
| structure.
| logifail wrote:
| > Sure. They still wound up in court.
|
| That case was brought by the New York Times, not any
| oversight body or investigative function of the EU, which
| makes it even more cringe-worthy.
|
| "The European Commission faced an embarrassing grilling
| for almost five hours on Friday as top EU judges cast
| doubt on the executive's commitment to transparency on
| the Covid-19 vaccine negotiations. The EU institution
| defended itself in a packed EU court in Luxembourg in the
| so-called Pfizergate case, brought by the New York Times
| and its former Brussels bureau chief Matina Stevis-
| Gridneff."
|
| The NYT is presumably welcome to try to take Hegseth to
| court?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _The NYT is presumably welcome to try to take Hegseth
| to court?_
|
| The _Times_ sued to get Von der Leyen to share
| information. Hegseth already does that because he 's an
| idiot. To my knowledge, SecDef isn't subject to FOIA in a
| meaningful way.
| logifail wrote:
| > The Times sued to get Von der Leyen to share
| information
|
| ...and failed
|
| > To my knowledge, SecDef isn't subject to FOIA in a
| meaningful way
|
| ...and as it turned out, neither is VdL.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| The case didn't succeed in producing the records. But the
| process uncovered a lot of shit.
|
| But again, you're comparing non-disclosure to
| irresponsible disclosure. VdL didn't send _highly_
| sensitive scramble times to a rando.
| logifail wrote:
| (With apologies if this appears provocative)
|
| Is there evidence that SECDEF 'acted with criminal
| intent'?
|
| We've already clarified that '[being] extremely careless'
| is not enough for a court case.
|
| [I have a mental picture of a Venn diagram with three
| circles: "Politicians", "Idiots" and "Criminals"...]
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Is there evidence that SECDEF 'acted with criminal
| intent'?_
|
| Tough to say if there's no investigation!
|
| > _We 've already clarified that '[being] extremely
| careless' is not enough for a court case_
|
| Investigation.
| logifail wrote:
| > FBI investigated Clinton because of her emails.
|
| Correct, and this was the outcome:
|
| [FBI director James Comey said] "Clinton had been
| 'extremely careless' but recommended that no charges be
| filed because Clinton did not act with criminal intent,
| the historical standard for pursuing prosecution"
|
| Is '[not] acting with criminal intent' really the
| standard we think we want to hold our elected officials
| to?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Is '[not] acting with criminal intent' really the
| standard we think we want to hold our elected officials
| to?_
|
| Yes, _mens rea_ is a deeply-precedented standard that 's
| a good default.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mens_rea
| logifail wrote:
| > Yes, mens rea is a deeply-precedented standard that's a
| good default
|
| (From the other side the pond) it does seem that legal
| standards such that one are applied very selectively in
| the USA, apparently depending heavily on the political
| leanings of those involved in any (potential) case.
|
| On the other hand, at least you do actually run elections
| to pick your POTUS, this side of the Atlantic we get the
| President of the European Commission based on a back-room
| deal and a Soviet-style "vote" in the Parliament with no
| choice. To top it off, when she first got the job in
| 2019, VdL wasn't even a candidate for it during the
| immediately preceeding European elections.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _what specifically is the problem the administration uses
| Signal together with unsecured comms?_
|
| The DoD kit makes it a _little bit_ harder to add randos to
| chats where one needlessly posts tactical air strike
| details.
| zmgsabst wrote:
| Like emails?
| iambateman wrote:
| Great question, thanks for asking.
|
| My point is that "make liberals sad" is also a stated policy
| goal of this administration.
|
| I think this article is about one of two things...either
| there is a possibility that SecDef using Signal represents an
| ongoing, material national security crisis that should be a
| concern for all Americans...or it's really the author
| grieving for a time when they felt safer because the strict
| protocols of confidentiality signaled (pun intended) a sense
| of seriousness about government secrets.
|
| If this is a material security threat, I need a lot of
| writers to explain why because most people don't know. If
| it's a sad liberal, the result will be counter-productive and
| large numbers of people-in-power will read this article as a
| win for their team.
| ineedasername wrote:
| The fact that everyone in the country knows specific
| details of what and how he communicates, is a national
| security crisis. If signal was secure and/or he was
| following reasonable precautions, _no one would know
| anything about this issue_.
| billiam wrote:
| Clown take. The use of Signal or any app on a non-secure
| device by SecDef for what we know he messaged about in his
| office is absolutely a primary national security threat.
| Firing offense for any senior Pentagon official dealing
| with highly classified traffic. Nothing to do with
| politics.
| CapricornNoble wrote:
| Agreed. I thought Lloyd Austin should have been fired for
| going into surgery without advising his deputy or any of
| his staff of the risks, and his deputy should have been
| fired for taking over for him.....without leaving her
| vacation in Puerto Rico.
|
| https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/timeline-key-figures-
| found-l...
|
| I think SecDef Hegseth is actually an even bigger
| disaster than SecDef Austin. That said....I think the
| Deep State/ military industrial complex/ Israel lobby is
| trying to get Hegseth fired because he's one of the Big 3
| (Vance/Hegseth/Gabbard) opposed to going kinetic with
| Iran. But he's making it _really_ easy for his
| adversaries, because he legitimately sucks at some
| foundational skills for management at his level.
| rl3 wrote:
| > _If this is a material security threat, I need a lot of
| writers to explain why because most people don't know._
|
| Because personal smartphones aren't considered secure for
| protecting classified information. Signal in and of itself
| _might_ be fine when used properly, but it doesn 't matter
| when the underlying platform is consumer-grade security.
| The risk of side-channel attacks is astronomical.
|
| > _My point is that "make liberals sad" is also a stated
| policy goal of this administration._
|
| > _If it's a sad liberal, ..._
|
| I'm not sure any of that furthers whatever argument you're
| trying to make. Signal being used in that manner didn't
| only violate a myriad of established protocols, but it was
| straight up illegal on top of it. In any normal political
| climate we would've seen resignations from day one,
| regardless of party.
| intermerda wrote:
| I don't understand it either. It's not as if you can
| accidentally message war plans to unauthorized parties on
| Signal.
| ineedasername wrote:
| "We are currently clean on OPSEC." -Pete Hegseth
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| The issue is that it has all been done with great incompetence,
| and with apparent glorification of ignorance as a sign of
| bravado. I, for one, want serious people in charge of my
| defense, not sycophants more concerned with their stage makeup,
| hair, fitted suit, and with 'owning the libs' than defending
| our nation.
| 2419410794 wrote:
| > Has Congress made it illegal to use an off-brand messaging
| app for secure communications?
|
| Yes. The law requires that classified information be handled
| under certain standards.
|
| > _Why_ is it insecure?
|
| Classified data is being transmitted on an unsecured device. If
| Hegseth's personal phone has Uber, Tinder, ... whatever apps
| installed, that software is running on a device that's contains
| national secrets.
|
| Systems which handle classified data are meant to be airgapped
| from the normal internet/normal software.
|
| The issue is not that signal is insecure, but rather that
| sensitive government information demands additional precaution
| (e.g. airgapping).
|
| There's a separate issue that there are legal requirements for
| maintaining records of government communication. Using a
| personal device (especially with disappearing messages) is
| illegal since it doesn't maintain this documentation.
|
| Additionally, classified information is tracked to see who read
| it and when. In the event of a security leak, this can help
| isolate where the leak happened. If the information gets posted
| on Signal, then there's nothing more that can be tracked.
|
| > For better or worse, he is the Secretary of Defense...The man
| we've entrusted to help coordinate our national defense.
|
| That's not the way rule of law works. The Secretary of Defense
| doesn't get to _decide_ we're doing things differently now. His
| actions, as well as the actions of his staff, are bound by the
| laws that congress has passed.
|
| > We need to start from the presumption that the people-in-
| power don't care that it's always been done this way...in fact,
| they have a ton of pressure to be different. But, in some
| cases, these people may be willing to listen to reasonable
| arguments which clearly establish _why_ using Signal is
| unreasonably worse than using US Government Issue messaging.
|
| The onus should not be on the general public to convince the
| Secretary of Defense to adhere to _bog standard_ requirements
| for handling sensitive information. If he has an idea, "I
| think using Signal on my personal phone to discuss imminent
| military actions is better than using a secure line," he could
| push that idea forward. Have the Pentagon's security staff
| evaluate the idea. Instead, he simply did it.
| glaucon wrote:
| > What is the probability that China is reading these messages
| in real-time
|
| Real-time might be nice but there's value in reading material
| at this level with almost any delay.
|
| In 1949 a US counter-intelligence program(me), the Venona
| project[1] decrypted Soviet cables from 1945 which made it
| almost certain the First Secretary to the British Embassy in
| Washington DC [2] was a Soviet asset. That wouldn't have
| happened if the Soviets hadn't misused their channels of
| communication.
|
| [1] https://www.osti.gov/opennet/manhattan-project-
| history/Event... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Philby
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| The issue is much deeper and more concerning. They've been
| using Signal like this across multiple administrations because
| the "official" tools are broken to the point of being almost
| useless. Signal has been one of the major workarounds.
|
| It isn't enough to say "don't use Signal", at some point they
| need to address the reality that there are no functional
| alternatives.
| troyvit wrote:
| The article dissects what's on Hesgeth's desk behind him.
| First, there's a personal computer there connected to the
| open web. The article says, "He wanted this computer to use
| the messaging app Signal, which is the preferred method of
| communication among Trump's government officials."
|
| Right next to that computer is a "Cisco IP Phone 8851 with a
| 14-key expansion module." That phone "connects the President,
| the National Security Council, Cabinet members, the Joint
| Chiefs of Staff, intelligence agency watch centers, and
| others." IOW everybody ostensibly on that Signal chat except
| the editor of The Atlantic.
|
| So now I'm questioning what "functional" means in this
| context. Does it mean "A thing I can type into while I'm at
| my desk and can continue to use while I'm taking a dump as
| long as I poop in public wifi", or does it mean "a thing that
| brings all top staff together to truly "have op-sec"?
|
| Reading further it looks like he also had access to "SecDef
| Cables", which provides " interoperable, certified and
| accredited, multi-security level voice, video, and data
| services."
|
| So there are functional alternatives, especially considering
| the functions I personally thought our government was looking
| for. Maybe they prioritized a safe space for Waltz to use his
| favorite emojis instead?
| h4ck_th3_pl4n3t wrote:
| Regarding Signal:
|
| Check out what happened to the Signal FOSS fork.
|
| Then check out what Molly is doing, and why.
|
| Personally I'd favor Briar over Signal any day.
| vkou wrote:
| Anyone in the military who did this, and didn't have the
| president personally protecting him would be cooling his heels
| in an 8x8 cell in Fort Leavenworth for a _very_ long time.
| mcfedr wrote:
| Why are your police not investigating this? The guy is actively
| breaking the law
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| Because Trump does not investigate himself, and the once
| independent Attorney General is now just another political arm
| of Trump, but with prosecutorial power and discrtion. We are in
| dark times.
| slt2021 wrote:
| always have been, its just current admin is less subtle about
| it
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| So you say, but I've seen plenty of independence...see
| Trump's first term for some examples.
| Loughla wrote:
| And you have hit the nail on the head for how Trump is
| operating this term.
|
| How can he do these things?
|
| Turns out they all could've, they just chose not to.
|
| Maybe we should strengthen the checks and balances, and
| Congress shouldn't abdicate ANY of its authority to the
| president. Maybe the system should work how it's supposed
| to instead of how is easiest.
| kube-system wrote:
| > How can he do these things?
|
| > Turns out they all could've, they just chose not to.
|
| That's not really the case, there are plenty of actions
| which he has _tried to implement_ but have been blocked
| by courts.
| jdminhbg wrote:
| > the once independent Attorney General
|
| This has never been the case; JFK appointed his little
| brother AG. The problem is that the Congress should be
| investigating and prosecuting the president but will not.
| intermerda wrote:
| > This has never been the case;
|
| Independence of the Justice Department has been the norm
| since and because of Watergate.
| jdminhbg wrote:
| It's been a nice kind of fig leaf, but constitutionally
| the president is the AG's boss, so it doesn't make any
| sense for the AG to investigate the president. There's an
| entire branch of government given this power in the
| Constitution, they've just decided they don't want it.
| xp84 wrote:
| Exactly. Congress doesn't want any of their duties. War
| declaration? Nah, let the President do it and call it
| "not a war." Budget? Well, technically we'll appropriate
| funds, but we'll only do a big CR once in a while. Tariff
| policy? Nah, let the President do it all with the
| "national security" loophole, no matter how absurd.
| Impeachment and removal? Well, not when it's your party's
| guy.
|
| For all the hate Trump gets, it's Congress who's created
| and who props up this monarchy.
| vkou wrote:
| Except that this Congress was hand-picked by him, since
| he purged anyone who would push back.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Could you point to say 3 concrete examples where he
| purged a legislative candidate or removed an elected
| legislator?
| DFHippie wrote:
| I believe "purged" here means primaried or threatened to
| primary. I'm sure you know of certain famous examples.
| Here are some recent headlines:
|
| https://www.scrippsnews.com/politics/president-trumps-
| first-...
|
| https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/06/politics/cornyn-texas-
| senate-...
|
| This list will contain more examples:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Republicans_who_opp
| ose...
| idle_zealot wrote:
| Judges _are_ investigating and holding trials. The Executive is
| being obstructive and outright ignoring court orders. Rule of
| law and the balance of powers have collapsed. Turns out that
| running a decade+ long misinformation campaign to sow distrust
| of all legal institutions, as well as expertise and
| professionalism in general is sufficient to topple the world 's
| oldest democracy. If only there had been _any_ effective
| counter-messaging things may have been different, but that 's
| impossible with our "left" hollowed out by capital.
| foota wrote:
| If you're not aware, these are federal laws, and the force
| responsible for investigating and arresting people who break
| them are a part of the executive branch.
| Morizero wrote:
| And the top executive is arguing that they are only
| accountable to him
| hypeatei wrote:
| And the attorney general just confirmed in a cabinet meeting
| that the U.S. marshals would not be arresting any of them
| (marshals handle court orders, e.g. if you're in contempt)
| woah wrote:
| If you really want to blow your mind, think about the fact
| that Hunter Biden was being prosecuted by the DOJ run by Joe
| Biden, just a few months ago. Can you imagine anything like
| that happening in the Trump administration if a Trump family
| member was accused of a crime?
| t-3 wrote:
| How many politicians have you seen blatantly breaking the law
| like this and having no problem? It happens over and over
| again. A lower-level flunky would be in prison, but a political
| appointee is going to be just fine, forced resignation is the
| worst that could possibly happen to him. Our system is just
| that corrupt. The same thing happens with leaks - politician or
| cabinet member leaking is normal, rando bureaucrat leaking is
| enemy of the state.
| gotoeleven wrote:
| My understanding is that the use of signal started during biden's
| term. Is this not true?
| whattheheckheck wrote:
| Nope
| intermerda wrote:
| Not true at all. The use of Signal started during Obama's first
| or second term. While the app's first release was during his
| second term, it existed under various names and forms way back.
| Wikipedia has a great article on its history.
|
| I personally started using signal some time around 2018 and I'm
| sure there were millions of users by the time Biden began his
| term.
| mmooss wrote:
| I thought the GP means that goverment officials such as the
| Secretary of Defense started using Signal during Biden's
| administration (though with no basis for that offered, yet).
| gotoeleven wrote:
| This is what Im talking about.
|
| https://www.snopes.com/news/2025/03/27/biden-authorized-
| sign...
| mmooss wrote:
| Right. They also use cell phones and send emails. The
| difference is, from the Snopes article:
|
| _"... it explicitly did not allow use of Signal to
| communicate "non-public" Department of Defense
| information, which would have included the conversations
| Trump administration officials had in their group chat."_
| rcbdev wrote:
| You must be intentionally acting dense.
| intermerda wrote:
| You must be used to not getting a clue.
| mmooss wrote:
| Do you have any evidence?
| gotoeleven wrote:
| https://www.snopes.com/news/2025/03/27/biden-authorized-
| sign...
| mmooss wrote:
| Very different. See my response here:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43859373
| cosmicgadget wrote:
| Are you being intentionally nonspecific? The use of Signal for
| some purpose doesn't somehow mean it is appropriate for any
| purpose.
| TiredOfLife wrote:
| During Obama they used a shared Gmail account by passing
| messages using the drafts feature.
| collingreen wrote:
| Who is "they"?
| vkou wrote:
| The director of the CIA sending sexts (and as it later
| turned out, classified materials) to his mistress.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petraeus_scandal
|
| He was fired the day after it reached Obama's desk, and
| eventually got a slap on the wrist and two years'
| probation.
| collingreen wrote:
| Thanks for the link! It looks like this affair over
| webmail sparked a lot of investigation and resulted in a
| firing, two years probation, and a $100,000 fine. That
| sounds like a great start for this kind of thing and they
| were just talking dirty, not actively sharing mission
| details!
|
| Overall, yes let's please investigate and appropriately
| punish wrongdoing at all levels.
| jmyeet wrote:
| Where is the "but her emails" crowd now? There are three main
| issues here:
|
| 1. The Defense Department bans the use of Signal for everybody
| else. Why is that? Why is the Secretary exempt?
|
| 2. As we've seen it's pretty easy to add unauthorized people to
| what should be secure communication channels where classified
| information is shared; and
|
| 3. There are laws around the preservation of governmental
| records. Expiring Signal messages seems like it's intentionally
| meant to circumvent these legal requirements ie it's illegal.
|
| We're only 100 days in. We've got 1200 more days of this.
| Supermancho wrote:
| > Where is the "but her emails" crowd now?
|
| Same place everyone else is now. Nobody cares about the
| flagrant violations by the executive. This is the foxes walking
| around freely now.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| Nobody? Including yourself?
| jmull wrote:
| That's a common idiom which isn't literal. (Obviously?)
| iszomer wrote:
| _Because this is my United States of Whatever!_
| nonethewiser wrote:
| The implication is that either he doesnt care, or he
| does. So I guess he does. I just didn't get the vibe that
| he wanted Hillary to be held accountable for her emails.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Re: 1. If a team at work has a long-standing policy implemented
| by and applying only to that team and I come in as the new team
| lead, I can change that policy.
|
| NB: I'm not arguing that this change in policy was done after a
| careful Chesterton's Fence analysis and weighing of all
| relevant factors, but it would seem stranger if a new leader
| _couldn't change_ any policies than if they can.
| sjsdaiuasgdia wrote:
| But did they change the policy, or did they do whatever
| because they felt like it regardless of what the policy said?
| A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 wrote:
| Huh? I am still here and I am still annoyed by both. If
| anything, people who opposed 'but her emails' crowd to
| sufficiently penalize Hillary, made the current situation
| possible to begin with.
|
| edit: To the lazy down voters. Address the 'my side never does
| anything wrong' issue and I might concede.
| mmooss wrote:
| Let's pretend you work for a non-US state intelligence agency.
| How would you find Hesgeth's personal computer in his office on
| the public Internet? A genuine thought experiment.
| o11c wrote:
| Write an article that he's likely to be interested in reading,
| spread the link, then mine the browser data just like every
| other website.
| wmf wrote:
| Yep. The CIA uses these same techniques to track foreigners
| of interest (e.g. Putin's entourage) so we should assume
| other countries are attempting to use similar techniques on
| American officials.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Literally just @ him on X. These are the moments of strategic
| ineptitude you hoard zero days for decades to score.
| Teever wrote:
| I don't want to derail the conversation too much with this
| but this is the kind of thing that blows my mind with
| seeing obscenely wealthy/powerful people like Musk and
| Trump on social media.
|
| At some level of wealth you reach a point where no one can
| get to you physically. You're completely physically safe
| and isolated and can't be hurt. That means that the only
| way someone can get to you is through communicating with
| you and making you hurt yourself.
|
| That means that social media is your only weakness. This is
| how adversaries can affect your plans and goals and disrupt
| your mind. Yet so many of these people seem so oblivious to
| this and are as terminally online as your average 4channer
| or facebook mom.
|
| Does this speak to some sort of weakness in these kinds of
| people or the addictiveness of social media?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Does this speak to some sort of weakness in these
| kinds of people or the addictiveness of social media?_
|
| They're online because their followers are online. Social
| media may be the actual lead pipes to our empire [1].
|
| So yes, they are absolutely weaker than leaders with
| digital hygiene. But the reason they're there is because
| the American public is similarly weaker.
|
| [1] https://penelope.uchicago.edu/~grout/encyclopaedia_ro
| mana/wi...
| Teever wrote:
| Sure, I get that there's utility in having an online
| presence, but these people are wealthy/powerful so they
| can afford to have someone do that work for them with the
| public non the wiser.
| sjsdaiuasgdia wrote:
| That wouldn't give that kind of narcissist the same level
| of satisfaction as they get from the army of sycophants
| clicking "Like" on their latest hot take.
|
| I think that direct connection is particularly attractive
| to the right kind of narcissist. Might be the best drug
| they've ever had.
| feisty0630 wrote:
| > Social media may be the actual lead pipes to our empire
| [1].
|
| In America, the lead pipes of their empire are the
| literal lead pipes still in use all over the country.
| WhompingWindows wrote:
| Sorry, you think it's impossible to hurt Trump? Are you
| forgetting the bullet that passed an inch from his brain?
| A crazy person with a gun can change history in a second,
| and it would've been a terrible violent occurrence
| throughout society if it had come to pass.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| Agreed. As much damage as Trump is causing, I'm guessing
| that his assassination would increase the chances of an
| even worse scenario: civil war.
|
| It would be a perfect psyop opportunity (I'm guessing) to
| trigger Trump's most enthusiastic fans.
| davidguetta wrote:
| Civil war when most people are hooked that much to medias
| and 60% obese is a really unrealistic development.
| tastyface wrote:
| I genuinely can't tell if it would lead to civil war or a
| collective shrug, Brian Thompson style.
|
| Life is a reality TV show.
| mmooss wrote:
| There are many, many other possibilities - all the
| possibilities that almost always happen. How bizarre to
| limit your options to those two things.
| Teever wrote:
| At his level of wealth it's a choice to be that exposed
| physically, just as it's a choice to be exposed at that
| level psychologically is my point.
|
| Someone with Trump's level of wealth could retire to an
| island and be like Elvis in his later years only dealing
| through people with intermediaries. They could have the
| best doctors, the best fitness regime and the best diet,
| and the best security and hundreds of miles between them
| and physical threats.
| punnerud wrote:
| You could locate the traffic to The White House using this
| triangulation trick:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42780816
|
| Title:"0-click deanonymization attack targeting Signal,
| Discord, other platforms"
|
| Maybe not 0-click anymore, but still applies if the user
| browsing the internet.
| overfeed wrote:
| Compromise the device of one of his contact and send him a
| juicy link via telegram that renders "Error: Not viewable on
| mobile" when opened a phone. Bonus points if the link has 0-day
| malware dropper
| mmooss wrote:
| > Compromise the device of one of his contact ...
|
| Yes, I should have thought of that old and obvious one. It
| opens up a universe of possibilities.
| rasz wrote:
| I would make Witkoff sit on his ass in hotel for 8 hours while
| my team one room over wirelessly breaks into his phone and gets
| into those Signal chats.
|
| https://news.sky.com/story/trumps-fixer-was-made-to-wait-eig...
|
| His personal PC? Send Big Ballz his way to do some upgrades
|
| https://www.npr.org/2025/04/15/nx-s1-5355896/doge-nlrb-elon-...
|
| maybe a free Starlink dish
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/17/us/politics/elon-musk-sta...
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| This assumes that the patsy needs to never discover that his
| device was compromised.
|
| I'm guessing there are a few scenarios where they could be
| tortured / blackmailed into compliance, even if it meant that
| the DoD would know about it in a day or two, and it would
| still be worth it.
|
| E.g., shortly before a real fight over Taiwan began.
|
| I really, really hope Hegseth gets his OPSEC act together,
| yesterday.
| mmooss wrote:
| Once they're in, often professionals will create many forms
| of hidden access and then remove evidence of the initial
| breach.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| You would just send him a link in a Signal message. His phone
| number is widely known and he has Signal installed on his
| desktop computer.
|
| Signal's protocol secures the message in transit. But their
| desktop app may or may not have client-side vulnerabilities.
| And if he clicks a link, you're out of Signal and into the
| browser. If the link downloads a file, you're into the OS.
| mmooss wrote:
| There is a Signal social engineering vulnerability where the
| attacker gets people to click a link that links the
| attacker's device to the target's Signal account.
| gilbetron wrote:
| Drop a usb stick outside of his house. 100% he'll pick it up
| and plug it in. 1000% if you brand it with his favorite
| whiskey.
| standardUser wrote:
| If you're going to put a guy in charge who is completely
| unqualified and has a history of alcohol abuse you should at
| least make sure he's competent. It's actually very grating to see
| someone operating at this highest level of authority and treating
| it like its beneath them. It feels like we're watching history
| get written by the most entitled and inept among us.
| pjc50 wrote:
| The entire administration is selected for loyalty. In this
| environment competence is a threat.
| eviks wrote:
| Competence is part of qualification, so what you're asking for
| is not possible even in theory
| sillyfluke wrote:
| What kind of tickles me is that any new poltical thriller tv
| series or movie that posits that matters of state in the US are
| conducted by serious and knowledgable people is now virtually
| unwatchable for me. It's virtually impossible to suspend the
| disbelief required to enjoy something that is so far removed
| from the reality of today's politicians.
|
| (The recent cringe inducing Deniro series comes to mind)
| mycatisblack wrote:
| You should watch Civil War (2024) some time. The disbelief is
| shrinking on that one.
| mnky9800n wrote:
| I found that movie to be disgusting as it takes real
| footage of war horrors such as 20 days in Mariupol, suicide
| bombers, etc. and sanitizes that for American audiences.
| Using this visual style of movies like 20 days in Mariupol
| indicates the filmmakers watched those movies and thought
| that could make them buck. Then it gives you some bullshit
| feel good call of duty action at the end to go kill the
| president which is tonally different both in visual style
| and in the context of the narrative. And it replaces the
| horrors of war such as bombing maternity hospitals and
| watching pregnant women be dragged from the wreckage with
| stereotypical racist Americans. And it justifies all this
| because it tells the tale of some war time reporters and
| asks the question what if they are just adrenaline junkies
| which is why they do their jobs? Thereby undercutting the
| real value and heroism of those who report on these
| conflicts who are captured, tortured, and murdered (e.g.,
| Viktoriia Roshchyna). It does nothing to connect the
| audience with anything that is actually happening in the
| world and even serves to insulate Americans from the
| horrors of Ukraine and elsewhere while attacking
| journalists. I thought that movie was disgusting.
| decimalenough wrote:
| ...huh? Civil War is about a group of reporters in the
| final days of a future civil war _in America_ where a
| rather Trumpian president is about to be overthrown by
| rebels. It 's not "replacing" anything in Ukraine because
| it's an entirely different story than Ukraine.
| mnky9800n wrote:
| I am talking about the visual language of the movie and
| how it takes the style of documentary films like 20 days
| in Mariupol (a movie about the beginning of the war in
| Ukraine). not the narrative.
| A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 wrote:
| I am confused. What is your complaint here? That US
| author's stole the visual approach?
| mnky9800n wrote:
| I don't think the approach was stolen. It is fine for
| artists to take styles and ideas from other works and put
| them in their own. My point is that I found the film to
| be generally an affront to the suffering of people in
| actual, ongoing wars. It trivialized those experiences
| using them as a costume so american audiences could
| giggle in delight at the cinema without having to worry
| about the trappings of an actual war. And it did so all
| to tell a narrative that was somewhat against war-time
| journalism, painting their efforts as self absorbed and
| self serving. Like look at the way they film the death of
| the Kirsten Dunst, in this hero pose with camera in hand
| searching for the perfect picture. Contrast that to the
| actual life and death of someone like Viktoriia Rushchyna
| who was tortured and had organs removed or Shireen Abu
| Akleh who was allegedly shot in the head by a sniper
| while wearing a press vest. I simply found the film
| disgusting and if people disagree with me that is fine.
|
| Of course any film about war (or perhaps any topic) could
| be controversial to someone. The WW2 epics starring John
| Wayne or Sergei Eisenstein's Alexandr Nevsky are both
| examples where the directors twisted every detail and
| used every opportunity to present a political message
| that the viewer may or may not agree with. My view on
| this is that the director of Civil War, Alex Garland,
| makes statements with the film that I disagree with. He
| seems to not see the humanity in people, at least, in my
| opinion. The movie never doubles down on anything, there
| is no deeper examination of the characters in the film,
| they just are until they aren't anymore. This is similar
| to his 2018 film Annihilation, which is essentially a
| retelling of J.G. Ballard's The Crystal World, and all of
| those characters in some way lack a humanity (although I
| think this works much better in this film as you discover
| that each character goes into the zone to find something
| about themselves that is missing and what defines them as
| human to themselves). And similar to The Beach, the novel
| he wrote that was turned into the movie The Beach,
| starring Leonardo Dicaprio about vapid westerners
| partying in thailand, or 28 days later, the zombie movie
| he wrote directed by Danny Boyle. Garland seems to see
| life as cheap and meaningless across the books and movies
| he has created. He cares more about the visual trappings
| of the setting he creates than the humans who live there.
| In the case of Civil War, I find it offensive as it uses
| the visual style of documentary films about ongoing wars
| as a costume and set dressing for his movie. And this
| movie comes from a culture (American) that started a war
| in Iraq and has done basically no introspection as to how
| those decisions completely changed their society into
| what it is today. This also influences the Civil War
| film. The president is blamed exclusively for all bad
| things across america. The entire movie is about how
| everything is the president's fault but lets interview
| him to see why.
| A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 wrote:
| << My point is that I found the film to be generally an
| affront to the suffering of people in actual, ongoing
| wars.
|
| In a sense, you do have a point. I do happen to agree
| that it is rather hard to match the sheer.. what is a
| good word here.. brute reality of war. It is genuinely
| hard to do even with the best efforts, because, and this
| is kinda the point that I am slowly leading towards: that
| the reality has to meet the expectations of the audience.
|
| And this is where I think you seem to fail at something
| you chastise the director/producer/maker(whole crew?),
| who made that movie. You seem to think that all wars all
| the same at all times; that the esperanto of violence
| would immediately cause a rather quick, normative default
| 'war' state that anyone could recognize. But you would be
| wrong... I don't want to bore you with the details, but
| just to give an idea consider the thought that it was not
| that long ago that soldiers wore rather colorful uniforms
| ( for a reason ) and it is only more recent wars that
| made them try to blend into environment. And this is but
| one, small, but visible difference, which will define how
| a war "looks" like.
|
| << It trivialized those experiences using them as a
| costume so american audiences could giggle in delight at
| the cinema without having to worry about the trappings of
| an actual war
|
| Does it? I watched the movie, because I heard so many
| differing opinions that it got me curious. I try to
| abstain from most movies lately. Frankly, were it not for
| my wife, we wouldn't stream, but it is what it is.
|
| But more to the point, which scene seemed trivial to you?
| Maybe my experience is different, because I watched it
| home?
|
| On the other hand, I think, again, you misunderstand
| something. Just by default, most of us do make odd
| sounds, when were are nervous or uncomfortable ( yes,
| even laugh ). I do not want to assume too much, but I
| think even if you saw someone laugh, you might be
| misinterpreting something. My point is that, even if what
| you observed ( assuming it was observed ) is true, it
| is.. not the movie's fault. People's come in all shapes
| and sizes. I know I laughed hard that one time I thought
| I was close to dying.
|
| << And it did so all to tell a narrative that was
| somewhat against war-time journalism, painting their
| efforts as self absorbed and self serving.
|
| I mean.. I did not get that impression, but I think that
| one could be safely left to interpretation.
|
| << I simply found the film disgusting and if people
| disagree with me that is fine.
|
| I am not sure what to disagree with. That war is bad?
| That the movie does not capture its true horrors? That
| people suffer? You might be losing your point a little.
|
| << Of course any film about war (or perhaps any topic)
| could be controversial to someone.
|
| I didn't see it as controversial. It was mildly
| interesting, but that was it. I personally think too many
| read too much into it, while Bill Hicks probably would
| have called it for what it is.
|
| << The WW2 epics starring John Wayne or Sergei
| Eisenstein's Alexandr Nevsky are both examples where the
| directors twisted every detail and used every opportunity
| to present a political message that the viewer may or may
| not agree with.
|
| Ok. Now I know you are older than me. And to that I can
| only say: welcome to the cinema. It is not just WW2
| movies. Everything now has a message. Sometimes, it is
| ridiculously overt, sometimes not.
|
| << My view on this is that the director of Civil War,
| Alex Garland, makes statements with the film that I
| disagree with.
|
| Hwell, you probably should not have watched the movie or
| listened to him or both.
|
| << The movie never doubles down on anything, there is no
| deeper examination of the characters in the film, they
| just are until they aren't anymore.
|
| Well that.. is an interesting criticism. I was going to
| respond reflexively, but I am going to ask you a real
| question that ties back to your original complaint how
| movies don't show the true horrors of war.
|
| Would you agree, especially based on the lack of deeper
| examination phrase you used, that, the fact that all
| those deaths don't matter is in a sense a lot more
| terrifying than whatever deeper meaning you would want to
| add to those deaths. Meaningful death could mean
| immortality, but just not being there anymore is just
| that..
|
| << The president is blamed exclusively for all bad things
| across america. The entire movie is about how everything
| is the president's fault but lets interview him to see
| why.
|
| Again, I think you misunderstand the audience of that
| movie, because that part is a very clear reflection of
| the real life in US.
|
| I was going to continue, but I think it is clear that we
| disagree to a fair degree. Please let me know what you
| think. It may end up being an interesting conversation.
|
| For the record, I was fortunate enough to not have
| experienced actual war, but some of family members did so
| I got to hear some of the stories. I am not even talking
| about a trained soldier doing a tour in a foreign land (
| though that experience clearly gives you a close insight
| into what is happening in that time ). I am talking about
| the civilians just trying to survive.
| nathan82 wrote:
| Do you have a different example other than 20 Days in
| Mariupol? Because the filmmakers definitely didn't watch
| that and think it could "make them buck". Principal
| photography for Civil War took place the year before 20
| Days in Mariupol premiered.
| sillyfluke wrote:
| As I recall the battle lines were a bit awkwardly drawn for
| that one. The realism would increase if Cali and Texas were
| governed by the same party for some time in real life (as I
| recall they were allies in that movie).
|
| I would like to see someone take up the idea of Canamerimex
| Union in a movie for kicks -- that is, the idea of Canada,
| California and Mexico forming a union on the west coast
| (and maybe continuing down the east coast, with Canada
| bridging both coasts)
| nozzlegear wrote:
| > As I recall the battle lines were a bit awkwardly drawn
| for that one. The realism would increase if Cali and
| Texas were governed by the same party for some time in
| real life (as I recall they were allies in that movie).
|
| I actually liked that little detail and don't think it's
| _too_ farfetched. In real life those two states are
| currently on opposite sides of the political spectrum,
| but (iirc) we don 't actually know why the civil war
| started in the movie and it seemed careful to avoid any
| kind of left vs right ideology. California and Texas both
| have a rich history of calls for secession from the
| union, and both have heavyweight economies that could
| allow them to stand as their own countries. I think if a
| civil war did break out where both states disagreed with
| the Federal government, they'd be more likely than you
| think to form an alliance.
| righthand wrote:
| The war in the movie starts because authoritarian elected
| Potus Nick Offerman creates an economic division between
| the states which causes the states to group up
| geographically and ally on their divisions. California
| and Texas today wouldn't pair but given enough pressure
| they might to ensure they remain an economic power house.
| nerdponx wrote:
| I could imagine them seceding independently, but allying
| once seceded, especially if the CA secession government
| shifts more conservative.
| fireflash38 wrote:
| All it would take is one major disaster hitting the two
| most populated areas in CA to turn the state red.
| nozzlegear wrote:
| We're getting deep into the hypotheticals now, but that
| disaster would probably also wipe out what makes
| California such a formidable economic powerhouse -- maybe
| that would be one reason California would want to ally
| with Texas. The disaster might also kneecap the state's
| ability to field an effective military via the National
| Guard.
|
| But like I said, what was interesting to me about the
| movie was the fact that the two states were allies
| against the Federal government, without any mention of
| the modern day left vs right culture war. It's
| interesting to think about how such an alliance could
| come to be when we remove the things we suppose might
| spark a civil war _today_.
| sillyfluke wrote:
| If they had developed that whole backstory of an alliance
| (how loose is it, how close or apart are they politically
| despite the military alliance etc) it would have been a
| different, and in my opinion, much more interesting
| movie. It just felt it was leaning too much on the
| visceral war aspect of it, and that didn't contain enough
| originality to carry my interest frankly. Others have
| mentioned the style, I just found the style uninspired
| "Vietnam War nostalgia" including aping the glorification
| of photojournalists and the overemphasis on non-social
| media "respectable journalism" from older reputable
| Vietnam movies.
| mapt wrote:
| They currently vote different, but there are a few things
| they have in common.
|
| They're both ridiculously disenfranchised in the Senate.
|
| They've both got significant antivax elements.
|
| They've both got a very large Hispanic population and a
| portion of the Mexico border.
|
| They're both large states with large economies and large
| governments; Whereas the Connecticut governor leading the
| Connecticut national guard is numerically incompetent at
| protesting the actions of the federal government, or has
| to overcome a bunch of coordination problems with other
| governors, they aren't and don't. Whereas Trump was free
| to seize the COVID pandemic supplies that Maryland bought
| and paid for, and redistribute them as political favors
| to red states, it would have been more difficult to do to
| a state with six times the population and a power center
| far from Washington. Any effort to oppressively regulate
| interstate trade is diminished somewhere you're dealing
| with large amounts of intrastate trade; Conversely, any
| impediments on trade with and travel to Mexico are going
| to be substantial issues in both Texas and California.
| wickedsight wrote:
| I'm currently watching 24 again and it now feels even more
| like fiction than it ever did.
| mnky9800n wrote:
| 24 was a wonderful piece of American propaganda whose only
| goal was to make it seem like torture was okay.
| acdha wrote:
| Yes, it was sickening to watch a lot of people - even
| self-proclaimed libertarians - flip on torture during
| that period. There was a stark reversal from the 90s
| where the War Crimes Act was unanimously passed because
| back then anti-torture laws were thought of as affecting
| enemies like the Viet Cong, which lasted less than a
| decade.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Crimes_Act_of_1996
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| The jack bauer power hour is a strong memory of my
| childhood.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| People who talked about how 24 and Jack Bauer showed that
| torture was _good_ actually included a goddamned supreme
| court justice and I think the SecDef? The Bush Jr admin
| was openly fans of the show.
|
| Oh, and the cast were invited to have a panel at a
| conference for the fucking Heritage Foundation!
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_P52G4Kyq5M A look at the
| 24 world and it's insane violence by Jon Bois
| mnky9800n wrote:
| There should be a whole PhD dissertation in how 24 took
| over American culture and was used to justify heinous
| acts with some trite "the ends justify the means" hero
| porn on prime time.
|
| Edit: and don't forget this show was on fox.
| layer8 wrote:
| Yeah, the "justified torture" is when I had to stop
| watching.
| pjc50 wrote:
| On the other hand, the UK Spitting Image puppet series of
| sketches _The President 's Brain is Missing_ holds up
| remarkably well, due to being about Reagan.
| ryukoposting wrote:
| In that case, you may enjoy Veep.
| trhway wrote:
| Total endorsement for Veep!
|
| There is a significant difference though which even Veep
| didn't predict - the people in Veep were still riding in
| the well-oiled deep-state car, while those clowns today is
| actively destroying that car.
|
| Wrt. clowns - note that the most important Hegseth's
| staffer is his wife who was his producer back at Fox and
| basically does the same for him at the Pentagon.
| sillyfluke wrote:
| Yes, I am familiar. When the dust has settled, it should
| probably go down as one of the best written shows this side
| of the century.
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| And "Don't look Up!"
| mrbombastic wrote:
| Yeah it has ruined the old zombie movies where the government
| ends up the bad guy but a competent bad guy that makes
| unilateral decisions like quarantining a city or bombing a
| civilian center to contain infection. I am pretty sure they
| are gonna all be either 1) running around panicking with the
| rest of us 2) infighting and useless 3) denying the truth
| before their eyes if such a catastrophic crisis ever were to
| happen.
| ModernMech wrote:
| True, anything that doesn't approximate Idiocracy is now not
| realistic enough.
| verisimi wrote:
| True. But what did you think was happening before, with
| previous governments?
| whydid wrote:
| This is an example of the False Equivalency logical fallacy.
| kubb wrote:
| When you feel real love for your favorite celebrity
| convict, whose incompetence is beyond denying, you'll put
| your mind to work to search for any device that will enable
| you to excuse anything he does and who he nominates.
|
| People will talk about "politicians being incompetent", or
| act like actually anyone who has ever been in the office
| was like this. It's a pretty close and comforting way to
| deal with the reality of supporting a fraud without having
| to admit that you were duped.
| gadders wrote:
| "A false equivalence or false equivalency is an informal
| fallacy in which an equivalence is drawn between two
| subjects based on flawed, faulty, or false reasoning"
|
| What is the faulty reasoning here? Apart from "My side
| good, your side bad."
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| You can find incompetence in previous cabinet officials.
| This batch of cabinet officials has far more people who
| are far more incompetent and unqualified than any
| previous cabinet.
|
| The faulty reasoning is saying that "this is just like
| previous administrations". It's not.
| gadders wrote:
| But the previous president was in the advanced stages of
| alzheimers and struggled to form coherent sentences. I
| think he alone beats anyone in the current organisation.
| lesuorac wrote:
| The faulty reasoning is the conduct is different.
|
| Obama's and Hillary's blackberries were government
| procured devices altered by the NSA for security
| purposes.
|
| The current US defense secretary isn't doing that.
| gadders wrote:
| What about Hillary's personal email server?
| int_19h wrote:
| It was pretty bad, and there should have been more
| serious consequences for sure.
|
| Did they discuss details of upcoming military operations
| on it, though? Because that's a whole other level of
| wilful negligence.
| michaelt wrote:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/23/us/politics/23berry.html
|
| _For a High-Tech President, a Hard-Fought E-Victory
|
| For more than two months, Mr. Obama has been waging a
| vigorous battle with his handlers to keep his BlackBerry,
| which like millions of other Americans he has relied upon for
| years to stay connected with friends and advisers. (And, of
| course, to get Chicago White Sox scores.)
|
| He won the fight, aides disclosed Thursday, but the privilege
| of becoming the nation's first e-mailing president comes with
| a specific set of rules.
|
| "The president has a BlackBerry through a compromise that
| allows him to stay in touch with senior staff and a small
| group of personal friends," said Robert Gibbs, his spokesman,
| "in a way that use will be limited and that the security is
| enhanced to ensure his ability to communicate."
|
| [...]
|
| The presidency, for all the power afforded by the office, has
| been deprived of the tools of modern communication. George W.
| Bush famously sent a farewell e-mail address to his friends
| when he took office eight years ago.
|
| While lawyers and the Secret Service balked at Mr. Obama's
| initial requests to allow him to keep his BlackBerry, they
| acquiesced as long as the president - and those corresponding
| with him - agreed to strict rules. And he had to agree to use
| a specially made device, which must be approved by national
| security officials._
| philipallstar wrote:
| It's fascinating to see the difference in coverage.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _the difference in coverage_
|
| Because there was a difference in conduct. Obama
| consulted "lawyers and the Secret Service," "agreed to
| strict rules" and "use[d] a specially made
| device...approved by national security officials."
| Hegseth yelled YOLO before effectively tweeting target
| co-ordinates for our warbirds.
| darkerside wrote:
| It's fascinating to see the victim mentality on behalf of
| those who really don't need it
| yubblegum wrote:
| > "lawyers and the Secret Service,"
|
| Yeah, but that bit about "handlers" of the President of
| the United States could also be a data point here. That
| term is usually used in conjunction with 'asset'.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| That term is widely used in multiple contexts.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| The President is _supposed_ to be "an asset". An asset
| of the USA. They are subservient to an institution,
| despite being granted certain powers and authority.
|
| Nixon once said "If the President does it, it's not
| illegal", despite that being just nowhere to be found in
| the Constitution in any form, yet that statement caused a
| bunch of right wing think tanks and policy institutions
| and voters to agree so wholeheartedly that they spent 70
| years ensuring it would become reality.
|
| Significant portions of the Republican party have been
| trying to make the US a monarchy again for decades.
| verisimi wrote:
| There was also all that nonsense about Hillary's laptop and
| emails.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/sep/02/hillary-
| clin...
| vkou wrote:
| Generally there would be a few garbage appointments, not an
| avalanche, and more important people have been shitcanned for
| lesser scandals.
| 1oooqooq wrote:
| they at least had to pretend. and to pretend they had to let
| competent staffers do the work so they could take credit.
|
| even bush fooled everyone he was literate (save from the two
| times he held books upsidedown) while in office.
| gadders wrote:
| Stuff like this I would imagine:
| https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jan/20/hillary-
| clin...
|
| "Some of the classified emails found on former secretary of
| state Hillary Clinton's home server were even more sensitive
| than top secret, according to an inspector general for the
| intelligence community."
| enaaem wrote:
| Imagine Hegseth was a black woman...
| xanderlewis wrote:
| (It's easy if you try...)
| pjc50 wrote:
| UK comparison: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-
| london-47996907 ; black woman MP has a train can, everyone
| treats it as a massive scandal. I think someone had a survey
| once where they found that one third of all hate mail and
| death threats directed at UK MPs was aimed at her.
| gadders wrote:
| There are no excuse for death threats but she is widely
| acknowledged as borderline competent at best.
| prawn wrote:
| For anyone else confused by the phrasing:
|
| _" Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott has apologised after
| a photo emerged of her sipping a can of M&S mojito on a
| London Overground train."_
|
| Meanwhile in Australia, the opposition leader visited a pub
| during his campaign and the crowd yelled at him to drink a
| beer out of his shoe.
| SequoiaHope wrote:
| > It feels like we're watching history get written by the most
| entitled and inept among us.
|
| I suspect this is somewhat common in history (this is not meant
| to excuse it), but we can't tell because those people still
| wrote the narrative.
| twixfel wrote:
| So Trump will be looked back on as a good president? Highly
| unlikely, I'd say. Trump is quite uniquely awful in the
| history of the US.
| VierScar wrote:
| Japan's WWII history is uniquely bad but they don't learn
| about it.
|
| Can threaten authors with treason for negative books like
| he did in an EO recently. Change school curriculums. Then
| Maga can start revising history..
|
| Was the 2025 recession from tarrifs? Nah it was Biden's
| inflation, or Ukraine aid. Actually.. didn't China impose
| tarrifs on US and US just reciprocated?
|
| The reality will be altered and murky
| twixfel wrote:
| The problem is that everyone knows tariffs don't work.
| History will not be kind to trump nor his supporters.
| yobi0h wrote:
| > Japan's WWII history is uniquely bad but they don't
| learn about it.
|
| I see this claim form time to time, but the unsavory side
| of WW2 is thought in classes, although not without
| controversy [1]:
|
| _Despite the efforts of the nationalist textbook
| reformers, by the late 1990s the most common Japanese
| schoolbooks contained references to, for instance, the
| Nanjing Massacre, Unit 731, and the comfort women of
| World War II, all historical issues which have faced
| challenges from ultranationalists in the past. The most
| recent of the controversial textbooks, the New History
| Textbook, published in 2000, which significantly
| downplays Japanese aggression, was shunned by nearly all
| of Japan 's school districts._
|
| On the other hand, after the occupation, GHQ had imposed
| a press code [2], i.e. censorship of mass media, that
| undoubtedly had an impact on postwar Japan, so you could
| say that the point still stands.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_history_textbo
| ok_cont...
|
| [2] https://www.hiroshimapeacemedia.jp/?p=139387
| MostlyBad wrote:
| Having lived in Japan for 2 year and working in what one
| would hope being a very educated environment (Todai and
| Rikadai PhD candidates), I can personally account that
| the number of Japanese who actually know about that bit
| of their history is few. Culturally, they don't speak
| about this topic - and there if something is not spoken
| about then it does not exist. I would not be surprised if
| some teachers could simply not cover that bit of the
| programme without any consequences; Japan is specifically
| good at not following its own laws, when such laws have
| been written mostly to appease international observers -
| same with women equality and discrimination of minorities
| laws.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| > The reality will be altered and murky
|
| The reality is _already_ altered and murky. There has
| been a full-blown total information war over reality for
| several years now.
|
| But Trump and MAGA, even if they win, won't win forever.
| There will someday be an end to this particular attempt
| to impose unreality. Then history (or at least the
| history of _this_ ) can be told honestly. (Or at least
| without MAGA spin. It may have a new spin, but it will at
| least be a different one.)
| SequoiaHope wrote:
| Trump is awful and so was G.W. Bush and Reagan and Nixon
| and Andrew Jackson and even George Washington[1].
|
| We don't learn much in school about George Washington
| burning down Iroquois villages because we focus on other
| things. It's entirely possible that Trump becomes so bad
| that the people who remember his misdeeds get erased like
| so many Iroquois or Vietnamese people or gays with HIV
| under these other presidents.
|
| Here's a clip [2] of Noam Chomsky describing the war crimes
| of every post WW2 president. Many people still regard those
| people as good presidents because they ignore their
| misdeeds.
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Town_Destroyer
|
| [2] https://youtu.be/5BXtgq0Nhsc
| djaychela wrote:
| I think your suspicions are wrong. Yes, there are plenty of
| less competent people in history, but not to this level.
| Trump is an imbecile who just happens to be good in one
| direction (bullying and manipulation). Put him in an escape
| room on his own and he'd die in there. While I can think that
| many previous UK leaders have not been genius-level, I can't
| think of one who was anywhere near as stupid and beligerent
| as Trump. Other than maybe Liz Truss, who is thick as two
| short planks, but fortunately was ousted quickly. That won't
| be happening with Trump, and the US (and the larger world)
| will pay for these pocket-lining morons' mistakes.
| SequoiaHope wrote:
| George HW Bush, Reagan, Nixon, Andrew Jackson, George
| Washington. They all did horrible things and their
| incompetence or evil led to widespread suffering of people
| most of us have forgotten.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43860662
| int_19h wrote:
| None of the people you've listed approach the level of
| incompetence of Trump and his administration.
| thrance wrote:
| And this is coming from the supposedly "anti-DEI"
| administration. What a fucking joke.
| imglorp wrote:
| This is highly competent.
|
| One skirts the official tools like this to prevent
| accountability from a written record. Completely sensible if
| you're planning to be judged for your actions.
| layer8 wrote:
| There was a related HN submission yesterday that didn't get
| traction: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43846682
| wmf wrote:
| If some tech geniuses wanted to improve government efficiency,
| one thing they could do is create secure yet easy to use
| collaboration software. Maybe give the app a catchy one-letter
| name.
| beloch wrote:
| The other members of the five eyes had better be careful about
| what they share with the U.S. while this is going on.
|
| Public key encryption, like Signal uses, offers good security for
| most purposes. e.g. It's fantastic for credit card transactions.
| The problem with using it for transmitting state secrets is that
| you can't rely on it for long-term secrecy. Even if you avoid
| MITM or other attacks, a message sent via Signal today could be
| archived in ciphertext and attacked ten years from now with the
| hardware/algorithms of ten years in the future. Maybe Signal's
| encryption will remain strong in ten years. Maybe it will be
| trivial to crack. If the secrets contained in that message are
| still sensitive ten years from now, you have a problem.
|
| Anything sent with Signal needs to be treated as _published_ with
| an unknown delay. If you 're sharing intelligence with the U.S.,
| you probably shouldn't find that acceptable.
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| > The other members of the five eyes had better be careful
| about what they share with the U.S. while this is going on.
|
| Right, but this is nothing new: Hegseth is only a recent
| example of Trump's camp mishandling sensitive docs; I'll bet
| there's been an inner secret Four Eyes group since the the Mar-
| a-Lago bathroom official-document-archive story dropped years
| ago.
|
| What surprises me is that I expected Tulsi Gabbard to be the
| centre of mishandling allegations, not SecDef.
| 20after4 wrote:
| Maybe Tulsi is just staying out of the spotlight while
| Hegseth was hired to be in the spotlight.
| Discordian93 wrote:
| Tulsi is a competent mole, she knows better than to be this
| obvious.
| mapt wrote:
| It would be gauche to attack Tulsi Gabbard, because you would
| have to start with her connections to Russia's Assadist
| interests and to RT & the Russian web brigades, and we have
| established (we voted on it) that any connection to Russia is
| Old News and Not A Big Deal and Hillary's Dirty Tricks. But
| Hegseth? Hegseth leaked something to The Atlantic. A far
| greater threat than Russia.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| The circus has only been in town for a few months. This thing
| is, as scandals go, an almost comically dumb scenario - even
| by Trump whack pack standards.
|
| Tulsi is by all appearances more experienced in operating
| under the radar. That said, I'm sure she won't disappoint.
| femto wrote:
| Even if Signal's encryption implementation is secure, the
| device on which it is running probably doesn't satisfy TEMPEST
| requirements. Most consumer crypto is vulnerable in some way to
| a side-channel attack.
| wickedsight wrote:
| None of that matters if Signal is running on what is
| effectively a personal device connected to the internet. That
| device is now the weak link and is what intelligence agencies
| in many countries are now probably trying to get into.
| nicce wrote:
| Pegasus all the way down as an example.
| wickedsight wrote:
| Exactly. And Pegasus is what we know about. I'm sure
| there's plenty we don't know about that's used for more
| high profile targets, like former Fox News hosts.
| LargeWu wrote:
| It has almost certainly already been breached.
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| Signal has been used widely in US intelligence for many, many
| years. Nothing about this is new, though perhaps people that
| never paid attention are just now becoming aware of it. As for
| the rest of Five Eyes, they use WhatsApp the same way. I'm not
| sure that WhatsApp would be considered an improvement.
|
| It is clear there is a gap between how people imagine this
| works, or should work in theory, and how it actually works.
| 0xEF wrote:
| They're paying attention to Signal now because Hegseth
| doesn't know his ass from his elbow when it comes to tech and
| secrecy, instead acting like someone who has watched too many
| action films and thinks those are just like real life. The
| problem is not Signal. The problem is incompetence. Plain and
| simple. Because he blindly added persons to the group that
| probably didn't belong there, we now have the infamous "we
| have OPSEC" line, but instead of questioning why this idiot
| still has a job anywhere near the intelligence agencies,
| we're wasting our breath scrutinizing what is easily one of
| the best opens for secure comes _if the user understands how
| it works._
| chuckadams wrote:
| > why this idiot still has a job anywhere near the
| intelligence agencies
|
| Because competence is a disqualifying attribute in the
| kakistocracy known as the Republican Party.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| > Signal has been used widely in US intelligence for many,
| many years.
|
| For lunch orders and office softball schedules. Not top
| secret information.
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| This is a factually incorrect and very naive take. The same
| topic has been in the news in European countries too about
| the widespread use of WhatsApp when discussing secret
| information. It isn't just the US government, everyone is
| doing it.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| Do you have any sources? Because I don't see any
| information about secret information normally going
| through Signal or WhatsApp.
| satanfirst wrote:
| I'd give different advice.
|
| You shouldn't share state secrets with the US. They will be on
| or transferred between misconfigured cloud accounts. Some
| agency will eventually get authorization for analysis of them
| with an intention of financial espionage. The probable or
| confirmed loss of them will serve as a plausible deniability
| for the US when it misuses them.
| TiredOfLife wrote:
| The encryption is completely irrelevant if the information is
| sent directly to 3rd parties.
| concordDance wrote:
| This is silly, many countries use consumer messaging for
| internal communications. The UK government famously uses
| whatsapp for example.
| codethief wrote:
| What other type of encryption would you use for state secrets?
| You seem to be implying that governments and three-letter
| agencies use some vastly superior cryptographic scheme, whereas
| AFAIK Signal is as close to the state of the art as it gets.
|
| Also, to be clear, Signal doesn't use public-key cryptography
| in the naive way (i.e. to encrypt/decrypt messages) as was/is
| possible with RSA. It uses asymmetric key pairs to first do a
| Diffie-Hellman key exchange, i.e. generate ephemeral symmetric
| keys, which are then used for encryption/decryption. This then
| also guarantees forward secrecy, see
| https://signal.org/blog/asynchronous-security/ . (Add to that
| they incorporate an additional post-quantum cryptographic
| scheme these days, and I'm probably omitting a lot of other
| details.)
| henryjcee wrote:
| came here to say similar. GGP is another great example of hn
| people jumping in to make comments without having even a
| basic understanding of what they're talking about.
| Frustrating as it spreads misinfo about security which is the
| last thing we need.
| wang_li wrote:
| You're in a comment section where people are flipping out
| that there exists a computer on his desk that isn't
| connected to any DoD network but is connected to the public
| internet.
|
| Approximately 30,000 people go to work in the Pentagon
| every day. There are areas in the building that are SCIFs
| and they don't allow cell phones and laptops. But the
| majority of the building is an office building used for
| office building type stuff. Employees and contractors bring
| their personal cellphones and mobile devices in there every
| day.
| int_19h wrote:
| Are they using those devices to discuss upcoming military
| operations?
| rocqua wrote:
| Store now decrypt later still defeats diffie hellman if you
| capture the handshake. And quantum computers break diffie
| hellman as easily as RSA.
| jxjnskkzxxhx wrote:
| Quantum computers don't exist. If you want to talk about a
| hypothetical machine which might exist in the future you
| should state that plainly.
|
| Forcing the reader to parse thru the literary devices in
| order to get to the argument weakens the argument.
| BrawnyBadger53 wrote:
| Not them but you are replying on a thread talking about
| how it isn't safe in the longer future. That context was
| already built.
| kube-system wrote:
| Quantum computers absolutely exist and are commercially
| available. They're just not very useful at the moment.
| rtkwe wrote:
| It get exponentially difficult to add more qubits so it's
| not a given that we will be able to build one large
| enough to be a real threat to modern cryptography.
| layer8 wrote:
| "Quantum computers that break diffie hellman as easily as
| RSA", where "easily" means "not at all", do exist.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| Poking around it seems like pre shared keys are used for the
| secure stuff, so no public keys, no rsa. It isn't that signal
| isn't state of the art, it just makes compromises for
| usability.
|
| Edit: I didn't state something perhaps I should have.
| Symmetric key is considered more secure because public key is
| more complicated so more room for side channel mistakes, and
| the computation needes to break public keys doesn't scale as
| fast with key size. I am not an expert but that is what I've
| read.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| > Signal is as close to the state of the art as it gets.
|
| For their use case, which requires communication between two
| (or more) arbitrary users who never communicated before among
| millions of users, running on cheap commodity hardware over
| wireless connectivity to the internet.
|
| Leaving encryption aside, looking only at the network level,
| the DoD is capable of using a dedicated fiber line. Or rather
| a parallel fiber infrastructure.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Aside from that, there's base level authentication that it
| is Hegseth.
|
| Is this device using DoD PKI [0]?
|
| If not, then how is DoD managing access to it? Or is there
| a post-it with a local password stuck to it?
|
| [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Access_Card#Inte
| grate...
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| > What other type of encryption would you use for state
| secrets?
|
| Maybe it's the servers that is the problem.
| yusina wrote:
| How are the servers a problem in an end-to-end encrypted
| scheme?
| maxerickson wrote:
| The server could be recording the traffic for later
| analysis, and the contents revealed if the encryption is
| defeated.
|
| The encryption probably won't be owned up to the point
| where it is practical to decrypt traffic in bulk, but
| it's a valid thing to look at.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| The issue isn't the encryption. It's the unsecure device it's
| running on. Nobody has to waste time cracking Signal if they
| have backdoored one of the computers at the endpoints. The US
| government categorically doesn't use unapproved hardware for
| secure communications. This is something the Secretary of
| Defense is supposed to know about.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| Five eyes have been 'careful' about what they share since they
| got burned during the first trump presidency.
| dboreham wrote:
| They've been careful since before Perl Harbour.
| fidotron wrote:
| > Anything sent with Signal needs to be treated as published
| with an unknown delay.
|
| Oddly they have thought of that already, to the point all
| encryption systems in use in the gov are thought of in these
| terms.
|
| All that matters are the different assumed times to publication
| (weeks to years), and then treating the strength of measures
| involved differently based on what is reasonable for the given
| use.
|
| If you absolutely need something to never be published then
| encryption isn't the solution, and nor are computers generally.
| VWWHFSfQ wrote:
| It's the entire mandate of the NSA's Utah Data Center.
| Archive all the world's encrypted data until such a time as
| it can be decrypted when either the algorithms have been
| cracked or machines are powerful enough to brute-force.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center
| rurban wrote:
| More like until they'll get the keys
| fidotron wrote:
| Or maybe they found a way to outsource brute forcing the
| keys.
| moandcompany wrote:
| Concur. This is part of why Suite A ciphers (algorithms)
| exist, and the second component includes robust key
| management practices are so important (this includes
| hardening of devices to prevent leakage of signals that could
| compromise those keys or the cryptographic processes
| themselves).
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSA_Suite_A_Cryptography
| morkalork wrote:
| Even before thus, Ukraine learned painfully that it shouldn't
| share every plan and every detail with the US. It kind of looks
| like a sad, self-fulfilling proficy. Ukraine makes a plan, some
| details get leaked state side, plan goes disastrously. Ukraine
| plans another operation, doesn't say anything, the plan goes
| off ok. The US feels betrayed and Ukraine looks like an
| ungrateful ally abusing trust, the relationship is strained.
| The election happens and Trump points at how they're a bad
| partner yadda yadda. Ukraine is blamed for the outcome of what
| is originally an American problem, the US leaking like a sieve.
| dgrin91 wrote:
| Isn't that true for basically everything though? I'm not
| familiar with what other encrypted messaging systems security
| agencies use, but either (1) they store ciphertexts that can in
| theory be attacked later or (2) they delete their data after
| some time, but signal has that option was well.
|
| Obviously using signal here is a terrible opsec failure, I'm
| just not sure how what you are saying changes anything
| lxgr wrote:
| There are significantly fewer concerns about symmetric
| encryption, and while it doesn't scale to the size or budget
| of a service like Signal, it's exactly the type of thing the
| military is good at:
|
| Distribute a bunch of physical artifacts (smartcards) across
| the globe; guard a central facility (a symmetric key exchange
| center) extremely well etc.
|
| The military can also afford to run its (encrypted or
| plaintext) communications over infrastructure it fully
| controls. The same isn't true for a service provided out of
| public clouds, on the public Internet.
| perfmode wrote:
| The most secure method of communication is a one-time pad, a
| pre-shared private key.
|
| "A one-time pad (OTP) is considered theoretically the most
| secure method of communication -- when it's implemented
| correctly. That means: 1. The key (pad) is truly random. 2.
| The key is at least as long as the message. 3. The key is
| used only once. 4. The key is securely shared in advance and
| kept completely secret.
|
| When all these conditions are met, a one-time pad provides
| perfect secrecy -- an eavesdropper cannot learn anything
| about the message, even with infinite computing power."
| nicce wrote:
| And you need to do that on paper, not on consumer device.
| stevenwoo wrote:
| I worked at a videoconferencing hardware/software company. We
| provided systems to USA government offices like the NSA and
| State Department and provided an input for which they gave us
| hardware specs but told us nothing else, the customer did the
| final testing on it to make sure it worked as specified. We
| assumed it was for some sort of encryption method of which
| they revealed to us as little as possible, the hardware
| engineers who saw it tested only saw a large, portable black
| box. Otherwise our system used the standard encoding/decoding
| methods of the day in the 1990s.
| acdha wrote:
| Signal's encryption algorithm is fine. The problem is the
| environment in which it runs: a consumer device connected to
| the general internet (and it's hard to believe that someone who
| does this installs patches promptly). He's one zero day or
| unwise click away from an adversary getting access to those
| messages and potentially being able to send them. Signal's
| disappearing message feature at least helps with the former
| risk but runs afoul of government records laws.
|
| The reason why the policies restrict access to government
| systems isn't because anyone thinks that those systems are
| magically immune to security bugs, but that there are entire
| teams of actually-qualified professionals monitoring them and
| proactively securing them. His phone is at risk to, say, a
| dodgy SMS/MMS message sent by anyone in the world who can get
| his number, potentially not needing more than a commercial
| spyware license, but his classified computer on a secure
| network can't even receive traffic from them, has locked down
| configuration, and is monitored so a compromise would be
| detected a lot faster.
|
| That larger context is what really matters. What they're doing
| is like the owner of a bank giving his drunken golf buddy the
| job of running the business, and the first thing he does is
| start storing the ledger in his car because it's more
| convenient. Even if he's totally innocent and trying to do a
| good job, it's just so much extra risk he's not prepared to
| handle for no benefit to anyone else.
| crowcroft wrote:
| An obvious issue that I noticed. He sent the exact same
| message to two different group chats.
|
| I assume he copy pasted the message on his unsecured device.
|
| How many apps had access to that text in his clipboard?
|
| To me this isn't a technical problem with Signal, it's an
| opsec problem, and that's quite a lot harder to explain to
| people.
| acdha wrote:
| Signal does have a forward feature which would look the
| same but I don't know if he uses it.
| qingcharles wrote:
| Yikes. Especially if it's been near a Windows PC. If I have
| link-to-PC switched on then I have a shared clipboard
| between phone and PC...
| crowcroft wrote:
| Or if it's an iPhone & Mac pair it probably synced with
| iCloud.
|
| Surely they don't have iCloud on their devices though...
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> The problem is the environment in which it runs
|
| Too deep. The problem is the physical environment, the room
| in which the machine displays the information. Computer and
| technological security means nothing if the information is
| displayed on a screen is in a room where anyone with a camera
| can snap a pic at any time.
| acdha wrote:
| That's valid in general, but in the specific case being
| discussed is an official military facility with strict
| access control and I would assume it's regularly checked
| for bugs.
| jancsika wrote:
| > Signal's encryption algorithm is fine.
|
| At least in the case of the leak the culprit was the UX, no?
|
| Suppose a user wants the following reasonable features (as
| was the case here):
|
| 1. Messages to one's contacts and groups of contacts should
| be secure and private from outside eavesdroppers, always.
|
| 2. Particular groups should only ever contain _a specific
| subset_ contacts.
|
| With Signal, the user can easily make them common mistake of
| attempting to add a contact who already is in the group. But
| in this case Signal UI autosuggested a _new_ contact,
| displaying initials for that new contact which are the same
| initials as a current group member.
|
| Now the user has unwittingly added another member to the
| group.
|
| Note in the case of the leak that the contact was a bona fide
| contact-- it's just that the user didn't want that particular
| contact in that particular group. IIRC Signal has no way to
| know which contacts are allowed to join certain groups.
|
| I don't know much about DoD security. But I'm going to guess
| no journalist has ever been invited to access a SCIF because
| they have the same initials as a Defense Dept. employee.
| acdha wrote:
| Definitely - that kind of context is critical. Signal,
| iMessage, etc. are designed to let you securely connect to
| people you just met and don't share much with other than a
| phone number. The DoD has the opposite problem: they have a
| list of people they trust enough to have access and
| blocking anyone not on that list is a major feature. Beyond
| the fact that both are sending messages, these problems are
| less alike than they seem at first.
| ajross wrote:
| > Even if you avoid MITM or other attacks, a message sent via
| Signal today [...]
|
| That's not the threat model. The threat model is that Signal is
| a tiny LLC making an app on behalf of a foundation and open
| source software project. It's a small group of human beings.
|
| Small groups of human beings can be coerced or exploited by
| state-level actors in lots of ways that can't feasibly be
| prevented. I mean, if someone walks up to you and offers $2M
| (or blackmails you with whatever they found in your OneDrive,
| etc...[1]) to look the other way while you hand them your
| laptop, are you really going to say no to that keylogger? Would
| everyone?
|
| At scale, there are auditing techniques to address this. The
| admins at e.g. github are (hopefully) not as vulnerable. But
| Signal is too small.
|
| [1] _Edit: Or, because let 's be honest that's the scale we're
| playing at: straight up threatens to Novichok you or your
| family._
| Spooky23 wrote:
| There's a million threats. These are not particularly bright
| people. They are busy and not aware of or concerned with much
| beyond limiting their own accountability for when they
| inevitably get burned by their bosses.
|
| You and I know that. So do the adversaries. The biggest issue
| for them is going to be not tripping over the intelligence
| collecting agencies (or corps) already on their devices.
| cryptonector wrote:
| Signal's crypto is quite good. The problem with it is that it
| has zero authorization functionality, otherwise the government
| could use something like Signal internally. The lack of
| military-grade IM solutions is a problem.
| purpleidea wrote:
| I can only imagine two possible explanations:
|
| 1) He is avoiding some sort of corrupt signals intelligence folks
| from knowing what he's working on.
|
| 2) He is avoiding the government catching him in some corruption
| by avoiding the official records act.
|
| Anything else?
| elsjaako wrote:
| The same reason teenagers might use Instagram DMs to
| communicate about school projects - It's just the platform he's
| familiar with.
|
| Or the same reason I have Whatsapp - communication in my social
| groups happens there, and if I don't have it I get left out.
|
| Your explanations assume there is some deeper meaning, looking
| at the tradeoffs for each communication platform, and then
| coming to some rational conclusion. I don't think there's much
| evidence for that.
|
| The people around trump just happen to be used to using signal
| to communicate, and if Pete doesn't get on board he gets left
| out.
| Loughla wrote:
| Incompetence only applies if you're not running the literal
| federal government.
|
| We have to assume malicious intent. These people could start
| a nuclear war. They get zero flexibility or grace.
| jcon321 wrote:
| Like with a cloth right?
| vkou wrote:
| 3) He's an idiot who hasn't given it a shred of thought, and
| was hired for loyalty, not brains.
| hydrogen7800 wrote:
| I try to apply Hanlon's Razor to this administration, but
| it's hard not to occasionally entertain other explanations
| with the sheer volume of incompetence.
| ozmodiar wrote:
| I think that as someone's power and authority grows, the
| risks of applying Hanlon's Razor get too high. It's best
| applied to peers.
| vkou wrote:
| His power and authority prior to getting put in charge of
| the largest military in the world was being a talking
| head making bad calls on television, which is roughly a
| step above being a 'social media influencer'.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > It is remarkable to what great lengths Hegseth went to use the
| Signal app, because as defense secretary he has his own
| communications center which is specialized in keeping him in
| contact with anyone he wants. This center is commonly called
| SecDef Cables and is part of Secretary of Defense Communications
| (SDC) unit.
|
| ... but unlike Signal, SDC respects laws requiring accurate
| record-keeping. And that's why this bunch of lawbreakers want to
| use Signal. They want to evade any and all accountability once
| this administration is over.
| codeulike wrote:
| Not a fan of the Trump administration but I imagine the official
| pentagon communications systems must be extremely clunky and
| annoying, and about 20 years behind civilian tech.
|
| During the UK Covid-19 enquiry into gov decision making at that
| time it came to light that most of the UK cabinet were co-
| ordinating via Whatsapp groups. Again, I'm not a fan of Boris and
| Dom Cummings but this makes some sort of sense to me. I recognise
| the need for government teams to have quick convenient chat
| available to them. Things move too fast these days to wait for
| the next cabinet meeting or to arrange things via a series of
| phone calls.
|
| Similarly we can look back to Obama having to fight to keep his
| Blackberry in 2009 https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna28780205
| twixfel wrote:
| > but I imagine
|
| Do you know at all or are you just relying completely on your
| imagination to justify the Trump admin's actions?
| codeulike wrote:
| I dont like Trump but I'm interested in the idea of what
| technology we want our politicians to use if we actually want
| them to be functional teams. This seems like a topic that
| might be good to talk about on HN.
| graemep wrote:
| The British government was officially using Zoom for cabinet
| meetings during lockdown which was a whole lot worse.
| codeulike wrote:
| The whole world had to shift online with about 2 weeks
| notice, so I'll forgive them that. At the time I was kind of
| impressed to be honest that red tape didn't bring the govt
| machinery to a halt and that they were actually able to
| improvise a bit. But yes Zoom is not generally the platform
| I'd want them to use.
| graemep wrote:
| There were better alternatives and they had more time than
| that (when lockdown was possible but not enforced) to
| prepare.
|
| IIRC the French installed gov controlled Jitsi server. That
| plus a VPN would be a whole not more secure.
|
| If you do not have things in place I think "we need to
| discuss state secrets securely" would have been clearly
| sufficient to justify an exemption to lockdown rules.
| pjc50 wrote:
| > quick convenient chat available to them.
|
| And _unarchived_. It 's very convenient to not have to do
| things in meetings with minutes where people might later
| question your decisions. Or report them to the police.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| To be fair, quite a lot of in-person meetings among U.S.
| federal government leaders are private and do not produce
| minutes.
| codeulike wrote:
| Yes you are right and these people probably are crooks. But
| in principle I think politicans should be able to have
| private conversations. These used to happen in literal back
| rooms but these days everyone is geographically spread out
| and thats not so possible. Formal decisions should be
| ratified in official minuted meetings but informal chat
| should also be possible. Because people need to actually talk
| to each other in an unguarded way to figure things out
| sometimes. At the moment the principle seems to be 'anything
| that a politican types to anyone else should be archived for
| later perusal' and I'm not sure that thats going to give us
| better decisions.
| twixfel wrote:
| That's a different point. Currently it has to be saved. It
| doesn't matter how you feel about it. It's the law.
| codeulike wrote:
| "Is this politican bad" is not a very good conversation
| for HN, but "what technology should politicians be using
| to make them effective" is a good topic for HN, and thats
| what I'm trying to have a conversation about
| zimpenfish wrote:
| > [...] politicans should be able to have private
| conversations. [...] Because people need to actually talk
| to each other in an unguarded way to figure things out
| sometimes.
|
| Which works fine as long as there are no bad actors who may
| bribe, corrupt, blackmail, etc. Unfortunately that is not
| the reality we live in and one way[0] of counteracting the
| bad actors is to enforce transparency with things like
| "everything must be recorded and archived".
|
| [0] Sadly not 100% effective.
| codeulike wrote:
| Right but what is the cost of insisting that "everything
| must be recorded and archived". Are you going to strap
| recording devices onto everyone in congress? You have to
| have a mix of safeguards but also practicality, surely?
| upofadown wrote:
| The problem here is that the convenience is coming at the
| expense of proper identity management. SignalGate is a good
| example of the principle. Some Apple convenience feature helped
| the user by putting the phone number of the reporter into the
| addressbook under the identity of a government official. Signal
| then cheerfully used that incorrect phone number to add the
| reporter to the group chat.
|
| That 20 year old tech is simply more secure... specifically
| because it is less convenient. By doing things the way they do
| them they can enforce access to desired levels of security by
| controlling physical access to the equipment. With something
| like Signal, that access is entirely the responsibility of the
| user. The user will inevitably mess that up, particularly when
| things get exciting. ... and Signal is not even really all that
| good at preventing the user from messing the identity thing up.
|
| * https://articles.59.ca/doku.php?id=em:sg (my article)
| codeulike wrote:
| You are right, but I'd also say that high security brings a
| lot of friction that slows down decision making. Irrespective
| of Trump and his friends (whom I dont like) as a point of
| principle I think world leaders have to choose between secure
| and slow vs fast and risk of leaks. For most purposes, fast
| and risk of leaks is going to be more optimal.
| A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 wrote:
| I hear you both. Frankly, I think we could use a little
| friction in communication to slow it and the resulting
| decisions down. I don't know about everyone else, but I
| don't make best decisions on the fly.
| lukeschlather wrote:
| My kneejerk reaction is the same as yours, but the fact that
| they were using disappearing messages - they're using Signal to
| get around their legal reporting requirements. Even if they
| have other motivations, what they're doing is illegal.
|
| Also, I complain a lot about Teams, but my understanding is
| modern DoD basically runs on Microsoft, AWS, (also Google?)
| just the same as private companies. Probably not Zoom, which is
| unfortunate from a usability perspective but also wise I think.
| fads_go wrote:
| Behind, or aligned with different goals?
|
| Can you name a popular civilian tech that blocks adding random
| journalists to small chat groups? That includes strong identity
| guarantees? That meets compliance requirements around logging
| calls?
|
| Bloomberg might come the closest on this. Why don't you go out
| and price a Bloomberg terminal for yourself, at the grade that
| lets you trade options with other Bloomberg terminal owners
| over the chat interface?
| JensRantil wrote:
| Of course the guy needs to have an end-to-end encrypted direct
| line to the president. It's the president that runs the show and
| all decisions must go through him.
| lwansbrough wrote:
| I think a pretty good show would be something written like West
| Wing, where everyone takes themselves very seriously, but with
| rampant, blatant incompetence. Like, not funny at all. Nothing
| tongue in cheek, no winks to the audience. A drama of morons.
|
| Get me inside the minds of these freaks.
| jajko wrote:
| The office. In White house.
| toomanyrichies wrote:
| That's basically "Veep". You might also enjoy "In The Loop",
| "The Thick Of It", or most of Armando Iannucci's oeuvre.
| ryukoposting wrote:
| Veep. You're describing Veep. I guess that's more "assholes"
| than "morons" but there's plenty of both.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| Veep is a documentary.
| m_fayer wrote:
| "Burn After Reading": only adjacent to the halls of power, but
| a great portrayal of a majority of morons trying to impose
| themselves into a mostly-offscreen world of aghast
| professionals. It's a harbinger.
| Aeolun wrote:
| Maybe just let the man use Signal?
|
| If someone gave me a whole set of locked down _windows_ computers
| and a bunch of achaic phone lines and told me to use them in
| 2025, I'd also try to circumvent such inconvenience.
| Loughla wrote:
| Are you in charge of federal secrets?
| mikeyouse wrote:
| Those pesky archiving requirements put in place after the
| wanton criminality of the Nixon administration are likely
| unnecessary as well, right? Surely nothing's being said or
| planned in the auto-deleting threads that would be criminal,
| right?
| bdangubic wrote:
| I think they should just use X and post publicly, I don't see
| what the fuss is all about :)
| netbioserror wrote:
| I'm simply going to point out the blaringly obvious that has
| somehow missed the armchair commentariat for this whole narrative
| debacle:
|
| 1) DoD and other departments have either tacitly or explicitly
| approved the use of Signal for internal matters for several years
| now, with proper opsec.
|
| 2) You cannot govern exclusively from a SCIF, hence 1.
| khaki54 wrote:
| Exactly. Signal and Wickr are widely used, and default
| installed in some orgs.
| lantry wrote:
| Does "proper opsec" include adding random journalists to your
| chat, and sharing classified intel with your friends?
| netbioserror wrote:
| Did you read the transcripts?
| lantry wrote:
| If you're talking about the chat messages published by the
| Atlantic, yes, I did.
| derektank wrote:
| >2) You cannot govern exclusively from a SCIF, hence 1.
|
| If you have the resources available to the SecDef, you frankly
| should be able to. Mobile SCIFs are something private companies
| can provide off the shelf for a few hundred thousand dollars.
| That's a drop in the bucket.
|
| Obviously, nobody can or should spend all their time in one
| unless you're some kind of watch officer, but when handling
| TS/SCI material, there really is no reason for a principal to
| not have access to a SCIF within a moment's notice if they make
| it a priority. And there's no reason to be sharing TS/SCI with
| anyone that is not themselves in a SCIF. We have a
| declassification/reclassification process if information needs
| to be more widely disseminated.
| cryptonector wrote:
| This is nonsense. The government simply could not function if
| all classified data had to be born in SCIFs and kept in
| SCIFs.
| cryptonector wrote:
| More likely the government would simply stop classifying
| information.
| mrbombastic wrote:
| "With proper opsec" is doing a lot of work here, and I would
| presume one very fundamental piece is it is only to be used for
| non-sensitive conversations. Unless you are going to argue
| sharing attack plans ahead of the attack on a personal device
| is okay, which seems absurd on its face in a post-Pegasus
| world.
| netbioserror wrote:
| Did you read the transcripts?
| mrbombastic wrote:
| Yes, i am referring to Hegseth's texts specifically
| netbioserror wrote:
| The beginning of the transcript is relevant. What do you
| think is happening there?
| cryptonector wrote:
| > 2) You cannot govern exclusively from a SCIF, hence 1.
|
| (1) doesn't have to be Signal. It should be some "enterprise"
| solution that DoD can own and operate, and it should federate
| with the same thing used in other executive agencies, and the
| WH itself. And it should have military grade authorization
| (meaning labeled, multi-level security).
|
| That said, (2) is quite right: you cannot govern from a SCIF.
| SCIFs are mainly tools of control to access to long-ago
| classified information. New classified information cannot be
| born in a SCIF for the simple reason that SCIFs cannot scale to
| the needs of those who govern.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Somewhat related: does there exist a technology where I can
| encrypt something in a manner that it can only be decrypted after
| a specific future date? If theoretically possible, what would it
| take for something like that to exist? ie. "We'd need an
| authority to broadcast some ongoing pseudorandom number generator
| that can be trusted" or whatnot.
| TrapLord_Rhodo wrote:
| a smart contract on solana.
| fmbb wrote:
| Can't you just fork the chain?
| fidotron wrote:
| You might be on to something there.
|
| I was thinking of encrypting a secret in the structure of a
| Rust program so it can only be decrypted by compiling and
| running it.
| andrepd wrote:
| ? Where's the time component there
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Compiling a rust program!
| joncrocks wrote:
| Surely you would have to store something off-chain in order
| for it to be inaccessible until a given point in time.
|
| Unless you can predict the future, I'm not sure how you would
| generate a key that would be unknowable now but generally
| available in the future.
| enlyth wrote:
| What you're describing is a time-lock puzzle
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-lock_puzzle) and there are
| ways to do it but none of them are perfect
| myroon5 wrote:
| https://crypto.stackexchange.com/q/606/time-capsule-cryptogr...
| layer8 wrote:
| Not necessarily requiring encryption: Shoot it into space on a
| carefully calculated trajectory. Alternatively, send it as a
| laser pulse towards something that will reflect it back at the
| right time.
| flexorium wrote:
| I'm somewhat surprised to see that they use a KVM to switch
| between back and forth between a JWICS and SIPRNET. I would
| imagine it's a special KVM as it's essentially bridging the
| airgap between the two.
|
| I'm guessing that's the product in question:
| https://www.vertiv.com/490454/globalassets/products/monitori...
| khaki54 wrote:
| They use special secure KVM from the major vendors and they are
| tempest resistant meaning they are shielded from bleeding
| signals between devices. They also have devices that can use
| multiple levels on the same screen and keyboard! See Everfox
| TTC
| flerchin wrote:
| But what about her emails. /s
| pessimizer wrote:
| That throught-terminating cliche propaganda line generated by a
| bunch of campaign strategists at a whiteboard is what got us
| into this situation.
|
| The extreme bipartisan view is that government business done by
| public officials should be hidden from the public record at
| their whim, even with the explicit goal of avoiding FOIA.
| Democrats believe that this is not only justified but virtuous,
| because Hillary Clinton lost an election.
| Havoc wrote:
| I get that he's senior but surely someone else signed off this
| farce?
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| He's SecDef. AFAIK he calls all the shots within DoD's
| operations, as long as Trump allows it.
|
| I guess the Treasury Department could stop transferring funds
| into DoD accounts, but that seems unlikely.
|
| Perhaps he could be prosecuted for violating various laws, but
| that would _require_ action by the DoJ, which also seems
| unlikely.
|
| Congress could also hold Trump responsible for Hegseth's
| actions, but that also strikes me as unlikely.
|
| The past 9 years have been a really good education in why the
| Separation of Powers is important, and what's at risk when it
| doesn't function properly.
| TaurenHunter wrote:
| The sheer hypocrisy
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/sep/02/hillary-clin...
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jul/05/fbi-no-charg...
|
| Also:
|
| https://www.fbi.gov/news/press-releases/statement-by-fbi-dir...
|
| "To be clear, this is not to suggest that in similar
| circumstances, a person who engaged in this activity would face
| no consequences. To the contrary, those individuals are often
| subject to security or administrative sanctions. But that is not
| what we are deciding now."
| Chyzwar wrote:
| Classic whataboutism.
| HPsquared wrote:
| There's a fine line between whataboutism and precedent.
| inverted_flag wrote:
| I look forward to the FBI's thorough investigation of
| Hegseth then.
| daveguy wrote:
| I prefer the term trumpist douchery.
| afavour wrote:
| ...no it isn't? Whataboutism is when you redirect attention
| from issue #1 to unrelated issue #2 in an attempt to change
| the conversation topic: "forget that, look at this!"
|
| OP's comment was pointing out the similarities between issue
| #1 and issue #2. There's no dismissal.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| The dismissal is implied. And this behavior is endemic in
| modern reporting and political conversation.
|
| Novel idea: what if we focus on the exact issue that was
| originally brought up?
|
| 'Someone else did it, or something like it, sometime,
| somewhere.' I'm past caring about that -- because it's used
| too frequently to distract from the current issue.
|
| A. Hegseth broke the law and shared classified information
| on a system that wasn't approved for it.
|
| B. Or, he unilaterally declassified operational details
| without informing anyone or going through a normal process.
|
| It can only be one of the two above options, because the
| facts aren't in question.
|
| _Edit_ : But looks like National Security Advisor Mike
| Waltz will be taking the fall for this:
| https://www.bbc.com/news/live/crkx3ed5dn2t
| pessimizer wrote:
| > The dismissal is implied.
|
| Is it? I'd think that somebody who took Hillary's hidden
| 3rd party communications seriously would take these
| seriously too.
|
| The bizarre behavior is insisting that what Clinton did
| was trivial, but that this is a disaster.
|
| Also this emphasis on security is backseat driving from a
| bunch of people who want to attack Iran. The real problem
| with them using third-party communications is that they
| avoid FOIA.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Can you try responding to what Hegseth did without
| mentioning anyone else?
|
| It's a simple ask.
| wang_li wrote:
| Whataboutism is when you are trying to show a double
| standard because person A did a thing that you were upset
| about and person B did the same thing and you don't care.
| Asking why you care about a person doing a thing and didn't
| care when a different person did something different is not
| whataboutism.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| I agree with the GP on the definition of whataboutism,
| and think that you have described something with a much
| older term: "pointing out the hypocrisy".
|
| They both share in common that rather than continuing to
| talk about just one thing, you are now talking about (at
| least) two.
|
| But whataboutism is a diversion tactic that tries to
| shift the attention from behavior/event A to
| behavior/event B; pointing out the hypocrisy notes the
| similarities between behaviors/events A and B and
| contrasts the response.
|
| Both can be deployed in similar situations, but the
| motivations for choosing one over the other are
| substantially different.
| Chyzwar wrote:
| OP did not state his motivation, leaving it for open
| interpretation.
| CGMthrowaway wrote:
| Is a double standard good or bad?
| Chyzwar wrote:
| > The communication intent is often to distract from the
| content of a topic (red herring). The goal may also be to
| question the justification for criticism and the
| legitimacy, integrity, and fairness of the critic, which
| can take on the character of discrediting the criticism,
| which may or may not be justified. Common accusations
| include double standards, and hypocrisy, but it can also be
| used to relativize criticism of one's own viewpoints or
| behaviors.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism
|
| Both Clintons private email server, Pete signal chats and
| Trump documents stash in Mar-a-lago are equally bad. Lack
| of consequences signal erosion of "Law and order" in the
| US. It seems that US is now not different from third rate
| countries where last minute exceptions, insider trading,
| open bribery, secret police(ICE) and targeted prosecution
| is a new norm.
| comfysocks wrote:
| I agree that all three are bad and shouldn't be
| tolerated.
|
| However, Hegseth's transgression was the worst in terms
| of severity by orders of magnitude. Details of an in-
| progress military operation and all.
| Chyzwar wrote:
| We do not know. We do not know what documents Trump had
| in Mar-a-lago, who had access to them, and what he shared
| with others. Furthermore, we do not know what was in
| Clintons emails and who read them. If anything, Hegseth's
| is less damming, since we know the content of chat and
| participants. In both Clintons and Trump cases, the
| impact could be much bigger. The problem in all cases is
| lack of accountability.
| afavour wrote:
| > If anything, Hegseth's is less damming, since we know
| the content of chat and participants
|
| That at least is surely not true. We know the contents
| because his attention to security was _even less_ than
| the others we 've heard about.
| kacesensitive wrote:
| It's literally not whataboutism.
|
| Whataboutism is when you bring up something about person A,
| then the only argument against it is something relating to
| person B.
|
| For example, when you point out the call the president made
| to the secretary of state in Georgia begging him to "find"
| 11,780 votes. Then, without a great excuse, the other person
| brings up Biden's mental decline.
|
| Both true, both concerning, but the reply just being blatant
| and desperate misdirection.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| Classic what about, whataboutism, whataboutism.
| wheelerwj wrote:
| What she did was wrong. There is no doubt about it. It needed
| to be investigated and dealt with accordingly. But let's not
| pretend that the Secretary of State mishandling classified docs
| is is at all similar or related to the Secretary of Defense,
| sharing upcoming attack plans and actively circumventing
| information security, ESPECIALLY after the outcry and
| investigation of the Secretary of State.
|
| But it's not hypocritical of our country to want to improve our
| government officials and not for them to stagnate or slip
| backwards.
| coryfklein wrote:
| The contrast betweeen
|
| a) beaurocrats' real comms setups (3 _telephones_ , four monitors
| all sitting on the desk - versus mounted on arms/wall) full of
| clutter and sitting on an anachronism of a wood desk
|
| and b) what you'd see in any "spy" movie with dark-mode graphics
| displaying fancy l33t charts displayed on quad-monitor setups
| mounted on arms, probably in a low-light setting and the
| beaurocrat doesn't look at the "small" monitors himself, his
| cronies do that, the only monitor he looks at is the single 136"
| on the wall used for teleconferencing with villains
|
| is hilarious
| actionfromafar wrote:
| and c) looking at spy comms on their _civilian_ phone while _in
| Russia_ , probably taking a dump.
| zelon88 wrote:
| He should probably be investigated. He's giving off major
| "Russian Asset" vibes.
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| Valid concerns about op-sec and personal responsibility aside, I
| think this is another example of why "security at the expense of
| usability comes at the expense of security". Official DoD
| communications equipment sucks, so people use the less secure,
| more usable encrypted communications platform when they feel they
| can get away with it.
|
| Maybe the DoD should work on developing some internal Android and
| Signal forks that focus on adding additional critical security
| controls without impacting usability. There's an obvious desire
| path here.
| beardedwizard wrote:
| They are using unofficial comms to stay off the record and
| unaccountable, it has nothing to do with ease of use.
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| That's possible I suppose, but do you have any evidence of
| that or is it just your personal biases causing you to assume
| the worst motivation you can imagine must be the correct one?
|
| I know personally that given the choice I'd probably rather
| use Signal than whatever messaging system the DoD contractors
| managed to come up with. And private conversations between
| senior military officials over encrypted DoD communication
| channels probably aren't FOIAable anyway.
| beardedwizard wrote:
| Perhaps, but the simplest answer is often the correct one.
| People are exactly who they appear to be.
| justsid wrote:
| But the simple answer is that the devices suck and people
| don't want to use them. This is going to be more and more
| true as time goes on because new people coming in will be
| used to the creature comforts they have from their
| personal equipment. I'm not defending anyone here, the
| people in power need to be held to a higher standard than
| some rando citizen on the street.
| alistairSH wrote:
| IIRC, DoD uses Wickr RAM for TS messaging and Teams for
| non-sensitive comms.
|
| Both are fairly "meh" WRT to usability, but neither are so
| awful people should be breaking the law over it.
| FuriouslyAdrift wrote:
| Wickr is supposed to only used for unclassified info like
| health data.
|
| They have a completely sepearate internet for TS/SCI
| (JWICS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Worldwide_Inte
| lligence_C...)
| alistairSH wrote:
| I thought there was a build/version of WICKR for DoD-like
| usage. Maybe not.
| FuriouslyAdrift wrote:
| I think Wickr RAM is specific to DoD... still not for
| anything S/TS
| f38zf5vdt wrote:
| > That's possible I suppose, but do you have any evidence
| of that
|
| Yes, in the chat where a reporter was accidentally present,
| many of the messages were set to be disappearing. I don't
| know why anyone would do that if not to avoid recordkeeping
| laws.
|
| > The images of the text chain show that the messages were
| set to disappear in one week.
|
| https://apnews.com/article/war-plans-hegseth-signal-chat-
| inv...
|
| Further, Project 2025 suggests bypassing federal record
| keeping legislation by simply holding in-person meetings
| without record.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxe55mU4DA8
|
| Oddly, the Project 2025 training videos that presumably the
| members of the executive cabinet have seen say _not_ to
| delete messages or set messages to auto-deleting _because_
| that would be in violation of federal record keeping
| legislation.
| bagels wrote:
| That is not the worst motivation I can imagine.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Tell us the worst one you can imagine, please.
| panzagl wrote:
| The real answer is that none of the people Hegseth wants to
| show off to have access to those networks.
| eutropia wrote:
| The dude has a staff of 30 people who's whole job is to connect
| him to literally anyone he wants to communicate with -- you're
| telling me that the usability of concierge service with more
| than two dozen staffers is inferior to using signal in a
| building with shitty cell service?
| opello wrote:
| I've wondered about this quite a bit and imagine there's got
| to be a "telephone" (the game of message distortion) like
| aspect where if some of the communication was explained, even
| a little push back might change the outcome. For example, a
| human intermediary presented with "send these details to
| these people" might get a "are you sure this person should
| have access to this?" ultimately preventing a bad/illegal
| action. People avoiding this kind of accountability, even
| just to a communications staffer, seems like it would have to
| be to reduce the subtle steering that happens when people are
| faced with conflict they don't want to, or have run out of
| psychological budget to, address.
| jordanpg wrote:
| > when they feel they can get away with it.
|
| It's not just this. Security involves compromises and trade-
| offs. Humans will be stupid humans and re-use passwords,
| install better but insecure software, not ever update, etc.
| It's an old story.
|
| In the year 2025, if communication with any other human on the
| globe isn't as simple as opening and app and typing, then
| people will find another way because there are about a thousand
| better ways.
|
| So I doubt they are trying to get away with anything. They're
| just preferring the trivial option over the option that
| probably involves a physical token or slow biometrics or
| 15-second logout or whatever arduous security features the
| government comms probably have. Just like any human would.
|
| Perhaps this will force the government COMSEC people to re-
| evaluate their practices.
|
| Updated to add: I'm not defending their practices, just giving
| a likely explanation. Blaming the users is not always the best
| way to evaluate a security failure.
| cdkmoose wrote:
| I would hope that when it comes to OpSec, SecDef, DoD, NSA,
| etc, don't act "Just like any human would."
| jordanpg wrote:
| All humans act like humans would. From a security
| standpoint, it is a mistake to assume otherwise in any
| context.
|
| https://www.google.com/search?q=computer+security+human+nat
| u...
| bunnie wrote:
| I feel bad for the Signal devs. If they weren't personally
| targets for state level actors before, they are now.
|
| Say what you want about the usability of DoD home grown
| solutions, but it was a military system backed up by military
| budgets and guns - civilians are less likely to be collateral
| damage in an attack against these systems.
|
| Now, all the civilians using Signal are potential splash damage
| casualties in a military conflict.
|
| I also suspect Signal does not have the budget, staffing, or
| desire to serve as a front line soldier in a cyber war; but this
| exposes them to military-grade risks, whether they like it or
| not.
| entuno wrote:
| Given it's usage in the past, Signal and it's developers have
| definitely been a target before now. Not to mention by law
| enforcement and forensic companies like Cellebrite, which lead
| to them hitting back in a rather amusing blog post a while
| back:
|
| https://signal.org/blog/cellebrite-vulnerabilities/
| pessimizer wrote:
| They're just going to keep hammering this dude until he bombs
| Iran, then MSNBC will say that he's finally grown into the role
| of a statesman and learned to make the hard choices.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Since NSA Waltz just got fired for this, shouldn't Hesgeth as
| well?
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