Summary
Lawmakers from both parties expressed outrage after The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief revealed he was accidentally included in a Trump administration Signal chat discussing Yemen airstrikes.
Rep. Chris Deluzio (D-Pa.) and Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.) called for investigations and firings, labeling it a serious security breach.
Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) criticized the use of non-secure systems, warning that adversaries like Russia and China could exploit it.
Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) condemned the administration’s mishandling of classified information, saying it endangers national security.
But her emails!!!
They didn’t really care about her emails with that statement, it was her pronoun which was the problem they were crying about.
I’d say 50/50 because she’s a woman and a Democrat.
Good thing she never wore a tan suit or used the wrong mustard, then Republicans would have done something drastic like storm the Capitol building!
I mean, her politics are also pretty shit.
Just, the shit parts they likely agree with.
They actually love a War Hawk like Clinton, they just hate admitting it because, exactly, she’s a woman and a Democrat.
🧈🚹
…that’s Lenny tho
Yes, and Squiggy.
I feel like David Lander was the more popular of the 2 back in the day, but I’ve seen Michael Mckean show up in more things after. I wonder if he found it hard to shake that character? … or if I didn’t watch the right stuff
Well, David Lander also wound up diagnosed wirh MS, and at a certain point couldn’t act anymore. Whereas Michael McKean didn’t have that issue.
“Every accusation is a confession”
I always thought they just liked buttery males.
Devil’s Advocate Hot Take:
This is an expression of power. An intentional leak to show that “We get to break rules, and you cannot.” We see it as incompetence and abject hypocrisy, but it could be a purposeful leak because they don’t care about being seen as hypocrites, they are about showing us they can get away with it. It could also be a Trial Balloon about the kind of wars they intend to wage.
/takes off tinfoil hat
I really think they really are just this stupid, but I think its at least worthwhile to consider the alternative, because a lot of what conservatives do is about using hypocrisy as a weapon and expression of power over others. They want us getting angry about such things, so they can can be cool and collected and say that we’re overreacting because they’re so calm while chuckling and sneering at us.
“But her emails!” Yeah they don’t actually give a shit, they may just want to show they can get away with it. Much like Trump rejecting using a government issued cell phone in his first term and Bush “losing” millions of emails.
Pretty good take. I agree they actually are this dumb, but not everyone involved is necessarily, so it’s wise to be aware of alternatives such as what you suggest.
This is an expression of power. An intentional leak to show that “We get to break rules, and you cannot.”
Hanlon’s razor applies I think:
“Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence or stupidity”
I really think they really are just this stupid
Yep. They fired all the adults that think things through and provide rigor for a reason so the only people left are children doing whatever they want ignorant of the consequences.
Exactly. If they had wanted to intentionally leak classified information in order to move the overton window or something, they would have done it differently. They wouldn’t have had the VP disagreeing with Trump. They wouldn’t have actually leaked serious classified information, including the name of an active CIA officer. They wouldn’t have leaked it to the editor in chief of the Atlantic.
They fired all the adults that think things through and provide rigor for a reason so the only people left are children doing whatever they want ignorant of the consequences.
For example, they fired anyone who would otherwise have said “Folks, this is not an appropriate communications tool for classified information. This needs to be shared in a SCIF”.
Anybody who knows better also knows to keep their mouth shut if they want to keep their job in this admin. And even if keeping their job isn’t their priority, they know that if they speak up they risk being scapegoated, hung out to dry, and possibly killed by MAGA loyalists for daring to confront the king.
No I’d say there’s absolutely a good share of malice in the mix with incompetence and stupidity.
As long as we’re putting on our tinfoil hats, it’s also possible that this was an intentional action taken against The Atlantic (or against Jeffrey Goldberg in particular). Trump’s admin has plenty of reasons to want to silence that publication, and might’ve hoped that by “accidentally” giving Goldberg access, they could entrap him into committing a crime (mishandling of classified material, espionage, etc).
With a little cooperation from the AG’s office, presto! You’ve got one of your biggest critics in jail, and sent a message to other would-be whistleblowers.
Reminds me of this from the Bush II years:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy
The Killian documents controversy (also referred to as Memogate or Rathergate) involved six documents containing false allegations about President George W. Bush’s service in the Texas Air National Guard in 1972–73, allegedly typed in 1973. Dan Rather presented four of these documents as authentic in a 60 Minutes II broadcast aired by CBS on September 8, 2004, less than two months before the 2004 presidential election, but it was later found that CBS had failed to authenticate them. Several typewriter and typography experts soon concluded that they were forgeries. Lieutenant Colonel Bill Burkett provided the documents to CBS, but he claims to have burned the originals after faxing them copies.
Anyway, interesting and worthwhile thing to consider.
There is exactly one political party that cares about hypocrisy.
And it ain’t the Republicans.
It’s the Russian way. Everyone knows things are shitty but everyone also feels powerless about it. Learned helplessness as a political strategy and the basis for a society.
The first part is purely conjecture of their intent. It is irrelevant and unknowable. The facts are they leaked this to a reporter. They should be held accountable based on the facts, not their intent.
Being dumb is the meta rn
The worst thing is aside from being inept and careless, there is no chance they aren’t selling secrets to anyone willing to pay.
The only person in real danger here is the journalist.
And the yemenis but they’ve got the wrong skin tone for anybody to even mention. Genocide is completely normalized.
Heads should roll? Maybe, if you ask nicely, the French may share some equipment and experience.
We actually preserved a few ones. We would be happy to provide. We can even take the 25% tarrif on our account.
From alcoholics, to heroin addicts, to ketamine fueled Nazis, the Trump administration is running like a well oiled crack addict machine.
That tracks with the Third Reich, actually
They only have themselves to blame. If you’re actively destroying OPSEC you have no reason to fucking cry.
That’s bad and all, but: They are using Signal?!
Presumably to get around FOIA requests?
With a journalist in the group there’s no need for FOI requests. Think of the money saved!
It practically pays for itself!
Yes, what of it? Technically signal is fine from a security/leakage angle. Obviously not from a “govt communications” / public records angle, but there neither is direct verbal comms.
Oh, so they’re upset now? What about, you know, when Trump stole a shit-ton of top secret documents that he very probably attempted to sell and at the very least definitely stored improperly and used a lot of lying and juggling to keep hold of? After he attempted to overthrow the government on Jan 6th. If they had moved faster, we wouldn’t even be having this whine-fest, because he wouldn’t have gotten re-elected from prison.
I think what may make this different from that is chuds could see the fact that their king did whatever he wanted with those top secret documents as his right.
This was incompetently handled active war planning. This can and should spook even those chuds
If this is the thing that makes people realize Trump and his cronies are fucking idiots, despite all the other evidence we already have, I’ll take it.
Literally.
“Non-secure systems” uh. No. Systems that aren’t in the US control is what you mean.As @[email protected] pointed out, Signal is insecure as in the access to the message wasn’t controlled. It’s like stripping naked in front of an open window with the lights on in your house. Yeah, technically, you are inside your home where it’s private. But if you aren’t pulling the shades everyone gonna see it
given that signal is what the us authorities encouraged citizens to use for privacy i assume that they do in fact have back door access to whatever they want
Well, that would be impressive. Because it’s open source, you can audit it yourself. The cryptography of it is secure. Unless the government has a secret way of breaking these encryption algorithms which we are unaware of, there is no backdoor.
I’ve only dug into the user to user messaging, but I’m group messaging is just as secure.
The only thing that was lacking when I read through it was key transparency. And that’s a problem with every end to end encryption service. HOWEVER I know work is being done on implementing it. That will alleviate the fears of the wrong public keys being used (aka, you’re talking to someone different than you thought).
linux is open source and it’s had countless vulnerabilities. I’m not a security researcher so i wouldn’t be able to spot a vulnerability anyway. I am a student of history and when my government says trust me bro it’s best if you use this one i see red flags.
I’d absolutely qualify it as non-secure in this context. Signal is E2E encrypted but there are no systems in place where it understands who’s added to a chat and validates access based on ACLs or anything. Authorization policies are critical in securing systems.
Man you’re technically correct.
The best kind of correct. Let me alter my comment and direct them to this, because I didn’t even think that far.
Isn’t that important given the nature of what was being discussed?
Yes. Access control is not in scope of Signal, I updated my comment to correct my statement.
I would however enjoy being a fly on the wall when someone has to explain what application or system scope is to Trump.
Heh. Same happened in Sweden some time back, but on a less serious issue, where a journalist was invited to a emergency meeting for the Liberal party over Signal.
And in Germany although that at least required some actual hacking.
Beyond stupid, can you imagine how hard Putin is laughing at the 34 count felon right now?
Any republican party member who stands up for this will be threatened with having their seat put up to a primary challenge. This is just a fact.
Remember, whatever the administration says can only be interpreted by fact by anyone who is part of the party. If you aren’t in line you aren’t in the party.
The undesirables will be shipped off to a camp far from the public’s eye and shaven, beaten and humiliated.
So we are more worried about the privacy communications instead of how we are bombing Yemen. Great. Fantastic.
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