- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.ml
A photograph of Trump administration official Mike Waltz’s phone shows him using an unofficial version of Signal designed to archive messages during a cabinet meeting.
Mike Waltz, who was until Thursday U.S. National Security Advisor, has inadvertently revealed he is using an obscure and unofficial version of Signal that is designed to archive messages, raising questions about what classification of information officials are discussing on the app and how that data is being secured, 404 Media has found.
On Thursday Reuters published a photograph of Waltz checking his mobile phone during a cabinet meeting held by Donald Trump.
The screen appears to show messages from various top level government officials, including JD Vance, Tulsi Gabbard, and Marco Rubio.
What laws are being broken? If republicans control both houses, why don’t they approve the app or change the law?
Government communications must be archived.
By using Signal, they’re intentionally breaking the law since Signal doesn’t retain communications. The only conclusion that can be drawn from this is they don’t want a record so they can’t be held accountable in the future.
The simple answer is that this wouldn’t pass the Senate, because the filibuster still exists (for now) and you need 2/3s vote to end debate and hold a vote (called cloture). It’s unlikely you’d get the 15 or so Dems needed for this to happen.
The complicated answer is that Congress has been perfectly happy ceding more and more of its authority to the Presidency for a long time now. When you’re elected for a two-year term (as Representatives are) but spend 1+ year campaigning (because seriously, fuck US elections) you don’t want to do anything that even the short-term-memories of American voters might remember. So they’re perfectly happy letting the President take the blame for anything if it’s their party in the White House, or obstructing him if it’s not.
The point they’re trying to make seems to be that the specific unofficial Signal app they are using does archive those messages. So the fact Signal by itself doesn’t, is irrelevant. The government is paying TeleMessage for this Signal app instead of using the official Signal app… The only reason for that would be for the archiving capability.
I mean… If they’re using Signal specifically because it doesn’t store messages, and they are trying to hide the communications and not archive them… They wouldn’t be using the app capable of archiving them in the first place, they’d just use the official Signal app.
Not sure why this is hard for people to understand since the article is explaining exactly what this app is and does and how it bypasses the “Signal doesn’t arching texts” issue entirely, because it doesn’t matter what the official Signal app does or doesn’t do.
Everyone gets that. What you don’t seem to get us that when the law says government communications must be archived, it doesn’t mean “an Israeli company has a copy of all my sensitive texts” is how to accomplish that.