Comment by frenchman_in_ny
8 months ago
In the banking world, employees have been fined significant sums, or even forced from their jobs [0], for unauthorized use of messaging platforms. And here, it's barely a shrug. Unbelievable.
[0] https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/morgan-stanley-hit-...
In the government world, people have been jailed for it. Not people so directly connected to a president, though.
Laws no longer apply to them - laws bound people below. If you're interested what will follow, look into Russia or Hungary.
Heh. Like when they arrested someone for running their own mail server and sending classified information through it? Oh wait...
yes, after months and months of investigations and hearing and non-stop new coverage and a Republican led committee that admitted in their final report that while there was negligence, they couldn't find any wrong doing.
Who's going to arrest them?
Fun fact, initially when places were setting up police forces, people railed that it was an infringement on their right to do a Citizen's Arrest.
This is why you have a constitution, codified laws, judicial system, separation of powers, etc. We're just learning now none of these things are worth the paper they're written on.
The issue is that there’s nothing that requires prosecution, just allows it.
This is the doubled edged nature of prosecutorial discretion.
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It's just as useful and effective as the international law and order that was setup after WW2.
So nada.
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Would you say that was always the case, or just a more recent development?
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[flagged]
Rules for thee but not for me. Now get back to work, peasant.
it's not unauthorized use of signal;
"Government officials have used Signal for organizational correspondence, such as scheduling sensitive meetings, but in the Biden administration, people who had permission to download it on their White House-issued phones were instructed to use the app sparingly, according to a former national security official who served in the administration."
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/heres-what-to-know-about...
It absolutely is an unauthorized use. Authorize use is "let's go to lunch". This was "let's bomb these people at this time".
Big difference.
Let's assume for the moment that the discussion of military plans on Signal was covered by this policy. That's debatable as others have said. Other parts of that policy would seem to suggest this kind of conversation is expressly forbidden on Signal and similar unofficial chat apps, while other less sensitive conversations are permitted.
How does that excuse the lack of attention and validation that resulted in an unintended party being added to the chat?
Regardless of Signal usage policy, that is a massive fuck up.
Did you read the article? Signal is not approved for this kind of communication and has long been advised against. They also had messages set to autodelete which violates the records act. It's blatantly illegal
Buttery Males!
It's too bad that this is being downvoted - swiftymon is trying to provide some context. It's useful to the discussion and well sourced. I'd love to read counterarguments rather than have this fade away :)
Because their claim is false and unsupported by their quote. It is absolutely unauthorized for government employees to conduct discussions like this on services like Signal. It's not even allowed for CUI level discussions, and war planning pushes into Secret and TS territory very quickly.
Organizational discussions means things like, for a standard fed on a TDY with others, "Meet in the lobby at 0700 so we can drive to the site for the meeting at 0800." Not "So we're going to use ... to attack ... at ...", which is almost certainly Secret or TS once aggregated.
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TFA article discusses how officials have long used Signal for routine logistics, contrasting that with the national defense plans being discussed in a group chat with a journalist