Comment by joshuamerrill
8 months ago
I began my career in a classified environment working on government satellite programs.
In my first week on the job, I was told, explicitly, that if I shared Classified or Controlled Unclassified information over unapproved channels, I would be reprimanded—likely fired, or less likely, prosecuted.
It was also made clear that safeguarding the nation's secrets from the carelessness of others was my responsibility, too.
It is mind-boggling that 18 people were on this thread, and none of them ever suggested that this discussion would be better served in a SCIF. To say nothing of SecDef starting the thread on Signal in the first place.
How many other such threads are active at the highest levels of government right now?
Does Chinese intelligence know?
I'm not suggesting punishment, or even prosecution, for the people involved. But the idea that this breach can occur with no accountability, consequences, or operational changes is unacceptable.
Why shouldn't punishment or prosecution be suggested. I've worked with classified information, and I would have been held accountable for my actions, why shouldn't they? I'm tired of this Too Important To Have Consequences business. It defeats the whole purpose of having qualifications, and security, and rules of any kind.
> I'm tired of this Too Important To Have Consequences business
Sure, but short of something similar to the UH CEO, do you think anything will actually happen to them?
If they’re doing this then the president presumably knows and does too. Even if they get prosecuted and convicted (after years of legal nonsense) they’d just get pardoned.
No, I don't think anything will change, but I'm still tired of it.
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Anything less than criminal prosecution would be an abomination of justice.
Well once you've stated that the president is immune and can pardon whoever for whatever, there's really not much to do. The US needs a new constitution to enforce this, otherwise the very concept of justice cannot exist.
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Honestly, I'm giving up hoping for even a fraction of deserved punishment too. It's hard to handle the emotional dissonance I feel repeatedly when I see injustice, so I've adjusted myself to expect minimal or no punishment and just hope things improve a little. I know this is exactly what those people who repeatedly do malicious things want to happen, and I'm not suggesting we give up seeking social justice. I just can't handle the rage I feel every time or I'll suffer from severe depression again. I need to save my willpower to still hope for a better world and to encourage or support people who are actually working to improve society.
I'm in the same boat. This whole thing is a War of Attrition, and my enemies are willing because I am getting too old and increasingly stressed out to keep up with and counter their irrationality. I honestly don't know where they get the energy to continuously be so stupid as to take classified information to a group chat, encrypted or not, like they're planning a night out.
These morons are going to get American citizens killed due to gross incompetence. I'm still trying to wrap my head around the fact that half my country said "yep, let's go with these guys" when they saw a bunch of bungling Nazis yelling at clouds like something out of Hogan's Heroes. I'd laugh at the absurdity of it all if I didn't think we were in genuine danger.
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Do you honestly think that (a) Trump's Justice Department would prosecute any of these offenses, and (b) even if so, that Trump wouldn't just pardon anyone involved?
Yeah, there's no way anything is going to happen to these guys. I'm saying that's a great suggestion, and one that everyone should be able to agree on.
But yeah, I agree with you. Nothing is going to happen. Just like no one at the top has been held to any kind of a standard at all since maybe Nixon. Who knows, if he had just stuck it out maybe he would have gotten off too.
The corruption is now, total and absolute. A complete Nero Court like the decadent days of the end of the Roman Empire.
"Trump’s crypto empire set to expand with new stablecoin and investment fund offerings" - https://apnews.com/article/trump-crypto-world-liberty-truth-...
"...Witkoff and his father, Trump’s special diplomatic envoy Steve Witkoff, helped launch World Liberty Financial with Trump and his sons last year. Under the terms outlined on the company’s website, a Trump-owned company has the “right to receive 75% of the net protocol revenues” from World Liberty Financial after expenses..."
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18077789-dying-every-day
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We all know this is the likely outcome, but Congress should use its powers to force the Trump administration to be public in not prosecuting and in pardoning, for the purposes of upholding rule of law to the extent possible. And the forth estate needs to throw both in their face to ensure the public understands both how everything about both what they did, and how the Trump administration will respond, is both unlawful and harmful to our country.
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Do you think they’ll get prosecuted? I am willing to bet money that congress won’t even have hearings on it.
Congress is already having hearings (at the committee level): https://www.axios.com/2025/03/24/congress-yemen-signal-hegse...
But it's not clear that will progress to anything further.
The Senate Intelligence Committee already held a hearing today: https://www.npr.org/2025/03/25/nx-s1-5339484/signal-war-plan...
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None of what they said was actually classified, and if the conversation included the president and vice president, then they inherently decide what is and is not classified. The power of the executive branch is vested in the president.
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But have you considered that they are Billionaires and therefore can do whatever they want?
I don’t think everyone involved in this fiasco are billionaires.
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The alternative explanation, is that they have so much dirt on Trump, they can't be fired...
Like my dad always said, "money talks and shit walks".
The problem is that most of those 18 people are just random folks picked on the premise of just one qualification: THey'd be Yes Man/Woman!! They aren't career professionals. I believe that explains the mess they've created and their incompetent approach to their duties.
It's still not too late to impeach that entire shack of clowns.
These are the same folks who scrubbed the Navajo Code Talkers from the DoD web site for being "DEI" or some such.
we replaced them with DUI hires.
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> It's still not too late to impeach that entire shack of clowns.
The problem is that the people in control of the power to impeach are also picked for being yes men/women. It's yes-men all the way down by design.
It’s Trump’s one true talent.
He got the Supreme Court and the judiciary leaning his way in his first term. Congress is controlled by either his Republican primary candidates, or Republicans who are too afraid to cross him.
Now he’s purging from the federal branch anyone who is not completely ideologically loyal to him. That is the true purpose of Doge.
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>U.S. national-security leaders
Those aren't leaders, quite the opposite, nothing but typical Trump-like non-leaders disgracing leadership positions.
>those 18 people are just random folks
OTOH if you picked 18 random patriotic Americans, odds are none would be that far below average at defending what normal Americans have always held dear.
On the subject of a 'shack of clowns,' now do the Afganistan withdrawal.
Kind of off topic as that was the previous Trump administration, but they were also a 'shack of clowns'
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It's a pretty big false dichotomy to present "people directly opposed to their policy platforms" as the sole alternative to people "picked on the premise of just one qualification: they'd be Yes Man/Woman".
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They pick competent, experienced people who are aligned with their policies. Not Fox News presenters and YouTube influencers.
Are we really looking at the best group of people that the current president could find to do these roles that agree with his policy platform? There was no one else with relevant experience willing?
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No, that was not suggested. You are not arguing in good faith.
It's pretty easy to compare the backgrounds of every prior secretary of defense with Pete Hegseth. They're typically people with significant experience managing government agencies, retired 3 and 4 star generals, or senators/congressmen with serious foreign policy experience. The last person with as little defense policy experience as Hegseth was probably McNamara, and he was President of Ford, e.g. someone who knew how to manage a large organization.
most people generally agreed with them but they also tried to pick people of talent and courage who might disagree on a number of issues. Trump doesn't care about any of that
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Heck, one of my co-workers at a FAANG freaked out when he realized that he had used his personal phone to take a picture of a meeting blackboard instead of his corp phone. He spent the afternoon trying to figure out how to scrub the photo.
There is a great thread on r/army where people are listing out all the Military careers destroyed by minor mistakes that pale in comparison to this.
I'd be really interested in a link!
I had that problem, but the FAANG I was at was also the same company as the one running my phone's OS, so it wasn't as bad.
> Does Chinese intelligence know?
How likely is it that all 18 of those people were accessing from mobile operating systems with no known working exploit chain? I would say pretty unlikely.
If they're "just" using Signal, they're likely "just" using stock Android if there isn't a policy requiring iPhones in lockdown mode. It's a very good question as to whether such a policy exists.
At this point it wouldn’t surprise me if they were using free Android phones they won in a raffle set up by foreign intelligence agents
Which do you think is more likely to be under foreign control and why? Bearing in mind that iPhones are made in China.
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Also, Steve Witkoff was in Moscow during the Signal text chain.
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Some of us are viewing this through the lens of the actual risk this could have caused to real American servicemen and women, and not just scoring points on television.
Like what is wrong with you that this is your reaction to something so serious?
At least here in the UK our politicians delete all their messages on WhatsApp https://www.politico.eu/article/the-british-governments-disa...
More seriously, having worked in an undisclosed defence company, we were told that we would be prosecuted if we did this. There were many many security controls in place that prevented this from happening on top of the threat.
Are you able to share any of those security controls? How do you stop presumably well-intended Signal app users from conferencing? Are you talking about cellular signal blocking, or are you talking about avoiding public networks entirely in favor of Sensitive Compartmented Information Facilities (SCIFs)?
Many layers of physical controls and regular audits mostly.
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Why are you specifically calling out you are not suggesting punishment nor prosecution?
Because I don't know whether either of those are appropriate.
There aren't many comparable breaches to this one. The closest in modern times may be Hillary Clinton's email server being used for government business. In that case, the FBI investigated and declined to bring charges, under the expectation that a jury would be unlikely to render a guilty verdict.
Okay, fine. But the FBI investigated and laid out the facts.
My fear is that the current administration sees this as a PR problem. No, this was an operational failure. We should feel lucky that merely an American journalist was added by mistake.
We should expect the FBI to investigate this, too. But I worry the facts are too inconvenient for even that level of accountability.
Why would we expect Patel and Bongino to investigate anything here? They were put there to investigate anyone else other than the current administration.
Why would any FBI agent take a risk on investigating anyone potentially in current or future administrations? They'll get fired later when the political winds change.
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18 USC 793(f) seems to apply here:
"Whoever, being entrusted with or having lawful possession or control of any document, writing ... through gross negligence permits the same to be removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of his trust ... and fails to make prompt report of such loss, theft, abstraction, or destruction to his superior officer—
Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both."
We can only guess about the "prompt reporting of the issue", but from what I've seen and heard I'm willing to put money on the fact that, no, this was not reported.
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> The closest in modern times may be Hillary Clinton's email server being used for government business.
Wait, there's more!! https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/cummings-jared-kushner...
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There is no reason to believe we are lucky. Instead, this is more of a canary in the coal mine that the DOD OIG and Congress are less able to excuse for a long-running hazard.
How much of the administration, for how long, and for what, is using hackable systems and without mandated audit trails for protected communications? Whether external hackers are already successfully snooping, or internal cover-ups are happening of ongoing corruption, both are deeply problematic, and can be happening in parallel to stupid leaks like this. Likewise, we can't even investigate and cleanup properly because these people are illegally deleting the forensic data for their illegal and insecure actions.
It's not even a surprise. Ex: It's already pretty well documented to embarrassing extents like the president flushing official documents down toilets and clogging them. Ex: The admins use of signal was a thing in the first term as well. The only new thing afaict is the public and checks-and-balances people have the evidence in front of them of illegal use when accepting the lies and criminality.
> We should feel lucky that merely an American journalist was added by mistake.
This time. We also have no idea how many times this has happened without the unique circumstances where the person incorrectly included would draw attention to the leak as part of their job as a journalist.
Generally speaking, if something like this can happen once, it has probably happened more than once.
We probably are very lucky that the time it very publicly happened was fairly early on in the tenure of this dumpster fire of a Presidential cabinet.
Of course instead of them seeing it this way they are certain to keep going after the journalist in an attempt to make him the bad guy of the story to project blame away, because that is what incompetent people do.
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> FBI investigated and declined to bring charges
Does the FBI make this determination? Wouldn’t that be the Attorney General’s call?
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> We should feel lucky that merely an American journalist was added by mistake.
Might not even be the first time already, just the first time they messed up and we found out...
Hunter Biden: Hold my beer.
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Assuming this to be true, this conversation is over.
"The Biden administration installed the Signal messaging app on CIA computers and approved it for official government use."
https://pjmedia.com/matt-margolis/2025/03/25/has-the-staffer...
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Incorrect.
"Clinton has said that she never used her personal email to send information that was marked classified at the time, although some of her emails had been retroactively classified.
Comey says that's not true. Of 30,000 emails Clinton turned over to the State Department in 2014, FBI investigators found 110 emails containing information that was classified at the time the email was sent. Eight of those were top secret, the highest level of classification."
"Another 2,000 emails have been retroactively classified since they were sent, Comey said."
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/07/05/484785586...
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Yeah that should be the bare minimum
because hackernews is full of people who cultivate a specific naivety when it comes to power so they don't have to contemplate their responsibility or position therin. its endemic and I have a hobby pointing it out again, and again, and again.
Because he wants the behavior to change, as it is a risk to the country's security. Typically these types of things at this level rarely result in prosecution; the compromise typically is a change in behavior / promise to do better / etc.
A US public watchdog is now sueing for action to be taken.
The people in the chat group included Vice President JD Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, various other Trump administration officials and aides and notably Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
~ https://www.huffpost.com/entry/pete-hegseth-sued-over-signal...
Time will tell how this buttery Signals chat plays out .. it's certainly given other many other countries more fuel to ridicule the USofA, it's hard to believe these clowns are our partners in global "intelligence".
In normal times this might even be something Congress should be interested in. But instead I wouldn't be surprised if the journalist will get prosecuted on grounds that he didn't leave the group as soon as he noticed the mistake.
I have read that one of them (thanks to sibling commenter, yes, Witkoff) was traveling in Russia while on this group chat, and that the chat disclosed the identity of an intelligence officer.
When you get to a certain level, you believe the rules don't apply to you. There are many examples of this, but I won't list any for fear of promoting false equivalencies.
In the Trump Whitehouse, not only do you believe the rules don't apply to you, but actually the rules don't apply to you.
Use Signal, an encrypted platform from the CIA with a charismatic public persona: the horror! Use an unencrypted email server in a closet for years: that's nothing.
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I actually think the major powers mostly know what the others are doing.
And should! That's how we remain, figuratively, minutes to midnight for generations, and not closer.
> information over unapproved channels, I would be reprimanded—likely fired, or less likely, prosecuted.
Potential penalty of death as well.
Also lets not forget those messages had a 4w expiary date.
All the President's Men:
https://youtu.be/ihHU3IVVrfM?t=477
https://youtu.be/isNlC0RYOyE?t=565
> But the idea that this breach can occur with no accountability, consequences, or operational changes is unacceptable.
There will be no accountability, consequences, or operational changes because the American people (a plurality of them anyway) voted for this. I like how people are even bothering to bring up the risk of prosecution, as if Trump wouldn't just pardon the people involved anyway.
Look, I am as disgusted as you are, but I continue to be impressed/disgusted by the neverending levels of shamelessness shown by Trump and his cronies:
1. Trump is now somehow blaming the reporter for this, calling him a "sleazebag".
2. Probably doesn't need repeating, but all the chants about "lock her up" against Hillary Clinton were due to her supposed mishandling of classified information. Yeah, waiting to hear all the outrage from the right over this 10x more egregious example.
3. I still continue to be awed by Hegseth railing against DEI because it's "anti-merit", as I can't think of an ass clown less qualified to be Sec of Defense.
Nothing will change unless the American people, at large, decide to punish those at the ballot box who exhibit these behaviors, and so far they have not been willing to do that.
I'm concerned that what brings change won't be a smarter electorate, but instead losing a war or having another civil war.
I'm somewhat politically conservative, and I still cannot make any sense of the plurality that voted Trump into office again. I really wonder if I'm in some kind of echo chamber that prevents me from understanding their perspective.
Their grievances begin with Reaganomics, then NAFTA, then the war in Afghanistan. All Republican projects. Now, instead of directing the blame where it belongs, they've adopted an even more 'enlightened' and destructive form of conservativism that abides corruption in broad daylight.
> I really wonder if I'm in some kind of echo chamber that prevents me from understanding their perspective.
I mean, I understand the ‘burn the world down’ perspective. I just don’t think it’s particularly productive.
>>>In my first week on the job, I was told, explicitly, that if I shared Classified or Controlled Unclassified information over unapproved channels, I would be reprimanded—likely fired, or less likely, prosecuted.
Now, I’m not replying to you about the morality of what happened or to tell my opinion of what is right and what is wrong.
But do you honestly believe the president is held to the same standard as you?
Would it shock you that they aren’t?
It's not shocking but it is unacceptable. The president should be held to a higher standard, not a lesser one.
No accountability or consequences for anyone is the motto of the Trump administration (or indeed Trump himself, who is a convicted felon).
First felon I know that has had no issues getting a job or getting a place to live. It's amazing how being a felon makes life so much more difficult for normies, yet actually improved his stature. It's embarrassing no matter which angle it is viewed.
It's all about the $$$.
The consequences will arrive by the will of the Trumpist administration.
Levied on the Undesirables only.
Trump can't fire any of them. Fox News doesn't have enough TV people to poach. Where else did he find his cabinet from?
Trump won't fire any of them, because nothing they've done displeases him, and displeasing Trump (rather than violating a law, for instance) is the only way to get fired by him.
> I'm not suggesting punishment, or even prosecution, for the people involved.
I am. Throw the book at them.
SCIF?
Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensitive_compartmented_inform...
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Was any classified information shared on Signal?
At 11:44 a.m., the account labeled “Pete Hegseth” posted in Signal a “TEAM UPDATE.” I will not quote from this update, or from certain other subsequent texts. The information contained in them, if they had been read by an adversary of the United States, could conceivably have been used to harm American military and intelligence personnel, particularly in the broader Middle East, Central Command’s area of responsibility. What I will say, in order to illustrate the shocking recklessness of this Signal conversation, is that the Hegseth post contained operational details of forthcoming strikes on Yemen, including information about targets, weapons the U.S. would be deploying, and attack sequencing.
From TFA.
The discussion itself wasn't transacting classified documents as such. But as Goldberg makes clear, information of both general sensitivity and immediate tactical significance was disclosed.
It was confirmed (under oath) that there was no classified information shared, however, the contents of the messages could not be shared with the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence as it is classified information.
English isn't my first language so I might've misunderstood what you wrote, but isn't that contradicting?
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Do we actually believe this was accidental? This seems like the most obvious “oops I leaked it to the press” I’ve ever seen.
Now Europe “accidentally saw” what the American powers were saying and it’s going to influence them.
I’m not at all sold that this was some ball that was dropped.
The EU knows exactly how the administration feels about them with regards to military support. The Signal thread makes all involved look extremely incompetent. I’m not seeing the advantage if this was planned.
I disagree. When you leak to the press, you often do it with a planted source who "leaks" to a journalist on condition of anonymity. Doing it with an "accidental" group chat add like this signals incompetence without any added value.
Updated Hanlon's razor: Never attribute to intelligence that which is adequately explained by stupidity
"that if I shared Classified or Controlled Unclassified information over unapproved channels"
You are confuse yourself, THEY ARE THE LAW
these are the most powerful guys in the nation, who decide to catch who and whom??? these guys who decide that not the other way around
CISA explicitly promoted Signal for use by top level government officials. The fact that an outsider was invited to a conversation they didn't belong in is troubling, but basically nothing else about this seems to be outside of recommended policy.
The administration is also claiming that there was no confidential information in the conversation, which I think is certainly debatable, but the rest of the story seems overblown to me.
You're talking about this document:
https://www.cisa.gov/sites/default/files/2024-12/guidance-mo...
Which says:
And goes on to say:
But concludes:
So they mention signal as an example of an app that they are talking about, but they explicitly state that by mentioning it they are not implying to endorse or recommend or even favor it.
Moreover, the advice doesn't apply to organizations that have their own best practices in place, which the organizations in question certainly do. So the question isn't what CISA recommends it's what the CIA, DoD, Department of State, etc. recommend.
“the rest of the story seems overblown” sounds like a thought-terminator to minimize impact.
You should read the release that CISA put out [0]. The use of Signal for classified discussions is not a suggested use. True, it's not explicitly forbidden, but people entrusted with that access should know better.
Saying that CISA approved Signal (and, in right-wing sources, saying "Biden administration CISA") is an attempt to minimize and distract.
They shouldn't have been texting classified information. Full stop.
[0] https://www.cisa.gov/sites/default/files/2024-12/guidance-mo...
What classified info was in the chat? The only reference I saw to classified info was explicit references to getting out of that medium to discuss classified info
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Is this false? I see it's being downvoted, leading me to believe people question its veracity
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