Comment by ceejayoz

8 months ago

She's also tweeting "This entire story was another hoax" this morning.

https://twitter.com/PressSec/status/1904875629612331123

So they are not going to even address that someone in the group apparently had Goldberg's personal contact information saved to their phone?

  • I haven't used Signal for group chats, but given that the published screenshot [0] says "Michael Waltz added you to the group", does that not mean that the adding user (Waltz) has Goldberg in his Signals contacts? Even if it was one of Waltz's aides who handled the phone while adding Goldberg, Goldberg's contact must have existed in Waltz's phone?

    Something that's piqued me (and my ignorance of Signal): It's not clear to me what Goldberg's Signal display name is, i.e. is it "Jeffrey Goldberg" or "JG". And who sets that? Goldberg, or the user who has him in his contacts? I mean if he were simply "JG", and it was Waltz who set that — then the question is not so much why Waltz has a prominent journalist like Goldberg in his contacts, but why does he obfuscate Goldberg as "JG"?

    It's fun to imagine that maybe Waltz has in the past been a secret source of Goldberg's. Goldberg outing the chat like this would seem to undercut that theory, but it's possible that Goldberg judged the situation as so egregious that it was worth burning his source (Waltz). And technically, Waltz wasn't acting as a "source" for this story and thus Goldberg isn't obligated to give him the usual journalistic protections.

    [0] https://cdn.theatlantic.com/thumbor/TcCybzsovOAQXiH4pDwlQupn...

    • You set your own display name on Signal. You can also set "nicknames" for each of your contacts, but they're local to your account. If a nickname is set, it overrides the display name in most places in the UI.

      1 reply →

    • As an attempt to get him fired from the Administration, this might the only one that works :-))

That tweet:

>The Atlantic has conceded: these were NOT “war plans.”

The leak:

>...1410: More F-18s LAUNCH (2nd strike package)”

>1415: Strike Drones on Target...

Seems kind of war plan like to me.