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.
Let your local magats know how you feel about being subjected to this shit show daily. Really let them know how you feel.
They just mumble TDS and start pretending to speak in tongues.
Up the ante
Probably backdoored
You’re thinking of Grind’r.
Seems more like they left the front door wide open.
Gotta save that juicy blackmail
Wish I could read the whole article
Thanks
I’m so grateful for archive.is and every project like it
Too stupid even for Trump to keep onboard.
“We are currently clean on OPSEC.”
“Only the best people.”
These fucking clowns. I’ve lived through an awful lot of Gov’t by the Stupid…
(Remember when we thought Bush the Younger was the dumbest president ever…??)
But this freak show simply outdoes anything that came before. 🙄 🤡 🖕
I long for the Bush era and that’s fucking tragic.
➕ 💯
Golfs better than Trump too
What a time to be alive
It was not. 2000+ has pretty much sucked.
Funny enough, 2000 is when I could first legally buy booze too. Still didn’t help.
Could it be that Mike was the insider that was leaking stuff to the media and this archiveable version of Signal is to be able to prove and/or keep Signal conversations that would otherwise be removed from the official app? I mean, just them using Signal is a violation of the Records Act, no, due to the ability to remove entire chats after a period of time? Everyone thinks he’s incompetent or dumb, but he may have added that reporter on purpose to expose their use of Signal in the first place and he’s using this unofficial version to save chats we would otherwise not have record of. If the insider info stops now, we’ll know why.
Laws don’t usually center around ability to do something but actually doing it. That is, using signal may be fine, turning on disappearing messages isn’t. But you can’t know. Most of our system is built on trust, assuming that people who got to that level, passed clearance, etc…are worthy of our trust. On the other hand, what’s even the alternative?
So these convos are backed up somewhere. Outside of government control. Great.
No wonder they moved fast to block any investigation
Noooo, it’s not that they’re guilty of anything… it’s to protect from the deep state and the radical left commiefascist"insertbuzzword"s! I’d put “hey look at the bunny” but these assholes aren’t even trying to distract anymore, it’s just plain and simple corrupt government running for their own best interests while throwing out half hearted stupid sound bites to appease the brain washed.
It’s backed up to the Israeli software company that makes this unofficial version of Signal. Probably the only people it’s less safe with than the Russians.
i think mossad has work with russia in the past, and they would likely get thier hands on this, and russia can pass it on to iran who will leak it to Hamas,etc.
How did this photo even happen? They don’t use privacy covers? Who’s running this operation??
I have a polarizing filter on my phone, but that can be circumvent Ed with the right camera lens.
Damn that Ed, always circumventing things.
I’m leaving Ed be. He’s cool, but his views are polarizing.
Next question: how does the rest of the photo come out when using that camera lens?
Polarized light still feels like black magic to me, so I wouldn’t be surprised if it would have a negligible to no effect on anything else in the frame, but my instinct says it would mess up a bunch of random things, thus making it useful for very specific spy craft type applications, but not for general use.
You’re not supposed to have sensitive info on your screen in public in the first place.
That’s why you have privacy glass meaning you can only read the screen from a narrow angle range.
This is the dumbass that is running the operation. Well, not anymore. He just got fired and nominated for ambassador to the UN.
Seriously
Talk about paid-vacation, I mean, paid-suspension
He just got fired and nominated for ambassador to the UN.
Wait, really? It’s getting impossible to keep up with this shit.
Holy shit it’s real
It’s like every mind numbing event is endcapped with a stinger: But wait, there’s more!
And your gonna feel worse about it!
You’re*
ur*
what a putz
Yo this is a real interesting read but the title is straight clickbait that makes it seem like the gov’t is externally archiving signal messages for citizens.
I mean, aren’t they?
It’s TeleMessage, not Signal, but w/e
No i mean, are they not just storing encrypted messages until they have capability to decrypt?
Yes, the US government has a longstanding ‘grab everything’ order in place.
It’s just a matter of whether they want to put the resources towards deciphering something.
I read it as intented, since most headlines in the last month have been about their own usage of Signal.
The article makes me wonder if Waltz is intentionally countering the counter-revolution.
Either that, or he’s just stupid as fuck.
Maybe both.
Lemme get this straight
It’s a problem for the government to use signal because all govt correspondence needs to be on record and retrievable in the future
But it’s also a problem to use archiving of encrypted chats?
Not an American, can someone explain?
Yes.
The answer is that this is all a bunch of stupid bullshit and that the Trumplicans truly don’t give a damn about laws that no one can force them to follow.
At this point, there’s really no point in trying to look for consistency or rational justification for anything these people do.
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.
The head of each Federal agency shall make and preserve records containing adequate and proper documentation of the organization, functions, policies, decisions, procedures, and essential transactions of the agency and designed to furnish the information necessary to protect the legal and financial rights of the Government and of persons directly affected by the agency’s activities. 44 U.S. Code § 3101.
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.
If republicans control both houses, why don’t they approve the app or change the law?
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 is 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.
How do you know they have access to the archived data? That’s possible… but requires making assumptions that the application sends the archive data back to the company, which is not a guarantee by any means. Not everything operates via vendor-run infrastructure, most enterprise applications are designed to work with an enterprise-run solution for exactly this type of reason. This isn’t a program aimed at the general public.
They make the client application, it is entirely possible that the client simply sends that data to a specified database, and the apps on these devices are set to a server run by the US government. It’s not hard to verify where the archive info leaving a device via any network interface is going. You can’t just hide a connection from the phone to an additional random server, especially if you’re looking for weird connections when validating solutions to implement.
Is it possible that they have it running to a server run by the company? Of course it’s possible. That doesn’t mean it’s plausible, or even likely here. We don’t know how the app is set up or where it archives to. Assuming it must archive back to the company though is ignorant of how anything remotely related to these types of things work.
On a side note… When was the contract for this application setup? Was it signed by the Trump admin or has it been in place for years to archive these types of communications and we’re only talking about it now because of the Trump officials being idiots brought it into the news cycle?
An archiving application isn’t inherently insecure just because it’s third party, or even made by a foreign company. There’s a shit ton of technology bought from foreign countries because that’s the best option.
No, both are a problem because they aren’t approved and controlled.
Sure. You are legally required to archive all correspondence by approved by our security departments software, not a corporate app that shares the info with corporations and are on unsecured servers. Our security warned them to not do this and they did it anyway.
Also, do you remember “but her emails” for Hillary Clinton? That was because she used a private app for some of her emails. She wasn’t using it to wage a war.
Lemme get this straight
It’s a problem for the government to use signal because all govt correspondence needs to be on record and retrievable in the future
But it’s also a problem to use archiving of encrypted chats?
Not an American, can someone explain?
What stops the government approving the app themselves?
What the fuck does that mean
Sea lioning.
Nothing, but it hasn’t been done, therefore this is illegal.
Lmao that’s pretty funny, why am I getting downvoted
Asking questions with obvious answers. You come off as a sealion troll.
What is a sealion?
Obvious answers for Americans maybe
God forbid you ask a question on the internet these days
Obvious for anyone with an internet connection and half a brain. Case in point, you could google “sealion troll” and get far more info than you’d ever get from a lemmy comment.
To make matters somewhat worse, tele message appears to be an Israeli company
Although they are owned by Smarsh, an American company.
mossad, looking through the logs: “already knew that. tell us something we don’t know ffs.”
This is a link to the modified app instruction.
https://www.telemessage.com/signal-archiver-android-installation-upgrade/
