Is the Signal debacle part of a more sinister pattern of behaviour?

Is there a systemic use of Signal to avoid data retention requirements?

As with all matters Trump, in the Signal chat thread, vagary is the chosen path by those facing questions from Senate hearings. Plenty of ‘I don’t recall’ and ‘I can’t speak to that’ along with a helping of ‘it’s under review’ appears to be the order of the day, as the campaign to defend the indefensible begins.

Hegseth, a man out of his depth that presents a threat to US national security

To better understand the matter we first need to discuss Signal and why the people involved were using it. For me this potentially points to a much wider and more sinister problem which I’ll speak to shortly.

The key point is, Signal allows for the deletion of messages and the entire chat if required. I have linked the instructions from Signal, of which I am a user below:

https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360007320491-Delete-messages-alerts-or-chats

Inside these instructions at the foot of the page, you will see a link to ‘Set and manage disappearing messages’. You will see that these settings can be used to delete messages after a specified period. Why is this important? It’s important because I would bet my wages on the fact that Signal is being used across the administration to drive around record retention requirements. The developers claim deletions leave no trace even of metadata. However, despite being encrypted, US security protocols dictate that no platform outside of approved channels should EVER be used to transmit the type of data included in the reported thread. These protocols are in place to protect American security.

It seems clear to me, by the very nature of the chat thread, none of the participants thought the contents would ever see the light of day given the alpha male style conversation. Certainly the insult to European allies and the mentioned intent to send Europe a bill for protecting shipping, is pretty revealing.

I would add, the US has not been the sole player in the Houthi conflict. Joint strikes have been carried out by the U.S. and United Kingdom with nonoperational support from Australia, Bahrain, Canada and the Netherlands. Allies now have good reason to worry that shared intelligence can’t be trusted in the hands of the current administration. Once again the arrogance is evident in the text exchange. It portrays a bunch of excited boys playing war games, but with live ammunition and real people dying. The testosterone is palpable.

Imagine if the journalist copied in was friendly to the plight of the Houthis? This was real time messaging, it seems clear it contained classified operational data, delivered in advance of a military strike on identified targets inside Yemen. Had this information been passed to the targets, can you imagine the potential risk it would have presented to the mission?

It was extremely fortunate for the administration, the person copied in was the editor in chief of the Atlantic Magazine, Jeffrey Goldberg. A well respected journalist despite being critical of the administration. He responsibly parsed the chat thread before meeting his responsibility to inform the public of this egregious security failure.

The response from the Secretary of Defence far from being apologetic, was to attack the messenger. Despite attempts to defend the indefensible, it’s clear for all to see, there’s a distinct possibility, the actions of these senior administration officials was a breach of the Espionage Act.

Axios reports that the White House response was as arrogant as the message thread itself. Four top administration officials stated:

“We don't care what the media says," a Trump adviser said. "We can easily handle what would kill any other administration. This will blow over." There was even an acknowledgment that such a revelation ‘..would kill any other administration’

Goldberg wrote that “the message thread included: operational details of forthcoming strikes on Yemen, including information about targets, weapons the U.S. would be deploying, and attack sequencing,"

Hardly surprising then that the Senate Intelligence Committee immediately convened an urgent hearing to question key participants. The lengths those giving evidence went to in order to avoid answering questions was frankly disturbing. Tulsi Gabbard appeared visibly shaken by the experience. Clearly her FSB training failed her on this occasion. The other interesting point that arose in her testimony was in relation to whether she had used a private or government phone to participate in the thread. Alarm bells should be ringing right now, because I also think that Signal is being used as a bridge between private and government devices. This screams security threat. My concern here, is given that loyalists are now installed throughout government. Can anyone be trusted to review any of this as is being claimed by Gabbard. She is a woman already previously suspected of being a Russian asset? This is a government corrupt to its core. I have little doubt it will protect whoever Trump wants protecting.

I believe the Atlantic has inadvertently stumbled upon a practice used widely across government to avoid meaningful oversight. Key players are I suspect, using Signal to avoid leaving a trail back to questionable interactions. The only information the platform collects is the date an account was registered, the time when an account was last active, and hashed phone numbers. Information like call history or location data isn't saved.

There surely should be a further investigation by the Senate Intelligence Committee to establish the extent of the use of Signal across government, especially given current negotiations between the US and the Kremlin. To think that such high level individuals are using a platform known to be vulnerable to Russian hackers, presents a clear and present danger to US national security if the platform is being used by other senior officials across the administration.

As recently as February, Security Week ran a headline ‘How Russian Hackers Are Exploiting Signal ‘Linked Devices’ Feature for Real Time Spying’ Reporting ‘Incident response specialists at Mandiant are sounding alarm bells after catching multiple Russian professional hacking gangs abusing a nifty Signal Messenger feature to surreptitiously spy on encrypted phone conversations’.

https://www.securityweek.com/how-russian-hackers-are-exploiting-signals-linked-devices-for-real-time-spying/amp/

It appears that those that should know better in government, are risking national security to play fast and loose with the rules and this is placing potentially misson critical data at risk.