I’m watching the hearing now. Democrats are ROASTING them and calling for their resignations, while Republicans are asking them about China and Mexico and praising their first months in position. It’s disgusting.
The NSA explicitly advised them all against the use of Signal back in February, citing recent breaches of the platform by Russian hackers. Two of them were in Moscow at the time the strikes were communicated, one being Gabbard, the Director of National Intelligence.
Edit: The lottery assigned Judge Boasberg to their trial. It’s a good day.
We need more than resignations. We need actual punishments. Can’t have them just resign and go on to be a private consultant or talking head.
This is just the congressional investigation. The criminal trial will be heard by Judge Boasberg.
Or go on to store documents in a bathroom between Russian ambassador visits
I hear non-federal prison is fun. Mix them in with gen pop while waiting in a transfer that never comes. Surely the thoughts and prayers are effective against boiling sugar water.
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one being Gabbard, the Director of National Intelligence
…and Kremlin mouthpiece and asset
Good times, good times.
I mean if you assume her title is an intended insult it makes a lot more sense.
Like the secretary of education in Idiocracy.
Correct.
There is obviously an easy fix for this. Get rid of the NSA, CISA, and other cybersecurity people.
That won’t stop a drunk moron inviting randos to chat.
Hot take: the NSA getting dissolved would be a win
It worked to lower covid! Can’t get record numbers of people dying from covid when you aren’t tracking!
Roasting isn’t enough, unless we’re talking about doing it over an open flame.
Congress can’t charge them with a crime. They’re already scheduled for court.
I’m not familiar with Boasberg, but a quick DDGing tells me he’s been blocking deportations. Someone with integrity ? Can you tell me more ?
Yes. He’s the judge that Trump and congressional Republicans have repeatedly threatened with impeachment for obstructing the Executive Branch. Impeachment of a federal judge requires a 2/3 vote in the Senate, and Senate Democrats have already stated that they will not vote in favor.
He has issued injunctions on the Alien Enemies Act deportations, and is the one demanding detailed flight logs and passenger lists for the flights to El Salvador. They very much dislike him for doing his job correctly.
Fascism is fucking gross.
Nice, what a bro. Thanks for the additional context, I was too weary to look him up thoroughly and sift through the bullshit
Oh Christ he’s gonna be the one they arrest in order to start the purge of the judiciary, isn’t he
Good to have a canary in the coal mine, at least.
Read the full transcript. There is so much more that is being overlooked besides the “war plans” that were leaked.
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Joe Kent: “I will send you the unclass data we pulled on BAM shipping” This indicates that Kent knew that this conversation was classified and that at least some people in the chat were not privy to at least some level of classified information.
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JD Vance: “I think messaging is going to be tough no matter what – nobody knows who the Houthis are – which is why we would need to stay focused on: 1) Biden failed & 2) Iran funded.”. He’s basically acknowledging what they’re doing is complete bullshit, but it won’t matter as long as they blame Biden for it.
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JD Vance: “1) this leaks, and we look indecisive;”. I don’t even know what to say here.
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Michael Waltz: “Per the president’s request we are working with DOD and State to determine how to compile the cost associated and levy them on the Europeans.”. In other words “We’re bombing Yemen, and Europe’s gonna pay for it.”
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JD Vance: “I just hate bailing Europe out again.”. I think this is a highly under-reported line in this whole debacle. It shows that the US position on Europe isn’t just some political theater to appease Trump, but shows that the US (or at least, this administration’s) disdain for Europe is very, very real. This is the geopolitical equivalent of finding out your best friend tells everybody that you’re nothing but a freeloading loser when you’re not around. Even if it stays quiet, this line will not go unnoticed, and will have a huge impact on US/EU relations going forward.
IMPORTANT EDIT: As I expected, these comments did not go unnoticed. European leaders are already rethinking their relationships with the US in response to not only this entire scandal, but also the specific comments made by JD Vance since it gives evidence of the true feelings of the Trump administration.
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JD Vance: “And if there are things we can do upfront to minimize risk to Saudi oil facilities we should do it.”. Good to know where his priorities are. Gotta protect that Saudi oil. Innocent civillians? Fuck 'em. They’re not nearly as important as that sweet, sweet black gold.
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Pete Hegseth: “VP: I fully share your loathing of European free-loading. It’s PATHETIC.”. See above. This is going to have a huge damping effect on our relations with our European allies going forward, as it reinforces the fact that US disdain for Europe is real and not just political theater for cameras.
So in other words, they’re bombing Yemen because Europeans are freeloaders, and if anybody asks why we’re even doing this just blame Biden.
Then whinging about messaging is hilarious to me. It’s not like they have ever been good at it it’s just their portion of the electorate has been eating lead paint and accepts basically anything.
They were basically saying as much in the chat. A couple of times. If anyone asks any questions, just blame Biden because they know their base will accept it.
Do you have the text of the ‘did not go unnoticed’ article, as it is paywalled for me
From the article, bolding mine:
"There are demands now for both Mr Waltz, who has been described by a White House official as a “f—ing idiot”, and Mr Hegseth to resign, which – given the seriousness of the security breach - should be the minimum required of them. But what must we conclude about JD Vance, who joined in the sneering at what are supposed to be his country’s chief allies with such gusto? And what about the future of our security operations? Do we continue to supply highly sensitive intelligence to a White House which holds us in contempt and might just accidentally broadcast critical information to random contacts?
And the biggest question of all: whose side is America on now? The “pathetic” Western countries with which it supposedly shares a democratic tradition or its new friend, Vladimir Putin, with whom it could comfortably carve up the world?"
I ran a roleplay spy organization that had tighter INFOSEC and OPSEC than this.
European here: we did not ask for your help, we do not particularly want you to bomb the houthis (or anyone in the Middle East for that matter).
… You want shipping through the Suez.
This bombing campaign won’t prevent missile attacks on shipping. If anything, it will further motivate ships to avoid the area.
I can think of a better way to get the Houthis to stop attacking ships in the Suez
Give Israel to Iran?
I do think the US in particular should have pulled the leash on Netanyahu. Sure felt like they had a different understanding of who has the power in that relationship. (Thanks, AIPAC.)
However, regardless of the US stance, I think s genocide happens there no matter what. Even so, slowly and constantly over 30 years is better than devastation over 30 months.
It’s not a black and white situation.
Even so, slowly and constantly (committing genocide) over 30 years is better than devastation over 30 months.
I don’t even have the words for how insanely fucked up this mindset is.
Easiest way to dothat is stop supporting Israel’s genocide in Palestine. Seems like all upsides to me
Are you seriously naive enough to think the Houthis will lay down their arms if Israel stops attacking Palestine? The Yemeni civil war was happening before Israel invaded Gaza.
Yes actually, they didn’t attack the ships during the ceasefire in Gaza.
And? They supported the ceasefire. Neat. They’re still not going to forget their initial grievances. And Iran and Saud aren’t suddenly decide to be all friendly.
Dude seriously. For the last few weeks, every time I see your username pop up I am baffled – baffled I say, you’re not an @lemmy.ml troll. I’d be happy to be character reference if they need one for you to join.
People have decided the issue is about which team you pick. Apparently it’s a sport where “your team” is good and the other guys are bad.
Who needs nuance when you can just rail against your perceived enemies (anyone who disagrees with you even slightly).
Who needs nuance when apparently an entire residential building counts as acceptable losses (don’t even think about damaging daddy’s oil tho)
Yeah, reporting has mostly been about the leak - and I understand why. American lives > anything else in American politics and the OPSEC is what puts American lives at risk.
But if I understand this “operation” correctly - a rocket specialist for the Houthis who was instrumental in the attacks on Suez Canal had a girlfriend in that building. So, they dropped the building on him. 53 innocents dead to kill one terrorist? This is acceptable losses in modern American warfighting?
We would indeed prefer shipping to Suez. That’s why we deploy navy ships to the Red Sea. Doesn’t mean that we asked for this particular strike on Jemen (which as many already pointed out is unlikely to affect piracy much). You can’t say you do something for Europe when to my knowledge no European nation asked for this “aide”.
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Have European leaders been living under a rock? The U.S. leaders have been pretty clear about Europeans countries freeloading and have told them to their faces repeatedly.
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The Government that hires by merit. :\
Pete Hegseth is not top shelf, but his liquor is.
I know. And he’s not a good hire for the merit based government either.
Do they know what that means?
Yup, that is a grade A f*ck up right there.
Vance responded a minute later: “Excellent.” Thirty-five minutes after that, Ratcliffe, the CIA director, wrote, “A good start,” which Waltz followed with a text containing a fist emoji, an American-flag emoji, and a fire emoji.
You cannot make this shit up
👊🇺🇸🔥
My new slogan: 👊🧔🏻♂️🇺🇸🔥 (Punch the nazis and burn their BS down)
I can’t find an emoji that looks like trump enough 👴🏽👦🏼 or just 🤡
'MURICA!
FUCK YEAH!
COMIN’ AGAIN TO SAVE THE MOTHERFUCKIN’ DAY, YEAH!
Unless you’re European, Canadian, or Mexican and then we give two shits, yeah!!
Or American really. The subset of Americans they care about is so close to zero it isn’t worth considering.
They’re like a bunch of frat boys trying to outdo each other in their edgy hot take. They’re creating their own tiny echo chamber where it is cool to hate on other Western countries and admire Russia.
This is an article about an article. The original Atlantic article that contains the messages themselves is here
The people who pulled this off, lol. They probably hacked Waltz his (private?) phone, replaced the number of some high level official with the number of the Atlantic guy, and then just sat back and relax. Watch this shit show unfold.
No-one “pulled this off”. Walz fucked up.
This is called “proportionality bias”, believing that a major event must have had major planning behind it.
It doesn’t. They’re just dumb and fat fingered the wrong recipient to add to the chat on an app and phone that they shouldn’t have been using in the first place!
Perfect example of hanlons razor
Not really. Accidentally / due to stupidity adding the chief editor of a critical magazine on the administration is just too perfect to be a coincidence.
Signal itself is not vulnerable. This article needs to correct itself. Signal is only vulnerable if the DEVICE THAT USES IT is compromised. Using devices that can be compromised is the issue here. Do not use that device to discuss anything confidential if you are in the government.
This is not Signal’s fault at all.
There is no doubt in my mind that their phones are compromised.
They’re refusing to use government issued devices. They’re all using personals. This was an issue last time around, too. There’s a whole fucking division of the government (that I’m sure they’re hollowing out now) whose job it is to make sure people who need secure devices have them and use them.
When Hillary Clinton used a private email server like her Republican predecessors, it was such an enormous breech of security that it launched numerous investigations (all by Republicans, and none concluding that any crimes occurred, or damage was done), and we are still hearing them whine about it to this day. Yet these dopes use off-the-shelf iPhones for communication, exposing our most precious secrets, and none of them think it’s an issue.
The only reason we know about this was because they reached a spectacular new level of incompetence, and literally invited a reporter to join them. How many times have they done this before, and how many times will they keep doing it? Discussing classified operations over unsecure phones, that is, not inviting reporters to join in. That will never happen again.
Her predecessors didn’t do that. They were literally using Hotmail and Gmail. Making their performative outrage even more absurd.
Clinton’s server wasn’t strictly to the standards of regulation and laws. But it wasn’t a fucking public email server hosting your grandmother’s Viagra spam.
Heh-heh
How many times have they done this before, and how many times will they keep doing it? Discussing classified operations over unsecure phones, that is, not inviting reporters to join in. That will never happen again.
We previously didn’t think they were stupid enough to do it once, and yet, they did. “Never” would imply a capability to learn from their mistakes that they do not possess.
Valid.
That’s nuts. I couldn’t even imagine putting anything gov or company secret into a personal device. Hell at work I even watch what I type into google
Makes me fucking sick that they get away with this shit, particularly after Hillary Clinton.
Fucking sickening.
What makes me sick is all the centrists and Leftists and low-information idiot voters who fucking believed all that shit about Hillary. Fash gonna fash, I expect them to be liars and hypocrites. But THOSE fucking dumbasses, the “Hillery gives me bad vibe so I vote for orange man” unga-bunga paint sniffers? That’s what makes me sick.
buttery males
🫠
They are compromised, it doesn’t even matter if the software on their phones is too.
Yeah, their terrible behavior, policies, and plans all make sense when you finally realize that they are all Russian assets. They aren’t acting like Americans charged with the responsibility of protecting and managing our government. They are acting like Russian deep cover operatives charged with dismantling and crashing the American government.
Their cover isn’t as deep as they seem to think it is.
They’re so compromised, they even add Editor-in-chiefs to text chains!
Tulsi only gave her device to Russian intelligence to install exclusive games not available in the US.
I don’t see the issue here. Gabbard is known to be trustworthy. Let her play the cool games.
But a presidential administration is required to keep classified records, and records of all meetings in general.
It may take decades of FOIA requests, but those records are SUPPOSED TO BE KEPT, not deleted forever after 7 days.
This regime using Signal is a major red flag and a permanent information black hole.
That’s exactly what he’s saying dude. The app works fine, there is no problem with the app. There is a problem with these people using the app.
Signal itself is not vulnerable. This article needs to correct itself. Signal is only vulnerable if the DEVICE THAT USES IT is compromised.
I think the description of vulnerability is subjective in this case. It could be that signal is inherently more vulnerable than official channels, as Signal is a private corporation that has no motivation to disclose any failures in their security.
I don’t think the article is trying to blame Signal in any way, it’s just not the proper communication channel and thus utilizing it is an inherent vulnerability no matter how secure their encryption may be.
Signal is a publicly available app that provides encrypted communications, but it can be hacked. It is not approved for carrying classified information. On March 14, one day before the strikes, the Defense Department cautioned personnel about the vulnerability of Signal, specifically that Russia was attempting to hack the app, according to a U.S. official who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity.
One known vulnerability is that a malicious actor, with access to a person’s phone, can link his or her device to the user’s Signal and essentially monitor messages remotely in real time.
This reads to me like Signal has weaknesses. Also, just so everyone is aware:
The Signal Technology Foundation, commonly known as the Signal Foundation, is an American Non-profit organization founded in 2018 by Moxie Marlinspike and Brian Acton. Its mission is to “protect free expression and enable Secure communication through Open source Digital privacy”. Its subsidiary, Signal Messenger LLC, is responsible for the development of the Signal messaging app and the Signal Protocol.
Signal is an open-source, encrypted messaging service for instant messaging , voice calls, and video calls . The instant messaging function includes sending text, voice notes, images, videos, and other files. Communication may be one-to-one between users or may involve group messaging.
Calling it a “vulnerability” that someone with full access to an authorized device can use it to authorize another device is crazy. That’s not Signal’s issue, that’s an issue with your device security. The app has to trust the logged in user; if it doesn’t, then even displaying the data could be a breach.
I think the description of vulnerability is subjective in this case.
No, it really isn’t. The Signal protocol enables E2EE, meaning you don’t have to worry about the server infra (that is, even if you don’t buy that they’re using the FOSS server code they say they are, it’s irrelevant). The Signal protocol is open and has been examined forwards and backwards over and over by security researchers around the world. I can’t emphasize how many eyes are on this protocol because of how prolifically used it is, including by government officials worldwide. The app is FOSS, and like the protocol, it has a ton of eyes on it for the same reason. The app is a reproducible build, meaning that if Signal baited you with a fake app, it would be found out immediately.
It could be that signal is inherently more vulnerable than official channels, as Signal is a private corporation that has no motivation to disclose any failures in their security.
They’re a corporation, sure, but in the sense that they’re a 501©(3), not a for-profit. Signal would have every incentive to disclose a failure in “their security” (where here that means their app or the protocol; again, what’s happening on the servers literally, provably, mathematically doesn’t matter). For a privacy org like this, it’s in their best interest to immediately report any problems that might compromise privacy.
I don’t think the article is trying to blame Signal in any way, it’s just not the proper communication channel
Agreed. But here, I agree it’s not the proper channel 1) because it’s on their personal devices which the person you’re responding to clearly stated and 2) a Signal chat (likely intentionally on their part) bypasses crucial records keeping laws. A known vuln for example is if someone has access to your phone, they can link their own personal device and read your messages as they come up. But again, that requires access to your phone, which becomes problematic if and only if you’re using your own personal device rather than a secure government one.
and thus utilizing it is an inherent vulnerability no matter how secure their encryption may be.
No. Again, that’s not an inherent vulnerability. Using it on their personal devices is, but unless you can come up with a vulnerability in the app itself or the protocol itself, then you’re just agreeing with the person you’re replying to.
The Signal Foundation is a non-profit. The non-profit owns an LLC under the same name which publishes and develops the apps.
The software itself is open source, and licensed under AGPLv3, the same permissive license as lemmy and mastodon.
Calling them a private company with no motivation to disclose any failures in their security is pretty clearly untrue in whole.
Nothing is going to happen right
Signal is a publicly available app that provides encrypted communications, but it can be hacked.
This is misleading statement that will only confuse people who want to use a secure messenger.
To clear things up with anyone who’s not technically inclined: Anything can be theoretically hacked. Signal has not been hacked and has no history of being compromised.
The Signal “hacks” that linked people’s Signal client to devices that aren’t theirs were sophisticated phishing/spoofing attacks. The equivalent of getting someone to click a malicious link via email because it looked like the real thing.
A reminder that you still need to do your due diligence even when using a secure service. Technology alone cannot completely protect you.
Not particularly technically inclined so this question may be stupid, but suppose an intelligence service found some backdoor into Signal, wouldn’t they try to keep that information hidden from Signal? So in theory the chat could be vulnerable already?
You dont just find backdoors in real encryption. They’re placed there intentionally. Signal already had governments demanding backdoors and they said no.
To add to the other comment and give an analogy: say you’re concerned that I secretly possess keys to the back door of your house and I can freely come and go. It’s technically possible. But two questions are important; how come you’ve never seen me in your house or any signs I’ve been there? And secondly, why do me and my friends keep asking you to give us your back door key?
Classification breakdown: https://bsky.app/profile/secretsandlaws.bsky.social/post/3llburtsvnk2m
The problem doesn’t even seem to be the hacking but how easy it is to gain access to a chat. I didn’t look into how the editor got invited but think of how easy it is to get a random number invited to a signal group chat. It doesn’t take much social engineering to slip a number in there with this chaotic oh no wait DISRUPTIVE administration. No authentication required. Just send a mail to [email protected] with the text “Oy bro, send group invite”
👊🇺🇲🔥
LMAO I can’t
Setting the US Constitution on fire using the power of the conservative fist.
I will say a prayer for perjury convictions 🙏
They’ll just investigate themselves and find nothing.
Best you’ll get is Garland v2: Electric Boogaloo
FFS, if a Dem gets into power DONT FUCK IT UP! PROSECUTE TO THE FULLEST EXTENT OF THE LAW
(oh wait, forgot about the pre-emptive pardons 😓, thanks, whoever wrote the constitution, what a stupid rule, pardons? what are we, a Monarchy?)
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With Kash Patel on the case, we can be rest assured hell for absolutely nothing about these idiots.
