Trump officials shared military plans on a private app — 10 years after uproar over Hillary Clinton’s private server

It’s almost as if they never actually cared about the server but rather were just using it to score points. Not at all like, you know, absolutely everything else.

:surprised-pikachu:
HUNTER BIDENS LAPTOP
It's almost like libs don't actually care about this recent leak but are also just using it to score points.
The lack of self-awareness is stunning.
- Ah, I knew there was a good reason I have you tagged as 'fucking moron'
- People do care about the leaaks, but also how ironically this situation is compared to the 'but what about her emails' situation in the past.
- imagine getting banned from c/noncredibledefense, how pathetic do you have to be for that to happen

Lock. Them. Up.

Nothing on Hillary Clinton's server was classified at the time it was put on the server
From the group of 30,000 e-mails returned to the State Department, 110 e-mails in 52 e-mail chains have been determined by the owning agency to contain classified information at the time they were sent or received. Eight of those chains contained information that was Top Secret at the time they were sent; 36 chains contained Secret information at the time; and eight contained Confidential information, which is the lowest level of classification.
Some items were subsequently reclassified to the lowest level above Unclassified.
Separate from those, about 2,000 additional e-mails were “up-classified” to make them Confidential; the information in those had not been classified at the time the e-mails were sent.
So there's really no comparison between the two situations.
I agree. I just wanted to correct the record and to highlight that a normal government employee would have been fired for what Hillary did.
In my opinion the most relevant commonality is the hypocrisy of all the involved parties. Hillary had sent out a notice to the entire State Department saying to only use official communication platforms, and then did the opposite as if she thinks she's above the rules.
Then these Republicans who condemned the actions also used a non-official platform.
Here we go with the "Democrats can do no wrong..." speech...
- Ah, cool, another account to block.
  Bye!
- Please explain how you can read "that one thing everyone was mad at wasn't as bad as they said" to "they're perfect angels who never do anything bad" without being either braindead or a pathetic partisan hack
- Any government business should be conducted solely on government equipment, classified or unclassified. What the poster is saying is that the two don't compare, what Hillary did was conduct government business on a private server, what the trump administration officials did was share sensitive compartmented information (SCI) on a private app.
  Both actions were wrong, it's just that revealing SCI information is far far worse.
- Where did it say that?
  This is the projection we were talking about.

Wasn't the server an actual private server she had setup whereas this is a corporate app that is supposedly private if they are not lying and accessing the data. I mean this is way wore unless they put up a server to run the chat software.

- I don't think anything can be proven unless you have admin rights to the server at all times. signals are encrypted every time they are sent encrypted. can it be turned off with a flag? does it run in dev without it for troubleshooting and if so is it impossible to enable in prod.
Also, while using the app, there is zero accountability for who told who to do what within the government. FOIA is useless for any conversation happening within that app, self hosted or not.
- Yep, OPSEC is definitely a major issue here. But the other problem is like you mention, zero accountability. Additionally, if they delete the chat, there is no way to reobtain the data for historical archive purposes, which is another law violation.
It doesn’t matter what kind of server you’re using. Highly classified information has rules and regulations. Some stuff can only be talked about in certain buildings because the buildings were built to block listening devices.
This is a major fuck up that could have gotten American soldiers killed. Everyone involved should be in prison.
- Everyone involved should be in prison.
  I'm not sure we could prove this was knowing and willful. The Russian recipient of the messages is the most suspicious angle of attack.

Conservative hypocrisy knows no bounds. They will only be outraged at what their talking heads tell them to be outraged at.

I'm not sure that pointing out the hypocrisy is even useful. I'm nearing 40 and "but it's okay when we do it" has always been a core tenant of conservatism. They don't give a shit that they're hypocrites, they don't care, I've boxed them in on it before and it always just boils down to "it's okay for us because I said so". I think it's maybe more useful to move past the identification of hypocrisy and start engaging in conversations about accountability. That is, conversations about hypocrisy without conversations about what kind of accountability you'd like to see are moot. So, let's move past "can you believe this shit? But her emails? Do you feel like the hypocrites you are yet?" to "your boy did something fucking stupid. I don't care about your excuses, fire him."

That's true! We just assume that by pointing out the naughty behavior Someone will Do Something because honest people expect honest reactions.
Dishonest people cannot have honest reactions, their words mean nothing, they respond only to personal suffering and nothing else.

Where is the accountability from the public? Every redneck 100 mi from me was screaming about her damn emails. They probably didn't even understand why they were outraged, but the man on the FoX nEwS was angry about it so I am too. They say that the don't trust the government for legitimate topics like vaccines, and taxes and then when the government gives you a huge reason to actually be concerned, it gets ignored

The hypocrisy knows no bounds...

It's almost like that party has no values and sees everything only through the lens of political leverage.

Also the disappearing texts are a concern. There's not much mention of that. And now you have to wonder, how many other conversations have been held there, and with who?

Disappearing texts?
- Similar to WhatsApp you can set limits on how long to keep a message

lock them up!

According to Sun Tzus art of war, someone who is that stupid should be put to death.

It’s always Opposite Day with these clowns GOP. The blame finger is always pointing at them.

Shared military plans with a journalist on a private app.

Clown show ... so let's spin it that this came from a disreputable journalist.

I'm so tired of America letting the worst pieces of shit get away with anything. One side breaks the speed limit by 2mph and they're euthanized. The other side rapes and kills all of Asia, and nothing happens.

The two sides you’re talking about is the rich vs the poor.
The rich get to do what they want because no one holds them accountable. The people that should be holding them accountable are corrupted by the endless money that the rich have.
The “people” could change this over night but the rich have us all divided.
If you want real change stop hating your neighbor and start banding together. That will never happen tho because the rich are winning this war.
- Are you seriously trying to convince us that these fucking Nazis are our allies? If I were in a room with Bill Gates and a dirt poor Nazi and had a gun with one bullet, I'd shoot the Nazi.
  No class solidarity with bigots. They do not get a seat at the table.

The takeaway is that Signal is a bloody good app to use.

Sounds like it's pretty easy to add the wrong people to your chat.
- People are usually the weakest link.
- It's no different from many other chat apps. Select the contacts you want in the group.
  There's no issue with the app, it's actually among the most secure. The issue is the meatbag behind the thumbs selecting who to put in the chat.
Is that the takeaway?
- For the reporter it was.

🧈 👨 s

Leonardo DiCaprio pointing at a tv

EDIT: To be 1000% clear, they should not be using personal cell phones for this, which they probably did because everyone in this admin is braindead gutter trash. I'm suggesting that self-hosted Signal over government servers is probably fine for security with potentially some tweaks to the app. Something I neglected to think of however is that this sidesteps record keeping, and probably deliberately so. My contention here was solely about security, but this fact makes Signal use unconscionable in my book because it impedes accountability.

Okay, let's just be clear here: Signal isn't just another "private app"; the amount of information they have about your communications is zero (0) with the exception that I believe they can see if you have an account and the last time you connected to the server. Governments absolutely do rely on Signal. The Signal protocol is open and highly robust, the app code is FOSS and has eyes from a shitload of security researchers globally due to its importance, its server code is FOSS (although you don't have to trust this due to the robust E2EE, and you can even self-host IIRC due to the FOSS server code), and it has reproducible builds.

This fuck-up was strictly due to the fact that they're incompetent morons just randomly inviting people to group chats and shit with no guardrails. If I had to guess, they'd probably want to self-host the fork the Signal app and make it so that you can only invite people with some form of clearance, but this last thing is total speculation on my part. I'm sure there's some way to sanely do this. The part about Signal being secure is just objectively true; it's audited like absolute crazy, both the FOSS app and the protocol. I would trust it more than whatever the US government could homebrew, even.

If you, as a citizen, are looking for secure, private messaging, Signal should be at the very top of your list of possible candidates alongside Matrix, SimpleX, and Session (keep in mind that Element and Session do not yet support forward secrecy, although the Matrix protocol does).

Let's also be clear: Signal, regardless of their encryption standards, is not an approved system for any kind of classified information. Leaks of this nature have the potential to cost people's lives. Every single person in that group chat would have known this. Many of them have original classification authority.
Further, not only was the platform not approved for the information, the messages were set to disappear after some time. This is a violation of government record keeping laws and FOIA standards. This wasn't an oopsie.
- I mean we put a fox news anchor in charge, and if he's even half as dumb as he looks, well that's pretty fucking dumb. I doubt he understands, or if he does, doesn't care. Just shameful. But hey, at least the libs are getting owned.
- The mere fact it was possible to invite a random journalist to the chat is ridiculous. That shouldn't be an option in a secure environment.
This fuck-up was strictly due to the fact that they're incompetent morons just randomly inviting people to group chats and shit with no guardrails.
No.
These fuckwits were handling classified and top secret information in the open on their cell phones.
It doesn't matter what specific app they used. This is not about the technology. You missed the point.
- This is the same team of geniuses that kept classified files, some of which were mysteriously emptied of their contents, in the unlocked bedroom and bathroom of a members-only club in Florida, near the swimming pool whose water mysteriously destroyed all the surveillance video just when the FBI were about to look at it.
There's been a few articles recently about Session authors starting with Signal protocol, and then continuing without clear understanding what they do, thus that Session shouldn't be used.
Matrix is a compromise, it's not as much about security as it is about just modern FOSS chat.
- Matrix is a compromise, it's not as much about security as it is about just modern FOSS chat.
  Pray tell. Granted again that Element doesn't yet support forward secrecy, but describe what you see as specifically wrong with Matrix, please.
I would trust it more than whatever the US government could homebrew, even.
The clowns in this administration, sure. But the NSA knows what they're doing when it comes to cryptography.

And here several days later they are still trying to gaslight everyone into believing that it never happened.

Lock him up!

I don’t run a magazine so I couldn’t report it but I was included on a top secret Signal group chat where administration officials talked about how long you should wait after Trump or Elon absolutely explodes a White House bathroom. A friend at OSHA accidentally added me.

The younger staffers were given a map of nearby Starbucks locations because sometimes, it would take hours for the West Wing loos to be re-certified as a safe workplace environment. And if the inspector forgot his Geiger counter, forget it. Bathrooms were off limits that day.

The app is likely secure.
The personal phones they installed this app on, however…

It's almost like both "parties" only care about decent OpSec when the other team fucks up.

And neither party cares about the endless imperial slaughter that these communications facilitate. Not even worth mentioning.

But muh both sides

They accidentally added a random guy to a Signal group. Not quite the same as classified documents on a self-hosted email server. I've heard US military uses Signal quite officially.

This should, of course, raise concerns that if they like Signal - they might want to self-host it, the client and the server are FOSS. They might even consider paying Signal the company to help them.

Dod specifically disallows Signal by name https://dodcio.defense.gov/Portals/0/Documents/Library/Memo-UseOfUnclassMobileApps.pdf
- OK, humans err. And also make mistakes, like being so confident on something they don't know for sure.
  If it's specifically disallowed, then some people should be locked up.

It's almost like excusing neoliberals for breaking the law just normalizes republicans doing it...

And they're a lot stupider, so when they do it there's more likely to be negative consequences.

The solution is higher standards and holding someone responsible even when they have the right letter by their name.

Letting neoliberals be as shitty as they want hasn't been working out for 30 years since they tried to convince us a president lying about sexually taking advantage of interns in the oval office and then lying about it under oath to Congress was a "nothingburger" to use their own vernacular.

All lowering Dem standards does, is make us look like hypocrites. And that depresses turnout, which lets fascists into office.

I'm all for accountability and yes there should have been repercussions for Hilary Clinton for using a private email server but in 2016 Republicans used the emails as a cudgel to keep scoring points and drag out investigation after investigation and hearing after hearing to keep the buttery males in the news cycle and keep constant attention on smearing her and making her seem like the incompetent evil mastermind behind benghazi and the pizza parlor and the adrenochrome.
We go high. They go low. And when they go low, they win elections.
a president lying about sexually taking advantage of interns in the oval office
I think the intern was willing and the problem was with lies.
Anyway, sometimes you have to release the steam even in the oval office.
Clinton is an unpleasant person (being best buddies with the current president before the latter's brain rot due to neurosyphilis became irreversible, for example), but why the hell fscking someone there is a bigger deal than, for example, just ordering murders overseas or legally starting this whole mass surveillance thing?
- I think the intern
  Was an intern...
  And he was the fucking president.
  Think of a scenario where anyone in management at a company can have "sexual relations" with an intern in their office and it can be described as "willing".
  Now, despite what Biden spent four years saying, understand that a US president is more powerful and has more of an effect on their interns careers and lives than some random CEO.
  For fucks sake, it's 2025, do you really understand how the implict and explicit power dynamic prevented consent at least during working hours.
  You think she did what she did with a guy 3 times her age because he was charismatic? It's because he was the president.
  Just....
  I feel like I'm rambling but there's so many obvious ways this was problematic, and you're still just fucking ok with it?
  but why the hell fscking someone there is a bigger deal than, for example, just ordering murders overseas or legally starting this whole mass surveillance thing?
  That was never the big deal, it was wrong and fucked up...
  But the big deal was Bill lying under oath to Congress about it, and Dem politicians and voters closed ranks and said it didn't matter.
  The coverup, not the crime.
  That was the beginning of the end of the two party system. Only one party had any integrity and we gave it away to protect Bill Clinton and neoliberalism.
  I guess this was all 30 years ago, and a lot of people weren't old enough to remember it happening, but it was also too recent to be in history books yet.
  There's not really an excuse to not learn about it now, political literacy literally saves lives. We need more informed voters.