How the Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg Got Added to the White House Signal Chat

I think in the very best case we _might_ see Apple/G adding an option into the OS to disable contact autosuggestion, but I wouldn't hold my breath.

When a feature is mildly useful 95% of the time and an awkward footgun 5%, I think it still remains a good addition, but one that can be turned off if necessary.

Double checking the recipients in a chat discussing national security is a super low bar and the parties involved are rightfully embarrassed by this one. I'm not letting them blame it on the product managers

The thing is, it's up to the official classification officer to decide on how far is too far for classification down and this administration loves to short man everything so likely they decided it wasn't an issue, but it is, and someone should be blamed in my opinion since that is that official's job.

You can go around legally too just ask what is and isn't considered classified by derivative.

SIPR is easy to access, there are terminals all over. We had SIPR laptops in cabinets no one ever used. TS/SCI not so much, but there are still SCIFs on every military base and there are a lot of those. Not having access to proper facilities is a bad excuse for the people who work with the president.

SCIF (Wikipedia): A sensitive compartmented information facility (SCIF /skɪf/), in United States military, national security/national defense and intelligence parlance, is an enclosed area within a building that is used to process sensitive compartmented information (SCI) types of classified information.

> but there’s nobody that is going to do anything to them about deviating.

Well, Chinese intelligence, but probably not anyone else, right?

[dead]

I doubt FOIA is even a concern considering this is classified information. I think they're more worried about investigations by a future DOJ or by a future Congress since they can look at this information (if it's not deleted, that is)

Plaintext SMS in the year of our lord 2025. People will do literally anything other than following the fucking law and recording their correspondence.

Reminds me of how the British government runs on WhatsApp.

You can joke about Microsoft Teams not being a real messaging platform, but running it on a network that's physically separated from the Internet is quite effective at keeping random journalists out of your chat groups.

German government seems to be trying the Matrix network.

That only explains that Signal was considered safe and allowed on their phones not that it was an authorized medium for sharing confidential information.

The reason that there's an "expected" process is because the people who were hired to think deeply about security got together and, for a bunch of reasons including "(obvs) the ability to add the wrong person is a problem", decided that the process should be something other than Signal. I'm not sure if we know all of the reasons they made that decision, but I think we can infer a few:

- all communication must be stored for legal purposes

- all communication must be on secure government hardware

- the entire security infrastructure must be operated by the government

Which of these aren't fundamental and practical?

Signal is end-to-end encrypted. One end is the Signal app on your phone. The other end is the Signal app on their phone. The Signal app is developed by people, using computers. Both of those things can be compromised, neither of them are under the perview of the U.S. security agencies.

I would put the market value of a backdoor into all Senior White House communications as certainly >$10B, and probably >$100B, limited only by how long the buyer believed it would be a reliable source of intel. (it may be better to offer it as a subscription service.)

At that point everything should be assumed to be compromised until demonstrated to a reasonable degree of confidence that it's probably safe. A random install from an app store is not that.

I think the most accurate thing Trump has said so far in 47th Presidency was "everything's computer" about the Tesla dash.

Almost everything else out of his mouth, at least towards the media, has existed somewhere on the scale between 'large clump of BS wrapped around a tiny nugget of truth' and 'bald-faced lie'.

And when fairly obvious lies are repeated, the rest of what is said by himself and the rest of his administration retains the stink of the same taint.

DARVO: Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender.

> here is an analysis that says it was the phone at fault, not human error

> I have trouble believing anything except butt covering at play.

No, I did not cheat. We just happened to be hanging around without undergarments, and, you know, we had been eating bananas, and somehow some banana peel fell on the floor, and then I slipped, and grabbed the first thing I could hold on to, and that's how we both accidentally fell on the couch, and then the dog got excited and jumped on us to play, and that's how I unvoluntarily got jump-humped into this unfortunate event..

It’s a real feature in first party apps (messages, mail, etc), but it’s not fully automatic. When it thinks that a number/address/etc is related to an existing contact, it’ll prompt the user to confirm or deny, and upon confirmation the info is added. Ultimately it’s up to the user.

I don't know when they added it to iOS, but my iPhone does this. I get a text from some new number and the message includes (e.g.) "Hey this is Tom." and a notice right in Messages says it "found" a contact that this may be and asks if I want to add the number to that contact. I could imagine having this happen correctly a few times in a row might make one trust that it knows what it's doing.

The iPhone contacts app is an absolute cluster of an app in terms of how it manages adding contacts (or allows other apps to add contacts).

Years ago I had my nicely arranges contacts in place, then added Gmail and it upload contacts so now they were all duplicated. Then when I dug into it, I realize you have have folders of different contacts, but depending on the view they are shown as combined.

Then add on top Gmail keeps asking me if I want to update someone's contacts from an email they sent me. I click yes, but it keeps coming up even though their contact info doesn't change (what?).

Then if I try to copy a message from iMessage, it will randomly assume a number is someone's phone number and ask me if I want to create a new contact (what?). If my fingers were fatter it would be easier to click "yes" and end up with a non-phone number added to some person's contacts.

I only trust the contacts that I add manually, everything else is suspect.

Could be one of those newfangled "AI" features.

Really? I think the text of the pop up is “new number found for CONTACT NAME. Add it to contact?”

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They're lying. This is up there with "I was hacked" when getting caught replying to porn accounts.

> s/was/is. As in -- they're going to keep using Signal.

If that does turn out to be the case then I am certain this won't be the last time they inadvertently share information.

Even if the democrats received a sudden vertebrae infusion, they hold no levers of power. One might ask where the spines are of the Republicans who are in a position to apply pressure from the inside. Trumpism may die due to pressure from the outside, but it seems far more likely that it will be taken down from the inside, eg internecine billionaire arguments, or a congressional palace coup.

There's absolutely a secure system that crosses agencies - they even refer to it in the Signal chat (see the comment about sending details to your "high side inboxes"). But you can't use that system on your personal phone, and it doesn't let you avoid record-keeping requirements by setting messages to auto-delete.

The US has been perfectly capable of executing complicated military operations for decades prior without needing to use Signal to coordinate messaging amongst heads of staff.

This is blatantly incorrect though. The NSA actually set up the DMCC phone system specifically for this purpose. They are phones with 100% of the infrastructure already set up for communicating classified or sensitive information even while abroad and they are hardened enough that they are generally considered unclassified when powered down. They come in a DMCC-S (secret) and DMCC-TS (top secret) flavor. Any somewhat senior member at any agency or department that regularly interacts with classified information could request one of these devices. They provide cross agency encrypted call, text, and other capabilities at all security levels.

https://www.disa.mil/-/media/Files/DISA/Fact-Sheets/DMCC-TS-...

So why are we Taking claims and justifications from this admin at face value? Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice shame on me”

that’s why in the past cabinet members have a personal SCIF at home.

Nothing in my comment implies that what Clinton did was any more lawful. But since you raised the point, I’ll just note that it is quite interesting that Clinton’s circumstance was thoroughly investigated by the FBI, whereas in the Signal debacle, it seems Trump’s administration is going to let it go.

Why the double standard?

Hegseth's messages were the worst but not the only ones. E.g., Waltz goes on to share details of targets hit.

And no one ever says, "Don't share operational details in this chat," either before Hegseth's details message or after. It's perfectly clear that was normal and expected.

The chat starts with pulling together the group, continues with high-level agreement to proceed, then the details start dropping... You know... exactly the way work-related chats go. I've had innumerable work chats like this.

Hegseth's own severe incompetence doesn't somehow absolve Waltz of his. I used "bozo" in the plural for a reason.

You don't have to carry water for these idiots. They may nominally be on your "side", but they aren't holding up their end of it. They are making huge mistakes which have real consequences for us all. Time to start calling them out on it, not trying to defend them with technicalities, false dichotomies, and misdirection.

It seems reasonably likely they were using signal to avoid records keeping requirements and public scrutiny. If you found a group of employees using signal with disappearing messages to talk about work outside of your normal work chat (slack etc.) you'd be pretty suspicious, let alone if they were working in public office!

I don’t like Waltz but I think this is the better take that has no really taken hold well in the media. Why was Hegseth posting information that should be in a need to know basis and to folks that have no benefit know before hand. This is the primary issue and I believe a disqualification for being SECDEF. Others would get immediately fired and a healthy chance of being prosecuted.

The other issue is having this chat outside of formal means. I am not as well educated but having civilians that serve at the pleasure of the president I would assume must follow some rules around formal and recorded communications.

None of them seemed at all surprised though, and a bunch of them responded positively. The group didn’t act like the chat was just for setting up a meeting.

They were all still breaking Presidential Records Act. They knew it.

Including Waltz.

They deserve punishment at the Executive level.

I want a President who follows laws.

Hegseth's posts were the most egregious, but there was a lot of sensitive information that could have been inferred from the rest of it -- basically that the U.S. was planning some sort of attack against the Houthis, they debated whether to do it or not and chose to go ahead, and the approximate timing of the attack is implied by the timing of meetings and decision windows.

https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2025/03/politics/yemen-war-p...

It’s an interesting point, but are they even allowed to communicate on these devices with this app? I feel that has to be a question with an answer and i would assume it’s no?

I don't think we need to go out of our way to exonerate any of them. "Really fucking up" isn't something exclusive.

You don't keep your job under this administration by sticking your head out.

He was one of many initials present at the beginning of the chat, no?

> "The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, or CISA, has recommended that “highly valued targets” — senior officials who handle sensitive information — use encryption apps [like Signal] for confidential communications. Those communications are not typically releasable under public record laws."

The same memo where they made that recommendation also said: "Unmanaged 'messaging apps,' including any app with a chat feature, regardless of the primary function, are NOT authorized to access, transmit, process non-public DoD information. This includes but is not limited to messaging, gaming, and social media apps. (i.e., iMessage, WhatsApps, Signal). "

Even after that, they were again explicitly warned not to use Signal for anything sensitive:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/nsa-signal-app-vulnerabilities-...

You are taking this recommendation completely out of context. This is a recommendation for confidential communications, not releasable under public record laws.

But neither of those applies for the Signal chat in question. That was not confidential communication, it was top secret active military data. And, like any other military-related decision, it was very much in the category of information that must be recorded and was going to eventually be releasable under public record laws, as soon as its confidential nature expired, 50+ years from now most likely.

In the way a pilot might misclick one time on a popup and crash a plane, yes. Except that never happens, because pilots know better than to use systems where a single misclick can mean a crash, which is much more than we can say about the top tiers of the US government.

Doesn't know how the phone works -- careless.

Clicks the button without knowing what impact it will have on a device he uses for national security communication -- reckless.

Uses a personal device -- careless and reckless.

Again: war plans should be on high side systems NOT Signal.

The main reason that government software is supposed to be used instead of signal is not that signal does not have good e2ee. It is to avoid fuck ups like adding a random, non-government person to a classified chat. An interface proper for this use would not allow such things to happen because one made a wrong click somewhere.

I'm not sure if I understood the details from the article, but there was also a previous mistake where Waltz added Goldberg's number as a contact number for Hughes. This was just iPhone doing its thing and syncing contacts I guess?

Man, the amount of people who will carry water for this admin astonishes me.

You couldn't even be bothered to read the sources you're quoting.

> That doesn't sound "extremely reckless negligent and careless". It sounds like he misclicked one time on an unexpected popup.

hwut? We're not talking about accidently texting your ex-girlfriend though I know people like you need to rely on false equivocations to sanewash the garbage.

No, this is not the standard expected of politicians. This is an unusual — probably even unprecedented — level of recklessness and carelessness for a National Security Advisor. We can expect the person advising the President on national security not to accidentally leak classified information to a journalist via an unsecured communication channel. That expectation is routinely complied with.

Hillary also had her phones destroyed (by hammer) so that those messages couldn't be saved for the record, much like Signal was set to destroy messages so they couldn't be saved.

If you're the new Secretary of Defense and you've never held a rank anywhere near a military General, you need to spend about 12 hours a day 7 days a week, with real active Generals for a lot longer than this before making any bold moves.

Anything less is certainly dereliction of duty.

I think the easy answer is that current systems are subject to FOIA and they are doing their best to avoid FOIA because whatever they are doing is very illegal.

I'm completely unfamiliar with what systems exist, but here's what the article states:

> the White House had authorized the use of Signal, largely because there is no alternative platform to text in real time across different agencies, two people familiar with the matter said.

> Previous administrations, including the Biden White House, did not develop an alternative platform to Signal, one of the people said.

Are you saying these sources are dissembling? Wouldn't surprise me at this point, but just making sure I understand what you're saying.

As described near the end of the article

> White House had authorized the use of Signal, largely because there is no alternative platform to text in real time across different agencies, two people familiar with the matter said.