He was very confused when there was nothing but mixers available.
Sounds like Kegsbreath installed Signal on his Pentagon computer (gift link below). First, how the fuck could a Pentagon computer be configured to allow software like this? They say it is a computer for “personal use” and again I say WTF? How can federal money be used to purchase items for personal usage? Lastly, Blondie Baghdad Bob said Signal is an approved app for government work. Is it really? For confidential or classified info?
Based on my experience in the area (doing IT at large organizations, including the government job I currently hold), I am guessing it’s one of three things.
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They’re firing people at such a rate that they can’t maintain a competent staff for an organization of their size, so they are compromising security for the sake of convenience, or even necessity, because it takes a lot of manpower to manage proper security best practices. If you just leave a system open and let people do whatever they want on their own, it lifts the burden from IT staff who might be in short supply right now.
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He just told someone in IT to install it and because of his position they couldn’t say no. Which isn’t actually that unusual. The person on the top of the org chart in any organization is always authorized to override anyone underneath them. A competent leader would listen to the cautions of their IT staff about why a certain piece of software isn’t a good idea, but we’re talking about Pete Hegseth here.
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His computer at the Pentagon is some personal computer that he brings in and he’s allowed to do that because (see #2 above).
Obviously any of those situations is horrible and probably illegal at a place like the Pentagon, but again, with that administration so out of control, what can you do?
Probably not for classified info, but if government officials are using signal for stuff like, “are you available to meet next Thursday, sometime between 3pm and 6pm?”, i don’t have a problem with it.
This is the first thing I thought of. Insecure as hell, but he’s the boss.
Which is how Jared Kushner and others in the first administration got their security clearances.
I don’t doubt that at all.
The founding fathers seemed to anticipate this sort of problem nearly 250 years ago (talk about forward-thinking!) and so set up the different branches of government to act as checks and balances on one another. So if you have a crazy POTUS who just wants to put dangerously incompetent people in key positions of the executive branch, there are tools in the other branches to curb that. The legislature can refuse to confirm those insane choices or pass laws governing their behavior, and the judicial branch can determine when laws are broken and intervene. But right now that’s not happening because those other branches are failing as well.
It doesn’t help when your checks and balances are managed by a triumvirate that is the equivalent of the Three Stooges.
Blondie Baghdad Bob needs to have a gigantic * next to her statement. Approved for public and internal data. Not CUI, sensitive or classified.
This seems to be the prevailing attitude. To shrug and just let it all happen.
I remember asking here many decades ago about how America seems to rely on the “checks and balances” being embedded so deep in the system they are completely protected from corruption, while to me they seemed incredibly fragile. Seems I was right.
I keep hoping that there will be a breaking point. Either Trump goes too far and there is a division among Republicans (as some have already grumbled about), or at least when the midterms happen, if the legislature goes blue he will get some pushback.
Those are not strong hopes but it’s what I have.
Two issues:
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Setting up meetings is a government function that should be subject to discovery in the rare (hah!) case where something potentially (hah! again) illegal is going to be discussed.
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Humans being humans, habit creation will lead to using Signal for other things.
Metadata are valuable intel and worthy of protection too. You can learn a lot from them, even without the content of the conversation. I still have a problem with allegedly innocuous content being transmitted via signal.
OTOH: Not my circus, not my monkeys, not my government. Thank Godott!
Yeah, weren’t enemies tracking troop movements because soldiers were tracking their runs on Strava or something?
Ukraine (probably) is tracking Russian forces using a hacked hiking app. The Russians are using it because its terrain maps are so useful.
Yup.
Yep. You can build relationships, and that can tell you things. You notice that when people X, Y and Z meet, nothing happens, but when X, Y and Z have a meeting with A and B, something blows up somewhere in the world. That tells you things about who does the planning, who does the approving, and can give you a heads-up that something is about to blow up.
There’s a reason why the CIA is mostly analysts sitting in cubicles, and not James Bond types out killing folk. This is the kind of thing they build whole careers around.
See, I’m reading the “Spy School” series of books (alongside my son, it’s our very own book club!) and so while I firmly believe the adults are all analysts sitting in cubicles, the 13-15 year olds are definitely doing some James Bond style bad guy foiling and nuclear bomb diffusion stuff!
You’ll tell me it’s make believe, but that’s just what THEY want you to think!
As an example of this, one of the reasons Naval Intelligence was able to suss out what the Japanese were up to early in WWII — in addition to cracking the JN25 code (which, though a breakthrough, only gave them 20-25% of messages) — was the ability to recognize an individual operator’s “fist” (keying style), thus associating him with a particular ship or station. Who was talking to whom, and how frequently, gave valuable insight into what was in the works.
(Now back to the Signal cock-up.)
HOLLY: I’ve got to admit it, I’ve flamingoed-up.
RIMMER: What?
HOLLY: It’s like a cock-up, only much, much bigger.
This is demonstrated in just about any episode of Law & Order.