Thursday, March 27, 2025
PMT: Signal App, blah blah blah, HILLARY'S EMAILS!
[So, I asked AI for an image of "Hillary Clinton and her home email server," and it gave me this fascinating depiction. Most intriguing is the third arm, apparently belonging to someone else, helping her out. And, of course, it doesn't look much like Hillary Clinton. I do like the shirt, though.]
As most people know by now, the nation's leaders (except, oddly, the Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) used a group chat on Signal to discuss a then-occurring military operation against Houthis in Yemen. Here is a sample:
Look, the operations of government don't always handle sensitive data well. When I was at DOJ, I received a Top Secret clearance-- and they mis-spelled my name on the letter informing me of this.
However, this was apparently a very serious breach. I kind of understand how they got there-- this is a bunch of people new to government at this level, and in their previous jobs at Fox News, venture capital, etc., the way you kept things from becoming discoverable in later lawsuits is to use signal, which erases after a period. It is designed to allow discussions without subjecting those discussions to becoming known when someone is sued.
Which, of course, isn't great on its own.
But the need to protect war secrets is different-- the point is not to avoid discovery in future civil suits; It's to make sure enemies don't get the information in real time. That means a different kind of protection, which the government has developed over time.
But these are people more worried about future lawsuits and civil (or criminal) discovery than they are about the Russians.
To put it in a nutshell, using Signal protects them. Traditional data security protects us.
