[grimpy]

> There's so many questions I genuinely don't have an answer for...

> Has Congress made it illegal to use an off-brand messaging app for secure communications? _Why_ is it insecure? What is the probability that China is reading these messages in real-time? 100%? 25%? 0.2%?

Is your point that, in the space of your own lack of knowledge, that reasonable rational may exist? Could you share what gives you trust in this administration to be so generous?

[iambateman]

Great question, thanks for asking.

My point is that “make liberals sad” is also a stated policy goal of this administration.

I think this article is about one of two things…either there is a possibility that SecDef using Signal represents an ongoing, material national security crisis that should be a concern for all Americans…or it’s really the author grieving for a time when they felt safer because the strict protocols of confidentiality signaled (pun intended) a sense of seriousness about government secrets.

If this is a material security threat, I need a lot of writers to explain why because most people don’t know. If it’s a sad liberal, the result will be counter-productive and large numbers of people-in-power will read this article as a win for their team.

[billiam]

Clown take. The use of Signal or any app on a non-secure device by SecDef for what we know he messaged about in his office is absolutely a primary national security threat. Firing offense for any senior Pentagon official dealing with highly classified traffic. Nothing to do with politics.

[CapricornNoble]

Agreed. I thought Lloyd Austin should have been fired for going into surgery without advising his deputy or any of his staff of the risks, and his deputy should have been fired for taking over for him.....without leaving her vacation in Puerto Rico.

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/timeline-key-figures-found-l...

I think SecDef Hegseth is actually an even bigger disaster than SecDef Austin. That said....I think the Deep State/ military industrial complex/ Israel lobby is trying to get Hegseth fired because he's one of the Big 3 (Vance/Hegseth/Gabbard) opposed to going kinetic with Iran. But he's making it really easy for his adversaries, because he legitimately sucks at some foundational skills for management at his level.

[ineedasername]

The fact that everyone in the country knows specific details of what and how he communicates, is a national security crisis. If signal was secure and/or he was following reasonable precautions, no one would know anything about this issue.

[rl3]

>If this is a material security threat, I need a lot of writers to explain why because most people don’t know.

Because personal smartphones aren't considered secure for protecting classified information. Signal in and of itself might be fine when used properly, but it doesn't matter when the underlying platform is consumer-grade security. The risk of side-channel attacks is astronomical.

>My point is that “make liberals sad” is also a stated policy goal of this administration.

>If it’s a sad liberal, ...

I'm not sure any of that furthers whatever argument you're trying to make. Signal being used in that manner didn't only violate a myriad of established protocols, but it was straight up illegal on top of it. In any normal political climate we would've seen resignations from day one, regardless of party.

[zmgsabst]

I see this as partisan:

- one side ignored Clinton using a private server as sec of state

- this one ignores using Signal

I haven’t seen arguments about what the standard is supposed to be or why this in particular is egregious. That would be more convincing than hyperventilating.

Edit:

If you read the article, there are both classified/secured and unsecured lines available at the station. So what specifically is the problem the administration uses Signal together with unsecured comms?

I don’t follow the allegation its mere presence is problematic, when discussing general communications with other parts of the administration. Especially when accessed via separate/dedicated machine (distinct from secured systems).

If you want to talk about the specifics of, eg, the Yemen war plans then do that — but this article does not.

[freddie_mercury]

How was an FBI and DOJ and investigation by the Obama administration "one side ignoring it"?

[zmgsabst]

How did Democrats respond to that information?

> Federal agencies did, however, retrospectively determine that 100 emails contained information that should have been deemed classified at the time they were sent, including 65 emails deemed "Secret" and 22 deemed "Top Secret".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillary_Clinton_email_controve...

That sounds a lot worse than what Hegseth is accused of, but didn’t derail her nomination nor draw widespread condemnation from Democrats.

That’s what I mean by “ignoring it”: the conclusion was bad but largely ignored by the party.

[collingreen]

This. So much this. The fantasy land behind these "Clinton's emails" takes is bizarre enough to seem intentional.

[JumpCrisscross]

> what specifically is the problem the administration uses Signal together with unsecured comms?

The DoD kit makes it a little bit harder to add randos to chats where one needlessly posts tactical air strike details.

[zmgsabst]

Like emails?

[godelski]

What if you believe both Clinton and Hegseth are in the wrong?

I hold this position and I don't think it's uncommon. Plenty of people think if something is wrong then it doesn't matter who does it.

There's definitely perception bias. Usually conversations are short when we're in agreement. Doesn't create engagement. Doesn't make for good news

[watwut]

There was whole massive campaign against her comparatively much milder infraction. It is crickets now. It was huge.

So, maybe 10 of you care, but the assymetry is beyond apparent.

For that matter, I remember when Obamas tan suit was horrible unpresidential infraction amd lack of respect. Same people voted for Trump not a peep about respectability.

[sokoloff]

How many people were complaining about “her emails” 28 days after the first one was sent? You’re looking at two very different points on the timeline of each event and concluding that everyone thinks they’re different because of the difference in magnitude of discourse on the topics.

Do you think the difference will remain at this level through the next election cycle?

I think plenty of people see massive amounts of equivalence and are more caught up in other, more urgent piles in Washington’s reinvention of the Augean Stables.

[watwut]

Donald Trump literally said she should be in prison her for the email server thing. Literally during campaign. It was cheered on.

The emails scandal was on for months and got invoked during election by conservative pundits, politicians. Again and again and again and again. They made it a whole big thing, pretending to care about security.

So yeah, it matters. The consistent track record of just extremely one sided care for security, respectability, lies and what not actually matter a lot. Now we know that conservatives complaining about X does not mean they care about X. They dont, they are ok when one of them does worst. It is just hypocrisy.

[sokoloff]

That's almost exactly my point. Four weeks into scandal B, it's not getting as much coverage and discussion as scandal A did during a campaign.

None of that is surprising, and I expect the current $SHITSTORM_DU_JOUR to get a lot more amplification in 2028 than in May of 2025, which is the same pattern as happened in scandal A's emails.

She was Secretary of State from 2009 to 2013. We heard a ton about the scandal in the 2016 election cycle [when it was convenient and useful politically], not in 2009-2013.

I'm friends with several retired military officers. They tend towards red, but they're absolutely incensed over the Hegseth topic, especially the ones who flew pointy jets.

N-gram viewer: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Clinton+email+...

[2419410794]

> If you read the article, there are both classified/secured and unsecured lines available at the station. So what specifically is the problem the administration uses Signal together with unsecured comms?

There are two issues. First, official communications about the workings of government ought to occur on government platforms, so that there's a permanent record for the communication. (As others have mentioned, this is required by the Federal Records Act.)

Second, the Pentagon has limited phone service and limited public internet access by design. The other computers in the office, while for unclassified material, are not (as I understand it) connected to the public internet like Hegseth's personal laptop is.

That said, I have no issue if Hegseth wants to use Signal to make dinner plans with other government officials.

[logifail]

> First, official communications [..]

Unfortunately the list of politicians who either don't care about records of their communications being properly kept, or who went out of their way to keep their comms "off the books" is long.

We should want to hold all of them to account, not just this one.

[JumpCrisscross]

> We should want to hold all of them to account, not just this one

We should and do. FBI investigated Clinton because of her emails.

[logifail]

> FBI investigated Clinton because of her emails.

Correct, and this was the outcome:

[FBI director James Comey said] "Clinton had been 'extremely careless' but recommended that no charges be filed because Clinton did not act with criminal intent, the historical standard for pursuing prosecution"

Is '[not] acting with criminal intent' really the standard we think we want to hold our elected officials to?

[JumpCrisscross]

> Is '[not] acting with criminal intent' really the standard we think we want to hold our elected officials to?

Yes, mens rea is a deeply-precedented standard that's a good default.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mens_rea

[logifail]

> We should and do

The European Commission ended up in court trying to keep Ursula von der Leyen's messages secret 'claiming that the texts were “by [their] nature short-lived” and were not covered by the EU’s freedom of information law'

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/feb/10/i-aske...

https://www.politico.eu/article/ursula-von-der-leyen-eu-comm...

Outcome? A(nother) nothingburger.

[JumpCrisscross]

> European Commission ended up in court trying to keep Ursula von der Leyen's messages secret 'claiming that the texts were “by [their] nature short-lived” and were not covered by the EU’s freedom of information law'

Sure. They still wound up in court. Hegseth hasn't had to go to court to defend himself because he hasn't even been investigated. You really have to go back to the Austro-Hungarian Empire to find these levels of exploitable ineptitude at the highest ranks of a major military structure.

[jorts]

Sharing details as he has done would put my brother who works for the Navy in the brig. As someone in his role he should know better but he’s only in his role as he will do whatever Trump asks him to. He was a O4, there’s a zero percent chance of him being knowledgeable enough to be competent in his role.

[collingreen]

He knew better when saying Clinton's behavior amounted to treason.

We don't need to argue about if he knew better; he did, from his own mouth. We need to argue about if it is ok and if it is ok for the people in power to do nothing about it because it's "their team".

At some point soon we need to realize we the people are on one team and everyone saying otherwise is trying to hurt us.

[trealira]

> At some point soon we need to realize we the people are on one team and everyone saying otherwise is trying to hurt us.

This might be good for a generic politician running for an election to say, but it's not true. We're not on the same team; we're different groups of people with different values who hate each other. Our politicians are the people we've voted to represent us. It's not like Trump, for example, hoodwinked Republicans; they like everything he's doing, and have for ten years, and a lot of it is because people like me hate him. We're not on the same team.

[CapricornNoble]

I know some pretty competent O-4s...but also a TON of mouth-breathing field grade officers too. Hegseth sucks on his own merits (or lack thereof) as a person.

SecDef Lovett only rose to O-4 before going into the NYC business community and then becoming a Special Assistant to SecWar Stimpson in 1940. https://history.defense.gov/Multimedia/Biographies/Article-V...

SecDef McElroy came up through Proctor & Gamble, no government or military experience. https://history.defense.gov/Multimedia/Biographies/Article-V...

Just as a few examples of adequately-successful SecDefs coming from "unimpressive" paper resumes.