ANN ARBOR – Signal is a messaging app that claims to be secure from hackers. But is it? Signal is in the news because it was used by Republican-appointed cabinet members to discuss a pending military attack on Yemen, targeting Houthi rebels.
The recent chat group reported exchange involved the adminstration’s most senior national security officials. It also, accidentally, included Jeffrey Goldberg, himself a storied national security reporter before he took up the editorship of the Atlantic. It’s a national security blunder almost without parallel.
In this video, two cybersecurity professionals debate the use of Signal for classified information. Dan Lohrmann a vice president at Presidio and former state of Michigan chief information security officer, and Richard Stiennon, who publishes the annual Security Yearbook. Near the end of this discussion, Stiennon breaks strongly against Lohrmann’s take on whether all of the administration officials on the chat should be punished.
A recent communication of this category of information over the Signal messaging app has been dismissed by President Trump as a mere “glitch”. It is definitely that. But it also raises the prospect that in his first two months of office, key parts of the administration might have inadvertently been leaving sensitive information vulnerable to enemy interception. That would be one of the most serious intelligence breaches in modern history.
National security advisor, Mike Waltz, has subsequently “taken responsibility” for the episode – but, so far at least, remains in post. Instead, the administration has decided to launch bitter ad hominem attacks against the journalist that revealed this breach of security.
An ordinary intelligence officer who communicated about highly sensitive and classified deployments through a platform with security that is not accredited or controlled by the intelligence community, would certainly face disciplinary action. An officer who accidentally invited a journalist into this chat would be likely to face even stiffer sanctions. Trump seems to have rallied around his officials, however.
Watch this video interview and you decide what steps, if any, should be taken against senior Trump administration officials who used Signal to discuss the attack before it happened.
