US government: sharing info about the world's crises in many more group chats
Last week, it was revealed that secret information is exchanged on Signal in the US government. Now it is known that there are more group chats.
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The US government's National Security Advisor team regularly sets up group chats on Signal to discuss crises around the world. This was reported by the US political magazine Politico, citing four anonymous individuals who were all invited to one or more of these chats. According to the report, there are at least 20 such group chats in total. The use of Signal for official business is therefore more widespread in the US government than previously known. All four sources have seen sensitive national security information in such chats, but classified information was probably not exchanged there.
Signal use in focus
The use of Signal Messenger by high-ranking representatives of the US government became the focus of public attention last week. It became known that ministers and high-ranking individuals had exchanged secret information about US military matters via Signal. This only became public because a journalist, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, was part of the group chat. According to US reports, Trump considered firing Michael Waltz after the revelations, but then decided against it because it could be considered a victory for the press. The National Security Advisor set up the group and invited the journalist.
The fact that the use of Signal is apparently widespread in the US government, even for official communications, is potentially problematic for several reasons. On the one hand, in the case of the first known group chat, the participants shared classified information via an unauthorized app. There are specially secured devices and prescribed communication channels for this type of communication. On the other hand, there are also suspicions that those involved are using Signal to circumvent the legally prescribed archiving obligations. For example, the group chat was set to automatically delete posts after a certain period of time.
(mho)