Josh Marshal, writing at Talking Points Memo:

Especially in the national security domain, many things the
government does have to remain secret. Sometimes those things
remain secret for years or decades. But they’re not secrets from
the U.S. government. The U.S. government owns all those
communications, all those facts of its own history. Using a Signal
app like this is hiding what’s happening from the government
itself. And that is almost certainly not an unintended byproduct
but the very reason for the use. These are disappearing
communications. They won’t be in the National Archives. Future
administrations won’t know what happened. There also won’t be any
records to determine whether crimes were committed.

This all goes to the fundamental point Trump has never been able
to accept: that the U.S. government is the property of the
American people and it persists over time with individual
officeholders merely temporary occupants charged with
administering an entity they don’t own or possess.

Think this is hyperbole? Remember that when Trump held his
notorious meeting with Vladimir Putin in Helsinki in 2019 he
confiscated his translator’s notes and ordered him not to divulge
anything that had been discussed. Remember that Trump got
impeached over an extortion plot recorded in the government record
of his phone call with President Zelensky. An intelligence analyst
discovered what had happened and decided he needed to report the
conduct. These aren’t hypotheticals. They’ve already happened. And
he’s even been caught. Which is probably one reason there’s so
much use of Signal.

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Title: OPSEC Isn’t Even the Worst Part of ‘SignalGate’
URL: https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/signalgate-is-bad-but-opsec-isnt-even-the-worst-part-of-it
Source: Daring Fireball
Source URL: https://daringfireball.net/
Date: March 25, 2025 at 09:40PM
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