OPSEC Isn’t Even the Worst Part of ‘SignalGate’

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.

★ Tuesday, 25 March 2025