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Comment by frenchman_in_ny | Hacker News Reader

In the banking world, employees have been fined significant sums, or even forced from their jobs [0], for unauthorized use of messaging platforms. And here, it's barely a shrug. Unbelievable.

[0] https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/morgan-stanley-hit-...

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In the government world, people have been jailed for it. Not people so directly connected to a president, though.

Heh. Like when they arrested someone for running their own mail server and sending classified information through it? Oh wait...

yes, after months and months of investigations and hearing and non-stop new coverage and a Republican led committee that admitted in their final report that while there was negligence, they couldn't find any wrong doing.

Laws no longer apply to them - laws bound people below. If you're interested what will follow, look into Russia or Hungary.

Who's going to arrest them?

This is why you have a constitution, codified laws, judicial system, separation of powers, etc. We're just learning now none of these things are worth the paper they're written on.

It's just as useful and effective as the international law and order that was setup after WW2.

So nada.

As long as you build an order around independence of countries and diplomacy (instead of, say, force) any organisation will only be as useful as countries are willing to follow and any structure can only be as good as the ones in charge are willing to go.

In consequences there are many flaws and a lot is stuck in post WW2 thinking, but I doubt there is a realistic chance of anything overall better.

The current U.S. administration tries to reshape things by disruption, we will see how this goes, but I doubt this will earn trust and buy-in from others. Thus not lead to a stable and "better" system. (While better, of course, is not globally objective, which again is key to the problem)

Would you say that was always the case, or just a more recent development?

Our entire civilization has always rested on a tacit "it's nice to have civilization, so we play by the rules" by everybody involved. Voluntary restraint is what keeps us from being animals, not nature or laws.

As Hobbes wrote so eloquently, we keep that compact because the alternative is "continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short"

We're currently exploring how many of those rules are really necessary, and, as a society, have decided to mostly shrug off that exploration.

That is the part that's changed. A willingness to ignore the rules by some, and a collective shrug by most.

I think it's partly the way the US state is set up. When the president picks the Supreme Court judges and they have lifetime appointments you don't truly have separation of powers. Then the whole thing is meaningless. When you have "liberal" and "conservative" courts based on the make up of the judges you need to start again.

The issue is that there’s nothing that requires prosecution, just allows it.

This is the doubled edged nature of prosecutorial discretion.

Well, in the idea of the system there is: The system is built around the assumption that Congress would impeach a president who fails to to the right™ thing (or fails to make his administration do ...)

However once the legislative branch surrenders oversight over executive there isn't much left keeping the system in balance. Even if judicial branch would call a measure unconstitutional, who'd execute that ruling?

The system is built around the assumption that a notable part of the system wants to keep it alive.

Fun fact, initially when places were setting up police forces, people railed that it was an infringement on their right to do a Citizen's Arrest.

Rules for thee but not for me. Now get back to work, peasant.

it's not unauthorized use of signal;

"Government officials have used Signal for organizational correspondence, such as scheduling sensitive meetings, but in the Biden administration, people who had permission to download it on their White House-issued phones were instructed to use the app sparingly, according to a former national security official who served in the administration."

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/heres-what-to-know-about...

It absolutely is an unauthorized use. Authorize use is "let's go to lunch". This was "let's bomb these people at this time".

Big difference.

Buttery Males!

It's too bad that this is being downvoted - swiftymon is trying to provide some context. It's useful to the discussion and well sourced. I'd love to read counterarguments rather than have this fade away :)

TFA article discusses how officials have long used Signal for routine logistics, contrasting that with the national defense plans being discussed in a group chat with a journalist

Because their claim is false and unsupported by their quote. It is absolutely unauthorized for government employees to conduct discussions like this on services like Signal. It's not even allowed for CUI level discussions, and war planning pushes into Secret and TS territory very quickly.

Organizational discussions means things like, for a standard fed on a TDY with others, "Meet in the lobby at 0700 so we can drive to the site for the meeting at 0800." Not "So we're going to use ... to attack ... at ...", which is almost certainly Secret or TS once aggregated.

This is the sort of counterargument I'd have liked to see instead of disagreement-driven downvoting, yes.

swiftymon created an account just to post a lie. That comment absolutely should be downvoted, with or without rebuttals. This isn't about disagreement.

You disagree over opinions. Should Signal be an appropriate system for discussing classified data? I'd say no, you might say yes, we disagree and debate.

Legally, is Signal an appropriate system for discussing classified data? No. Unless you believe in alternative facts, there is no point to disagree on, it's just a fact that it is not legally an appropriate system for what they did.

And then swiftymon lied and used "evidence" to bolster their lie that didn't even agree with their lie.

You assert things strongly, but you are not an arbiter of truth about data classification in the federal government - this is certainly an area where discussion can be had and where becoming more informed increases the quality of discussion. Interestingly enough, many of the people in charge of data classification in the federal government were on said Signal thread!

I could assert that you're lying, etc - as you're effectively committing the same sin as the poster who originally got downvoted - but that wouldn't be having a conversation; it'd be a rude refusal to tolerate a conversation. I encourage you to assume good intent and engage instead of hurling accusations at people - even if they're new accounts.

Let's assume for the moment that the discussion of military plans on Signal was covered by this policy. That's debatable as others have said. Other parts of that policy would seem to suggest this kind of conversation is expressly forbidden on Signal and similar unofficial chat apps, while other less sensitive conversations are permitted.

How does that excuse the lack of attention and validation that resulted in an unintended party being added to the chat?

Regardless of Signal usage policy, that is a massive fuck up.

Did you read the article? Signal is not approved for this kind of communication and has long been advised against. They also had messages set to autodelete which violates the records act. It's blatantly illegal

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