> The practice began during President Joe Biden’s administration and had the official approval of CIA records management officials, Ratcliffe said, as long as “any decisions that are made are also recorded through formal channels.”

There is a tension in the interpretation of text messaging. Is it a written record like an email, which is stored and archived? Or is it more like voice conversation; ephemeral and generally not recorded or archived?

For a long time the default behavior of messaging apps was to just hold onto all messages indefinitely. This led a lot of folks in law enforcement to think of them as permanent written records.

The approach in the quote above treats them more like a voice conversation. Anything of significance should be written down in an official way, even if it originated over messaging.