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Comment by leereeves | Hacker News Reader

Hegseth has invited his wife and brother to other official meetings in person. He seems to be including them as part of his team; inviting them to the Signal chat probably wasn't a mistake.

> That and the deliberate lack of record keeping.

That part seems like speculation. How would we even know if records were kept? If records were kept, they'd be classified.

> Attorneys suing the United States government over its use of vanishing Signal messages

That seems very much like the concern is about the use of Signal, so the fact that CISA recommends it is very relevant.

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From the original chat that got leaked, Walz had set the group chat up to auto delete messages every week, and 4 weeks in other cases. Official government communication is subject to the federal records act so that chat, which was used to communicate official government actions, was not compliant. If it was just used for lunch dates or something, Hesgeth wouldn't be in this mess.

CISA recommends Signal, but it is not an approved tool to share classified information. That's what SCIFs are for.

Oh good, his disregard for security is flagrant rather than incompetent.

I imagine he trusts his wife and brother more than he trusts anyone else with access to that info. Having staff he trusts is the opposite of disregard for security.

And since this info was leaked to the press, there is clearly someone with access who he should not have trusted. Do you really think the security breach in this case came from his wife or brother?

There is a long history of people getting betrayed by spouses and siblings. He may trust his wife and brother but the rest of the US has no reason to share that trust.

> Do you really think the security breach in this case came from his wife or brother

I don't think it's out of the question.

Really going hard on the Wilhoit, huh?

> Really going hard on the Wilhoit, huh?

I guess that's a reference to some fictional "Wilhoit's Law", right? I had to look it up. Turns out it's just a partisan Internet snipe from a classical music composer originally posted in the comments on a blog[1].

That sums up the case against Hegseth nicely. Just a partisan attack without substance, sustained only by ignorance.

1: https://slate.com/business/2022/06/wilhoits-law-conservative...

Without substance? Using chats without double checking who are members of the chat group is a thing not even I do when sharing some gossip, lol. That's blatant incompetence, a person responsible for the USA defence cannot be bothered to cross the members list of a group chat before sharing extremely sensitive information.

And now he's adding his family into the mix?

I don't think it's ignorant to think you are extending him an awful lot of grace.

I've just seen all this - nepotism, classified info outside government channels, the occasional mistake - often enough to recognize that people only get outraged about it when "the other side" does it.

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