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Comment by mmastrac | Hacker News Reader

> TM SGNL appears to refer to a piece of software from a company called TeleMessage which makes clones of popular messaging apps but adds an archiving capability to each of them

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Crikey that's terrifying. Not even a US company either.

FTA, fwiw: "404 Media found numerous U.S. government contracts that mention TeleMessage specifically. One for around $90,000 from December 2024 says “Telemessage (a Smarsh Co.) Licenses for Text Message Archiving, & WhatsApp and Signal Licenses.”"

TeleMessage is an Israeli software company based in Petah Tikva, Israel. Founded in 1999 by Guy Levit and Gil Shapira, it provides secure enterprise messaging, mobile communications archiving and high-volume text messaging services. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TeleMessage

Even though Israel is our "Ally" -- we really shouldn't trust a foreign company with our sensitive messaging.

If you're in the government, you should treat Hegseth and anyone who uses Signal and TMSIGNL as compromised.

It's not like Israel would ever spy on the US right?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Pollard

Or the US spy on Israel.

US spy agencies are world famous weak and heavy relayed on UK and Israel communications.

I'm pretty sure that the US is a high priority intelligence target for Israel. But then any of the big nations should be. Russia, US, China, etc.

Please tell that to European governments too. The Netherlands military police was using Whatsapp (e.g., https://www.defensie.nl/actueel/nieuws/2022/06/15/maatregele...). Only Germany has the BwMessenger (Matrix) as far as I know. It makes me wonder what the other militaries are using.

This is misleading bordering on rage bait. There were 11 dutch military police who created a WhatsApp group. This was not allowed and is also not sanctioned or any form of official Military Police communications channel.

The leader of those 11 was fired because of it.

It says it right there in the article. Stop making drama.

I do not get the feeling that using WhatsApp was the source of the disciplinary measures here, but rather the racist contents they shared there. So to be fair to GP, this could be much more prevalent.

The matrix development is carried by France a lot for their secure communication. The German affair hopped onto that.

I thought DekkoSecure was a standard for encrypted govt/military messaging? Why bother with this COTS consumer crap?

trust me that's a feature not a bug

Telemessage got bought out by Smarsh a couple years ago. (Which several other commenters are saying is a US company) Their service has gone way downhill since.

Source: use them for several of my clients.

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