5d ago

Trump names ‘first buddy’ and DOGE head Elon Musk to investigate Signal blunder

www.independent.co.uk

Summary

Trump appointed Elon Musk, head of the DOGE, to investigate how a journalist was accidentally added to a Signal chat discussing military operations in Yemen.

National Security Adviser Mike Waltz admitted fault but could not explain how the contact was saved. Trump speculated that the journalist may have added himself.

The investigation will involve Musk’s technical team, the National Security Council, and White House lawyers.

A federal lawsuit challenges the use of Signal for government communication, alleging it violates federal law.

60 comments

Trump speculated that the journalist may have added himself.
You can't even do that on Signal! But MAGAts will eat it up and keep repeating it cuz of how dumb they are.
- Ok let’s suppose you could though. Wouldn’t that make it EVEN MORE criminally negligent to discuss classified info there?
  
  Right??? Like oh my actual god, if a journalist could do this (it's completely, categorically impossible), then every nation-state on Earth would use it to trivially eavesdrop.
  
  exactly. I use and love signal. its a fantastic privacy tool - seriously! but the amount of pure stupid on display by this administration is just too much to take.
- With the MAGAts its best to imagine a very low bar, then lower that again by half the amount and thats where they are in terms of how dumb they are.
  
  "Think of the most average person you know, and then realize that ~~half of all people are dumber than that~~ every one of these morons has the collective IQ of a carrot."
- Why would they discuss classified military plans on an app where outsiders could just "add themselves". That argument isn't helping their case...
  Nevermind. I need to stop thinking about things. The sheer stupidity hurts my brain.
  
  We’re supposed to think “he (the journalist) is so bad and evil he hacked into the secure platform” — not that that helps their case either.
  
  It seems like their best argument is that they are incredibly stupid, and a smart reporter took advantage of them.
- "Hold my unlocked phone while I chug this beer!"
  《criminal mastermind journalist adds himself to confidential chat group》
- You know what you can do? Anyone can add to a group their in. At least from what I've seen. Secure for govy talk for sure.
  
  signal group chats can have admins and users. admins are able to control access to the group.
  signal is a social communication network. yes, when everything works well and people dont screw up, its wonderfully private and secure - one of the best and easiest to use secure social communication tools around.
  the real issue is... these idiots used it (probably from their personal phones!) like it was NSA approved tech. lead idiot hegseth being all "opsec is clean" while an unknown participant has been added to the group chat is just... I have no words. these people are playing dressup.
  signal on an uncompromised device and with decent digital hygiene will keep a whole bunch of people and TLAs out of your business. however, I do not expect the US Govt planing military fucking strikes via signal just so the "principals" can conveniently sip drinks by the pool instead of being in an NSA approved communication facility.
  seriously, fuck!
  
  There's a setting for that. It's open invite or admin invite. Default is open invite.
  Doubtful any of the participants knew that, though.

OK... so you want to say he added himself... which let's ignore that you can't do that, but say you can. Then why are they using this app? Basically saying national security measures out in the public. That's not a better look.

I dare say I'm beginning to suspect this Trump fellow may not be as competent as he claims
- No! Rilly?

“We have investigated ourselves and discovered nothing happened.”

Haha! WTF! It's a group chat in a messaging app - not some super high tech hacking operation!
- Yeah, it's just a case of a boomer not knowing how to use their fucking phone.
  
  Hey! I'm a Boomer, and I can use my phone very well, thank you very much. Don't blame it on him being a Boomer, blame it on him for the REAL reason - he's just virtuosically stupid, like every one of them on those texts (except the journalist).
- Considering what these people are like, it may very well be the entire dark net.

This is actually good news. We knew there was never going to be a valid investigation anyway, so at least this forces the MuskRat to waste at least a portion of his resources on this cover-up. He'll also certainly violate a few laws while doing it, so when they finally lose power, we can slam him with those charges as well, and lock him up for longer, and fine his estate another several billion in fines and damages.
- I don't have any faith whatsoever that, if we can oust the fascists from power, they'll face any consequences at all. There will be no Nuremberg trials this time. They're more likely to just get voted back in.
  
  No, not the next time. If we manage to wrest power from them again, it won't be with the current bunch of weak, spineless weenies that comprise the current Dem leadership, like that fucking scumbag Chuck Schumer.
  Our liberators will be a new guard of Democrats, who are fucking pissed off as Hell, and it will be their pledge to purge MAGA from our government and our country by any means necessary, that gives them power. They will take power knowing they are expected to punish the MAGA Traitors to Hell and back, and they'll do it.

They should have used something more secure, like an AOL chatroom. Or public IRC.
"Hey Mr. @BigBrain, can I have an @ on my user name too?"
@BigBrain "Sure!"

lmao what's to investigate other than what dumb pieces of shit these are?

He's unqualified, but at this point I'm surprised they didn't assign the case to a cactus named detective pokey.

Like any idiot who doesn't want to take account for doing something idiotic, you need to send five people after the "true cause", when everybody knows exactly what it is already.
It's illegal to use commercial means to discuss national security matter or military engagement
You typed "J G" into a fucking app and shared said secrets with someone who wasn't cleared.
Finding different ways to explain it isn't going to distract from point #1, and only further explain how fucking dumb you all are.
Idiots.
- It will tho. This will 100% work. Musk will say there was some backdoor hacking bull crap going on and the journalist snuck into the meeting and then made it seem like he was invited by accident to make them look bad. It will be played off as a nasty attack that was only meant to make the Republican heroes of this country look bad while also risking national security and the lives of those in the military.
  And they will eat it up like pigs. God I hope I'm wrong.
  
  I think you are wrong, but only in the you're not thinking about the big picture.
  Elon "I traced the DDOS to Ukrainian terrorists" Musk is in charge of this. Someone on Twitter (probably his alt) is going to post a conspiracy on Twitter about Ukrainian or Canadian hackers being behind it, and he's going to retweet it with some plausibly deniable bullshit like "not far off," and rally up his cult of reactionary prokaryots to demand a economic or military response. It's yet another golden opportunity for the crony collective to sweep their own incompetence under the rug while simultaneously scapegoating another country to push their unspoken-but-obvious agenda.
  
  I hate that I read this and immediately went "yup, that's how it'll go" without a hint of irony.

“Elon Musk has offered to put his technical experts on this to figure out how this number was inadvertently added to the chat. Again, to take responsibility and ensure this can never happen again.”
Take responsibility? That would be unprecedented.

Just wait till Leon assigns Big Balls to the case -- they'll get to the bottom of this in a flash

How about investigating why they were using signal and not all in prison for it.

Good, waste more millions of dollars having the Musktard "investigate." Sounds like a perfect plan, you misplanted piece of fucking abortion, Trump.

So next time it will be fucked up all the same, but using X private messages instead of Signal.
That should do!

Its probably just pretext to arrest the editor, and charge him with treason .

We can all sleep better knowing Shitler is on the case.

This belongs in politicalmemes /s

To be a pessimist here: This will be the end of signal. They will move in on the LLC and foundation soon citing national security reasons. Or they may have done so already but kept things under the rugs due to national security laws.
And to play a conspiracy theorist for once: Maybe that was the plan all along. We all know how much Elmo hates Signal.

'first buddy' ( ° ͜ʖ͡°)╭∩╮

...and they were roommates

Unrelated, though what's with Musk, perhaps other MAGAts, wearing the MAGA hat like that in the thumbnail: barely touching their head, so much that a slight breeze would knock it off.
Is it some sort of literal 'big brain' show off thing?
- Nah he just paid a lotta money to have that hair and doesn't wanna crush it with that hat.
- probably to hide his hair procedures, how botched it was.

This is going to turn into a privacy issue with signal not Zapp Brannigan giving the codes away.

Huh, as it turns out, that group chat had about 10 million people that were over 150 years old.

- I really like this reaction gif

You investigate the massive security breach with an even bigger security breach?
Tom Clancys Rotating Coffin Turbine Power Generation - may he rotate in peace - is going to need to upgrade the lines.

Elon is turning into the Jared Lushner of this second term.

Help, help! Someone call Dunning-Kruger Man! Please, Dunning-Kruger Man, confidently tell us it's someone else's fault without actually understanding anything! Hurry, we're trapped in this news cycle with no way out!

Maybe he will fire all of them. It is his go to move.
- Seems like an actually interesting move, there's no love lost between Leon and Vance from what we've seen so far.

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