The ‘Signalgate’ report Inspect General The report calls for one change to avoid repeated comparisons
United States The Insonctor General’s report released today found that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth may have deployed troops and military intelligence in March in connection with ongoing attacks on the Houthis. The IG first shared the classified report with Congress on Tuesday.
This report contains only one specific recommendation: that the chief of the special security office of the US Commald Command command in accordance with the “policies of the Department of Defense” and issue additional procedures, as necessary, to ensure the placement of the appropriate part of the classified information. ” The report also refers to another IG letter about the use of “electronic messaging systems” and points to its recommendations improving the training of senior DoD officials in the proper use of electronic devices. “
The incident the IG was investigating is often referred to as “Signalgate,” because senior US officials were using a platform used to communicate through secure government channels. Apparently, national security adviser Michael Waltz accidentally invited the Atlantic’s top editor, Jeffrey Goldberg, to the signal discussion again. Goldberg later denied the presence of the chat and his erroneous installation – illustrating in real time some of the dangers of using a consumer app for private business and military business. At the moment, in addition to very specific information about the strike, including details such as the time of the bombs, hegseth messages in the conversation another time “clean in OPSEC,” referring to operational security.
The IG report notes that Hegsseth is the “De facto Declassification Authority in the DOD” and therefore decides what information needs to be classified and how the information is classified.
“We conclude that the secretary presented compassionate, non-functional, determined information that did not need to be classified as a signal conversation on his cell phone,” the IG said. “However, because the secretary revealed that he used a signal application on his phone to send dod information that is not made by dod 8170.01, a commercial application that is available for sending nonpublic information.”
The report says Hegseth “declined to be discussed” by the IG report and instead sent a written statement about the signal events. The Defense Department did not immediately respond to a telephone request for comment.
Signal is an app for standard secure gold applications for consumer use. End-to-End Encrypts messages and phone calls so both sender and receiver can access them – not without eavesdroppers or even signatures. And Signal also collects very little metadata, so the company knows almost nothing about its users and has nothing to turn to when it receives law enforcement requests. It doesn’t matter how good the brand is, however the “threat model” and consumer use case is very different from this high level government and military officials.
