Summary
Lawmakers from both parties expressed outrage after The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief revealed he was accidentally included in a Trump administration Signal chat discussing Yemen airstrikes.
Rep. Chris Deluzio (D-Pa.) and Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.) called for investigations and firings, labeling it a serious security breach.
Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) criticized the use of non-secure systems, warning that adversaries like Russia and China could exploit it.
Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) condemned the administration’s mishandling of classified information, saying it endangers national security.
Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) criticized the use of non-secure systems, warning that adversaries like Russia and China could exploit it.
The singular problem with Americans doing a holocaust abroad is that another country might find out about it in advance.
I mean, just think for a minute. What if we wanted to bomb a Russian orphanage or a Chinese university? They could take advantage of our data insecurity to thwart us!
Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) condemned the administration’s mishandling of classified information, saying it endangers national security.
We’re carpet bombing people on the other side of the fucking planet. This is so far outside the scope of “national security”.
Absolute Ghoul Nation.
You’re diminishing the term Holocaust by using it for something only remotely comparable.
This specific incident, no. But the point is that if it happens for other issues more important domestically, it would be a national security risk.
You’re diminishing the term Holocaust
The US’s Role in the Hidden Genocide in Yemen
The Arab state of Yemen has been locked in a civil war since 2014—a conflict that escalated significantly in March 2015, when a Saudi-led coalition began air strikes against the Houthi rebels. This coalition has been backed by the US and the UK, despite producing a humanitarian crisis that has left 8.4 million people on the brink of famine.
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Q. You write that “even if the US and UK do not intend for their support to be used in the commission of genocide, it is irrelevant to the question of whether they are complicit in the genocide.” What is the basis for assigning responsibility to a state in this case, if intent is irrelevant?
In the case of Bosnia v. Serbia, the International Court of Justice established that shared intent is only relevant when considering whether a state conspired with another to commit genocide. For complicity, a state only needs to be aware that the aid it is providing to another state facilitates the crime being committed. In other words, if the US and UK shared the Saudi-led coalition’s genocidal intent, the aid they are providing would make them conspirators in the commission of genocide. Without shared intent, they are still complicit in the crime based on their continued material support, which has aided in the commission of genocide.
With Trump’s return, we’ve once again gone beyond simply facilitating Saudi mass killing of Yemeni residents and gone straight into the strategic slaughter of whole neighborhoods and villages.
But the point is that if it happens for other issues more important domestically, it would be a national security risk.
That the American media can only report on the exposure of the systematic mass murder of half the country’s native residents as a risk to the United States illustrates the deep rot within the American psyche.
That the American media can only report on the exposure of the systematic mass murder of half the country’s native residents as a risk to the United States illustrates the deep rot within the American psyche.
No one said that. This isn’t about reporting, this is about information leaks.
If genocide is limited to mass killing by direct violence, some might argue that the term cannot apply to Yemen. Relative to the generally recognized cases of genocide (Armenia, Jewish Holocaust, Rwanda, etc.), a “substantial” number of Yemenis have not been killed by direct violence. However, between ten and twenty thousand people have been killed by direct violence and many tens of thousands more have been killed by deteriorating public health conditions directly related to the Saudi-led coalition’s bombing attacks and naval blockade. Additionally, Yemen’s rich cultural heritage has been deliberately bombed by the coalition. The direct and indirect physical attacks, public health emergencies, and cultural destruction together amount to a synchronized attack on life in Yemen.
It is not a Holocaust type event. An issue and a travesty, yes. But they are fighting literal terrorists as part of it. It’s not exactly the pure black and white the Holocaust was, and I think your own source backs my statement.
I do agree it is horrifying. But I would argue that the saudis are the primary perpetrators, not the states. Unfortunately the actual meat of the article is hidden behind a paywall.
Sure. Outraged over an inadvertent leak, but totally fine arming a country committing genocide, trying to strong-arm the victim of relentless aggression into giving up 1/5th of it’s territory, letting disease spread freely in the nation, detaining people without charges, kidnapping people off the streets and deporting then to violent foreign prisoners without due process, weakening our defense industry, alienating every ally and partner we have on the planet, threatening to annex countries, starting trade wars, taking away women’s healthcare, threatening the most vulnerable members of society, etc etc etc. All that other stuff is fine, but sure, let’s raise holy hell over an inadvertent leak.
“Non-secure systems” uh. No. Systems that aren’t in the US control is what you mean.
As @asdfasdfasdf@lemmy.world pointed out, Signal is insecure as in the access to the message wasn’t controlled. It’s like stripping naked in front of an open window with the lights on in your house. Yeah, technically, you are inside your home where it’s private. But if you aren’t pulling the shades everyone gonna see it
Well, that would be impressive. Because it’s open source, you can audit it yourself. The cryptography of it is secure. Unless the government has a secret way of breaking these encryption algorithms which we are unaware of, there is no backdoor.
I’ve only dug into the user to user messaging, but I’m group messaging is just as secure.
The only thing that was lacking when I read through it was key transparency. And that’s a problem with every end to end encryption service. HOWEVER I know work is being done on implementing it. That will alleviate the fears of the wrong public keys being used (aka, you’re talking to someone different than you thought).
I’d absolutely qualify it as non-secure in this context. Signal is E2E encrypted but there are no systems in place where it understands who’s added to a chat and validates access based on ACLs or anything. Authorization policies are critical in securing systems.
So we are more worried about the privacy communications instead of how we are bombing Yemen. Great. Fantastic.
This is surprisingly a middle ground. I’ve been seeing people on the right just as pissed off about this. They have a point too in that there can be two truths here.
He could have leaked information and needs to be held accountable.
The claim that the information leaked as stated can be exaggerated.
Just be careful out there that they don’t rope you into looking like idiots by being over dramatic.
