Mike Waltz accidentally reveals obscure app the government is using to archive Signal messages
A photograph of Trump administration official Mike Waltz's phone shows him using an unofficial version of Signal designed to archive messages during a cabinet meeting.
Mike Waltz, who was until Thursday U.S. National Security Advisor, has inadvertently revealed he is using an obscure and unofficial version of Signal that is designed to archive messages, raising questions about what classification of information officials are discussing on the app and how that data is being secured, 404 Media has found.
On Thursday Reuters published a photograph of Waltz checking his mobile phone during a cabinet meeting held by Donald Trump.
The screen appears to show messages from various top level government officials, including JD Vance, Tulsi Gabbard, and Marco Rubio.
https://www.404media.co/mike-waltz-accidentally-reveals-obscure-app-the-government-is-using-to-archive-signal-messages/Open linkView original on lemmy.world
https://www.businessinsider.com/mike-waltz-photographed-using-signal-messaging-app-during-cabinet-meeting-2025-5?op=1
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TeleMessage
Let that sink in
Hello foreign intelligence agencies, would you like an easy way to intercept and read classified communications? Maybe just buy it off Mossad? JFC what is this clown show. Why are our intelligence officials even using off the shelf, or even modified, software solutions for communications? Shouldn't we have some secure messaging app and protocols developed here?
Am I missing something here or is it really this dumb?
They are going out of their way to use an Israeli platform to discuss top secret government business on. Seems pretty obvious why. They are taking instructions from
IsraelRussia!I mean it's probably both but I would bet my life that Trump is actually a Russian agent. You don't grab a whole pile of classified documents and bring them to your home in a location secured worse than the door to a bedroom and not proceed to give those away.
Now, direct involvement and level of control - idk but he must be "on their payroll" so to speak.
Who knows they're a whole den of corruption, I wouldn't be surprised to learn some of Trump's staff are selling state secrets.
Most of that shit went to Saudi Arabia for the 2 billion paid to Jared Kushner's company years ago.
Isn’t Israel known for its tech firms making phone security bypass tech (I.E. NSO Group and their Pegasus SW?)
I don't understand, signal is open source, why would they need to purchase an unofficial fork from a foreign company? Isn't that an huge security issue?
And what's the point of using end to end encryption if the app has been hacked to send messages to a remote server anyway
Signal is lacking a certain feature "Archiving messages" . This company used Signal's open source code to add this feature and offer the whole thing as a "Signal plus" product.
Assuming best intentions, Waltz wanted Signal but also wanted the ability to archive messages so he opted for the software provided by this company instead of the original.
https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360007321231-Archiving-or-unarchiving-chats
Am I just being dense or does stock Signal already have this feature?
You can also export the entirety of your Signal chats and decrypt them on a computer with an open source tool.
I also thought they were using Signal specifically to avoid FOIA, which requires government officials to archive their messages.
So it is possible government officials are using disappearing messages in Signal (which is illegal for multiple reasons), which will give a reason to use a third party app, not that this specific app should be trusted in any way.
My understanding is that Archiving chats would be keeping a copy of these chats accessible elsewhere for archiving purposes and not directly related to the archiving feature you've mentioned.
Signal does support chat backup which is close enough but its encrypted and its complicated to make one (for security reasons) and I am not sure its possible to view the encrypted chats without going through the process of restoring the backup.
There are third party, open source tools to view encrypted Signal backups if you have the key to decrypt them.
Sounds like a Klingon insult.
Petak-T'kva!
/ stab
It translates to "you have Play-Doh on your forehead".
well that is how you become Israel's and Russia's bitch and sell your own country so they don't reveal the dirt that they found about you
Preloaded with Pegasus at your disposal lmao
Holy mother of fuck
We trained him wrong, as a joke
I am bleeding, leaving me the victor!
squeak squeak
Someone should really try "my nuts to your fist style."
That’s a lot of nuts!
DA NA NA NA NA- NEO.
DA NA NA NA NA NA NA- SPORIN.
Eeny meeny miney mo
I wonder where my glove will go
How did this photo even happen? They don't use privacy covers? Who's running this operation??
This is the dumbass that is running the operation. Well, not anymore. He just got fired and nominated for ambassador to the UN.
Seriously
Wait, really? It's getting impossible to keep up with this shit.
It's like every mind numbing event is endcapped with a stinger: But wait, there's more!
And your gonna feel worse about it!
You're*
ur*
Talk about paid-vacation, I mean, paid-suspension
You're not supposed to have sensitive info on your screen in public in the first place.
That’s why you have privacy glass meaning you can only read the screen from a narrow angle range.
I have a polarizing filter on my phone, but that can be circumvent Ed with the right camera lens.
Damn that Ed, always circumventing things.
I'm leaving Ed be. He's cool, but his views are polarizing.
Next question: how does the rest of the photo come out when using that camera lens?
Polarized light still feels like black magic to me, so I wouldn't be surprised if it would have a negligible to no effect on anything else in the frame, but my instinct says it would mess up a bunch of random things, thus making it useful for very specific spy craft type applications, but not for general use.
Super Secret MAGA Signal Archive App!
Download MAGASecretsApp.exe at MAGASecretsApp. ru now!
So these convos are backed up somewhere. Outside of government control. Great.
No wonder they moved fast to block any investigation
i think mossad has work with russia in the past, and they would likely get thier hands on this, and russia can pass it on to iran who will leak it to Hamas,,,,etc.
Noooo, it's not that they're guilty of anything... it's to protect from the deep state and the radical left commiefascist"insertbuzzword"s! I'd put "hey look at the bunny" but these assholes aren't even trying to distract anymore, it's just plain and simple corrupt government running for their own best interests while throwing out half hearted stupid sound bites to appease the brain washed.
Jd Vance:
I have conformation from my counterpart its turned off. He'll be there.
Oh boy! Here we go a crimin' again! ᕕ(ᐛ)ᕗ
“We are currently clean on OPSEC.”
"Only the best people."
These fucking clowns. I've lived through an awful lot of Gov't by the Stupid...
(Remember when we thought Bush the Younger was the dumbest president ever...??)
But this freak show simply outdoes anything that came before. 🙄 🤡 🖕
I long for the Bush era and that's fucking tragic.
Golfs better than Trump too
Now watch this drive
What a time to be alive
It was not. 2000+ has pretty much sucked.
Funny enough, 2000 is when I could first legally buy booze too. Still didn’t help.
➕ 💯
To make matters somewhat worse, tele message appears to be an Israeli company
mossad, looking through the logs: "already knew that. tell us something we don't know ffs."
Although they are owned by Smarsh, an American company.
The article makes me wonder if Waltz is intentionally countering the counter-revolution.
Either that, or he's just stupid as fuck.
Maybe both.
They just mumble TDS and start pretending to speak in tongues.
Could it be that Mike was the insider that was leaking stuff to the media and this archiveable version of Signal is to be able to prove and/or keep Signal conversations that would otherwise be removed from the official app? I mean, just them using Signal is a violation of the Records Act, no, due to the ability to remove entire chats after a period of time? Everyone thinks he's incompetent or dumb, but he may have added that reporter on purpose to expose their use of Signal in the first place and he's using this unofficial version to save chats we would otherwise not have record of. If the insider info stops now, we'll know why.
lol this guy can assemble into a whole war thunder forum on his own
"send top secret government chats to a server in Israel?"
YES / LATER
Yo this is a real interesting read but the title is straight clickbait that makes it seem like the gov't is externally archiving signal messages for citizens.
I read it as intented, since most headlines in the last month have been about their own usage of Signal.
I mean, aren't they?
It's TeleMessage, not Signal, but w/e
No i mean, are they not just storing encrypted messages until they have capability to decrypt?
Yes, the US government has a longstanding 'grab everything' order in place.
It's just a matter of whether they want to put the resources towards deciphering something.
I'm just shocked he didn't have a post-it note with his code written in blue pen in the other hand...
And they'll still defend it too. Ugh
what a putz
Hostile intelligence agencies can have a little espionage, as a treat.
Probably backdoored
Seems more like they left the front door wide open.
You're thinking of Grind'r.
This is a link to the modified app instruction.
https://www.telemessage.com/signal-archiver-android-installation-upgrade/
Wish I could read the whole article
https://archive.is/IcPKY
I'm so grateful for archive.is and every project like it
Thanks
Gotta save that juicy blackmail
Too stupid even for Trump to keep onboard.
I doubt anything digital is private.
He's doing the job of a stand-up comedian. His paycheck should reflect that.
🤡
That is slightly better than using regular signal. I wonder if they only started using it after the leaks?
No, it is not. Those convos are being stored somewhere, who knows if it’s even completely secure.
Modified clients could be transmitting the private keys to the server.
But not storing communications like this is literally illegal. It's not good, but it's breaking the law less.
Neither the app nor the archiver are approved or managed. This is absolutely even more illegal.
Is it if those backups are in Russia?
they're in Tel Aviv
What would be funny is if Signal made some changes that break that app's functionality.
How might they do that?
Lemme get this straight
It's a problem for the government to use signal because all govt correspondence needs to be on record and retrievable in the future
But it's also a problem to use archiving of encrypted chats?
Not an American, can someone explain?
Sure. You are legally required to archive all correspondence by approved by our security departments software, not a corporate app that shares the info with corporations and are on unsecured servers. Our security warned them to not do this and they did it anyway.
Also, do you remember "but her emails" for Hillary Clinton? That was because she used a private app for some of her emails. She wasn't using it to wage a war.
What stops the government approving the app themselves?
Nothing, but it hasn't been done, therefore this is illegal.
Lmao that's pretty funny, why am I getting downvoted
Asking questions with obvious answers. You come off as a sealion troll.
What is a sealion?
Obvious answers for Americans maybe
God forbid you ask a question on the internet these days
Obvious for anyone with an internet connection and half a brain. Case in point, you could google "sealion troll" and get far more info than you'd ever get from a lemmy comment.
What the fuck does that mean
Sea lioning.
Yes.
The answer is that this is all a bunch of stupid bullshit and that the Trumplicans truly don't give a damn about laws that no one can force them to follow.
At this point, there's really no point in trying to look for consistency or rational justification for anything these people do.
What laws are being broken? If republicans control both houses, why don't they approve the app or change the law?
Government communications must be archived.
By using Signal, they're intentionally breaking the law since Signal doesn't retain communications. The only conclusion that can be drawn from this is they don't want a record so they can't be held accountable in the future.
The simple answer is that this wouldn't pass the Senate, because the filibuster still exists (for now) and you need 2/3s vote to end debate and hold a vote (called cloture). It's unlikely you'd get the 15 or so Dems needed for this to happen.
The complicated answer is that Congress has been perfectly happy ceding more and more of its authority to the Presidency for a long time now. When you're elected for a two-year term (as Representatives are) but spend 1+ year campaigning (because seriously, fuck US elections) you don't want to do anything that even the short-term-memories of American voters might remember. So they're perfectly happy letting the President take the blame for anything if it's their party in the White House, or obstructing him if it's not.
The point they're trying to make seems to be that the specific unofficial Signal app they are using does archive those messages. So the fact Signal by itself doesn't, is irrelevant. The government is paying TeleMessage for this Signal app instead of using the official Signal app... The only reason for that would be for the archiving capability.
I mean... If they're using Signal specifically because it doesn't store messages, and they are trying to hide the communications and not archive them... They wouldn't be using the app capable of archiving them in the first place, they'd just use the official Signal app.
Not sure why this is hard for people to understand since the article is explaining exactly what this app is and does and how it bypasses the "Signal doesn't arching texts" issue entirely, because it doesn't matter what the official Signal app does or doesn't do.
Everyone gets that. What you don't seem to get is that when the law says government communications must be archived, it doesn't mean "an Israeli company has a copy of all my sensitive texts" is how to accomplish that.
How do you know they have access to the archived data? That's possible... but requires making assumptions that the application sends the archive data back to the company, which is not a guarantee by any means. Not everything operates via vendor-run infrastructure, most enterprise applications are designed to work with an enterprise-run solution for exactly this type of reason. This isn't a program aimed at the general public.
They make the client application, it is entirely possible that the client simply sends that data to a specified database, and the apps on these devices are set to a server run by the US government. It's not hard to verify where the archive info leaving a device via any network interface is going. You can't just hide a connection from the phone to an additional random server, especially if you're looking for weird connections when validating solutions to implement.
Is it possible that they have it running to a server run by the company? Of course it's possible. That doesn't mean it's plausible, or even likely here. We don't know how the app is set up or where it archives to. Assuming it must archive back to the company though is ignorant of how anything remotely related to these types of things work.
On a side note... When was the contract for this application setup? Was it signed by the Trump admin or has it been in place for years to archive these types of communications and we're only talking about it now because of the Trump officials being idiots brought it into the news cycle?
An archiving application isn't inherently insecure just because it's third party, or even made by a foreign company. There's a shit ton of technology bought from foreign countries because that's the best option.
No, both are a problem because they aren't approved and controlled.