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Republicans Are Reportedly Using a Self-Destructing Message App To Avoid Leaks (theverge.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Trump administration members and other Republicans are using the encrypted, self-destructing messaging app Confide to keep conversations private in the wake of hacks and leaks, according to Jonathan Swan and David McCabe at Axios. Axios writes that "numerous senior GOP operatives and several members of the Trump administration" have downloaded Confide, which automatically wipes messages after they're read. One operative told Axios that the app "provides some cover" for people in the party. He ties it to last year's hack of the Democratic National Committee, which led to huge and damaging information dumps of DNC emails leading up to the 2016 election. But besides outright hacks, the source also said he liked the fact that Confide makes it difficult to screenshot messages, because only a few words are shown at a time. That suggests that it's useful not just for reducing paper trails, but for stopping insiders from preserving individual messages -- especially given the steady flow of leaks that have come out since Trump took office. As Axios notes, official White House business is subject to preservation rules, although we don't know much about who's allegedly using Confide and what they're doing with it, so it's not clear whether this might run afoul of those laws. It's also difficult to say how much this is a specifically Republican phenomenon, and how much is a general move toward encryption.

11 of 326 comments (clear)

  1. Re: Isn't this illegal? by oobayly · · Score: 3, Informative

    The @POTUS account retweeted his Nordstrom tweet, so yes. Plus Kellanne Conway was busy telling people to "Go buy Ivanka's stuff."

    http://money.cnn.com/2017/02/0...

    http://heavy.com/news/2017/02/...

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/worl...

  2. Re:Isn't this illegal? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Actually they are. Records must be kept for presidential libraries.

  3. Re:Isn't this illegal? by mrchaotica · · Score: 3, Informative

    On a related note, the White House FOIA page is currently unavailable. So much for requesting transcripts of all Trump Administration business done over Confide (just for shits and giggles since there's no chance they'd, you know, comply with the law or anything).

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    "[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz

  4. Re: Isn't this illegal? by Xabraxas · · Score: 3, Informative

    One is a non-profit helping people around the world. The other is a for profit helping the President's daughter. How are you blind to this difference?

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    Time makes more converts than reason
  5. Re:That's becoming a meme by dszd0g · · Score: 3, Informative

    Still feeding the fake news and alternative facts I see. Sorry, you can't rewrite history. If you voted for President Pedophile, you voted for someone who lies and has no problem breaking the law, and if you did it because he made up a claim that his opponent broke the law all the worse. Kelly-Anne Conway just broke the law on Fox News last night by advertising for Ivanka Trump, but I don't see Republicans punishing her either. Most federal employees in the past get suspended or fired for what she did last night, but President Pedophile and Republican controlled congress are the only ones with the ability to punish her, and I don't see either doing anything. President Pedophile actually defended her after she broke the law.

    http://www.forbes.com/sites/ma...

    https://www.bloomberg.com/poli...

    The Clinton e-mails are one of the biggest lies Republicans, Breitbart, and Fox News told. Nothing was really deleted. Hillary first sent one copy of the hard drives to a law office and had them sort between all the personal stuff and professional stuff. They "deleted" the personal stuff off that copy of the data before handing it to the FBI. The FBI said that wasn't sufficient and issued a subpoena for all the data including the personal data. Then she handed a copy of all the data including the personal stuff. Once requested, the FBI got everything. The quote from the FBI was about "deleted" e-mails was that there were about a dozen business e-mails that hadn't been included with the first set of business e-mails handed over. There wasn't any crime, because nothing was actually deleted. The FBI also decided that the missing ("deleted") e-mails was not criminal because there was no evidence that it was done intentionally and there was nothing incriminating in them (incorrectly sorting 0.1% of the e-mails was probably accidental). It's not like we are talking about paper copies where there is only one copy of the papers and she shredded them. There were multiple copies of the data on different hard drives and backups.

    Rice had her aides use personal e-mail accounts to send e-mails for her. Powell used a private e-mail account (believed to be AOL) for his secretary of state e-mails. Republicans only had a problem with Clinton doing the same thing Republicans had done. They also leave out that she requested a secure e-mail option from the NSA twice and was rejected; the NSA told her to send e-mails from her office computer when she spent most of her job traveling. She was just trying to do her job.

    http://www.nytimes.com/interac...

    http://www.politifact.com/trut...

    http://www.usatoday.com/story/...

    http://www.businessinsider.com...

    http://thehill.com/policy/nati...

    http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02...

    http://www.factcheck.org/2016/...

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  6. Re:Isn't this illegal? by PopeRatzo · · Score: 4, Informative

    Baloney. The Presidential Libraries acts of 1978 and 1986 allow government records to be transferred to Presidential Libraries, but they do not require presidential communications to use only government channels, or even to be recorded at all.

    Bill, that's just not true.

    "The Presidential Records Act (PRA) of 1978, 44 U.S.C. 2201–2207, is an Act of Congress of the United States governing the official records of Presidents and Vice Presidents created or received after January 20, 1981, and mandating the preservation of all presidential records. The PRA changed the legal ownership of the official records of the President from private to public, and established a new statutory structure under which Presidents must manage their records."

    Further, courts since Nixon have upheld this provision of the law. Presidential records must be preserved. As Sean Spicer would say, "period".

    Now, presidents have issued executive orders attempting to countermand this provision (Reagan, Bush I and Bush II), in an effort to circumvent it and to keep their evil-doing secret for as long as possible, but as recently as 2007, the courts have said, "Nah, fuck that". If you want to keep something from the public, you better classify it. That's how we got to the point where so much of what our government says and does is classified. The recent discussion of Trump's horribly botched raid in Yemen is an example of this. We know the target was missed, we know 30 civilians died (including an 8 year-old girl), we know that a Special Services soldier died and an aircraft was lost, but when asked why the administration was calling the raid a great success, the answer was, "It's classified".

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  7. Re:That's becoming a meme by dszd0g · · Score: 5, Informative

    He flirts and hits on 10-15 year old girls regularly (often enough that there are multiple tapes of him doing it). He liked walked in on underage teenage girls naked changing and bragged about being the only man allowed to do it on the Howard Stern show. He had his staff try to encourage the underage teenage girls that were naked to flirt with him saying they were more likely to win the contests if they did. He talked about wanting to sleep with teenage girls on the Howard Stern show. In my opinion, that makes him a pedophile.

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new...

    http://www.rollingstone.com/po...

    http://www.politifact.com/wisc...

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...

    http://people.com/politics/don...

    http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_...

    http://www.cbsnews.com/news/mo...

    http://www.tmz.com/2016/10/12/...

    http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-...

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  8. Re:Isn't this illegal? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    These are records that have been created, the fact that they're subsequently illegally destroying them does not make the records any less created. If they don't want to created public records, then they shouldn't create public records.

    Deleting things after the fact is what got Nixon run out of office. Considering the shady shenanigans that we've seen out of the GOP the last few years, I can only imagine how bad the stuff is that they don't want the public to see. Stealing a SCOTUS nomination was pretty low.

  9. Re: That's becoming a meme by dszd0g · · Score: 5, Informative

    You are on Slashdot. You should understand deleting one copy of data isn't actually deleting it when other copies exist. You are doing exactly what Trump, Fox News, and Brietbart did by using the term "deleted" when referring to one copy of the data to imply that data was lost. The first sentence was a misquote. I said "Nothing was really deleted" because other copies of the data existed; thus no crime. When handing over the business only data Hillary was very clear about what had been done and that she had a law office sort the data.

    There is no cover-up or conspiracy here. Republicans managed to make one out of thin air. I do have to credit them with managing to convince so many Americans that a crime was committed when one wasn't.

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  10. Re:That's becoming a meme by dwillden · · Score: 4, Informative

    What was actionable: The 150+ Emails containing classified information that were on her unclassified private server. Each email constitutes a count of either failure to protect/negligent mishandling or intentional security compromise. Both charges are felonies, the first though has no requirement of Intent. Each count is worth 5 to 10 years in Prison and $10,000 or higher fine. How is that for actionable and quantifiable "what"?

    Everybody entrusted with classified information is held to the same legal standards, many a lessor person has faced decades in Jail for such a crimes. She could get lucky and be charged with the negligent mishandling charges for all the emails she sent. (she is not liable for emails sent to her that might have contained such info, but then the FBI should be going after whoever sent those to her), but as Classified information, is stored on physically separate networks and machines, the act of transferring the data, especially the Top Secret info that was on some of the emails, is a deliberate act so she should face the slightly more severe deliberate security compromise charges.

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  11. Re:That's becoming a meme by dwillden · · Score: 2, Informative

    USC 18 793. Her crimes specifically fit sub paragraphs (e) or (f). If (e), it's often referred to as deliberate security compromise, if (f) it's failure to protect/mishandling of Classified Information. (f) is most likely to be charged as it requires no intent. You mishandle classified information, you have violated this law.

    Both (e) and (f) carry a fine of up to $10,000 and a sentence of up to 10 years. She should face a count for each email sent from her account. For any emails containing classified information originating from someone else, that person faces the same charge and she could face another count of (f) for failure to report a violation.

    The law is clear the penalties are clear and those punished for such crimes? Many, some much more egregious as hers due to being intentional attempts to spy. But here is a list of some so prosecuted for violating this law.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Espionage_Act_of_1917#Soviet_spies.2C_late_20th_century
    If you continue from that point down to the 21st century you find Kenneth Wayne Ford, who never transmitted to an unauthorized person but simply retained classified information. I have a much more detailed list of individuals convicted at home but am at work currently.

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