Slashdot Mirror
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.
it's Republicans doing it so it's OK.
Aren't they required to conduct all government business on government systems? Didn't Hilary got a whole lot of crap (and lose an election) over this?
Welp, they're in charge so I guess they get to make the rules, but did they even bother to change the laws first?
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I wonder if they still want that backdoor to that encryption sitting there for someone to stumble on...
"This phone will self-destruct in 5 seconds. Good luck, Kellyanne."
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
Exactly. Trump raked Apple over the coals for their stance on encryption after all.
It's funny how having different opinions on various topics now sounds so outrageous to a lot of people. Maybe it is, in this world of media bubbles.
This note7 will Self Destruct in 5 seconds!
"If you're doing nothing wrong then you've got nothing to hide"... is that how the saying goes?
Twinstiq, game news
Quick question: Doesn't this violate the government regulations regarding destruction of records?
https://www.justice.gov/usam/c...
and:
https://www2.ed.gov/policy/gen...
After all, if Trump’s tweets are now presidential records (and, by law, they are), wouldn't these also be included under those rules?
"Federal records may not be destroyed-except in accordance with the procedures described in Chapter 33 of Title 44, United States Code. These procedures allow for records destruction only under the authority of a records disposition schedule approved by the Archivist of the United States. NARA issues a General Records Schedule (GRS) that gives record descriptions of records that are common to most Federal agencies and authorizes record disposals for temporary records."
Yes, yes, I know, "But Hillary Hillary Hillary....", right, I get it, but if her doing it was illegal (and I think it was), how can this be legal?
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
I think what GP means is this:
Most government agencies, such as the FCC, FTC, and FBI, act on the authorization of *Congress*. Congress made a law creating the FCC, and granted the FCC certain powers. Congress can do that because the Constitution gives them that power. When Congress created the FCC, they also put limits on it. The a law, passed by Congress, that says "the FCC can regulate phone companies, and when they do, they must preserve their records according to a, b, and c. So these federal agencies created by Congress have to operate the way Congress specifies. Congress can create records retention rules for the agencies they create.
On the other hand, the Presidency was *not* created by Congress. The President gets his authority directly from the Constitution. The Constitution gives the President the power to control the military, to conduct international relations, etc - without asking Congress for permission. Because the Constitution gives the President certain powers, Congress has no authority to say "you can't do that unless you do it our way". The President can conduct his Constitutional authority in any way he sees fit. The Constitution says he's commander in chief of the military, so Congress has no authority to say that he must send all military orders using this system or that system.
Other Presidential powers *are* granted by Congress, and can therefore be regulated by Congress, so *in theory* they could regulate how he uses those powers, but the courts, the Congress, and the President traditionally are leery of interfering with *how* the other branch internally conducts their business. They argue about policy, the fight about what laws to make across the nation, but the vice-president (officially the president of the Senate) doesn't comment on the Senate rules of how they operate internally, and the President doesn't tell the courts how to publish rulings, and Congress doesn't tell the president which messaging system to use.
Picking a fight about that stuff internal to another branch is wasteful and counter-productive. If Congress decided to tell the President which messaging apps to use, he could turn around and have VP Pence, who is Constitutionally President of the Senate, start picking at the Senate's internal process. It's not worth it.
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/...
This message is encrypted with Quad ROT-13 to protect the author's copyright under the DMCA.
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-...
This message is encrypted with Quad ROT-13 to protect the author's copyright under the DMCA.
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.
This message is encrypted with Quad ROT-13 to protect the author's copyright under the DMCA.
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.
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
That's an interesting argument. It was resolved quite some time ago. The counter-argument is of course that because the President is empowered to fulfill his duties as he sees fit, one method he may use is to hire staff to assist him in his duties. The White House staff operates under the Constitutional authority of the President, as agents of the President. Their authority doesn't come from the Congress. Further, interfering with the White House staff *is* interfering with the President's conduct of his Constitutional duties. This is the reasoning the Supreme Court has mostly used - Congress may not generally interfere with the President's conduct of diplomacy*, and because the President conducts diplomacy by using his staff, interfering with staff *is* interfering with the President's powers.
Not only can Congress not specify a particular means of communication, they can not even *look* at internal White House memos if the President indicates that doing so would interfere with his Constitutional duties. This is called "executive privilege" and it was first invoked by George Washington. In 1796, Presiden Washington refused to comply with a request by the House of Representatives for documents related to the negotiation of the Jay Treaty. Many, many Presidents since Washington have invoked executive privilege, and most of the time they've won.
A major turning point in executive privilege was Nixon. The Nixon administration refused to turn over documents related to Watergate, saying "executive privilege". The Supreme Court ruled that while a President may keep White House communications private, in a criminal investigation of that magnitude he had to give more explanation than just saying "executive privilege". Given the gravity of the situation and the legitimate interest in the papers, he would need to say "turning over the papers would interfere with my Constitutional powers because ...", SCOTUS said. While technically the court ruled against Nixon, they stressed that generally the White House *may* choose not to reveal their communications to Congress or the courts - in criminal cases of major public interest, they just need to state a *reason* they aren't turning over the communications.
For 25 years after Nixon no President lost an executive privilege claim. The Clinton administration claimed executive privilege a record fourteen times, and lost only once.
So yeah that is an interesting argument you've made. That argument has not been the successful argument throughput history.
* Aside from ratification of treaties by the Senate only.