> Waltz also appears to have also engendered some sympathy from inside Trump’s orbit over the group chat because the White House had authorized the use of Signal, largely because there is no alternative platform to text in real time across different agencies, two people familiar with the matter said.
- No alternative platform: Presumably on purpose. If it were a good security practice to text this type of information in real time across existential-level national-security agencies by using multiple private vendors (e.g., Apple, Signal, AT&T, Verizon, …), I'll go out on a limb to guess that the government would have implemented that idea before 2025.
It's not on purpose, it's a lack of IT coordination and has been a long-standing issue in the government. As an example, until about 2010-2012, nearly every US military base hosted its own email server and employees (military, civilian, contractor) received an email address like first.last@base.af.mil (replace af with another branch as appropriate). Now it'll be first.last@us.af.mil.
They consolidated each branch's email and other comm systems over a number of years with good and bad results. Cross-branch communication could still be improved, but it's much better than it used to be. Cross department and agency communication is still broken. And the only purpose is so they can retain control of their fiefdoms.
That's the fun part. They did. DISA and the NSA have had the DMCC-TS (and DMCC-S) phones available across basically every agency or department for years now. They come already provisioned with Cellcrypt for messaging and phone calls as well as email access.
These are the standard communication device for senior members of the US government who are working regularly with classified information.
- No alternative platform: Presumably on purpose. If it were a good security practice to text this type of information in real time across existential-level national-security agencies by using multiple private vendors (e.g., Apple, Signal, AT&T, Verizon, …), I'll go out on a limb to guess that the government would have implemented that idea before 2025.