WEBVTT - why is the US gov using a ‘cartoonishly hackable’ messaging app? 0:00:15.280 --> 0:00:24.800 I'm afraid Kaleidoscope and iHeart podcasts. This is kill Switch. 0:00:26.239 --> 0:00:30.120 I'm Dextera Thomas. Maybe you've heard a signal Gate. If not, 0:00:30.400 --> 0:00:32.960 I'll get you up to speed real quick. Back in March, 0:00:33.040 --> 0:00:36.040 a bunch of top White House staff, including the Vice President, 0:00:36.320 --> 0:00:39.560 Secretary of Defense, and a lot of other people, were 0:00:39.560 --> 0:00:42.800 discussing military operations in Yemen. And they were having this 0:00:42.840 --> 0:00:46.120 discussion on a chat app called signal which you'll hear 0:00:46.159 --> 0:00:48.640 more about in the second But amongst all the White 0:00:48.640 --> 0:00:53.080 House officials was an outsider somebody, and that somebody turned 0:00:53.120 --> 0:00:56.160 out to be US National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, had 0:00:56.320 --> 0:00:59.520 accidentally added a journalist from the Atlantic to that group chat. 0:01:00.320 --> 0:01:03.400 That journalists did what journalists are supposed to do, tell 0:01:03.440 --> 0:01:06.880 the public what's happening. It was embarrassing for the White House, 0:01:07.080 --> 0:01:09.280 and it also raised a lot of questions about what 0:01:09.400 --> 0:01:12.600 exactly the US is doing overseas. It's a big enough 0:01:12.640 --> 0:01:16.080 deal that Signalgate has its own Wikipedia entry, and the 0:01:16.120 --> 0:01:23.279 story would have ended there. Then fast forward to May. First, 0:01:23.520 --> 0:01:26.360 a picture started to circulate of the very same guy, 0:01:26.640 --> 0:01:30.160 Mike Waltz, looking at his phone in a meeting using 0:01:30.160 --> 0:01:33.120 an app that looked familiar sort of. 0:01:33.520 --> 0:01:36.039 He was in a cabinet meeting with President Trump and 0:01:36.080 --> 0:01:39.839 other senior officials, and the Roysters photographer got him looking 0:01:39.920 --> 0:01:43.160 down at his phone, and if you zoomed in, it 0:01:43.200 --> 0:01:45.080 looked like he was using signal, which is of course 0:01:45.120 --> 0:01:48.480 very Ray funny and Rai Ray ironic. So people saw 0:01:48.520 --> 0:01:52.400 that they started tweeting it and posting on Blue Sky saying, 0:01:52.440 --> 0:01:56.080 ha ha, look, Mike Waltz's using signal in this photo. 0:01:56.320 --> 0:01:58.680 And then of course when you zoom in there are names. 0:01:58.840 --> 0:02:02.600 It shows the chat and there's says Rubio. I only 0:02:02.640 --> 0:02:05.840 know if one senior official who has a surname Rubio 0:02:06.160 --> 0:02:09.919 obviously relates me to the Department of State. There's Gabbard, 0:02:10.000 --> 0:02:12.760 I think probably Tolsy Gabbard. And then there's one that's 0:02:12.800 --> 0:02:14.160 just straight up says jd Vance. 0:02:14.440 --> 0:02:16.280 Yeah, I wasna say. Jadvance is right in there, and 0:02:16.280 --> 0:02:20.200 I'm just I'm reading part of jd Vance's messages right here, 0:02:20.240 --> 0:02:24.200 just in this picture, which brings up an entirely different question, 0:02:24.639 --> 0:02:29.880 which is should you be reading your text messages during 0:02:29.919 --> 0:02:32.320 a meeting in which they are photographers. But I suppose 0:02:32.360 --> 0:02:36.960 we can leave that to the side. This is my 0:02:37.080 --> 0:02:40.320 friend and former colleague from my Vice News days, Joseph Cox. 0:02:40.760 --> 0:02:43.800 He now reports for and co owns the online publication 0:02:43.960 --> 0:02:44.880 four or for Media. 0:02:45.400 --> 0:02:47.760 Somebody put it in our in our work group chat 0:02:47.800 --> 0:02:51.359 and I was say, I look at Signal every day, 0:02:51.880 --> 0:02:54.440 like way too much, like twelve hours a day. I'm 0:02:54.440 --> 0:02:57.680 looking at that app. This is not Signal. There's a 0:02:57.760 --> 0:02:59.799 there's something ever so slightly different. And when I look 0:02:59.840 --> 0:03:03.000 at the bottom, there's usually a message in Signal says 0:03:03.000 --> 0:03:05.480 please verify your signal pin. And this is so you 0:03:05.480 --> 0:03:07.320 remember the pin so you don't get locked out, and 0:03:07.360 --> 0:03:09.480 it keeps your account more secure. It's a very good thing. 0:03:09.960 --> 0:03:13.520 But at the bottom it said please remember your TM 0:03:13.960 --> 0:03:17.560 SGNL pin. And I'm like, what the well the hell 0:03:17.680 --> 0:03:20.720 is that? And then I google around and that leads 0:03:20.760 --> 0:03:25.760 me to tele Message and their modified version of Signal. 0:03:26.040 --> 0:03:28.680 You really have to be hyper focusing on this stuff 0:03:29.040 --> 0:03:31.880 to notice it at all. And then you further zoomed 0:03:31.880 --> 0:03:34.359 in and said, Yo, this ain't signal. 0:03:34.160 --> 0:03:37.360 This is not signal, this is some weird modified version. 0:03:38.360 --> 0:03:42.640 So yeah, we report that Mike Waltz has inadvertently revealed 0:03:43.160 --> 0:03:47.080 the weird Signal clone that the Trump administration is using. 0:03:49.040 --> 0:03:52.360 Just to clarify here, Signal the actual Signal is a 0:03:52.360 --> 0:03:55.640 messaging app that uses what's called end to end encryption, 0:03:56.120 --> 0:03:59.240 which means that when you send a message, nobody, not 0:03:59.360 --> 0:04:02.640 the government, not even Signal can read your messages. Even 0:04:02.640 --> 0:04:05.880 if they do intercept them, only the intended recipient can 0:04:05.920 --> 0:04:09.800 read the message. It's basically the gold standard for secure messaging. 0:04:10.520 --> 0:04:13.080 What Joseph noticed was that the app Mike Waltz was 0:04:13.160 --> 0:04:16.520 using in the picture looked like the actual Signal, but 0:04:16.760 --> 0:04:20.480 that something was off. This app looked kind of similar, 0:04:20.720 --> 0:04:23.400 but it was clear that someone else had modified it, 0:04:23.800 --> 0:04:27.000 and his suspicion was that this modified version might not 0:04:27.080 --> 0:04:29.880 have had the same security that the actual Signal does. 0:04:30.760 --> 0:04:33.000 So Joseph wrote an article on four or four that 0:04:33.120 --> 0:04:36.240 explained the issue here, and the key was that phrase 0:04:36.279 --> 0:04:42.040 at the bottom TMSGNL. Joseph started digging around and realized 0:04:42.080 --> 0:04:45.039 that this was probably from a company called tele Message. 0:04:45.600 --> 0:04:50.320 This company basically makes clones of popular messaging apps like WhatsApp, Telegram, 0:04:50.480 --> 0:04:55.479 we Chat, and Yes Signal with one extra feature. It 0:04:55.600 --> 0:04:59.320 saves copies of all the messages sent or received onto 0:04:59.360 --> 0:05:02.719 another server not to spoil the next part. But maybe 0:05:02.760 --> 0:05:06.520 you're already seeing the problem here, So let's talk about 0:05:06.520 --> 0:05:10.279 the timeline. This picture of Mike Waltz circulates and Joseph 0:05:10.320 --> 0:05:14.800 publishes that article on May first. On May third, two 0:05:14.920 --> 0:05:19.200 days later, an anonymous hacker contacts another reporter named Micah 0:05:19.279 --> 0:05:22.080 Lee saying that they've managed to hack tele a message, 0:05:22.600 --> 0:05:26.280 and so Micah and Joseph put together another article explaining 0:05:26.400 --> 0:05:27.760 how bad this really is. 0:05:32.080 --> 0:05:34.960 I'm getting these screenshots and I'm getting sent this data. 0:05:35.440 --> 0:05:37.640 One of the first examples is a screenshot of a 0:05:37.680 --> 0:05:40.760 telemessage back end, which you know, a normal person should 0:05:40.760 --> 0:05:42.120 not be able to access and a hacker should be 0:05:42.200 --> 0:05:44.320 able to access it. And it has all of these 0:05:44.720 --> 0:05:49.120 contact details for officials from Customs and Border Protection, implying 0:05:49.560 --> 0:05:51.960 that they use the tool as well for some reason. 0:05:52.320 --> 0:05:57.160 So I spend my Sunday phoning up numbers in this 0:05:57.400 --> 0:06:00.800 list of CPB officials contact information, and I answer with 0:06:00.839 --> 0:06:02.919 the name, and I say with Customs and Border and 0:06:02.960 --> 0:06:06.360 they confirm, so it verifies the data. They then hang 0:06:06.440 --> 0:06:08.120 up after I explain what's happening. 0:06:08.279 --> 0:06:08.520 Wow. 0:06:08.640 --> 0:06:12.240 But then there's the much more serious stuff, which is 0:06:12.920 --> 0:06:16.040 messages that they may have thought were secure with a 0:06:16.080 --> 0:06:18.760 modified version of Signal, and these messages are going off 0:06:18.760 --> 0:06:23.400 against archived somewhere. The hacker was able to essentially intercept 0:06:23.480 --> 0:06:26.320 them in the middle of that process, and we were 0:06:26.360 --> 0:06:29.919 reading messages that were clearly sent that day of internal 0:06:29.960 --> 0:06:34.960 conversations between various people. One example was one from it 0:06:35.000 --> 0:06:37.640 looks like it was from Galaxy Digital, which is a 0:06:37.640 --> 0:06:41.400 cryptocurrency connected company, and they were talking about some sort 0:06:41.400 --> 0:06:44.960 of bill or law that the Dems may or may 0:06:45.000 --> 0:06:49.240 not support. I'm not particularly interested in the specifics of 0:06:49.240 --> 0:06:52.000 that bill, but it just shows you whoa this is 0:06:52.040 --> 0:06:54.479 a really sensitive conversation, even if I don't really care 0:06:54.520 --> 0:06:57.160 about cryptocurrency. This isn't something that a hacker should be 0:06:57.200 --> 0:06:58.720 able to get, and this isn't something that I should 0:06:58.760 --> 0:07:02.120 be able to read. But the implication is is that 0:07:02.240 --> 0:07:06.239 Mike Waltz and people he was talking to, like Rubio 0:07:06.400 --> 0:07:10.360 or whoever run this same platform, the hacker just managed 0:07:10.400 --> 0:07:13.520 to break into and get the contents of messages. And 0:07:13.560 --> 0:07:16.560 that's massive because who knows who else had access to this. 0:07:17.160 --> 0:07:20.080 So just giving these government officials the benefit of the 0:07:20.120 --> 0:07:23.720 doubt for a moment, maybe this is what happened. Using 0:07:23.760 --> 0:07:27.360 an app that can automatically delete messages is not okay 0:07:27.400 --> 0:07:30.600 for government officials because the public is supposed to have 0:07:30.640 --> 0:07:34.120 access to non classified information, and one of the things 0:07:34.200 --> 0:07:38.400 telemessage promises to do is help organizations comply with regulations 0:07:38.480 --> 0:07:41.920 about retaining records. Now, we have no evidence of the 0:07:41.960 --> 0:07:45.200 reasoning or timing of the government's use of telemessage, but 0:07:45.520 --> 0:07:48.280 that would be a charitable reading here. Maybe they did 0:07:48.280 --> 0:07:49.360 it to obey the law. 0:07:49.840 --> 0:07:53.520 It is a really really, really really hard trade off, 0:07:53.880 --> 0:07:56.200 and one side we want the government to keep records 0:07:56.200 --> 0:07:58.280 so we can foil them and there can be accountability 0:07:58.320 --> 0:08:00.560 and transparency whenever we need that, you know, either in 0:08:00.600 --> 0:08:03.320 the current moment or at a later date. And then 0:08:03.360 --> 0:08:06.080 when they do seemingly choose at all to do that, 0:08:06.760 --> 0:08:08.800 it blows up massively in their face, and it's actually 0:08:08.840 --> 0:08:10.920 probably even worse than the problem they were trying to 0:08:10.920 --> 0:08:13.600 solve in the first place. Tele a message who don't 0:08:13.640 --> 0:08:16.440 make signal, they don't develop signal in any capacity. They 0:08:16.440 --> 0:08:19.040 don't do it for reach Out, Whatsapple Telegram either, but 0:08:19.080 --> 0:08:22.320 they take those apps and they like shoven archiving ability 0:08:22.720 --> 0:08:26.280 onto it. So presumably you might just not make a 0:08:26.360 --> 0:08:31.480 fully secure solution. But then even more fundamentally, there are 0:08:31.520 --> 0:08:34.719 just always going to be risks involved of this, and 0:08:35.040 --> 0:08:38.040 it kind of reminds me of you know, government's always 0:08:38.040 --> 0:08:42.880 asking for back doors into communication products. I'm not saying 0:08:42.960 --> 0:08:47.400 tele message is absolutely a backdoor, and they don't use 0:08:47.440 --> 0:08:53.760 that terminology, but practically it's kind of the same. It's 0:08:53.880 --> 0:08:56.400 taking the messages and copying them elsewhere, which is what 0:08:56.480 --> 0:09:00.559 we think of a backdoor. Fundamentally, by introduce seeing another 0:09:00.600 --> 0:09:05.040 party to the chat, you're introducing more risk in some form. 0:09:05.080 --> 0:09:07.920 Right exactly, because the idea here, what sounds like tell 0:09:07.960 --> 0:09:13.160 Message is promising is that well, signal your message is 0:09:13.679 --> 0:09:15.800 encrypted from one end to the other. It's end to 0:09:16.000 --> 0:09:20.120 end encrypted, so nobody can intercept that. But then it's 0:09:20.200 --> 0:09:24.080 going through tele messages being copied somewhere else, and so 0:09:24.240 --> 0:09:28.760 by default, by definition, it's not encrypted in to end anymore. 0:09:29.000 --> 0:09:31.880 So when we first reported on sort of the Trump 0:09:31.920 --> 0:09:34.640 happening use of telemessage, the New York Times followed up 0:09:34.640 --> 0:09:36.079 a few days later, and they were talking about some 0:09:36.080 --> 0:09:38.160 of the security risks about this, and they spoke to 0:09:38.800 --> 0:09:42.720 some executive that's Smash, which is the American company that 0:09:42.840 --> 0:09:47.199 owns the Israeli company tele message, and that executive to 0:09:47.240 --> 0:09:49.800 The New York Times was saying something like we we 0:09:49.880 --> 0:09:54.200 don't de encrypts, which is a bizarre term I've never 0:09:54.240 --> 0:09:57.600 heard anyone use with any in any serious context. But 0:09:57.679 --> 0:10:00.880 what they were trying to say was basically, it's still secure, 0:10:01.040 --> 0:10:03.440 you know, even though we have we're adding this archiving thing, 0:10:03.480 --> 0:10:06.800 it's still secure. And I mean they say that, they 0:10:06.840 --> 0:10:09.960 say it's still end to end encrypted, and of course 0:10:09.960 --> 0:10:12.559 they're free to say whatever they want that they're comfortable 0:10:12.559 --> 0:10:16.240 saying in their marketing material. But Michah Lee, the security 0:10:16.240 --> 0:10:18.400 of research and journalist we worked on the hack, has 0:10:18.440 --> 0:10:21.760 done a ray detailed analysis about how telem message does 0:10:22.200 --> 0:10:25.240 have access to the plain text of messages. But then 0:10:25.280 --> 0:10:28.520 I think even just more importantly, we were looking at 0:10:28.559 --> 0:10:31.200 the contents of messages. It's clearly not end to end encrypted. 0:10:31.240 --> 0:10:35.040 We were reading the messages. So and maybe there is 0:10:35.080 --> 0:10:37.000 a way, and maybe there are some messages that are 0:10:37.080 --> 0:10:39.720 encrypted by tele message, but what we've seen and what 0:10:39.760 --> 0:10:41.240 I'm saying is some are definitely not. 0:10:42.960 --> 0:10:45.880 And just to be clear, we don't necessarily know that 0:10:46.040 --> 0:10:48.959 every single top ranking official in the government is using 0:10:49.000 --> 0:10:52.320 this tele message clone of signal. It looks like tele 0:10:52.360 --> 0:10:55.400 message acts enough like regular signal to where you can 0:10:55.440 --> 0:10:57.960 send messages back and forth and you wouldn't know if 0:10:58.000 --> 0:11:00.280 the person on the other side is using the clone. 0:11:00.840 --> 0:11:02.959 But even if one person in a group chat is 0:11:03.040 --> 0:11:05.840 using it, and we know that former National Security advisor 0:11:05.880 --> 0:11:09.320 Mike Watz is using it, that potentially means that everyone 0:11:09.360 --> 0:11:12.240 they talk to or everyone in a group chat is 0:11:12.280 --> 0:11:15.520 having their messages sent to a third party server and 0:11:15.559 --> 0:11:18.480 that someone else would be able to see those messages. 0:11:19.679 --> 0:11:24.240 In the article, you pretty explicitly say we're not going 0:11:24.280 --> 0:11:27.200 to tell you how the hacker did it, so it 0:11:27.240 --> 0:11:30.559 sounds like the hacker communicated to you, this is how 0:11:30.600 --> 0:11:34.480 I did it. You don't make that public. Why is 0:11:34.520 --> 0:11:36.320 there Yeah, I. 0:11:36.320 --> 0:11:38.000 Mean, first of all, we ask as part of the 0:11:38.080 --> 0:11:40.559 verification process, if they can explain how they did it 0:11:40.600 --> 0:11:44.680 in a verifiable manner, that's good or even better. Of course, 0:11:45.040 --> 0:11:47.200 we can't always fully verify that because we're not going 0:11:47.280 --> 0:11:51.120 to go do the hack ourselves inane and obviously, so 0:11:51.400 --> 0:11:53.640 it really depends, and you have to be really, really 0:11:53.679 --> 0:11:57.120 careful about what you're amplifying because if you include certain 0:11:57.160 --> 0:12:01.320 information that could give other hackers or random people the 0:12:01.360 --> 0:12:04.160 ability to go basically do it again, and who knows 0:12:04.200 --> 0:12:05.800 what they're going to then do with that data. We 0:12:05.840 --> 0:12:08.080 don't want to cause more harm, so there's a trade 0:12:08.080 --> 0:12:11.880 off there, and it also relates to how security researchers 0:12:12.040 --> 0:12:16.400 often disclose vulnerabilities. What hackers will often do is they 0:12:16.440 --> 0:12:20.560 will probe a server or reverse engineering app. They'll go 0:12:20.600 --> 0:12:23.120 to the company, Hey, I found this vulnerability. I think 0:12:23.160 --> 0:12:25.800 you should fix it. The company will say, wow, that's 0:12:25.800 --> 0:12:27.920 really bad. His ten thousand dollars in a T shirt 0:12:27.960 --> 0:12:31.040 or a coffee mug or something, and they'll fix it, 0:12:31.120 --> 0:12:34.760 hopefully within thirty days. Blah blah blah. That's called responsible disclosure. 0:12:34.960 --> 0:12:38.400 That doesn't really involve the media at least traditionally. The 0:12:38.440 --> 0:12:40.320 other way that some hackers do, and they did it 0:12:40.360 --> 0:12:44.000 in this case, they find a vulnerability, they might actually 0:12:44.040 --> 0:12:47.439 exploit that vulnerability to show it's real and to get data, 0:12:47.480 --> 0:12:50.320 and then they go to the press. And in this case, 0:12:50.400 --> 0:12:52.560 the hackers said they did this because they thought the 0:12:52.559 --> 0:12:53.680 company might cover it up. 0:12:54.040 --> 0:12:57.280 So after the four or four article comes out, NBC 0:12:57.440 --> 0:13:02.079 reports that they'd spoken to a second hacker. Is it 0:13:02.200 --> 0:13:06.520 possible that there's another hacker who's gotten information and not 0:13:06.760 --> 0:13:08.400 reported it to a journalist. 0:13:08.960 --> 0:13:14.520 It's absolutely possible. Like already you have one hacker who 0:13:14.520 --> 0:13:17.240 provided information to us, you then have a second hacker 0:13:17.440 --> 0:13:19.760 who also breaks into the system. And that's quite rare, 0:13:19.960 --> 0:13:23.560 to be honest, Like, I report on so many data breaches, 0:13:24.040 --> 0:13:27.160 and it's not common for a media outlet to report 0:13:27.160 --> 0:13:29.360 on a hack and then a day or so later, 0:13:29.440 --> 0:13:31.880 another media outlet says, another hacker got it. Like that 0:13:32.000 --> 0:13:36.160 just doesn't doesn't really happen. Now, let's assume those hackers 0:13:36.160 --> 0:13:38.079 are probably random hackers who were just talking to the 0:13:38.120 --> 0:13:42.720 press or whatever. If you are from a nation state 0:13:42.760 --> 0:13:47.000 intelligence agency like China or Russia or Iran, if you 0:13:47.840 --> 0:13:50.640 haven't even looked at that server, you should probably lose 0:13:50.640 --> 0:13:55.360 your job because that's literally your job is to find 0:13:55.400 --> 0:14:00.120 out where these vulnerabilities are. You don't really have a 0:14:00.160 --> 0:14:04.600 more pressing target than the people around Donald Trump or 0:14:04.640 --> 0:14:08.240 Donald Trump himself. That's sort of in a circle. It 0:14:08.360 --> 0:14:10.720 is your job too, among us of these people. 0:14:11.360 --> 0:14:14.440 Should people stop using signal after all this came out? 0:14:14.760 --> 0:14:18.880 Absolutely not. More people should use signal or a secure 0:14:18.880 --> 0:14:21.760 alternative that makes sense in their life. Don't let the 0:14:21.840 --> 0:14:25.880 telemassage Debarkle throw you off that just you probably don't 0:14:25.920 --> 0:14:28.360 use a tool like that. It's like an archiving tool. 0:14:29.400 --> 0:14:33.320 Okay, So hopefully we haven't scared you away from using Signal. Truly, 0:14:33.440 --> 0:14:36.240 it is a great app. There's nothing wrong with Signal itself. 0:14:36.840 --> 0:14:40.640 The issue is with tell Message. But there's something else 0:14:40.680 --> 0:14:43.080 we need to talk about, because we've talked about the 0:14:43.120 --> 0:14:45.800 technical side of all this, and now we need to 0:14:45.840 --> 0:14:49.200 talk about the human side. Once a vulnerability is found, 0:14:49.640 --> 0:14:52.520 the next step is figuring out what the potential damage is. 0:14:53.240 --> 0:14:55.120 And to know that, you need to know whether this 0:14:55.240 --> 0:14:58.600 vulnerability was a mistake or it was there on purpose. 0:14:59.080 --> 0:15:02.960 And this is where things get tricky because Telemessage, the company, 0:15:03.400 --> 0:15:06.360 not only has access to servers where messages are archived, 0:15:06.680 --> 0:15:09.600 but they theoretically would have access to all the chat 0:15:09.600 --> 0:15:14.040 logs of everything ever said using their service. And Telemessage 0:15:14.080 --> 0:15:16.720 is based in Israel, founded by someone who worked in 0:15:16.720 --> 0:15:20.160 intelligence for the Israel Defense Force. So what does this 0:15:20.240 --> 0:15:23.840 mean for the US government and what might they do next? 0:15:25.000 --> 0:15:39.720 That's after the break Politics is not really my forte. 0:15:40.000 --> 0:15:42.360 But in order to understand what exactly is at stake 0:15:42.360 --> 0:15:44.560 in this hack, I knew I'd have to learn a 0:15:44.560 --> 0:15:46.640 little bit more about what people are saying in DC. 0:15:47.360 --> 0:15:49.960 So I called up yet another friend and former colleague, 0:15:50.040 --> 0:15:54.400 Evan McMorris Centaro. He's a longtime politics reporter and he 0:15:54.440 --> 0:15:57.600 now writes a daily newsletter for a nonprofit media organization 0:15:57.800 --> 0:15:59.880 called Notice That's NTU. 0:16:00.880 --> 0:16:04.280 It kind of sort of broke in the journalism i'd say, 0:16:04.320 --> 0:16:06.720 around that snowed in era. That's when I first started 0:16:07.040 --> 0:16:08.160 hearing about it. 0:16:08.160 --> 0:16:11.480 It's not just government officials who use Signal. Actually, outside 0:16:11.480 --> 0:16:14.360 of tech people, journalists were some of the earliest adopters. 0:16:14.760 --> 0:16:16.920 The fact that this app is not only secure, but 0:16:17.000 --> 0:16:20.160 that it would automatically delete messages is a big benefit. 0:16:20.720 --> 0:16:22.680 This stuff is really important when you're talking to a 0:16:22.760 --> 0:16:24.400 source about something sensitive. 0:16:25.560 --> 0:16:28.040 And you know, an important thing about Washington is everybody 0:16:28.040 --> 0:16:30.760 that you're talking to is old for the most part, 0:16:31.280 --> 0:16:34.480 and their tech savviness is very low, and so it 0:16:34.560 --> 0:16:38.240 takes a long time for this something like this to 0:16:38.280 --> 0:16:41.000 kind of matriculate out through the entire system. So now 0:16:41.080 --> 0:16:43.880 we're in a world now where the Vice president is 0:16:43.920 --> 0:16:46.480 on it, and the National Security Advisor is on it, 0:16:46.680 --> 0:16:48.560 and the Secretary of Defense is on it. You know, 0:16:48.640 --> 0:16:51.480 these are particularly old people as far as politics goes. 0:16:51.840 --> 0:16:54.800 But it takes from that sort of snowed in time 0:16:54.880 --> 0:16:56.960 all those years ago to now for it to become 0:16:57.080 --> 0:17:01.160 very very prevalent as people sort of start to catch 0:17:01.200 --> 0:17:03.840 on to something that's new. It is not like in 0:17:03.880 --> 0:17:07.520 the movies where the movie shows, you know, the government 0:17:07.600 --> 0:17:12.840 officials have the coolest, slickest, most amazing technology that has 0:17:13.760 --> 0:17:17.280 the best features. In reality, you know, tech in the 0:17:17.280 --> 0:17:22.000 government is a slow, slow moving process and one that 0:17:22.040 --> 0:17:24.879 has a lot of lawyering involved. There are laws, very 0:17:24.880 --> 0:17:28.960 specific laws about the kinds of records that government officials 0:17:29.000 --> 0:17:31.359 have to keep, and so you know there's sort of like, 0:17:31.440 --> 0:17:34.000 you know, these government officials will tell you we're keeping records, 0:17:34.359 --> 0:17:37.200 we are doing things the right way. Some Biden officials 0:17:37.200 --> 0:17:38.520 talked about how they would use it to you know, 0:17:39.080 --> 0:17:41.159 plan like where they would meet up for dinner or 0:17:41.200 --> 0:17:43.200 something like that if they were on the road somewhere, 0:17:43.359 --> 0:17:46.200 things like that. But as we saw with this signal gate, 0:17:46.840 --> 0:17:50.959 there was a real comfort in using this service for 0:17:51.320 --> 0:17:57.400 something that would absolutely be governed by classified records acts 0:17:57.600 --> 0:18:00.000 that are very specific and how classical records must be handled, 0:18:00.359 --> 0:18:03.439 and also in record keeping that are very specific in 0:18:03.520 --> 0:18:07.359 what kind of things administration officials have to keep to 0:18:07.400 --> 0:18:08.520 be archived for history. 0:18:08.960 --> 0:18:13.320 Why does this stuff need to be archived. 0:18:12.840 --> 0:18:15.480 Well, you know, Acts of the presidential record jacks are 0:18:15.520 --> 0:18:19.440 designed for history when you're president. When your government official, 0:18:20.200 --> 0:18:23.280 your privacy is different. The work that you do, the 0:18:23.359 --> 0:18:26.439 work product that you do as a government official. It 0:18:26.520 --> 0:18:29.080 kind of belongs to the government with means it belongs 0:18:29.080 --> 0:18:32.120 to everybody. That's true of the executive branch. It's not 0:18:32.160 --> 0:18:36.679 true of Congress. It's a very important part of what 0:18:36.960 --> 0:18:41.480 an administration does is create a history of how decisions 0:18:41.480 --> 0:18:44.920 are made so future decisions can be made better. They 0:18:44.920 --> 0:18:47.800 are not This is not your personal private email. Those 0:18:47.840 --> 0:18:52.119 emails are public record and can be looked at by 0:18:52.160 --> 0:18:53.680 people and can be requested by people. 0:18:54.040 --> 0:18:57.240 So look, one of the first things that I thought 0:18:57.240 --> 0:18:59.679 of when I saw this whole telemessage thing in the 0:18:59.720 --> 0:19:01.639 hack is the first thing that popped in my mind 0:19:02.119 --> 0:19:04.359 was this kind of reminds me of Hillary Clinton in 0:19:04.400 --> 0:19:06.320 the emails, And it's become kind of a meme at 0:19:06.320 --> 0:19:08.359 this point. You know, I've heard the memes so much 0:19:08.400 --> 0:19:11.360 that I've actually kind of forgotten what the email thing 0:19:11.600 --> 0:19:12.440 was about. 0:19:12.680 --> 0:19:17.920 There are actually three separate email scandals in the Clinton 0:19:18.280 --> 0:19:21.240 campaign twenty sixteen. A right, so let's start with the 0:19:21.240 --> 0:19:26.920 first one. So Hillary Clinton, rather than use her email 0:19:27.040 --> 0:19:30.280 system that was given to her the as Secretary of 0:19:30.320 --> 0:19:33.520 State that goes through the government, she sent all of 0:19:33.560 --> 0:19:38.240 her emails through a private email server that she had 0:19:38.280 --> 0:19:41.080 set up herself. But so what happened was is that 0:19:41.119 --> 0:19:44.920 when she was done being Secretary of State, she had 0:19:44.960 --> 0:19:47.720 to do the Official Records Acts part of her job, 0:19:47.880 --> 0:19:51.280 and so she turned over all of these emails. And 0:19:51.280 --> 0:19:52.919 then it turned out that the way those emails had 0:19:52.960 --> 0:19:56.760 been turned over was that her and her lawyers had 0:19:56.800 --> 0:19:59.840 gone through all these emails on this server that she 0:20:00.040 --> 0:20:04.160 owned and said, these are the ones that are professional, 0:20:04.160 --> 0:20:06.760 these are the ones that you need to categorize, and 0:20:07.000 --> 0:20:10.720 thousands of other ones we're keeping them. They're not they're 0:20:10.760 --> 0:20:13.400 personal emails, they're not subject to the Official Records Act. 0:20:13.640 --> 0:20:16.439 And then also we're like kind of deleting them for 0:20:16.520 --> 0:20:19.040 all time, so it's never to be found again. The 0:20:19.080 --> 0:20:23.280 second email scandal was the Clinton campaign itself. When it 0:20:23.359 --> 0:20:29.000 was running, it's senior advisor, John Podesta, used his personal 0:20:29.160 --> 0:20:33.760 Gmail for all of his communications with the campaign. He 0:20:33.840 --> 0:20:35.359 was a top advisor. He got a lot of emails, 0:20:35.359 --> 0:20:37.880 a lot of very sensitive series emails. So he gets 0:20:37.880 --> 0:20:41.000 this weird email one day that asks him for like 0:20:41.080 --> 0:20:43.159 his information and passwords and stuff were like you know, 0:20:43.280 --> 0:20:46.000 links away as a phishing attack. He sends it to 0:20:46.040 --> 0:20:48.919 the IT guy and says, is this bad? And the 0:20:49.000 --> 0:20:51.439 IT guy sends it back email saying, now this is 0:20:51.440 --> 0:20:53.720 a legitimate email, but actually he meant to say it 0:20:53.760 --> 0:20:58.320 was an illegitimate email. Pessa clicks on it spears phishing attack. 0:20:58.480 --> 0:21:01.600 All of his emails are harvested. Huge scandal for the 0:21:01.640 --> 0:21:04.560 Clinton campaign, all right. So that's the second one. The 0:21:04.600 --> 0:21:08.480 third one is that Kuma Abidin, who was another top 0:21:08.520 --> 0:21:11.360 senior Clinton advisor while she was Secretary of State and 0:21:11.520 --> 0:21:15.000 on her campaign, had a personal laptop of her own 0:21:15.920 --> 0:21:20.120 and she would get all of Hillary Clinton's emails. And 0:21:20.359 --> 0:21:24.080 so you know, they had had all this conversation. The 0:21:24.160 --> 0:21:27.879 fbi'd investigated the private email server thing, They talked about it. 0:21:28.119 --> 0:21:29.960 The FBI had said, look, this is not great that 0:21:30.040 --> 0:21:32.960 you did this, but we don't see anything worth prosecuting here. 0:21:33.520 --> 0:21:36.960 That happened early in the campaign, but at the very end, 0:21:37.119 --> 0:21:40.360 in the last subverts of the campaign, whom Abiden's then 0:21:40.440 --> 0:21:45.720 husband named Anthony Wiener, who was a congressman from New York. 0:21:46.080 --> 0:21:50.240 He was involved in a very like embarrassing and like ongoing, 0:21:50.440 --> 0:21:55.199 endless kind of sex scandal involving him texting people, some 0:21:55.240 --> 0:21:57.719 of them underage, sexting them. 0:21:57.960 --> 0:21:58.120 Right. 0:21:58.640 --> 0:22:01.080 So, in the course of that investigator of that, they 0:22:01.160 --> 0:22:04.560 uncover that, oh, he's been using this laptop that has 0:22:04.680 --> 0:22:07.560 of course archived on it in its own version of 0:22:08.480 --> 0:22:11.959 Outlook or its email software whatever it was, all of 0:22:12.000 --> 0:22:15.760 these old Hillary Clinton emails that maybe some of them 0:22:15.760 --> 0:22:18.919 are the ones that she, you know, tried to delete 0:22:18.920 --> 0:22:20.399 from a server. We can go back where we can 0:22:20.440 --> 0:22:21.720 look and see if any of them are going to 0:22:21.760 --> 0:22:24.679 violate the lot. So this comes out right near the 0:22:24.760 --> 0:22:28.560 very end of the campaign, and all of a sudden, 0:22:28.760 --> 0:22:31.359 Hill Clinton's emails are back, and then she loses in 0:22:31.400 --> 0:22:34.439 a very close election to Donald Trump, and a lot 0:22:34.480 --> 0:22:37.400 of people equate it being at least one of these 0:22:37.400 --> 0:22:41.080 email scandals that did it, possibly three, but really it 0:22:41.160 --> 0:22:43.879