I know, I know, we aren’t supposed to quote Bill Cosby anymore. But there is a classic Cosby story, decades old, that I can’t resist paraphrasing; so please forgive my cultural incorrectness.
A doctor is doing surgery under local anesthesia. The conversation among the surgical team seems normal:
- Surgeon – Scalpel please, Nurse.
- Scrub Nurse – Scalpel, Doctor
- Surgeon – Sponge
- Scrub Nurse – Sponge
- Surgeon – Forceps
- Scrub Nurse – Forceps
- Surgeon – Oops!!
- Patient (wide awake now) – What do you mean oops? I know what I mean when I say oops!! What oops?
Secret Plans
With all the craziness going on in the United States in the past few weeks, you might have missed it. Saturday, March 15th, the Trump Administration launched a bombing attack on the Houthis militant group in Yemen. At least 53 were killed in the strikes, including women and children. It was the beginning of an ongoing campaign against the Houthis, who’ve been attacking American and European ships near the Southern end of the Suez Canal. The Houthis are backed by Iran, and are opposed to the Yemeni government (they’re backed by Saudi Arabia). They began their attacks on shipping in retaliation for the Israeli operations in Gaza.
You’d expect that the details for planning, executing and launching such an attack would be secret. There’s lots of “government stuff” today that we could argue about being secret or not, things like kidnapping folks off the street and sending them to El Salvador. But there is no argument here. The detailed plans on the Houthis attack were, and should have been, highly classified. Leaking details could be used to shoot down American aircraft, or somehow interfere with American operations. There is nothing more sacrosanct then keeping our military as safe as possible.
Order 191
American history tells us what happens when secrets are revealed. In the Civil War, the seemingly invincible Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, commanded by General Robert E Lee, won a string of victories from Seven Pines and Seven Days around Richmond, to Second Manassas near Washington in the summer of 1862. Lee then took his army north, attacking into Maryland and hoped to skirt north and east to cut off the Union capital.
Lee’s Special Order 191 listed the order of battle, which roads what parts of his army would take into Maryland, and all of his troop dispositions. As sections of the Confederate forces moved through Maryland, Union troops tried to catch up. A Union corporal found a copy of Order 191, wrapped around some cigars, in a field where the Confederates camped just days before. The Corporal understood the importance of the plan, and it was soon in the hands of the highest Union commander, Commanding General George B McClellan.
Antietam
McClellan knew where Lee was, and where he was going. More importantly, he knew that Lee’s Army was spread out in marching order, and not concentrated for battle. If he could hit Lee “in the middle”, he would split the Army of Northern Virginia. McClellan could then defeat them piecemeal. But, time was of the essence. The Confederate “middle” was at a small town called Sharpsburg, on a creek called Antietam.
McClellan was nothing if not cautious, and failed to strike soon enough. Lee started to pull his forces together, and the battle at Antietam ensued. It was the bloodiest combat of the Civil War up to that time. But for a forced march of seventeen miles by Confederate General AP Hill’s light corps, who marched off the road and into battle without breaking stride; the Army of Northern Virginia, would have been destroyed.
McClellan missed his chance, and the battle ended in a stalemate. Lee withdrew back across the Potomac River to Virginia, and the Civil War went on for another two and a half years. After the war, there was an attempt to find who lost Order 191. Surviving Confederate generals all made their excuses. General Longstreet said he ate his copy. The story became the principal American example of both loss of security, and the ignominy of a General who failed to strike when the opportunity presented itself. President Lincoln removed McClellan from command.
Get the App
We’ve all watched enough television to have a pretty good idea about that security today. There are in-person meetings in “SCIFS”, rooms that are secure and checked for any kind of survelliance equipment. There are incredibly secure tele-communications equipment, with all sorts of technical means of keeping messages and conversations secure. And then, there are methods that are just not secure.
Most current communications “apps” don’t guarantee security. Apple text keeps long strings of text discussions for years. Messenger does the same, and can be copied and hacked. What’s App supposedly disappears in seconds, which limits communication. And Telegram, the app of choice for many Europeans, is supposedly full of Russian trolls.
Signal is also a texting app, that brags about privacy:
“Stories, images, texts and videos disappear after 24 hours. Privacy settings keep you in charge of exactly who can see each Story”.
Signal promises not to read your messages, or store them in any way. And Signal promises: “No back doors, no data collection, no compromises”. So if you want “secure messaging”, Signal may be your thing.
But it’s not up to the “gold standard” of US military level security. Signal’s main security feature is that the messages disappear in 24 hours. But if a phone is “hacked” while messages are sent, or if screen shots are taken, then the information is preserved in spite of the 24 hour lifespan. And, of course, if a “third party” is made a part of the text group, then security is compromised from the beginning.
Principals Committee
In 2016, Donald Trump pilloried Hillary Clinton for using a private email service. “What about the emails” became the knee jerk response to any criticism of Trump’s candidacy. And it is true that Hillary had a private server, and some government emails went through that server. It became one of those irritating issues that cost Clinton the Presidency by the narrowest of margins.
Yesterday, we heard that a Principal’s Committee of national leaders in the Trump Administration discussed the development and the details of the Houthi attack in a text group on Signal, called the “Houthis PC Small Group”. We found out, because the text group included Jeff Goldberg, the editor of Atlantic Magazine.
Goldberg wasn’t supposed to be in the group. He was along with the Secretaries of Defense, State, Treasury, the Directors of National Intelligence, the CIA, the President’s Chief of Staff, the National Security Advisor, the Vice President, and others. Like Longstreet eating Order 191, there will probably be an internal search to discover how Goldberg was included. But there is a much greater point.
The Signal app is not military level secure. Even if was, it’s not OUR security. Signal is privately owned by “Moxie Marlinspike” and Brian Acton. The phones using the app were “out and about”, in cars in Michigan, and in pockets on the street (addendum – one was in MOSCOW, RUSSIA)– all incredibly vulnerable to attack and hack operations. And what is highly classified information, including the Vice President disagreeing with the President, and the “order of battle” for the attack, was out there for all to see.
Oops
And how did Goldberg get added? Was it some nefarious act to somehow discredit The Atlantic, one of Trump’s greatest editorial critics? Or was it just another error, another “oops” in the long chain of “oops” in this whole security adventure?
Or, is this just the hubris of the Trump Administration? Government secure apps create records, classified records. It’s part of what we expect of the government, to keep track of what was said and what was done. And the folks around Trump, since even before the 2015 Presidential run, don’t like records. Records turn into evidence, and evidence can be subpoenaed and used in trials. Signal messages are gone after twenty-four hours, disappeared into the ether of our online world. That is, except for the screen shots that Mr. Greenberg took to document his journey.
And, of course, this is the same President who kept National Security documents in the “golden restroom” at his Mara Lago home. Why should we expect his underlings to have any higher standard of protection?
What’s at risk? The folks flying those planes against the Houthis, and the ships that launch the missiles and recover the planes. Of course, none of those are as important as the ability of the National Security Advisor Waltz to send an emoji message of congratulations to his committee “friends”, I guess.
Oops.
