Signal affair: US journalist supposedly thanks to the iOS function in a secret group chat

The editor-in-chief of a US magazine was accidentally added to a group chat of high US government agents because the national security advisor of the US government incorrectly saved his telephone number after a proposal of his iPhone. This is supposedly the result of an internal investigation, reports the Guardian. The information comes from three anonymous people who are familiar with it. Accordingly, the presence of journalist Jeffrey Goldberg was the result of several mistakes, the basis of which was already laid in the US presidential election campaign. The investigation could therefore have contributed to the fact that US President Donald Trump has not released Michael Waltz.

According to the summary of the British newspaper At the beginning of the affair, an email from Jeffrey Goldberg is to the Donald Trump campaign team in October. The editor -in -chief of The Atlantic sent questions about the candidate’s statements about injured military members. Trump’s spokesman Brian Hughes copied the content of the email-including a signature-and sent it to Waltz via text message to prepare it. He did not contact Goldberg and probably forgot the news. Instead, the iPhone later suggested adding Waltz to the Hughes entry. This is now a spokesman for the National Security Council.

For this proposal, a function in iOS, which has been in existence for years, is responsible, which suggests to add telephone numbers from emails to contact if it assigns it to him. Waltz did not notice the mistake and then had Goldberg’s phone number under the name Brian Hughes in his iPhone. When he set up the chat group for the attacks on Yemen, he then accidentally added the renowned journalist. The cyber security expert Thomas Rid explainedThat it should have looked like that for Waltz that Hughes belongs to the chat group – for everyone else, contact as “JG” would have been published.

Private devices for secret meetings unsuitable

The explanation makes it clear why private smartphones with their changing functions and different applications are not authorized for such meetings and there are specially secured communication channels. Goldberg was finally able to read secret information about military strokes on Yemen in the group. It is now known that group chats on Signal are clearly more common in the US government. In addition, there is suspicion that the messenger is also used there because the legally prescribed obligations for archiving can be avoided. In the group chat for Yemen, it was set that posts are automatically deleted.

The behavior of the Minister of Defense, Pete Hegseth, which is particularly active in the chat, is now being examined by the Pentagon. US President Donald Trump, who was not part of the group chat, has repeatedly put himself behind the members. According to the US media, however, he thought about releasing Waltz because of the affair, but then decided against it because this could be seen as the victory of the press. The internal investigation report could also have helped Waltz. Waltz was also one of those in US politics who have particularly sharply criticized Hillary Clinton’s lack of legal persecution in the so-called e-mail affair.