No Big Deal? That appears to be the current administration’s official position. How do we know? Just look on line.
Yup. Go on line. That’s what reporters at Der Spiegel did. What did they find? Private contact details of senior U.S. security officials, including National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.
Using commercial search engines along with hacked customer data that had been published, the reporters were able to find mobile phone numbers, email addresses, and some passwords belonging to the officials.
According to Der Spiegel’s published report, “Most of these numbers and email addresses are apparently still in use, with some of them linked to profiles on social media platforms like Instagram and LinkedIn. They were used to create Dropbox accounts and profiles in apps that track running data. There are also WhatsApp profiles for the respective phone numbers and even Signal accounts in some cases.”
Der Spiegel reporters also commented that “hostile intelligence services could use this publicly available data to hack the communications of those affected by installing spyware on their devices.”
Given this egregious security breach, the reporters noted that it is at least conceivable that foreign agents were privy to the Signal chat group in which Gabbard, Waltz and Hegseth discussed a military strike — a conversation about which, incidentally, these security directors lied to Congress.
One can only assume that if a group of German reporters – who are our allies, by the way – could find this information so easily, our enemies are finding it too. No prob.
And by the way, the Der Spiegel reporters noted that The U.S. Defense Department did not respond to a request for comment. Why should they? National security is not a big deal for the current administration.