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Boston Globe
25-03-2025
- Politics
- Boston Globe
How should officials discuss military plans? Not over Signal, experts say.
Both Democrats and Republicans expressed concerns. Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (D-Mississippi), the top Democrat on the House Committee on Homeland Security, called for an investigation - saying that it 'should go without saying that Trump administration officials must not use Signal for discussing sensitive intelligence matters reserved for the Situation Room - and doing so including members of the public is gross incompetence.' Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Rep. Michael Lawler (R-New York) said on X, 'Classified information should not be transmitted on unsecured channels - and certainly not to those without security clearances, including reporters. Period. Safeguards must be put in place to ensure this never happens again.' Here's what to know about the protocol for government officials to communicate sensitive and classified information. What are the rules for communicating sensitive or classified information? The federal government has different protocols for handling information based on its level of classification. But war plans and weapon designs are among the information often considered 'top secret.' The Atlantic reported that Hegseth posted 'operational details' in the Signal chat about the upcoming strikes - including about targets, specific weapons and the sequence of attacks. Generally, the federal government requires officials to handle high-level classified information in person, with personal cellphones and other electronic devices left outside of secure rooms where confidential meetings take place, said Rep. Seth Magaziner (D-Rhode Island), a member of the House cybersecurity and infrastructure protection subcommittee. The facilities with these rooms - called sensitive compartmented information facilities, or SCIFs - are 'designed to prevent adversaries from being able to listen in to what is being discussed,' Magaziner said in a phone interview Monday. He added that information presented during meetings inside SCIFs is usually printed out and stored securely. Advertisement If an official is not physically able to be at a secure facility, the government operates secure communication channels that can be used instead, Magaziner said. 'But Signal is not one of those systems,' he said. Larry Pfeiffer, a former senior CIA and NSA official, said top administration officials like those involved in the group chat have government-approved communications with them 24 hours a day, even when traveling. 'Back in my time, it would have included secure phone, computer and video teleconference. In the office and at home,' said Pfeiffer, who also was senior director of the White House Situation Room. 'And there was a travel kit that would be with them on the road and in the air.' What are the risks in using Signal for sensitive information? The Defense Department has previously referred to Signal as an 'unmanaged' messaging app. In a 2023 memo, the department defined unmanaged apps as those 'NOT authorized to access, transmit, process nonpublic DoD information.' It listed Apple's iMessage and Meta-owned WhatsApp as other examples of unmanaged apps. The apps that are authorized to access Defense Department information are controlled by an enterprise management system, which 'can enforce controls on the application and data in a way that can reduce the risk of data compromise or exposure/spillage of data to unmanaged applications,' according to the memo, signed by then-Defense Department Chief Information Officer John B. Sherman. Signal offers some level of protection for messages since it is an encrypted platform, but it is not suitable for highly sensitive, classified conversations, Matt Blaze, a professor of computer science and law at Georgetown University, told The Washington Post. Signal runs on 'fundamentally insecure devices' - smartphones and laptop computers attached to the internet that may be 'subject to all sorts of attacks against the devices that have nothing to do with the security of the software.' Advertisement Signal also has a feature allowing stored messages to disappear after a time specified by the user. Should a foreign intelligence service or another skilled agency obtain a phone involved in a sensitive conversation, they may be able to access the stored messages, Blaze said. 'Signal does as much as it can to delete messages when disappearing messages expire, but it's still running on a fundamentally vulnerable platform.' Are there other ways officials communicate over Signal or other apps? A former senior Defense Department official, speaking on the condition of anonymity due to fear her security clearance could be revoked, said she and her colleagues did communicate on Signal - but only to tell each other to check their government devices if a national security threat was emerging. They would message vaguely about any issue, the official said, such as referring to 'that thing in the Middle East' or 'that sensitive subject that I briefed you on.' The official said she would then access the information through her laptop's secure modem. 'We were very, very careful about not discussing classified information [on Signal],' the official said. 'I would worry deeply about the ability of a foreign nation to be able to penetrate any of our unclassified tech,' she said, adding she has never seen a similar situation during her roughly two decades working in federal government. 'This is not how you conduct national security.' Advertisement More broadly in Washington, federal workers migrating their correspondence to Signal in a zeal for secrecy after Trump took office could be against rules that most government correspondence and internal communications are preserved and archived for public transparency. How significant is it to share military plans with a journalist? The only people who should have access to classified information are those whom national security protocol has cleared to receive information, people who need to know the information for their jobs and people who have completed a nondisclosure agreement, according to the Center for Development of Security Excellence, a directorate in the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency. Top Trump administration officials have said in recent weeks that they would aggressively investigate unauthorized leaks of sensitive and classified material to journalists from people in U.S. spy agencies and the Defense Department, citing reporting in various publications including The Post. The Atlantic's report, Magaziner said, raises questions about how often Trump administration officials have been using Signal to communicate sensitive information - and whether any information may have been compromised. Magaziner, like some other Democratic lawmakers, have called for an investigation - and said the officials referenced in the Atlantic's report should testify in front of Congress. Ellen Nakashima and Warren P. Strobel contributed to this report.
CBS News
07-03-2025
- Politics
- CBS News
Homeland Security ends collective bargaining agreement with TSA employees
The Department of Homeland Security said Friday it is ending the collective bargaining agreement with the union representing thousands of frontline workers with the Transportation Security Administration, a decision the TSA union called an "unprovoked attack." In announcing the decision, DHS criticized the union — which represents worker responsible for screening airline passengers — claiming TSA employs more people working full-time on union issues than those "performing screening functions at 86% of our airports." "This action will ensure Americans will have more effective and modernized workforces across the nation's transportation networks," Homeland Security said in a statement. "TSA is renewing its commitment to providing a quick and secure travel process for Americans." The decision to end collective bargaining was criticized by the Association of Flight Attendants, a union representing flight attendants, and Democratic lawmakers, with both claiming that the action will make flying less safe. DHS's decision comes after the agency last year pushed to boost TSA workers' pay, which has historically lagged that of other government employees. In May 2024, the TSA administrator at the time, David Pekoske, signed the collective bargaining agreement and credited pay increases that went into effect in 2023 for helping to improve employee retention and morale, areas where TSA has had challenges. "Attempting to negate [TSA workers'] legally binding collective bargaining agreement now makes zero sense – it will only reduce morale and hamper the workforce," said Rep. Bennie G. Thompson, a Democrat from Mississippi and ranking member of the Committee on Homeland Security, in a statement on Friday. In the announcement, DHS said poor performers were being allowed to stay on the job and that the agreement was hindering the ability of the organization "to safeguard our transportation systems and keep Americans safe" — an assessment that faced immediate pushback from Thompson and the union. The decision is "terrible for aviation security and everyone who depends on safe travel," the Association of Flight Attendants said. The group added, "This will take us back to the days of security at the lowest price with the highest costs for our country." Impact on 47,000 TSA workers The American Federation of Government Employees, the union representing the TSA workers, said in a statement that the order would strip collective bargaining rights from roughly 47,000 transportation security officers, or TSOs. Those are people responsible for staffing airports around the country and checking to make sure that hundreds of thousands of passengers a day do not carry any weapons or explosives into the secure areas of airports. The union said Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and President Donald Trump's administration were violating the right of staffers to join a union. It also said that the reasons the Republican administration had given for the decision — specifically the criticisms of union activity — were "completely fabricated." Instead, the union said, the decision was retaliation for its wider efforts challenging a range of decisions taken by the Trump administration that have affected federal workers. AFGE represents roughly 800,000 federal government workers in Washington, D.C., and across the country, and it has been pushing back on many of the administration's actions such as firing probationary employees and cuts to the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID. "Our union has been out in front challenging this administration's unlawful actions targeting federal workers, both in the legal courts and in the court of public opinion," the union said. "Now our TSA officers are paying the price with this clearly retaliatory action." The decision to end the collective bargaining agreement comes after Trump's administration pushed out Pekoske the day Trump was sworn into office. The TSA does not currently have an administrator or a deputy administrator. In a note to staff, acting TSA Administrator Adam Stahl said Noem made the decision to rescind officers' collective bargaining rights to align with the Trump administration's "vision of maximizing government productivity and efficiency and ensuring that our workforce can respond swiftly and effectively to evolving threats." "By removing the constraints of collective bargaining, TSOs will be able to operate with greater flexibility and responsiveness, ensuring the highest level of security and efficiency in protecting the American public," Stahl wrote. "This determination is made with the TSO in mind, ensuring employee inclusivity and restoring meritocracy to the workforce." Stahl said the agency "will establish alternative procedures" to address employee concerns and grievances "in a fair and transparent manner." "Anti-union talking points" Rep. Thompson criticized the Homeland Security press release, saying the department was using "flat out wrong anti-union talking points." He said the real aim was "diminishing" the workforce so "they can transform it in the mold of Project 2025." "Attempting to negate their legally binding collective bargaining agreement now makes zero sense — it will only reduce morale and hamper the workforce," Thompson said. "Since the Biden Administration provided pay increases and a new collective bargaining contract to the workforce, TSA's attrition rates have plummeted." Project 2025 was the conservative governing blueprint that Trump insisted during the 2024 campaign was not part of his agenda. Project 2025 calls for immediately ending the TSA union and eventually privatizing the entire agency. The TSA was created after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, when hijackers smuggled knives and box cutters through security to use as weapons as they commandeered four airplanes and slammed them into the Pentagon, the World Trade Center towers and a Pennsylvania field. The TSA's mandate when it was created in November 2001 was to prevent a similar attack in the future. Air travel since then has undergone a massive overhaul, with passengers and their luggage going through extensive screening at the airport and passenger information generally uploaded to TSA in advance of travel to facilitate screening. Increasingly, the agency has also been using facial recognition technology to scan passengers at checkpoints, leading to criticism by some members of Congress.
