A photograph of Trump administration official Mike Waltz’s phone shows him using an unofficial version of Signal designed to archive messages during a cabinet meeting.
Mike Waltz, who was until Thursday U.S. National Security Advisor, has inadvertently revealed he is using an obscure and unofficial version of Signal that is designed to archive messages, raising questions about what classification of information officials are discussing on the app and how that data is being secured, 404 Media has found.
On Thursday Reuters published a photograph of Waltz checking his mobile phone during a cabinet meeting held by Donald Trump.
The screen appears to show messages from various top level government officials, including JD Vance, Tulsi Gabbard, and Marco Rubio.
I don’t understand, signal is open source, why would they need to purchase an unofficial fork from a foreign company? Isn’t that an huge security issue?
And what’s the point of using end to end encryption if the app has been hacked to send messages to a remote server anyway
Signal is lacking a certain feature “Archiving messages” . This company used Signal’s open source code to add this feature and offer the whole thing as a “Signal plus” product.
Assuming best intentions, Waltz wanted Signal but also wanted the ability to archive messages so he opted for the software provided by this company instead of the original.