from the opsec-omnishambles dept
The Trump administration has been described as many things, none of them good. What no one will ever accuse it of being is “competent.” Trump has surrounded himself with sycophants, most of them known only for waving the MAGA flag when not hosting shows on Fox or podcasts celebrating the debut of American fascism.
Case in point: SecDef Pete Hegseth, who was previously best known for his multiple Fox News appearances (and is currently best known for reposting a recording of a pastor saying women shouldn’t have the right to vote) now heads the Defense Department. Somehow, a Signal chat group that included him managed to invite Atlantic journalist Jeffrey Goldberg to a chat session discussing an ongoing military attack in Yemen.
In all fairness to Hegseth (which is far more than he deserves), he probably didn’t send out this invite himself. On the other hand, his defense of this OPSEC failure strips away all the fairness I’ve just awarded him. According to Hegseth, this was no big deal because nothing classified was discussed and these weren’t actually “war plans” despite the group being referred to by at least one (intended) participant as the “houthi war chat group.”
Well, if that’s the case, then future “war chats” should just take place on X in full view of everyone. After all, nothing sensitive or classified is being shared. Isn’t that right, Pete?
Pete may not be the best judge of what can or can’t be shared with people who don’t have the proper security clearance. While “Signalgate” continued to generate press coverage, it was discovered that Pete Hegseth was intentionally discussing matters of national security with… his wife, his brother, and his family’s lawyer.
And that brings us to the latest OPSEC failure from this hideous administration. Again, to be far more fair to ICE than it deserves, it’s possible no one from ICE added this random person to a chat group discussing a manhunt already in progress. Joseph Cox has the hilariously gory details at 404 Media:
Members of a law enforcement group chat including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other agencies inadvertently added a random person to the group called “Mass Text” where they exposed highly sensitive information about an active search for a convicted attempted murderer seemingly marked for deportation, 404 Media has learned.
The texts included an unredacted ICE “Field Operations Worksheet” that includes detailed information about the target they were looking for, and the texts showed ICE pulling data from a DMV and license plate readers (LPRs), according to screenshots of the chat obtained and verified by 404 Media. The person accidentally added to the group chat is not a law enforcement official or associated with the investigation in any way, and said they were added to it weeks ago and initially thought it was a series of spam messages.
Click through for the coverage of this latest attempt to make America great again. There are plenty of screenshots of the texts, as well as confirmation that the participants in the chat group included at least one ICE official and one member of the US Marshals Service.
Oh, and then there’s this detail, which makes it even more of an OPSEC failure.
These new ICE messages were MMS, or Multimedia Messaging Service messages, meaning they weren’t end-to-end encrypted, like texts sent over Signal or WhatsApp are.
The government has issued nothing but a refusal to comment on these revelations. And it’s entirely possible some random cop added this random person to the chat group, rather than someone working for ICE, but the end result is the same thing: another unforced error from an administration that seems to be to have been crafted from the ground up to be as embarrassing as possible as often as possible.
Or maybe ICE was just following DHS head Kristi Noem’s lead. After all, she doesn’t seem to mind exposing impending or ongoing ICE operations so long as it generates a photo op for her to post at social media’s favorite Nazi bar:
Here’s press coverage of that debacle:
In one instance, sources told the Journal that Noem likely hampered a series of early morning raids in New York City by posting about the operation on social media while it was still underway.
People familiar with the January effort claimed Noem’s post on X tipped off targets that ICE was in action, spoiling the element of surprise and resulting in “fewer arrests than officials had hoped for.”
Of course, DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin was there to defend the photo op that jeopardized an ICE operation by claiming the raids were “already winding down” when the post went live. Given the 3:43 am timestamp, that seems unlikely like McLaughlin is flat out lying about what happened.
Whatever the case, the administration continues to lower the bar in terms of basic competence. And while that might be occasionally amusing, it’s still pretty good at brute forcing its way towards a totalitarian takeover. Back to 404 Media’s Joseph Cox:
Recently ICE officials have raided incorrect addresses; potentially violated court orders banning the agency from racial profiling people at Home Depots; detained U.S. citizens (including for days without water); and deported U.S. citizen children, one of which had cancer, with their families to Honduras, all while aggressively rounding up undocumented people many of whom have no criminal record and denying due process to some.
Being stupid in group chats doesn’t seem to be doing much damage to the full-on evil being perpetrated daily by the Trump administration. While it does give us some hope that it will periodically trip over its own feet, it’s a pretty fucking cold comfort.
Filed Under: dhs, failure, mass deportation, opsec, trump administration
