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Technology

Technology

The Big Story

Signal chat members sued for app records

Participants of a Signal group chat discussion about a strike on Houthi targets in Yemen are facing a lawsuit over a request to turn over all conversations they had on the encrypted app over the past three months.

© Greg Nash

The suit asks for the Signal messages from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and other top Trump officials, requesting the totality of messages in their accounts “regardless of sender or recipient.”

“When news first broke about Signalgate, the first question on a lot of national security people’s minds wasn’t, ‘How did this happen?’ We knew how it happened. Our question was, ‘How often did this happen?’” said Kel McClanahan, executive director of National Security Counselors.

The nonprofit brought the suit after filing a similar public information request on behalf of a journalist.

“The heads of at least five of the most powerful agencies in the national security community were freely texting over an app that was not approved for sensitive communications and setting it to automatically delete everything they said," McClanahan added.

"And since then we’ve learned that we were right to be worried, thanks to the news about Hegseth’s Signal chat with his wife and personal lawyer about bombing plans,” he continued.

The suit is the first filed since reporting indicating Hegseth discussed the same strike in a Signal chat with his wife, brother and personal lawyer.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent are also named in the suit, alongside Hegseth.

Rubio, Ratcliffe and Gabbard were among those added to the initial chat, which became public last month when Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, revealed he was mistakenly invited to join the Signal group.

In a bombshell report, Goldberg said Hegseth had sent details about forthcoming strikes on Houthi rebels in Yemen, including weapons used, targets, and timing, over the encrypted messaging app.

Hegseth's problems were compounded when The New York Times reported the existence of the second Signal chat Sunday.

The Hill's Rebecca Beitsch has more here.

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