On Thursday, Reuters published a photograph showing then-United States national security adviser Mike Waltz checking his phone during a cabinet meeting led by President Trump at the White House. Upon enlarging the image, it appears Waltz was using the encrypted messaging app Signal; however, the notification displayed as “TM SGNL.” Waltz was reportedly using an Israeli-developed app called TeleMessage Signal to communicate with individuals who seem to be high-ranking US officials, including JD Vance, Marco Rubio, and Tulsi Gabbard.
Senior members of the Trump administration had previously used disappearing Signal messages to coordinate military actions in Yemen during March, inadvertently including Jeffrey Goldberg, The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief, in the group chat. This incident, known as the “SignalGate” scandal, exposed significant breaches of government “operational security” protocols and raised issues concerning compliance with federal records-retention laws. Waltz, who was dismissed by Trump as US national security adviser on Thursday, was a central figure in this scandal. He had created the “Houthi PC Small Group” chat and added Goldberg to it. Waltz accepted full responsibility during an interview with Fox News in late March.
The SignalGate incident was unrelated to the Signal app itself, which operated as intended. The app was used inappropriately for highly sensitive discussions that should have occurred using secure federal devices and platforms. Signal is designed to ensure that only message senders and receivers can read the content, offering minimal data collection on users. This security feature limits access points for cyber threats unless participants’ devices are directly compromised. In contrast, using TeleMessage Signal to meet data retention compliance requirements potentially exposes messages to adversaries.
Jake Williams, a former NSA hacker and vice president of research and development at Hunter Strategy, expressed concerns over the federal government using Israeli technology to manage sensitive data, suggesting it could be targeted by nation-states. TeleMessage, founded in Israel in 1999 by former Israeli Defense Forces technologists, was acquired by the US-based company Smarsh last year. The service archives communications using a “mobile archiver” tool.
TeleMessage markets the ability to capture and monitor mobile communications like SMS, MMS, voice calls, and various messaging apps. It claims that for Signal, it can record and capture content while maintaining original app features and encryption. However, the creation of a “corporate archive” may compromise the privacy and security that end-to-end encryption aims to offer.
