If anything, I'm a bit surprised that Jeff Goldberg burned this source.
If anything, I'd suspect that he'd keep the channel open as long as he could.
Or, he's got other channels that work better.
All the same, I mean, wow. These guys are just morons here, there's really no other way around it. I'm trying to think of a charitable way to spin this and I've got nothing.
Like, very clearly, these people are going to get service-members killed due to their idiocy
As soon as he realizes (or a reasonable person would realize) that the group chat is not a hoax, and that he is getting confidential military information over that channel, his continued membership in the channel demonstrates intent to receive the information, which makes anything he writes about it in the future legally problematic. It's complicated and it's not like just receiving classified information from a source is intrinsically criminal, but it'll be the entire fact pattern he'd be confronted with by prosecutors.
The fourt cases related to Watergate established that receiving classified information is not illegal, and affirmed 1A rights. I'd argue it's a exactly the same as a journalist overhearing this motley crew discussing the war plan in the halls of the White House without being aware there's a journalist nearby. I wouldn't bank on the current supreme court to uphold precedence, or the current administration persecuting the journalist for "hacking" into a "secure" government chat group - which is what they'll allege without evidence. I suspect the journalist cares more about national security than the cowboys in the chat group, and is acutely aware that they are a target for hacking by nation-states, which would leak classified information.
The US Supreme Court hews close to precedent. The only two significant overturned decisions in the last decade are Roe v Wade, which regardless of your views on abortion was a poorly reasoned decision, which was really judicial legislation, that had to be essentially amended several times (whether abortion should be permitted is a separate question from whether Roe was good law, which it obviously wasn't) and Chevron, which was contrary to the most fundamental principles of the rule of law (that is, that the interpretation of the law is a fundamentally judicial function).
Neither were really political decisions. The SCOTUS doesn't split along ideological or party lines all the time. It often splits in different ways, and often makes decisions on very politically heated topics unanimously. You should have more confidence in it. It is the least bad of your three major institutions of government by far.
To go back to Chevron, you have to look beyond the US and understand that for anyone else anywhere else in the world, the idea of the courts deferring in their interpretation of the law to executive agencies is just ridiculous. It never made any sense. Its result was inevitable: a new government was elected and suddenly the law changed overnight because government departments all published their new "interpretations" of the law. That is just silly, it makes a mockery of the principles of the rule of law, and it gives too much power to the government. Law should be made by parliament (which you call congress, for some reason) and rulemaking powers should be explicitly delegated to executive agencies where appropriate. Vagueness in the law should be interpreted and resolved by the courts, not by the executive in a way that is subject to political whimsy.
> The only two significant overturned decisions in the last decade are Roe [...] and Chevron
That's really not true; just a couple of the other major decisions overturned in the last decade:
Apodaca v. Oregon, holding that while the 14th Amendment did incorporate the right to jury trial against the States, it did not incorporate the unanimity requirement that the Supreme Court has found against the federal government in the 6th Amendment against the states. (reversed in Ramos v. Louisiana, 2020.)
Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, holding that a certiied public-sector union could collect an “agency fee” attributable to representational activities but not other union functions to represented non-member employees. Reversed by Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees Council 31 (2018).
>To go back to Chevron, you have to look beyond the US and understand that for anyone else anywhere else in the world, the idea of the courts deferring in their interpretation of the law to executive agencies is just ridiculous
My interpretation is difficult and complex domain specific regulation were handled by agency experts, and not lawyers. It is now up to congress to detail very specifically this potentially difficult regulation and to quickly adjust when research changes.
Is my interpretation incorrect? Since to me this current approach sounds terrible, inflexibly and set-up to fail.
Yes, it's about attacking the means by which we collectively hold bad actors in check. Also other countries absolutely do delegate regulatory minutae to experts. If we can delegate law making to elected representatives, we can do the same for regulations to ensure they do what is intended.
No, it is about decent lawmaking. Nothing stops Congress from delegating regulation-making powers to agencies. Chevron isn't about that. Chevron didn't involve any delegation of anything.
Chevron is about the statute saying something vague like "a term in a consumer credit contract is void if it is oppressive" and then the effective definition of the word "oppressive" being able to be "interpreted" by executive agencies at their whim with the courts being powerless to intervene. That is contrary to the rule of law. If there is a vagueness, that should be filled by a court supplying an interpretation and that precedent is then established. Law should be stable and predictable.
Remember the original Chevron case was based on the EPA changing its interpretation of "source" of air pollution under the Clean Air Act 1963 to make it much narrower. There was no statutory power for it to do so. Nothing in the Act authorised it. It unilaterally changed its interpretation of the law, and the Court said "that is fine, it is ambiguous, you decide what the law is and as long as it is a reasonable interpretation that is fine". Nothing to stop them turning around the next day and changing their interpretation again.
> being able to be "interpreted" by executive agencies at their whim with the courts being powerless to intervene.
This isn't accurate though. You're arguing these things could literally change day to day, but there were established procedures for rule changes. Those procedures required posting reasons for the change, a notice published in the register, the chance for people to comment on the change, etc. When regulations changed without notice and without any reason given they got blocked from making the change.
See the debates around net neutrality and FCC decisions. Took a lot of notices, a lot of back and forth, etc. They couldn't just arbitrarily change the rules from one day to the next.
> Nothing to stop them turning around the next day and changing their interpretation again.
Why describes mostly every law enacted by a parliament? They clearly have that power to change the laws they enacted at any time.
So where is the problem if parliament delegates this power to some executive entity?
Now, if delegation is not clearly defined, this is another issue I can understand. And I am not interested enough in the minutia of US legislation to have an opinion on that.
> Why describes mostly every law enacted by a parliament? They clearly have that power to change the laws they enacted at any time.
They don't have the power to reinterpret their laws. They can repeal laws and pass new laws, but interpretation is up to the courts, if they don't like the interpretation the court gives to a law then their recourse is to pass a new law.
> So where is the problem if parliament delegates this power to some executive entity?
The problem is firstly that the executive isn't supposed to have the power to make or repeal laws, "delegating" it to them breaks the separation of powers, and secondly allowing a law to be "reinterpreted" rather than rewritten breaks the whole system of precedence that the rule of law depends on.
> then the effective definition of the word "oppressive" being able to be "interpreted" by executive agencies
I don't get how this could ever be resolved though. You can complain about how "oppressive" is "interpreted" so they can add more words, they can say "people are harmed" and then it's up to interpretation about who is "people" and what is "harm" so then you add more words to define "people" as living homo-sapiens and then it's up to interpretation about what is "living" and on and on.
> If there is a vagueness
There is literally always vagueness. "I never said she took his money" can have 7 different interpretations just based on which word is emphasized.
It's a meaningless tautology that any English sentence has some amount of vagueness and that people will be interpreting its meaning.
Which is exactly why it's important to have a separation of powers where the legislature writes the laws and the courts interpret them. When the same entity is both writing the rules and interpreting the ambiguity in them, that's ripe for abuse.
Chevron was not about deciding regulation details.
It was about who interprets what a law an agency administers means.
Before Chevron, an agency could say "we interpret this law to mean we can do X", and then no one could stop it from doing X. That's a huge amount of unchecked power!
Now an impartial court get to interpret what laws mean. Seems like the obviously right thing to me.
First, a made up but illustrative one. The statute says something vague like "a term in a standard form consumer contract that is oppressive or unconscionable is void." In a common law system (anything derived from English law, including US, Australia, etc) the meaning of these terms, if they aren't defined elsewhere in the statute, is figured out based on decided cases. Someone will argue that it covers a particular clause, and the judge will decide if it does. The judge might give a detailed test for what constitutes "oppressive" or might reuse an existing one from a different context or whatever. The decision might be appealed and a panel of judges decide the meaning. But over time, and as cases are decided, the meaning becomes clear. You can point to half a dozen examples of clearly oppressive clauses and a dozen that clearly aren't, there is a legal test for what counts, etc. The law develops towards certainty and the doctrine of precedent also means it stabilises: it isn't going to change its meaning just because new judges are appointed, because they generally follow precedent pretty closely.
Under the Chevron doctrine, there is an extra step. If a government agency says that its interpretation is that "oppressive" means X, then if that interpretation is reasonable, if it is open on the wording of the statute, then the inquiry stops there. The court defers to the government agency. This has the benefit, admittedly, that the definition can change over time according to changing conditions. But it has downsides. It is giving the job of deciding what laws mean to the government, rather than the judiciary. The government is meant to act according to law, not to interpret it. That isn't the executive's proper function. But quite apart from the philosophical objections, it is no good for stability. A new government is elected and the official interpretation changes. This happens a lot. A new government is elected and it is decided that now "restraint of trade" clauses in employment contracts are legal. Four years later they're unenforceable. Four years layer they're enforceable again. No laws changed, no regulations are passed, a government agency just releases a new statement of its official interpretation of the law.
That is quite different to, e.g., there being a statute saying "terms in consumer contracts must accord with the regulations promulgated by the department of consumer protection as in force at the date of execution of the contract" because:
1. It is clear what is delegated to the executive and what is not.
2. It is clear that the definition applied is the definition at the time the contract was signed, and the "interpretation" is not retrospective.
3. It is still up to the court to give a clear, consistent, precedential ruling as to the meaning of the regulations themselves.
This example is real: Chevron itself. There, the EPA changed the definition of "source" of air pollution, without Congressional approval, so that "source" was much narrower (making pollution harder to regulate).
> The SCOTUS doesn't split along ideological or party lines all the time.
It happens enough on cases that matter that it's farcical not to put (R) and (D) after the names of the justices, for clarity, when discussing them in the press.
The fact that this is getting downvoted into the ground really shows the delta between reality and what the members of this site want to convince themselves is reality.
There should be protection for people that receive information in this manner that is equivalent to whistleblower protection. No law abiding citizen should ever be prosecuted in favor of protecting a government fuck up.
"his continued membership in the channel demonstrates intent to receive the information"
Nope. His authority as a journalist prevails. He published the article -- so his intent was to do his job as a journalist, and the public has a right to know.
National security or institutional trust was not damaged by the journalist -- only by the ignorance of the politicians now running our military.
The information was newsworthy and in the public interest.
Publication did not cause harm (and you might argue that dropping actual bombs caused much more harm).
The information was obtained legally and without foresight.
The journalist has an obligation to report the information if it serves the public interest, especially if it reveals systemic failures, endangers democracy, or impacts public policy.
I think you are talking past each other. OP's point was about future publications (possibly including confidential information only shared through that Signal group).
That's the part you're concerned with? Criminal liability of the journalist while the alcoholic was sending government secrets over a signal group chat to unverified members?
> If anything, I'm a bit surprised that Jeff Goldberg burned this source.
> If anything, I'd suspect that he'd keep the channel open as long as he could.
> Or, he's got other channels that work better.
The Signal chat group was called the “Houthi PC small group.” It appeared to be a short-term, mission-specific group rather than a long-term, open-ended group. Thus, it's unlikely that much more information would be gained in the future. Goldberg's inclusion in the chat was the main story here, not the specific details revealed to Goldberg, many of which he kept confidential.
He was probably worried about the legal ramifications of not doing so, though these days he may be more likely to get sent off to some El Salvadoran prison for writing the article and exposing their staggering incompetence than he would be for continuing to knowingly listen in on the chat.
He did the right thing. He's obviously of a certain political bent, but recognized this kind of leak could lead to the loss of American service member lives. He didn't share everything from the chat. I respect him for what he did.
Hard to say. Sharing it may have lead to saving of servicemen lives since it may cause an abort. Not like it is a self defense mission, attacks on Houthi is totally optional meddling that likely breeds more 'terrorists'.
Trying to assess the consequences of publishing highly classified information on military operations is a ridiculously reckless idea. None of us have enough data about the full picture to even try to guess correctly here. The only sane thing to do is to maintain confidentiality and leave it to the involved agencies to draw consequences as they see fit.
A group of idiots who share battle plans with journalists under commander in chief Trump have clearly displayed their incompetence in drawing consequences. That the idiots who illegally sent it know best was not even on my radar of possibilities and is a ridiculously reckless idea imo.
It is not even clear to me that preserving serviceman is one of the goals of these agencies, given they've marched them off to die in several needless wars. Sure maybe the agencies might have more information, that doesn't mean they're more likely to make decisions that preserve life. Deference to 'experts' in government has lead to much bloodshed.
Ah, I didn’t phrase this properly; I was referring to the broader military organisation orchestrating the actual long-Running operations, not the clowns in charge. They probably know best which information should be classified to protect deployed soldiers, and I would find it questionable to assume you know better than them about what may endanger individual servicemen abroad.
My guess is that he was consulting their lawyers during this. IANAL but it might have been a crime if he did not leave the group as soon as he was sure it was real. He keeps mentioning that he was not certain this is real until the first attacks. After the first attack, he could not continue this argument.
My theory is that he had to balance the journalistic scoop of the century with the risk of being arrested for illegally accessing/storing classified information. If they had noticed before he published the story then he could have been vanned and the public told that he had infiltrated a secure channel, and who would be able to say otherwise? MAGA people would cheerfully call for his execution.
Under US federal law it is generally not a crime for a person without a security clearance to receive or store classified information. The legal problems come in when they solicit it or take some other action to obtain it.
Laws matter less than they used to. When the President regularly uses the term "retribution" to describe his mode of operation, I don't blame someone for taking a more careful approach in a case like this. It shouldn't be that way, for a journalist. But a lot of things shouldn't be the way they are today.
"If anything, I'd suspect that he'd keep the channel open as long as he could."
The real story is that he was added to the channel, so it doesn't surprise me that he didn't try to lurk indefinitely. I'm guessing these things are also ad-hoc, so perhaps the well was already dry after the attack?
But this is some truly amateur-hour shit. I've seen better communications discipline from volunteer open source projects than this.
One lawyer I follow on Bluesky mentioned the longer he stayed on more exposed he became to legal ramifications. Also, this involves national security which courts may treat differently than other issues.
I am more surprised that he did not save this incident for a future book
I think that's a fair assessment. Goldberg seems to have strong journalistic ethics too. Again, from Bluesky,
David Graham asks Jeffrey Goldberg about possible retaliation
Jeffrey: It's not my role to care about the possibility of threats or retaliation. We just have to come to work and do our jobs to the best of our ability. Unfortunately, in our society today—-we see this across corporate journalism and law firms and other industries--there's too much preemptive obeying for my taste. All we can do is just go do our jobs.
Yeah, there is a crime defined for intentionally gathering national defense information, and that crime is called "espionage"; while the courts have found constitutional limits beyond what is in the text of the law that restrict when it can be applied, the application of those limits isn't super consistent in practice and the formal boundary could be changed by the courts at any time when the government is pushing it, and a journalist knowingly taking advantage of someone else's mistake to continue gathering such information would not be out of line of the situations in which the government has pursued charges for that in the last decade.
and a journalist knowingly taking advantage of someone else's mistake to continue gathering such information would not be out of line of the situations in which the government has pursued charges for that in the last decade.
Yes, that would be a crime, but that's not what the original comment said.
> mentioned the longer he stayed on more exposed he became to legal ramifications
I'm asking "if someone was added in error, why do legal ramification increase"?
Clearly being added in error then publishing a bunch of stories in a series would be a crime.
> I'm asking "if someone was added in error, why do legal ramification increase"?
No, that's exactly what I answered: the ramifications increase the longer he stays on, because the longer he stays on the greater chance it is seen as exploiting the error with intent to gain national defense information.
I think you are arguing a moot point. It's not really about what happened, the law is mainly about the intent. He did not immediately leave because he did not believe this to be a genuine group. So he has no intend to do harm at this point. But once he becomes convinced this is real he now _intentionally_ receives classified information he's not authorised to have. So now it is _necessarily_ also a legal problem for him.
So in your case: Getting added to a random signal chat where you are not exposed to anything? You should be fine. At least it will be very hard to show any intent to violate anything. Though that isn't necessarily true either. E.g. one could imagine Signal usernames belonging to operatives being in that group. And starting to post or investigate those could still get you in legitimate trouble.
And yes, ignorance of the law does not necessarily save one either. But a central point in all prosecutions is some portion of criminal intent
No, the crime isn't staying in. The crime (if it is one) is choosing to stay in. If he reports on messages from 6mo ago with an auto-delete of 1wk, he was aware of it roughly 6mo ago (and taking it seriously enough to preserve things).
This is the type of thing that can get you on jail or even (quietly) killed during a normal US administration. I'm not surprised Goldberg GTFO intermediately.
Dunno, I was surprised how digitally literate these old dudes are to the point of writing long autistic messages in Signal, so long that the author can quote them only as "wrote a lengthy message". Even normie programmers of all people can communicate only with meat sounds.
Who complained here that email can't be replaced by messengers, because you can't write long messages there? Here's a counterexample.
He could have continued for weeks, imho he did the good citizen and responsible journalist thing here. Made the public aware before it really got out of hand.
I'm betting that Goldberg realized, once it was confirmed real, that his only feasible defense was exiting the chat and going public immediately. Otherwise, someone notices he's there, and he's arrested by ICE and disappeared to El Salvador, or worse.
In many ways, being a public enemy of the Trump Admin is the safest enemy to be.
I thought that at first, but the group was clearly temporary, intended for this particular military action. There was likely little value to staying, and as other comments note, a nonzero risk of (likely unsuccessful) prosecution.
Imagine if he stays and obtains some critical information that later happens to get leaked. You're now a prime suspect for the leak, possibly facing charges of something like treason. I think leaving was the wise choice.
Sounds like he received the message purposefully and pretends it was an mistake?
2h is a lot but also not that much time, everything is prepared already it’s more a countdown I would say. What would be a usual timeframe to inform the people you want to inform about an immediate event which is going to happen?
> Sounds like he received the message purposefully and pretends it was an mistake?
Why would he have been added to the group? For what purpose would the current National Security Advisor have to bring in an outsider to discussions that ended up involving almost certainly classified data?
> 2h is a lot but not that much time
He was added to the group two days (13 March) before the strikes (15 March), not two hours.
That would make a lot more sense if the information hadn't been accurate. You don't leak real operational data deliberately to try and catch someone who might publish it. Because if they do, you've compromised your real mission (the attacks on the Houthis in this case).
I meant it from the common assumption for mass media propagation: get it out there as fast as possible and correct later if needed. On a related note, how often do consumers of news go back to read on retractions, if any?
If anything, I'd suspect that he'd keep the channel open as long as he could.
Or, he's got other channels that work better.
All the same, I mean, wow. These guys are just morons here, there's really no other way around it. I'm trying to think of a charitable way to spin this and I've got nothing.
Like, very clearly, these people are going to get service-members killed due to their idiocy