Signal app used by Trump officials previously prompted scrutiny in Harris County

HARRIS COUNTY, Texas - The editor-in-chief of The Atlantic came out on Monday to allege he was included in a group chat on Signal with top national security officials.

Back in 2022, political reporter Greg Groogan did a report on the app supposedly being used by some Harris County officials.

FOX 26 report on Signal in 2022

The backstory:

Back in 2022, Groogan reported Harris County officials Commissioner Adrian Garcia, Commissioner Rodney Ellis and Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo were users on the app.

"I have Slack, I have Signal, I have WhatsApp. I haven't used them in years," Hidalgo said in the previous report. "I do not have governmental conversations on Signal."

FOX 26 legal analyst Chris Tritico offered his thoughts at the time: "It troubles me, on many fronts that they would even have it on their phone. Troubles me on many fronts because the appearance of impropriety is enough for the public to lose faith in these officials. They need to be able to explain how this is not a problem."

FOX 26 previously detected Signal accounts connected to the personal phones of political figures such as Troy Nehls, Dan Crenshaw and Randy Weber, who are all members of the Republican Party.

Importance of transparency

Why you should care:

In a state where people are guaranteed by law to get full access to public information and much of what's happening within our government, there is a real growing concern that 21st century technology has created fail-safe measures for elected officials to operate in secret.

According to the Attorney General, the Texas Public Information Act dictates institutionalizing transparency for the taxpayer and for citizens to inspect or copy government records. It also provides that governmental bodies may withhold government records from the public in specific instances.

Since TPIA'S passage in 1972, many elected officials and others in public service have sought to keep secrets and conduct business in the shadows, an "end run" on transparency aided by rapidly advancing technology.

Dig deeper: Signal app war plan leak broke the law, Texas expert says

What is the Signal app?

Dig deeper:

This week, Atlantic Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg detailed a discussion that happened over the Signal messaging app hours before strikes on Iran-backed Houthi-rebels in Yemen ordered by U.S. President Donald Trump.

It’s an app that can be used for direct messaging and group chats as well as phone and video calls.

Signal uses end-to-end encryption for its messaging and calling services that prevents any third-party from viewing conversation content or listening in on calls.

In other words, messages and calls sent on Signal are scrambled and only the sender and recipient at each end will have the key to decipher them.

Signal’s encryption protocol is open source, meaning that it’s freely available for anyone to inspect, use or modify. The encryption protocol is also used by another popular chat service, social media company Meta’s WhatsApp platform.

Encryption on Signal is turned on by default, unlike another popular messaging app, Telegram, which requires users to turn it on and does not make it available for group chats.

Signal has features that are found on other messaging apps. It allows users to host group chats with up to 1,000 people and messages can be set to automatically disappear after a certain time.

What they're saying:

Encryption experts at the University of Houston tell FOX 26, the Signal App is nearly impossible to hack, which means government officials, at all levels, have the capacity to communicate in an unrecorded "black box", but are essentially breaking the law each time they do so.

"We kind of have the worst of both worlds here - the lack of transparency by the use of that app, while on the other hand, spilling the beans to the news media in advance of an attack, exactly what was going to happen, when it was going to happen and who it was going to happen to," said Aleshire.