Nobody who isn’t trying to conceal something wants to lose message history-not for messages about January 6 and not for more mundane ones about, say, procurement or leave approval. But best practice today for any system update is for the new system to be backward-compatible with older systems. Secret Service officials told The Washington Post that the deletions were not malicious-that they were simply part of a phone-system update. At worst, the parade of errors is indicative of darker motivations. At best, the loss of these texts is evidence of astonishing incompetence at an agency that is supposed to be a sophisticated cyberactor, charged with investigating cybercrimes. The entire episode is now under criminal investigation by the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general.Īlmost nothing about this episode makes sense. Skeptical observers suspect a cover-up of the agency’s errors, and more apocalyptic critics see the data deletion as part of a possible conspiracy to support President Donald Trump’s attempted coup. The Secret Service says that the deletions came about as part of a routine, long-planned update to its phone system and that, as part of this update, it factory-reset its agents’ mobile devices, deleting all data. The United States Secret Service is reported to have permanently deleted or lost a host of data, including text messages, that relate to the January 6 insurrection.
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