The Signal group chat that senior Trump administration officials convened to discuss military strikes in Yemen has sparked outrage over the reckless way a journalist was mistakenly added to the group.
But open government experts have raised another concern as well: the rise in usage of disappearing messaging apps like Signal, which they say could become a way for officials to skirt the requirements of federal laws meant to preserve government records.
“It’s a huge problem,” said Anne Weismann, a George Washington Law professor who frequently acts as outside counsel for nonprofits who push for more openness in government. “If the secretary of defense is participating in a conversation about planning an attack, I think it’s hard to argue there’s any circumstance in which that would not be appropriate for preservation.”
Two federal laws — the Presidential Records Act and the Federal Records Act — require officials to preserve communications related to government business. Agencies can comply with the law by instructing those using messaging apps to preserve chats through screen shots or other means.
Presidential records, which would include the communications of Vice President JD Vance, who participated in the Signal chat, must be permanently preserved. Many other federal records are considered temporary, but they must be preserved until the National Archives and Records Administration approves their destruction.
All of this affects what records the public can eventually see through Freedom of Information Act requests. If there is no record preserved, there is nothing to release.
The White House did not respond to a question about what guidance the Trump administration had given to top aides about preserving any messages they send or receive on Signal.
On Thursday, a federal judge heard arguments from the watchdog group American Oversight, which wants to order members of the Trump administration to preserve texts from disappearing messaging apps.
Amber Richer, a Justice Department lawyer representing the Trump administration, assured Judge James E. Boasberg that the government was taking steps to preserve messages from the Signal chat in question.
“These agencies are certainly working to fulfill their obligations under the Federal Records Act,” Ms. Richer said.
Judge Boasberg ordered the government to preserve all records in the chat, which took place from March 11 to 15. He said he wanted to see Trump administration develop record-keeping policies consistent with federal law.
In past administrations, national archivists have written letters to try to enforce the Presidential Records Act and the Federal Records Act. During the Biden administration, the National Archives referred an investigation into Mr. Trump’s handling of documents to the Justice Department.
Mr. Trump fired the nation’s archivist in February and appointed Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, as the acting archivist. Mr. Rubio was among those who participated in the Signal chat with disappearing messages.
“They have, in my view, completely co-opted NARA and the role of the archivist,” Ms. Weismann said.
Concerns over the rising use of Signal and other disappearing messaging apps are not new. They existed during the first Trump administration, when the group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington filed a lawsuit that claimed White House officials were using apps like Signal and Confide to delete messages in violation of the Presidential Records Act.
During the Biden administration, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency recommended the use of Signal, writing that it was a “best practice” to “adopt a free messaging application for secure communications that guarantees end-to-end encryption, such as Signal or similar apps.”
But this week’s news thrust the messaging app to the attention of the public.
Top Trump officials had convened a Signal group chat to discuss airstrikes in Yemen, but Michael Waltz, the national security adviser, mistakenly added Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor in chief of The Atlantic, to the group. In the chat, Mr. Hegseth disclosed specific operational details two hours before U.S. troops launched attacks against the Houthi militia in Yemen.
Some messages were set to delete automatically in one week or four weeks, Mr. Goldberg reported.
“There were legal obligations on the part of all of the members of that chat to fulfill their record-keeping responsibilities,” said Jason R. Baron, a professor in the College of Information at the University of Maryland.
He said systems to automatically preserve messages are simply not in place for apps like Signal the way they are for emails. When Congress updated the Presidential Records Act and the Federal Records Act in 2014 to include electronic messaging, ephemeral apps were not used pervasively in government. The records laws leave it to individuals to take steps to ensure that messages are preserved.
“Automated email archiving is taken care of at most agencies because they’re under a mandate to preserve government records electronically,” Mr. Baron said. “Electronic messaging is under the same mandate, but it’s still the Wild Wild West in terms of compliance, since agencies have not generally taken steps to automate ways to preserve those records.”
Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said Signal was an “approved app” for government use, and “the most safe and efficient way of communicating,” especially when people could not be in the same room.
“This is a first step in the right direction,” Chioma Chukwu, the interim executive director of American Oversight, said of the Trump administration’s pledge to preserve records. “But we’re going to have to keep going, because you can’t believe what the administration says. You have to watch what it does.”
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