White House deputy press secretary Anna Kelly wrote in an email to NBC News: “As we have said many times, Signal is an approved app for government use and is loaded on government phones.” Kelly did not address a question about TeleMessage. The National Security Council didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Signal is the encrypted messaging app that Waltz and other high-ranking administration officials used when he inadvertently added Atlantic Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg to the group chat of government officials concerning the military strike. Critics of the incident said that it raised security concerns and showed top administration officials side-stepping typical communications protocols used when discussing sensitive military matters.
TeleMessage is a “fork” of Signal, copying parts of the app and making a handful of adjustments to its code. TeleMessage markets itself as a way for government agencies and businesses to adhere to records retention laws by instantly making backup copies of chats.
The app was founded in 1999 in Israel before it was acquired by the Portland, Oregon-based company Smarsh in a two-year process that closed in 2024. TeleMessage maintains an office in Israel.
In an interview, Smarsh’s president for enterprise business, Tom Padgett, said he did not expect the app to be spotlighted in such a prominent way and that “we merely help our customers adhere to regulations.”
According to Padgett and government records reviewed by NBC News, government contracts (some of which are still current) involving TeleMessage go back years, predating the current Trump administration. One current contract that mentions TeleMessage allocated $2.1 million from the Department of Homeland Security and FEMA for “TELEMESSAGE MOBILE ELECTRONIC MESSAGE ARCHIVING,” beginning in February 2023, with an August 2025 end date.
“We work with the federal government in a myriad of different departments,” Padgett said.
Padgett said that, like Signal, messages sent and archived via TeleMessage are encrypted, but he noted that its archiving services don’t address the security concerns that were raised by Signalgate. The app’s focus is to simply address issues pertaining to record retention that have come with the use of messaging apps throughout the government.
“It is purely a method and mechanism to capture that communication and store it,” he said.
It is unclear if or how Waltz or any other government officials who use TeleMessage back up their chats.
Padgett said that clients have various options for archiving, including using a “Smarsh archive,” in which Smarsh partners with another company that stores the clients’ data. Smarsh said it does not have access to that data. Padgett declined to specify whether the federal government used Smarsh archives or employed other archiving options offered by the app, such as sending a copy of every message to a Gmail address.
Padgett also declined to weigh in on whether the photo showed Waltz using TeleMessage, saying, “I can neither confirm nor deny. And I know you understand that.”
TeleMessage is largely unknown and untested among cyber experts. NBC News asked five cybersecurity experts about Telemessage. Each said they had not heard of it before learning about Waltz’s apparent use of it Thursday.
Signal licenses part of its product to other companies under certain restrictions — for example, its encryption protocol is found in messaging apps such as iMessage and WhatsApp. However, a Signal spokesperson told NBC News that it has no agreement with TeleMessage, was unaware of it before the Reuters photo Thursday and is looking into potential recourse.
“We cannot guarantee the privacy or security properties of unofficial versions of Signal,” the spokesperson said.
Padgett declined to comment on Smarsh’s current relationship with Signal.
Trump announced Thursday that he had replaced Waltz as national security adviser with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who will at least on an interim basis juggle both jobs.
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