Another view ...
Top Trump officials text classified Yemen airstrike plans to journo in Signal SNAFU
www.theregister.com
... Military analyst and retired Australian Army Major General Mick Ryan has described the use of the secure chat app in this matter as "appalling."
"By using Signal for such a sensitive issue, the participants demonstrate a cavalier attitude to operational security," he wrote Tuesday, Australian time. "For a Secretary of Defense who allegedly values a war-fighting ethos, this shortfall in security is appalling. In normal times, this would see people sacked. I don't expect that in this case though because these are not normal times."
"Why aren't they using more secure communications that are assured by the NSA or another government communications agency?" he added. The Register understands chat tools used by those agencies include features that prevent, say, journalists from participating in group chats.
Another question worth asking is why the group's members used Signal, and why they set at least some of the messages to auto-delete, which may be a violation of federal records-keeping laws.
Using Signal is also extraordinary given that a constant refrain of President Trump's 2015 presidential election campaign was the need to "lock up" Hillary Clinton for using a private server for her emails.
As Ryan pointed out: "By communicating on devices which were transmitting information about a future operation in real time to a journalist, the conversation may also have been compromised by other foreign interested parties. As a result, might the entire operation to strike the Houthis have been compromised, and the lives of military personnel put at risk?" ...