Mueller says messaging apps likely destroyed evidence
Posted Apr 19, 2019 5:05 AM
Gopal Ratnam
... In investigating ties between the Trump campaign and Russian individuals, Mueller’s team ran into technological hurdles, in addition to old-fashioned ones such as unavailable foreign witnesses, according to the report.
The special counsel’s office “learned that some of the individuals we interviewed or whose conduct we investigated — including some associated with the Trump Campaign deleted relevant communications or communicated during the relevant period using applications that feature encryption or that do not provide for long term retention of data or communication records,” the report said. “In such cases the Office was not able to corroborate witness statements through comparison to contemporaneous communications or fully question witnesses about statements that appeared inconsistent with the other known facts.”
Apps such as Snapchat, for example, delete messages once they have been viewed, and the company says it deletes all messages from its servers after 30 days. WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram and Viber are some of the apps that offer end-to-end encryption of messages. The report does not mention which individuals may have used such apps.
The probe also “faced practical limits on its ability to access relevant evidence as well — numerous witnesses and subjects lived abroad, and documents were held outside the United States,” the report said ...
https://www.rollcall.com/news/congress/mueller-report-says-messaging-apps-likely-destroyed-trump-russia-evidence
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