Federal bureaucrats suffer anxiety over surveillance by taxpayers
Bureaucrats across the federal workforce are becoming increasingly paranoid about being surveilled by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), CNN reported Monday.
The legacy media outlet said federal employees are suffering from anxiety over the “sudden appearance of DOGE representatives,” even though both President Donald Trump and Elon Musk have been openly disclosing their plans for DOGE since before November’s election.
In less than a month of operation, DOGE has fulfilled its promise to provide American taxpayers with unprecedented transparency into government corruption. The department’s team of young sleuths has uncovered scandalous misspending by the US Agency of International Development (USAID) and hundreds of billions of dollars in fraudulent social security payments. Now employees of other agencies, fearing similar scrutiny, are suffering from acute paranoia.
Avoiding electronics and self-censoring
According to the CNN report, some bureaucrats turn their phones off at home for fear of being tracked or tapped, while others have purchased Faraday bags to protect their phones from being surveilled. Some report being more careful about how they use their personal phones while connected to Wifi at work.
“I used to carry my work phone around with me everywhere, after hours, on the weekend, in case anything was needed. Now I won’t take it out of my office space,” said an employee at the General Services Administration (GSA).
Workers say they are opting for person-to-person meetings rather than chatting over Microsoft Teams to avoid their conversations being scrutinized by DOGE employees. Those using Teams report being more careful about their words, and some who opt for in-person chats conduct them in hushed voices away from their computers. Employees at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are using Microsoft Word to take notes and only save them in Google Docs after wiping them of terms like “climate change,” which could trigger an investigation into government pseudoscience.
“People are picking up the phone for the first time in a decade because they don’t have to have online meetings or notes,” an employee said. “We’re that level of paranoid.”
A worker at the Department of Veteran Affairs said they no longer view news websites on their work computers and even thought about covering up the computer’s webcam because “there is a persistent feeling that we are being watched.”
Other employees have become suspicious of technical issues.
“Any technical glitch we experience, we wonder, is this just us being paranoid or is it some nefarious action?” said a Department of Education employee.
