A notification shared on Monday on the homepage of the U.S. Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) serves as the most recent demonstration of the Trump administration’s ongoing neglect for fundamental cybersecurity measures. The alert instructed recently dismissed CISA personnel to reach out for potential rehiring, only to subsequently be placed on leave, requesting employees to submit their Social Security number or date of birth in a password-protected email attachment — likely with the password required to access the document included in the email’s text.

On March 13, a district court judge in Maryland mandated the Trump administration to reinstate over 130 probationary CISA workers who were terminated the previous month. On Monday, the administration declared that those dismissed personnel would be reinstated but placed on paid administrative leave.

A notice displayed on the CISA homepage indicated that the administration is striving to connect with those who were unlawfully dismissed in mid-February.

“Please provide a password protected attachment that includes your full name, your employment dates (inclusive of termination date), and one additional identifying detail such as date of birth or social security number,” the notification states. “Kindly, if available, attach any termination notice.”

The message did not clarify how the affected CISA personnel should communicate the password for any attached files, suggesting that the expectation is for employees to simply include the plaintext password in their correspondences.

Email is comparable to sending a postcard through conventional mail, as anyone who intercepts the message along its delivery route can easily read it. In security language, this is akin to encrypting sensitive information while also attaching the key needed to unveil the details.

Furthermore, numerous antivirus and security software face challenges when attempting to scan password-protected files, indicating that the administration’s instructions could heighten the risk of malware submitted by cybercriminals being accepted and executed by U.S. government workers.

The notification featured in the screenshot above was removed from the CISA homepage on Tuesday evening and supplanted with a considerably shorter message directing former CISA employees to reach out to a specific email address. Nonetheless, a slightly altered variant of the same notification originally released on CISA’s website remains available on the website of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which similarly instructs dismissed personnel seeking to be rehired and placed on leave to send a password-protected email attachment containing sensitive personal information.

This is not the first instance of the administration abandoning basic Security 101 principles for the sake of expediency. Last month, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) sent an unencrypted email to the White House containing the first names and the initial letter of the last names of recently hired CIA agents who might be easily dismissed.

As cybersecurity journalist Shane Harris pointed out in The Atlantic, even those snippets of information could prove useful to foreign espionage agents.

“Over the weekend, a former senior CIA official demonstrated to me how a foreign adversary who knew only his first name and last initial could have traced him from the single line of the congressional record featuring his full name published over 20 years ago when he joined the Foreign Service,” Harris noted. “At that time, the former official was operating undercover as a State Department agent. If a foreign government had known even part of his name from a confirmed list of CIA officers, his cover would have been compromised.”

The White House has also terminated at least 100 intelligence personnel from the National Security Agency (NSA), reportedly for utilizing an internal NSA chat service to discuss their personal matters and political views. While testifying before the House Select Committee on the Communist Party earlier this month, the NSA’s former chief cybersecurity official stated that the Trump administration’s efforts to conduct mass firings of probationary federal employees would be “devastating” to U.S. cybersecurity operations.”

Rob Joyce, who dedicated 34 years to the NSA, informed Congress of the significance of these employees in maintaining an assertive approach against China in cyberspace.

“At my previous agency, exceptional technical talent was recruited into developmental programs that provided rigorous specialized training and practical experience to nurture critical skills,” Joyce explained to the panel. “Removing probationary employees will obliterate a pipeline of top talent responsible for identifying and neutralizing [Chinese] threats.”

Both the email sent to dismissed CISA employees and DOGE’s ongoing attempts to circumvent vetted government networks for a quicker Wi-Fi connection symbolize this administration’s overall methodology towards even the most basic security protocols: to circumvent them or simply pretend they do not exist for a valid reason.

On Monday, The New York Times reported that U.S. Secret Service personnel at the White House briefly went on alert last month when a trusted captain from Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) examined the roof of the Eisenhower building within the White House grounds — to explore the possibility of establishing a dish to acquire satellite Internet access directly from Musk’s Starlink service.

The White House press secretary informed The Times that Starlink had “contributed” the service and that the donation had been vetted by the legal advisor managing ethics issues in the White House Counsel’s Office. The White House asserts that the service is vital due to the sluggishness of its wireless network.

Jake Williams, vice president for research and development at the cybersecurity consulting firm Hunter Strategy, conveyed to The Times that “it’s exceptionally uncommon” to install Starlink or another internet provider as a substitute.for current governmental assets that have been approved and secured.

“I cannot recall a moment where I have encountered that,” Williams remarked. “It adds another vulnerability,” Williams emphasized. “But what is the purpose of introducing that hazard?”

In the meantime, NBC News claimed on March 7 that Starlink is broadening its presence within the federal government.

“Several federal departments are considering the adoption of SpaceX’s Starlink for internet services — and at least one department, the General Services Administration (GSA), has proceeded with this at the urging of Musk’s team, as per an individual who was employed at the GSA last month and is acquainted with its network operations — despite a pledge by Musk and Trump to significantly cut the federal budget overall,” NBC reported.

The veteran Musk personnel who encountered the Secret Service atop the White House grounds was Christopher Stanley, a 33-year-old senior director for security engineering at X and lead security engineer at SpaceX.

On Monday, Bloomberg revealed that Stanley had been appointed to the board of directors at the mortgage behemoth Fannie Mae. Stanley joined the board alongside the recently confirmed Federal Housing Finance Agency director Bill Pulte, the grandson of the late housing entrepreneur and PulteGroup founder — William J. Pulte.

In acknowledgment of his new board position at an agency that influences the nation’s $12 trillion mortgage marketplace, Stanley retweeted a Bloomberg article about the appointment with a smiley emoji and the remark “Tech Support.”

However, earlier today, Bloomberg reported that Stanley had unexpectedly resigned from the Fannie board, with the reasons for his swift exit remaining unclear. As previously reported here last month, Stanley had a fleeting moment of notoriety on Twitter in 2015 when he divulged the user database for the DDoS-for-hire service LizardStresser, shortly leading to threats of physical harm against his family.

My 2015 article on that leak did not specifically identify Stanley, yet he revealed himself as the source by uploading a video about it to his YouTube channel. An examination of domain names registered by Stanley indicates he operated under the alias “enKrypt,” and was the prior owner of a pirated software and hacking forum identified as error33[.]net, as well as theC0re, a community focused on video game cheating.

Stanley is one among more than 50 DOGE personnel, primarily young men and women who have collaborated with one or more of Musk’s ventures. The Trump administration continues to be haunted by inquiries regarding how many — if any — of the DOGE employees underwent a rigorous security background check prior to gaining access to such sensitive governmental databases.

This is primarily due to the fact that in one of his initial executive actions after being inaugurated for a second term on January 20, President Trump declared that the security clearance procedure was excessively cumbersome and time-consuming, asserting that anyone designated by the White House counsel would receive complete top secret/sensitive compartmented information (TS/SCI) access for a period of up to six months. In other words: We acknowledged the risk, so TAH-DAH! No risk!

Presumably, this is the same counsel who found no moral issues with Musk “contributing” Starlink to the White House, nor with President Trump inviting the media to film him promoting Cybertrucks and Teslas (referred to as “Teslers”) on the White House lawn last week.

Mr. Musk’s unelected position as leader of an improvised executive group that is gleefully dismissing federal employees and thrusting federal agencies into “the wood chipper” has led to a decline in his Tesla stock price in recent weeks, while acts of arson and other vandalism on properties displaying the Tesla emblem are emerging both domestically and internationally, negatively impacting Tesla sales.

President Trump and his attorney general Pam Bondi have controversially claimed that those responsible for assaults on Tesla showrooms are engaging in “domestic terrorism,” pledging that perpetrators will be prosecuted accordingly. However, it remains uncertain whether this administration would recognize a genuine domestic security threat if it were positioned directly behind the Resolute Desk.

Or at the pinnacle of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The Washington Post revealed last month that Trump’s newly appointed FBI director Kash Patel was compensated $25,000 the previous year by a film company owned by a dual U.S. Russian citizen that has produced programs advocating “deep state” conspiracy theories promoted by the Kremlin.

“The resulting six-part documentary was shown on Tucker Carlson’s online platform, which is itself a consistent channel for Kremlin propaganda,” The Post stated. “In the film, Patel made his now notorious commitment to shut down the FBI’s headquarters in Washington and ‘transform it into a museum for the deep state.’”

When the head of the FBI is vowing to convert his agency’s headquarters into a satirical public display on the U.S. National Mall, it may seem trivial to be concerned about the White House’s clumsy and offensive directives to former workers they unlawfully dismissed.

Indeed, one recurrent piece of feedback I’ve received from a segment of readers here is something like this: “I used to enjoy reading your work more before you started focusing on politics constantly.”

My reply to that is: “Absolutely, me too.” It’s not that I have suddenly developed an interest in writing about political issues; rather, it is that various actions from this administration continually encroach upon my areas of reporting.

A less generous interpretation of that reader remark is that anyone still providing such feedback is either severely misinformed, being insincere, or simply reluctant to be continually reminded that they are aligned with the antagonists, despite all evidence indicating otherwise.

Article II of the U.S. Constitution clearly states that the president shall ensure that the laws are faithfully enforced. Yet almost from the very beginning of his second term, Mr. Trump has acted in breach of his sworn responsibility as president by opting not to enforce laws enacted by Congress (TikTok ban, anyone?), by halting funds that had already beenallocated by Congress, and most recently by disregarding a federal court ruling while concurrently demanding the impeachment of the judge who made the ruling. Sworn to defend, uphold, and protect The Constitution, President Trump seems to be generating new constitutional dilemmas with nearly every day that passes.

After Mr. Trump was ousted from his position in November 2020, he resorted to unfounded assertions of widespread “election fraud” to account for his defeat — with fatal and enduring repercussions. This time, the rallying cry of DOGE and the White House is “government fraud,” which provides the administration a level of justification for its actions among a constituency that has long wanted to reduce the scale and expenditure of government.

In truth, “government fraud” has morphed into a term of mockery and public disdain directed at anything or anyone the current administration finds unfavorable. If DOGE and the White House were genuinely committed to eliminating governmental waste, fraud, and abuse, it would hardly be more effective than seeking assistance from the inspectors general combatting it across various federal departments.

After all, these inspectors general are likely acutely aware of where numerous fiscal irregularities within the federal government are concealed. In contrast, Mr. Trump terminated at least 17 inspectors general, leaving the government devoid of essential oversight of departmental actions. Such an action is improbable to curb government fraud; if anything, it will merely promote such behavior.

As Techdirt founder Mike Masnick remarked in a recent article “Why Techdirt is Now a Democracy Blog (Whether We Like it or Not),” when the very entities that have facilitated American innovation are being methodically dismantled, it ceases to be a “political” narrative: It transforms into a narrative about whether the environment that made all the other stories we discuss will continue to endure.

“This is why the perspective of tech journalism is so vital at this moment,” Masnick penned. “We’ve invested decades in documenting how technology and entrepreneurship can either fortify or undermine democratic institutions. We recognize the threats posed by concentrated authority in the digital era. And we’ve observed firsthand how tech leaders who once supported innovation and transparency now actively endeavor to centralize power and dismantle the very systems that enabled their triumph.”

“However, currently, the most significant story is how the disassembly of American institutions jeopardizes everything else we examine,” Masnick further elaborated. “When the foundational structures that promote innovation, safeguard civil liberties, and encourage open discourse are under siege, every other tech policy issue takes a backseat.”