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Federal Employees Sue Trump Administration Over Insecure Email Distribution System


— January 28, 2025

The lawsuit relays concerns shared by an Office of Personnel Management employees, including a disgruntled Reddit user who claimed that the agency was forced to install a new server in its office after a longtime employee refused to establish a direct line of communication to the entire federal workforce.


Two federal employees have filed a lawsuit claiming that the Trump administration’s proposed email distribution system is inherently insecure.

According to CNN, the lawsuit accuses the U.S. Office of Personnel Management of agreeing to implement the new email distribution system without first completing a privacy and security assessment.

Attorneys for the two plaintiffs note that, over the course of the past several days, many federal employees have received messages from the email address “HR@opm.gov,” which said that it is running tests for a new “distribution and response list.”

“The goal of these tests is to confirm that an email can be sent and replied to by all government employees,” one of the HR@opm.gov emails said.

Federal employees were purportedly told to reply to at least some of the emails.

The lawsuit relays concerns shared by an Office of Personnel Management employees, including a disgruntled Reddit user who claimed that the agency was forced to install a new server in its office after a longtime employee refused to establish a direct line of communication to the entire federal workforce.

Donald Trump in 2016. Image from Flickr via Wikimedia Commons/user:Gage Skidmore. (CCA-BY-2.0).

The same Reddit posts suggests that some Office of Personnel Management employees have also received instructions to share all responses to the email with the department’s chief of staff, Amanda Scales.

Scales, notes The Hill, is a former employee at Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company.

All federal agencies have also been told to send Scales a list of all federal employees who are still within their one-year probationary period, making it easier to terminate their employment.

Kel McClanahan, the executive director of National Security Counselors, told The Hill that the emails may be masking an effort to create a comprehensive list of all federal government employees.

“I think part of the reason—and this is just my own speculation—that they’re doing this to try and create that database,” McClanahan told The Hill. “And they’re trying to sort of create it by smushing together all these other databases and telling everyone who receives the email to respond.”

McClanahan also spoke to CNN, saying that the Office of Personnel Management has been hacked in the past, with one recent attempt made against a security clearance system that would have “presumably” been “very well protected.”

“Plugging in a new email server for the sole purpose of sending messages directly to every federal employee is an invitation to be hacked, and every employee out there needs to know how much of their data is at risk,” McClanahan told CNN.

Sources

Lawsuit alleges new Trump administration email system for federal employees raises privacy concerns

OPM sued over privacy concerns with new government-wide email system

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