The billionaire’s Doge may be secretly recording meetings in at least two agencies, according to emails from senior officials

At the Department of Veterans Affairs, a senior official warned employees in an email that virtual meetings were being secretly recorded. Anyone dissatisfied with Donald Trump’s decisions should be careful about voicing their opinions, the official cautioned.

Over at the state department, IT staff said new monitoring software had been loaded on to computers. Some staffers had started using white noise machines in their offices, or even turned on an office breakroom sink, to muffle conversations in case there might be any hot mics within range.

A supervisor at one water management organization that works closely with the Environmental Protection Agency sent a warning to staffers that their meetings and phone calls with the agency were being monitored by an artificial intelligence tool.

Anecdotes like these are rife among federal employees now, amid fears that senior agency leaders or agents from Elon Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency” may be snooping on conversations, using software to track computer activity and, possibly, using artificial intelligence to scan for disloyalty or mentions of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) buzzwords. Many fear losing their jobs, as thousands already have.

“It’s like being in a horror film where you know something out there [wants] to kill you but you never know when or how or who it is,” one employee from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development said.

These details arose from conversations with more than two dozen federal employees who spoke with the Guardian and Crooked Media’s What a Day newsletter, and shared emails from agency officials and screengrabs.

The employees described a culture of fear among those who remain in the federal workforce, after waves of layoffs left many of their peers unemployed or stuck in professional limbo amid confusing and unresolved legal cases.

The US government has long been transparent with federal employees about its ability to monitor them with software. But now, top officials across the government are warning employees to exercise extreme caution, over fears about what this administration might do with the information, what technology might be used, who would receive the information and whether stray talk might form the basis for fresh job cuts.

Trump administration representatives denied some of the assertions and concerns raised by sources for this article, but didn’t respond to all of them. The EPA denied recording meetings, but didn’t specifically address the use of artificial intelligence. The state department denied monitoring for loyalty or other “ridiculous purposes” but also said the department had been clear about employees’ “expectations of privacy” when it comes to national security. Other agencies, including the Department of Veterans Affairs and the education department, didn’t respond to requests for comment.

The White House issued a blanket denial.

“Fake reporters are willing to draft up any sensationalist, totally fake stories for clicks, instead of spending their time and effort on real reporting. None of this story is true, and another fake news reporter is once again missing the point of Doge – saving the American people billions of dollars from waste, fraud, and abuse,” Taylor Rogers, a White House spokesperson, wrote in an email.

A manager at the Association of Clean Water Administrators (ACWA), which brings together state officials to work with the EPA on water quality and management, recently distributed an email warning staffers that meetings with EPA staffers may be monitored by AI.

The email reads: “We recently learned that all EPA phones (landline/mobile), all Teams/Zoom virtual meetings, and calendar entries are being transcribed/monitored.”

The information is then fed into “an AI tool” to be analyzed and scrutinized, the email’s author continues, adding “we saw” an AI notetaker listed as a participant in one of the meetings. “I do not know if DOGE is doing the analysis or … the agency itself,” the author writes. Participants aren’t being notified that the call is being transcribed, the email states.

The EPA denied that it is recording meetings. It also didn’t specifically address the question of an AI tool.

“This is fake news,” an EPA spokesperson said in a statement. “EPA is not monitoring or transcribing phone calls, meetings, or calendar entries.”

But Trump political appointees have told EPA managers that Musk’s team is implementing AI to monitor workers and look for disparaging comments about Trump or Musk, according to a Reuters report.

During a meeting on Wednesday morning, EPA managers told employees that Doge was “using AI to scan through agency communications to find any anti-Musk, anti-Doge, or anti-Trump statements”, an employee told the Guardian and What a Day. Employees should be “very careful” about what they say in private messages and virtual meetings, the managers added.

“I honestly just think the Doge spying is kind of pathetic,” the employee said. “If they’re that confident about what they’re doing, they wouldn’t be so paranoid.”

According to another email shared with the Guardian and What a Day, a Department of Veterans Affairs official also warned employees that virtual meetings were being secretly recorded.

The VA didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Top veterans affairs researchers across the country were recently put on administrative leave, according to an email obtained by What a Day. One of them was put on administrative leave for the “inappropriate distribution of VA material”, according to the internal email. But it’s not clear whether the individual was accused of speaking to the press or committing some other infraction.

A representative for Doge did not respond to a request for comment.

At the now-shuttered US Agency for International Development (USAID), employees said they discovered that their private communications were being monitored by leadership who arrived after Trump’s inauguration, prompting staff to abandon official channels altogether.

“They went into our chats, like our private group chats,” said a former USAID employee who lost their position during the mass firing wave in February. “It was [the acting administrator] Jason Gray, not Doge directly. But he was put in place when they fired everybody” because he knew the systems well.

The intrusions became so blatant that Gray – who was also the agency’s chief information officer – suddenly appeared in one group chat with more than 40 contractors.

“We knew they were watching,” the former USAID employee, who was in the chat, said. “Everybody went on either Signal or WhatsApp because nobody was trusting [leadership] at that point.”

Gray’s turbulent tenure culminated in USAID’s website being taken offline.

In February, IT staff at the state department warned some employees that monitoring software was being uploaded on to computers, according to an employee, who provided images showing a record of their individual keystrokes being tracked in the software.

Others worry that Doge could begin combing through conversations for anti-Trump sentiments or diversity, equity and inclusion “buzzwords”, which could then be used as grounds to fire employees.

Supervisors began sharing unofficial guidance to “act as though we are always on a hot mic”, the state department employee said.

“We’re turning on sinks and shit to have conversations,” they added. “It’s really funny to think about the Dogebags sitting there, watching and learning in real time, that the ‘deep state’ is really a bunch of goobers just doing our boring jobs for middling pay.”

A state department spokesperson said in a statement: “The state department is not monitoring its employees for loyalty or for other ridiculous purposes. The department has always been transparent with its employees on expectations of privacy in department facilities and on department networks and devices. Our focus in this regard is and always has been on preserving and protecting the national security of the United States.”

Government employees should expect that they’re being watched, top officials in the Department of Veterans Affairs said at an employee town hall in New England. “There shouldn’t be any expectation of privacy,” an official told employees, according to a list of questions and answers at the town hall provided to What a Day.

At the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in February, managers warned some employees to be extra careful about what they say on calls, according to an employee. “I personally think they are watching us,” they said.

Some workers at the education department are fearful of speaking out, describing the atmosphere as “total paranoia”. Doge has infiltrated the education department, where half of the staff has already been fired as Trump seeks to dismantle the entire agency.

“They are just so omnipresent and the work environment is so toxic and hostile, it feels like anything is possible,” a former senior education department official said about the potential for surveillance.