Ex-Twitter exec tips off federal workers how to avoid being 'surveilled' by Musk's people

A former Twitter executive is dishing out advice to federal workers thrown off balance by the Elon Musk/Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) takeover of agencies like USAID and the Treasury Department.

Musk has been criticized for his slash and burn tactics that are eerily similar to how he handled his takeover at Twitter, now rebranded as X.

Rumman Chowdhury, who served as director for the Machine Learning Ethics, Transparency and Accountability (META) team,at X, told MSNBC's Jen Psaki Sunday that Musk's strategy of "shock and awe" is meant to "constantly keep people scared, uninformed, keep changing things up on them, make demands that are impossible, make new hoops to jump through."

"No work happens during this for all of the, 'moving in beds' and the dramatics and truly the 'theater,' the theatrics of, you know, saying there's 120 hour work weeks, one has to ask how much work is actually getting done if nobody knows what's going on," Chowdhury said.

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Chowdhury has been sharing advice to federal workers via X competitor, Bluesky. In one post, Chowdhury advises, "If you are a gov employee please do not use your gov devices to coordinate. Do not use standard messaging on your Android or Apple devices. Don’t use WhatsApp. These CEOs will likely give your messages if asked by the administration. Please use Signal and set your messages to autodelete."

In addition to sharing tips on social media, Chowdhury has been working on a series of articles with former and current federal employees ("all of whom, unfortunately, have to remain anonymous") and "critical tech thinkers."

"They're specifically on what to do if you get doxed, how to prevent workplace surveillance, how to prevent device surveillance. And, in short, it's things like, you know, 'don't have conversations in the workplace,' 'don't have conversations on your work devices,' 'try to log into encrypted end-to-end networks.' You know, just remove yourself from any place or situation in which you can be surveilled."

Chowdhury added, "And also, just be careful what you say, no matter what platform you're on. The unfortunate truth is, there are a lot of federal employees sharing documents, you know, working together. But we do have to be careful when we're working with each other, you know, to push back."

Watch the clip below via MSNBC or at the link.