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

Two federal employees are suing the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) to block the agency from creating a new email distribution system — an action that comes as the information will reportedly be directed to a former staffer to Elon Musk now at the agency.

The suit, launched by two anonymous federal employees, ties together two events that have alarmed members of the federal workforce and prompted privacy concerns.

That includes an unusual email from OPM last Thursday reviewed by The Hill said the agency was testing “a new capability” to reach all federal employees — a departure from staffers typically being contacted directly by their agency’s human resources department.

Also cited in the suit is an anonymous Reddit post Monday from someone purporting to be an OPM employee, saying a new server was installed at their office after a career employee refused to set up a direct line of communication to all federal employees.

According to the post, instructions have been given to share responses to the email to OPM chief of staff Amanda Scales, a former employee at Musk’s AI company.

Federal agencies have separately been directed to send Scales a list of all employees still on their one-year probationary status, and therefore easier to remove from government.

The suit says the actions violate the E-Government Act of 2002, which requires a Privacy Impact Assessment before pushing ahead with creation of databases that store personally identifiable information.

Kel McClanahan, executive director of National Security Counselors, a non-profit law firm, noted that OPM has been hacked before and has a duty to protect employees’ information.

“Because they did that without any indications to the public of how this thing was being managed — they can't do that for security reasons. They can't do that because they have not given anybody any reason to believe that this server is secure….that this server is storing this information in the proper format that would prevent it from being hacked,” he said.

OPM declined to comment on the lawsuit.

McClanahan noted that the emails appear to be an effort to create a master list of federal government employees, as “System of Records Notices” are typically managed by each department.

“I think part of the reason — and this is just my own speculation — that they're doing this is to try and create that database. 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,” he said.

A Friday email from OPM instructed employees to respond “yes” to test messages to confirm they can be reached by the agency.

The involvement of Scales comes as Musk, her former employer, has been tapped to lead the Department on Government Efficiency (DOGE), an advisory group focused on slashing the size of the federal workforce and budget.

DOGE as well as OPM have been tapped to form “a plan to reduce the size of the Federal Government’s workforce through efficiency improvements and attrition” — a move detailed in an order from Trump to institute a federal hiring freeze.

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