Noem says DHS employees installed surveillance software on her, other political officials' devices

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said that employees in her agency installed surveillance software on her phone and laptop, as well as the devices of other political officials.

Noem told Patrick Bet-David on the “PBD Podcast” on Thursday that Elon Musk and his team helped her discover unauthorized surveillance software embedded on government devices assigned to political appointees, the Daily Caller News Foundation reported.

“They had done that to several of the politicals, and so we ended up bringing in people and that was something that if you didn’t have those technology experts here in the department looking at all of our laptops and our phones and recognizing that kind of software it would still be happening today,” she said.

“So one of the things I need to do and continue to do is partner with technology companies and experts to bring them in and help us because many times in government and especially in this department, which was extremely neglected, we were just behind and not up to the standard we should be at. I remember the first four months I couldn’t even send a PowerPoint over email from the Department of Homeland Security servers that was longer than six pages long.”

Noem said DHS’s prior approach to security was flawed, and that the problem extends beyond the department.

“So the backwards thinking of protecting our country was extremely detrimental to keeping us safe, and many times, the deep state. What I tell people most of the time is I always believed when people talked about the deep state before, that it existed,” Noem said. “I never would have dreamed that it was as bad as it is.”

The DHS secretary also explained how she recently found out about a hidden room in the department.

“I just found the other day a whole room on this campus that was a secret SCIF secure facility that had files nobody knew existed. So we just happened to have an employee walk by a door and wonder what it was and started asking questions,” Noem said.

“We went in there. There was individuals working there that had secret files that nobody knew about on some of these most controversial topics like that, and now I’ve got that turned over to attorneys, and we’re getting to the bottom of what exactly happened there.”

DHS and the Department of Government Efficiency did not immediately respond to DCNF’s requests for comment.