The New York Times reports that the Department of Homeland Security will no longer be using the software that captures and saves text messages between officials.
Wait. They haven’t been using it since April. Great.
So, how does the most sprawling, well-funded, and violent agency go about keeping its communication records these days, given those pesky laws like the Freedom of Information Act and the Federal Records Act?
Glad you asked.
Apparently, back in April, DHS started using a new, very high-tech, very efficient way to make sure that they follow the obligations of those laws. Rather than using TeleMessage, the program that had taken care of things automatically, now, it’s much, much simpler. All an official needs to do to preserve their text messages and follow the law is:
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Take a screenshot of each message on your work phone
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Send it to your work email
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Download it to your work computer
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Run a program on each screenshot to make it text searchable.
See? Piece of cake! Surely this is much more reliable than the old way, where a piece of software just ran in the background and stored everything. According to DHS, there were cybersecurity concerns with the automatic program TeleMessage, but one small detail there: they switched to the screenshot method in April, but reports of TeleMessage being hacked didn’t appear until early May. Whoopsie!
So weird that this issue has cropped up at the agency most inclined to refuse to provide any information at all about what its people are doing. It was probably inevitable that the same bunch that thinks federal agents should run around masked, armed, and with no visible ID would also eschew keeping any records about it.
DHS has said that this is totally within the law, absolutely, but their own court filings show the unlucky acting chief records officer of the National Archives William Fischer patiently and professionally writing to whatever nonsense flack is handling FOIA for DHS. And, well, here’s poor William trying to square what DHS told American Oversight about their records request with the law:
On July 23, 2025, DHS wrote that “text message data generated after April 9, 2025, is no longer maintained.” On August 21, 2025, DHS submitted that it “no longer has the capability to conduct a search of text messages.” If the statements are accurate, please explain how DHS’s record retention policies for text messages meet the requirements of the FRA, including 36 CFR § 1222.26, which requires that DHS “capture, manage, and preserve electronic records with appropriate metadata.”
If you’re confused, so is everyone else. Here’s what happened. American Oversight sued after the government refused to provide records about the deployment of the National Guard in Los Angeles earlier this year. On July 23, DHS basically said, “naw, we don’t keep text message data, and haven’t since April 9, so pound sand.”
After The New York Times reported on it, though, they backtracked, seeming to remember that they were required by law to keep them, so they came up with saying that sure, they keep messages, but no, they won’t tell you how.
DHS also made sure to throw its own FOIA staff under the bus. See, when they told American Oversight that they couldn’t find any records, it’s just because they were too stupid to know where to look! “They explained that public information officers had erroneously concluded that the agency lacked the ability to locate responsive records, without searching for manual screenshots. Those became the department’s official record-keeping practice for text messages since April 9.”
If your own people tasked with responding to records requests don’t know where to look, that is kind of a problem. This looks a lot more like another delay tactic, along with a way to square their previous boast that they just weren’t gonna keep stuff as meaning that they actually somehow did keep stuff, but you just can’t find it.
Can’t blame this one on Mike Waltz.
There’s no reason the administration should really worry that this will have any fallout. The Supreme Court already blessed its refusal to provide any information about the so-called Department of Government Efficiency. Not data from DOGE. Data about DOGE. Because literally having to provide information explaining what type of agency DOGE is would somehow violate the separation of powers, of course.
Why doesn’t DHS just take the Attorney General Pam Bondi route and say that finding one piece of paper will take two years? Just make them cool their heels!
Surely it is just a coincidence that DHS stopped keeping text messages about 10 days after news broke that Mike Waltz of Signalgate fame was found to have been using Signal for not just bombing actions but a wide variety of groups just chattin’ ’bout national security matters.
If they can’t have the disappearing messages app, they’ll just disappear their own messages, thank you. You want to do something right, gotta do it yourself.
