DHS Tells 40,000 Exposed Employees to Develop a More Mysterious Vibe

WASHINGTON—THIS IS PARODY. In response to reports that a data breach exposed personnel information affecting more than 40,000 Department of Homeland Security employees, DHS has unveiled what it calls the first truly modern layer of federal protection: asking employees to become much harder to describe.

The new program, known internally as Project Ambient Fog, does not attempt to repair any particular system, strengthen access controls or answer the increasingly awkward question of why a department built around identifying vulnerabilities apparently maintained a staff directory with the emotional durability of a community-theater mailing list. Instead, employees will receive training in the fine art of seeming like someone who may or may not work in an office near a highway.

“The old model of security relied too heavily on passwords, encryption and knowing who is supposed to have the list,” said a fictional senior DHS administrator while standing beside a presentation slide containing only the word Perhaps. “The new model is human ambiguity. If someone asks what you do, you say, ‘A little of this, a little of that.’ If they ask where you work, you laugh softly and look at a bird.”

Under the policy, affected employees will be encouraged to eliminate distinguishing traits from professional biographies. Job titles such as “special agent,” “intelligence analyst” and “border operations coordinator” will be replaced with neutral descriptions including “calendar user,” “attends meetings” and “has access to a lanyard.” Employees whose names have already appeared online will be offered optional aliases drawn from a federally approved pool of people who sound like they own one sensible jacket: Chris, Morgan, Taylor and, for senior leadership, “Drew From Procurement.”

The first unexpected complication emerged Tuesday, when officials discovered that an agency devoted to strategic vagueness cannot easily hold a press briefing. The department’s spokesperson opened with a statement acknowledging that “something occurred involving certain individuals connected to an organization in the general vicinity of government.” Reporters then asked whether the department was confirming a breach. The spokesperson stared at the seal behind him for eleven seconds, whispered “weather is changing,” and left through a door that had not been there at the start of the briefing.

But the true test came when congressional offices requested a detailed explanation of how DHS planned to prevent another exposure. The department responded with a 312-page plan titled Regarding Several Matters, in which every proposed safeguard had been replaced by phrases such as “appropriate measures,” “relevant stakeholders” and “the usual stuff, but heightened.” One staffer familiar with the fictional rollout said the document was initially rejected because it contained a page number, which investigators worried might reveal that the department had a sequence.

Agency managers have also been instructed to monitor employees for signs of excessive personal specificity. A pilot program at one DHS office flagged a worker after she mentioned owning a golden retriever, prompting supervisors to place her in a temporary Identity Reduction Seminar. By lunch, she had been issued a gray sweater, a reusable water bottle with no stickers and a new approved answer to every question: “I’ve been around.”

The department insists the effort is not about blaming employees for being identifiable human beings in a system that stored their identifying information. “Absolutely not,” said the fictional administrator. “We are merely asking the workforce to meet us halfway by becoming the kind of people no database, enemy, colleague or spouse could ever fully remember.”

By Wednesday afternoon, Project Ambient Fog had become so successful that DHS could no longer locate the official who announced it.