The then head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency was facing another kind of threat as a major storm drove through Florida last October. Police were enabled on rental properties they owned as a result of a prank call in a potentially dangerous attack known as “swatting.”
Hurricanes and Milton have caused an online plot torrent, with FEMA officials facing harassment and death threats, according to hundreds of pages of agency emails and other documents obtained by Bloomberg News’ request for the Freedom of Information Act. Records shed new light on how disaster-related misinformation affects government emergency response, sucking up internal resources and putting staff at risk.
Deanne Criswell, who ran FEMA under President Joe Biden, learned about the swatting situation as he was trying to briefly explain television viewers in Milton, one of the most powerful storms developing in the Gulf of Mexico. “It was a very unsettling feeling,” she said in a recent interview.
Many of the attacks outlined in the documents have not been previously reported, including at least seven senior FEMA staff members DOXXING. In these incidents, sensitive personal information such as home address was published online for harassment purposes. Records also reveal the challenges that the agency faced when trying to control the situation.
The incident follows an online wave of uninformation suggesting that FEMA is misrepresenting its response to the hurricanes that hit Florida and North Carolina leading up to the presidential election. Among the exposed claims that were swirling at the time were reports that agency workers seized property from survivors and confiscated donations.
The time and resources of offensive diversion agencies set records straight and protected personnel. “It made my staff nervous,” Chriswell said. “It made the people in the community nervous. They didn’t know who to believe. They didn’t know who to trust.” When President Donald Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Christa Noem cut their staff and funds, including pulling back some of the resources FEMA used in the fall, the threat of misinformation continues to rush to cut staffing and funding. In the aftermath of the fatal Texas flood in July, online conspiracy theory denounced Cloudseed.
“A profit-driven platform model in which sensational falsehood outweighs the de facto update of an emergency ensures that this issue lasts throughout the political cycle and can endanger lives.”
A spokesman for FEMA said in an email that agents will “use internal DHS resources to identify and mitigate personal threats to employees.”
The path of disinformation
Hurricane Helen landed as a Category 4 storm in the middle of the night on September 26th, causing historic floods far more inland, killing at least 250 people. Western North Carolina was a particularly big hit. The flood wiped out small towns and cut off others, but Asheville lost water for more than a month. Almost immediately, FEMA staff had to halt accepting housing assistance applications from survivors and confront false rumors circulating online, including not having enough funds to help them.
FEMA officials and experts believe the rapid spread of disinformation is attributable to the distrust of the region’s historic government and the ratcheting of moderation by social media platforms. Famous figures, including X’s owners Elon Musk and Trump, repeated some of the false claims in the late stages of his bid to seize the White House. For example, Trump said multiple times during his campaign rally that FEMA had directed disaster funds to immigrants.
For example, the agency shared a screenshot taken from the Truth Social Post on October 5th. The GAB post on October 6th was the favorite social media site on the far right, calling for various officials to be treated as “mussolini.” “Only question: Are there enough ropes?” read one of the responses.
Jacyln Rothenberg, a spokesman for the agency at the time, was one of the most targeted futures targeting homeland security, lending customs and border protection agents to provide safety in her home. “Doxxing was so serious that I had to stop tweeting because my safety was in danger,” she said. “I had to stop interviewing, I had to stop putting myself on the record.”
FEMA staff also found that what is called “far-right” users post possible personal information to many officials, including Criswell, Coen, and Rothenberg, internal documents show.
FEMA offline attack
Milton, the second most powerful hurricane, developed off the coast of Florida, and attacks on staff began to migrate from the internet to their homes. After Criswell’s rental properties were attacked, among other “serious threats,” then DHS Executive Director Alejandro Mayorkas approved government vehicles and additional security, protecting the FEMA chief.
Then it happened to someone else. “My Deputy Jenna Peters home was smashed,” Cohen told FEMA’s security team in an October 11 email. Peters did not respond to requests for comment.
The most notable incident was a man who was allegedly “hunting” FEMA staff in a disaster zone in North Carolina. At Chriswell’s order, she said in an email to other top Biden officials: “All FEMA staff and contractors are working to interact with survivors and conduct home inspections, and the search and rescue team stopped following the initial report.”
FEMA has since compiled a workplace protection task force that includes security, intelligence and communications experts to manage incoming threats. Protection measures include using specialized software to flag previously targeted representatives online as there is a risk of more harassment. However, there were limitations to how far the government could have had on content moderation. At the time, an outspoken Republican led by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan was investigating a technology company that claimed the platform was censoring conservative perspectives under federal pressure.
After initially endorsing Zerofox to help promote Takedowns, FEMA later asked the company to terminate requests for removal of all social media content. On each internal document, he said that after staff discussions it was not recommended that agents contract services that have taken action beyond passive threat monitoring. Zerofox declined to comment.
Trump’s team has already oversaw the massive scale of FEMA staffing, fundraising and programming. As part of the contract review, FEMA has ended its agreement with Zerofox, according to a former official familiar with the situation. A FEMA spokesman confirmed that it ended its Zerofox contract in April. For Melissa Ryan, founder of Card Strategy, for Melissa Ryan, a consulting firm that studies the current political situation where civil servants who are often politicized and attacked to provide transparency are a greater obstacle than budget cuts to fight false claims. “Many of the new government’s appointees are Trump’s loyalty, and if they actually try to respond effectively to disinformation, those who try to become targeted by the Magazine and the administration,” she said.
Hirji, Alba and Leopold write for Bloomberg.
