In February of this year, DOGE employees installed a Starlink terminal on the roof of the White House without the approval of technical staff, which security experts have called a possible way to leak data and bypass government protections.
In February of this year, DOGE employees installed a Starlink terminal on the roof of the White House without the approval of technical staff, which security experts have called a possible way to leak data and bypass government protections.
The Washington Post reported this, citing three people familiar with the situation. According to them, the terminal was installed on the roof of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, a building adjacent to the White House. At the same time, the team of specialists responsible for secure communications at the facility was not warned and could not monitor the new connection.
After installation, a Wi-Fi network called Starlink Guest appeared in the White House staff and visitor access area, requiring no basic authentication — just a password. This contradicts established procedures: traditionally, even temporary access at the White House requires a login, password, and expiration date, and all traffic is strictly monitored.
«This connection was not through a VPN, which is required for any device on the internal network. That is, anyone could have gone outside the controlled environment,» said one former government employee.
Starlink connectivity bypassed official data channels and prevented the use of full-featured logging—systems that typically record all outgoing and incoming packets, IP addresses, time and type of connection—creating the risk of unauthorized information leaks, malware infiltration, or even espionage by foreign governments.
Despite the concerns, the U.S. Secret Service said it was aware of the installation and did not consider it a security incident. However, some former officials have already reached out to Democrats in Congress. According to Democratic Congressman Stephen Lynch, the oversight committee is conducting several parallel investigations into the use of Starlink in government agencies.
According to sources, Starlink terminals have also been installed in other federal agencies, including the National Labor Relations Board and the General Services Administration, in addition to the White House. In some cases, DOGE employees have disabled access logs and used AI to analyze large amounts of government data.
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