Searchlight New Mexico is a non-profit news organization that provides coverage on many issues of concern to New Mexico residents. Since last year, the department tasked with overseeing foster care and child welfare in New Mexico has been encrypting and routinely deleting its communications, making much of its work essentially untraceable. The leadership of the Children, Youth and Families Department (CYFD) has directed staff to use Signal, a secure communication app, and has set chats to automatically delete. In contrast to standard text messages or emails — which could be accessed by attorneys, reporters and members of the public under the state’s open records laws — messages sent via Signal are all but impossible to retrieve. Once deleted, virtually no trace of a Signal conversation remains, even on the company’s server.