A 41-year-old Secret Service trainee was arrested in Glynn County, Georgia, on April 8 and charged with felony eavesdropping after allegedly using a hidden camera disguised as a phone charger to secretly record his roommate at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center.
Joel Canvasser, who joined the Secret Service in the fall of 2025, now faces a felony charge and has had both his security clearance and access to agency systems suspended. The man entrusted with learning to protect the nation's highest officials stands accused of running a weeks-long surveillance operation against the person sleeping in the next bed.
An incident report obtained by the Daily Mail lays out a troubling sequence of events. The victim told officers the ordeal began about a month before the arrest, sometime in March, when his phone charger went missing from his room at the training center. Canvasser allegedly suggested that cleaning staff may have taken it, and offered a replacement.
That replacement charger, police records state, was plugged into a wall outlet beneath the TV and had "coverage of the entire room."
Within days of plugging in the new charger, the victim began receiving strange text messages from unknown numbers. The messages were not random. Police records describe how "over time he began to realize whoever was texting him was simultaneously watching him."
The roommate initially suspected his own phone had been compromised. He placed a band-aid over his phone's camera in an attempt to block any surveillance. But the messages kept coming, and they tracked his movements in real time.
One incident stands out in the police account. The victim was using the bathroom with his phone in his pocket. When he finished, he checked his phone and found a message referencing what he had just done. That moment changed everything.
The agency has faced a string of embarrassing incidents in recent years, from a Secret Service agent accidentally shooting himself at a Philadelphia airport to security breaches at the White House itself.
"It was at this point that the victim realized the individual was not watching him through his phone camera but instead from another device."
The victim turned to Canvasser for help, precisely because Canvasser had a "cyber background." Before applying to become a special agent, Canvasser had served as a civilian analyst assigned to the Office of Strategic Information and Intelligence, a unit responsible for monitoring and assessing threats to the president and others under Secret Service protection.
Canvasser allegedly told his roommate the problem was malware and reset the phone. The strange messages stopped, briefly. About a week later, they resumed.
The victim eventually discovered the truth on his own. Light reflected off the replacement charger at just the right angle, revealing a lens embedded in the device. He told investigators that Canvasser had also entered his room multiple times while he was asleep.
Investigators were shown photos, text messages from multiple unknown numbers, an SD card, and the charger device itself. Officials at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center reported the incident to police after the roommate said he wanted to press charges.
The Secret Service has dealt with security breaches near the White House and external threats to its protective mission. But this case came from inside the ranks, a trainee allegedly targeting the person he lived with.
Secret Service Deputy Director Matthew Quinn did not mince words about the charges.
"The charges are deeply troubling and raise significant concerns about the individual's character and fitness to serve."
Quinn added that trainers at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center acted swiftly once the allegations surfaced, and said the agency would let the judicial process run its course.
"As this matter is now before the courts, we will allow the facts to be presented through the judicial process."
Canvasser's security clearance has been suspended and his access to agency systems revoked. What remains unclear is whether he is still technically employed by the Secret Service or has been formally separated. The exact court and case number for the felony eavesdropping charge have not been publicly identified. Nor has the specific police agency that authored the incident report been named in available reporting.
The case raises hard questions about vetting. Canvasser had already worked inside the Secret Service apparatus as a civilian analyst before applying to become a special agent. He had access to sensitive threat-assessment work. The agency cleared him for training. Yet if the allegations hold, he was allegedly conducting his own covert surveillance operation against a fellow trainee while preparing to join the protective ranks.
Recent incidents have tested public confidence in federal law enforcement readiness, including a shooting near the White House that triggered a heightened Secret Service alert. Internal misconduct only compounds those concerns.
Nothing in Canvasser's public profile hinted at the charges he now faces. He relocated from New York to Michigan to be with his husband Jeffrey, whom he met on Facebook in 2014. The couple married in 2020. Social media images obtained by the Daily Mail show Canvasser smiling alongside Jeffrey.
In one post, Canvasser wrote about his husband: "You are the best decision I have ever made. I know I'm not the easiest person to deal with." He added: "You have shown me patience, compassion, and how to take a step back and breathe, you make me want to be a better person every day just by being you."
Those words land differently now. The man who wrote about patience and self-improvement stands accused of a calculated, invasive surveillance scheme against someone who trusted him enough to ask for help.
Meanwhile, broader questions about leadership and accountability within federal security agencies continue to swirl in Washington.
The Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Georgia serves as the primary training ground for dozens of federal law enforcement agencies. Trainees live in close quarters. Trust between roommates is not optional, it is a baseline requirement for the environment to function. If a trainee cannot be trusted not to spy on the person in the next room, the vetting process that put him there failed.
The felony eavesdropping charge now moves through the courts. The evidence, the charger with its hidden lens, the SD card, the text messages from unknown numbers, the timeline of escalating surveillance, will be weighed by a judge and jury. Canvasser has not been convicted.
But the damage to the agency's credibility does not wait for a verdict. The Secret Service asks the public to trust that the people behind the earpieces and dark suits are the best of the best. When one of those people allegedly turns a phone charger into a spy camera and aims it at his own roommate, that trust takes a hit no press statement can fix.
If the agency cannot catch a threat living in its own training barracks, Americans are right to ask what else it might be missing.
