At the beginning of the year when the new administration took to office, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) was introduced to the federal space tasked with the job of enacting cutbacks. The presence of DOGE (which had been headed by tech billionaire Elon Musk at the time) and its subsequent cutbacks at the Social Security Administration (SSA) sparked immediate backlash from former SSA officials and the public at large.
Now, a chief data officer at the SSA is warning that the data of hundreds of millions of Americans have become vulnerable as a result of DOGE’s actions. Here is what you need to know.
Social Security chief data officer blows whistle on DOGE
SSA Chief Data Officer Charles Borges has recently disclosed that during their time at the SSA, DOGE created a cloud based copy of the SSA’s complete database. According to a whistleblower disclosure that the Government Accountability Project submitted this week to the Office of Special Counsel, “DOGE officials uploaded the dataset to a vulnerable system, without including measures for security or oversight.”
In the whistleblower report, Borges writes the following: “Should bad actors gain access to this cloud environment, Americans may be susceptible to widespread identity theft, lose vital healthcare and food benefits, and the government could be responsible for re-issuing every American a new Social Security number.”
Access to this server was exclusive to DOGE members, with Borges noting that this created “enormous vulnerabilities” due to a lack of verified audits. Furthermore, Borges’ role as Chief Data Officer was also overlooked by DOGE officials who had left him out of the loop of their project entirely. According to a report from the Times, “Borges complaint was filed amid piling concerns that have led to lawsuits seeking to block young software engineers at the agency once helmed by Elon Musk from having access to confidential government data.”
DOGE first sought access to the SSA database in January, however, in March a lawsuit had been taken out which resulted in the entity being blocked from accessing SSA data temporarily. In June, however, the Supreme Court’s ruling favored the Trump Administration, and as a result, DOGE once again gained access to the database.
Andrea Meza, director of campaigns at the Government Accountability Project who is currently serving as Borges’ attorney stated the following: “Mr. Borges raised concerns to his supervisors about his discovery of a disturbing pattern of questionable and risky security access and administrative misconduct that impacts some of the public’s most sensitive data. Mr. Borges’ bravery in coming forward to protect the American public’s data is an important step towards mitigating the risks before it is too late.”
What is the SSA saying?
In the report from the Times, it is noted that, “Despite his role overseeing data at the SSA, Borges said DOGE failed to include him in their project—leaving him to discover the potentially catastrophic ramifications after the fact.” However, according to the SSA, who had written a statement regarding this to the Daily Beast, the agency was “not aware of any privacy breach or compromise and remain dedicated to protecting sensitive personal data.”
The statement from the SSA continues on with the following: “Commissioner Bisignano and the Social Security Administration take all whistleblower complaints seriously. SSA stores all personal data in secure environments that have robust safeguards in place to protect vital information. The data referenced in the complaint is stored in a long-standing environment used by SSA and walled off from the internet. High-level career SSA officials have administrative access to this system with oversight by SSA’s Information Security team.”
The agency is also now said to be backtracking on its cutbacks as it scrambles to rehire a number of the officials that had been let go as part of DOGE’s efforts at the SSA.
“In the past, government agencies have worked hard to keep that information safe and secure, both to protect the American people’s private data and to ensure that government agencies don’t use it for the wrong purposes,” Tim Whitehouse, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, wrote in an email. “All that is out the window now, as Congress and the courts have acquiesced to this dangerous power grab. It has been happening in plain sight for months now.”