New reporting in the Washington Post indicates that a former DOGE software engineer allegedly copied Americans’ personal information from two Social Security databases onto a thumb drive, with the intention of uploading the data onto the servers of a company where he had recently obtained employment.
These two databases include the records of approximately 500 million living and dead beneficiaries, risking exposure of Social Security numbers, birthplaces, dates, citizenship, race, ethnicity, and parents’ names.
“The Post reporting details the latest in a series of serious data breaches on the part of DOGE staff, enabled by an administration apparently more interested in leveraging Americans’ personal data to advance political and personal agendas — rather than serving the public,” said NCPSSM President and CEO Max Richtman in a press statement Thursday.
Richtman says the alleged breach was a “direct consequence” of last year’s ill-advised Supreme Court ruling that granted DOGE “unfettered access” to sensitive Social Security data.
The newly reported breach clearly is part of a pattern. Recall last year’s allegations that DOGE uploaded personal Social Security data to an unsecured cloud server — and that DOGE employees offered to share Americans’ data with a third-party political operative to “overturn election results.” A federal judge found that the IRS had provided taxpayers’ personal data to ICE as part of Trump’s brutal crackdown on immigrants. Trump appointed Social Security Commissioner Frank Bisignano to the dual role of “IRS CEO” last year in what advocates worry is a move to facilitate consolidation of Americans’ data for inappropriate (and illegal) purposes.
Our senior Social Security expert, Maria Freese, lays the blame not just on ‘rogue’ DOGE employees, but on the Trump administration itself.
“From the very beginning, the Administration has been decimating the federal workforce and undermining the government’s ability to serve the public. A lot of this has been couched in terms of searching for ‘waste and fraud,’ even though the Social Security Administration has an extremely low fraud rate and has always been one of the most efficient agencies in the federal government.” – Maria Freese, Senior Policy Expert, NCPSSM
Advocates fear that these breaches are part of a larger agenda, which Freese believes is intended to “undermine public confidence in the program,” so that Social Security can eventually be “privatized and sold to the highest bidder.”
NCPSSM Social Security expert Maria Freese (right) on the latest episode of “Capital Quick Takes”
Democratic lawmakers have been increasingly agitated by reports of continued DOGE abuse of Americans’ personal data. Reps. John Larson (D-CT) and Richard Neal (D-MA) responded immediately to the allegations in the Washington Post:
“These continued revelations demand a full investigation with accountability if wrongdoing is confirmed. This is criminal, and the result of a year of lawlessness and mismanaging the people’s data that Republicans have insisted wasn’t happening.” – Reps John Larson (D-CT) and Richard Neal (D-MA)
Public Citizen co-president Lisa Gilbert also demanded accountability. “This massive, illegal, and horrific breach of Americans’ most sensitive data has confirmed… that the Trump administration allowing DOGE to infiltrate our government without oversight created fertile ground for abuse, and in this case of an exceptionally egregious kind.”