DOGE Takeover of USDS Allows Them to Surveil the US Government from the Inside

Much efficiency. Such government. Wow.

Just pronounce it "dodgy service"

A partial answer from the OP:

Who exactly is going to be part of DOGE is a particularly thorny issue, because there are technically two DOGEs. One is the permanent organization, the revamped USDS—now the US DOGE Service. The other is a temporary organization, with a termination date of July 4, 2026. Creating this organization means the temporary DOGE can operate under a special set of rules. It can sequester employees from other parts of the government and can accept people who want to work for the government as volunteers. Temporary organizations can also hire what are known as special government employees—experts in a given field who can bypass the rigors of the regular federal hiring processes. They’re also not subject to the same transparency requirements as other government employees.

Hopefully they have better things to move on to.

Keep their jobs if they kiss the ring

> What happens to all its engineers and developers?

The clever ones will leave. The naïve ones will become legal fodder for the rest of their careers. The lucky ones will make an impression on a billionaire and become rich from the proximity.

On the whole, the country may benefit from having young, talented and naïve engineers engaging in tasks at the boundaries of the legally permissable. It works for VC, after all. (The difference being you don't get personally bankrupted with legal bills in startups if you're wrong.)

Same thing as what happened to engineers at X. Asked to pledge loyalty and demonstrate their usefulness to Musk (and Trump), otherwise be fired.

What do you expect when the ideal Silicon Valley corporation is structured as a dictatorship? People have been conditioned by the industry to accept authoritarianism in their lives and work, and this is the end result.

It's Musk, not Trump. Musk can do no wrong in the eyes of 20 year old programmers who believe a tablet on wheels is going to make them rich one day.

IME, Trump support on HN probably follows the general population: 50/50 among folks who care to vote, who knows among folks who have far less to lose.

My feeling is that people here generally assume that the bad things will always happen to other folks, so that these articles appear as divisive and irrelevant.

It's one of the great Gell-Mann amneisia-style ironies that folks here are generally very understanding of why online privacy doesn't work when folks adopt "privacy doesn't matter if you have nothing to hide"-

these same folks immediately fail to understand that if the government can oppress trans/queer/bipoc/native/women/etc folks or put down labor, then the same group will exert its power over them. It doesn't help that these same folks probably don't even see state oppression as state oppression, as it just shows up as "what normal, Real humans do".

I suppose position might not be incorrect for folks who are sufficiently privileged and very bought into the idea that they live at the historically necessary end of history.

After all, their ancestors committed pretty horrible crimes for which they have never felt one bit of blow back. So they might simply be right that the boot will always be on other folks faces, forever.

I doubt it (I don't think that the boot on their faces is a thing that they can see at such close proxemity), but they also think I'm an idiot and I'm not in an impartial place where I could judge which of us is right.

It's also entirely possible that the flagging is being done by a small minority. I don't know precisely how flagging on HN works as I've never done it, but I can't imagine it's terribly difficult to game and there's a definite motive.

I wouldn't be shocked to find out it was all one account, really.

It was already on the "sous-vide" setting for the past few years, now it's been set to "broil" overnight.

I’m still baffled that MORE people voted for this sad, sick, small excuse of a man as president this time around. Very disappointed in my fellow Americans who are either too hateful, willfully ignorant, or ambivalent to let this happen to all of us. Shameful.

They legally don't have secrets but they practically do have secrets.

Because the social security numbers, health records, or geographic details of people who have interacted with the government shouldn’t be open to the general public, for one.

They have lots of confidential information. Some examples:

* Many agencies - for example, the IRS, Medicare, Social Security, FEMA, agencies that provide loans, or any other service - have lots of information on individual citizens.

* Many agencies have information or make decisions that would distort markets if leaked - it's release must be carefully managed - such as the departments of Treasury, Labor, Commerce; or the Federal Reserve.

* The Department of Justice has lots of information pertaining to lawsuits and investigations that must be kept secret.

etc.

When people think classified, they think UFOs and Assassinations. But something as simple as which agencies and agents are investigating which issues, companies and people, can be unclassified, effectively giving private interests opportunities to shut things down.

The VA has PHI of veterans. You need to have a clearance to work with that data.

Aside from the other reasons already mentioned, fully public agencies would be astoundingly inefficient and ineffective. Government agencies are already subject to an intense amount of scrutiny (some sincere, some extremely bad faith) and if every email, bulletin, roadmap, etc. were public by default agencies would become even more catatonic than they already are. There needs to be a space for reasonable disagreement and problem-solving without the possibility of immense personal, professional, and political consequences.

It could also make accountability harder because it would encourage avoiding paper trails whenever possible, even when employees believe they are acting within the law.

Is FOIA the right amount of openness? I don't know, probably not, but it's definitely better than public-by-default.

You have to pass a "public trust" clearance for alot of Gov departments. They vary in intensity. For example, GSA and USDA are both pretty quick and easy. Dept of Ed, treasury, and IRS are way more in-depth.

I am going to venture a guess...

They have access to all the data.

Streamline/reform existing systems means train AI on the data.

> access to unclassified data in every government agency.

Is this even meaningful? We have the FoIA, can’t any company acquire unclassified data any time they want?

I suppose it’s an ease-of-access thing, but for a large corp it seems you would be constantly data mining the government with FoIA requests.

It would come down to the individual departments.

They demand access. Some departments give it up. Others say no. It goes over to the inspector general of the department, who may end up consulting with the Attorney General, who will surely approve. If that doesn't work, they go to the courts to resolve.

That's not supposed to ever happen, but it's the rules for when one department of the government is fighting another.

So it's not as easy as the article makes it sound. But it's either a significant blow to the Deep State or a pogrom of the civil service, depending on your point of view.

They’ve always had that ability and mission, since conception. This isn’t something they’ve been “supercharged” with.

The article you’re reading is saying that it’s possible that existing mission has been co-opted.

Did they get supercharged or did they get co-opted?

> The DOGE is, effectively, a group of auditors.

That's a pretty big leap. What is it based on?

The OP article says the new USDS's program seems designed to identify and weed out political opponents.

Not realizing the implications of an oligarch who bought his way into the federal government with apparent conflicts of interest is equally reaching and dogmatic. This article asks the right questions. We should be concerned about this and keep a watchful eye on it.

> Of course they're going to need to have access to information on the organizations they are auditing.

And Criminal conspiracy is just making plans with friends. The details matter and the details are that DOGE is structured for maximum access/capability and minimum oversight from congress, other agencies, and the public.