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https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/feb/08/judge-tem...
They have tried to get data of all payments to US citizens including pensions, 401k, benefits and allowances etc. All foreign aid and diplomacy payments are included, and they have been charged with trying to find ways to illegaly stop these payments.
Be very careful in supporting what Musk and DOGE do. They are unelected, and have been given unprecedented access to government data. Scary times are ahead.
It's not the stupidest argument, but it applies to every last staff member of the us treasury.
None of the bureaucrats are elected, and this data has been gathered by the government to perform its functions. Insofar as Elon's team are pretty much just a couple of new bureaucrats bought in by Trump; they can use this data to streamline government. The office of president is pretty powerful; odds are he can appoint people to do work for him. It'd be crazy if he can't.
The problem is the government shouldn't be storing a whole bunch of sensitive data. It is like being shocked that someone in the NSA is actually looking at all the data they collect - there is a big problem there, but it is that they're collecting and storing the data. Obviously once they have it people will look at it. That is why it is being gathered and stored. It should be criminal to store on the grounds of privacy; but it isn't.
"On the grounds of privacy it should be criminal for the agency authorised to fund medical treatments to store people's sensitive medical records related to treatments they pay for" sounds like a much less defensible proposition than "on the grounds of privacy it should be criminal for what is nominally the government's IT advice body to hire a bunch of script kiddies without proper vetting or any genuine auditing credentials to download said sensitive medical records, store them as insecurely as they like, cross reference them with whatever other sensitive data they find on the grounds that they might be able to use them to tweet dubious claims about waste"...
We can call anyone a script kiddie. I know some people who do data analysis for government health departments. Calling them a script kiddie wouldn't be respectful but they are youthful and do run scripts. The process appointing Musk is was more public and accountable than the one appointing my friends. Musk even gets public debate on the subject of whether hiring his people is a good idea or not. They're being very well vetted.
People are weird. I feel like a lot of ink gets spilled pointing out that one day the government will be controlled by people you don't like no matter who you are. But that argument doesn't seem to get through to all these people who panic every time it turns out that democracies don't always elect the same people with the same ideologies over and over. Government isn't trustworthy and people shouldn't be discovering that en masse in February 2025.
I mean, even if it was as simple "$n recurring payments for $drug to $SSN over $period", that absolutely is sensitive private information, especially when linked to originally entirely separate but equally critical records about someone's employment by a body tasked with firing people...
It absolutely makes sense for records to be audited with great care by qualified people in an airgapped environment with anonymization by default, but that's not what's happening here, is it? It's like I'm actually pretty convinced that it's necessary for the state to be able to arrest and incarcerate people, but I'm not convinced that the "due process" bit doesn't matter or that untrained edgelords to be making the decisions on incarceration is fundamentally the same as having police, prosecution and a trial to lock people up. I don't think the answer to the fact I might not like every executive the electorate votes in (or every law that exists) is to defund police, I think the answer is to have due process, and not due process that is de facto abolished on the day a new executive assumes power. It's much the same with governments being able to store some data
> We can call anyone a script kiddie. I know some people who do data analysis for government health departments. Calling them a script kiddie wouldn't be respectful but they are youthful and do run scripts.
I think it's a pretty accurate description for a 19 year old whose short and undistinguished career history involves being fired from an internship at a cybersecurity firm for leaking its secrets to a competitor, and soliciting DDoS attacks on The Com.
Certainly better than "very well vetted".
I imagine young people you know that do data analysis for health departments have more auditing experience, fewer red flags, very carefully controlled access to data and senior people training them and checking their work. They would, I imagine, also be competent enough to be unlikely to confuse $8b and $8m when estimating cost savings...
Like tax returns? What legitimate need does management consultant have to see the individual tax returns of any person without any accountable transparency?
It gets back to this basic issue of what this data is that I don't want anyone to know but the government needs to have a permanent record of. The overlap of those two things should be tiny. If it is so terrible that Musk & team can't look at it, why is it OK to be recorded? It isn't like the security of these departments is expected to be that great; data leaks. All the data that a large organisation holds is likely to become public sooner or later even if that happens because it is sold on the darknet. And the employees that looks it it regularly are who-knows-who doing who-knows-what on a good day.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/doge/judge-denies-states-bi...
Nobody complained about "unelected" Obama or Biden appointees accessing the treasury or SSN, but now that Trump is exposing corruption en-masse and stopping the gravy train, many folks are suddenly very concerned. The FUD is unfortunately not working.
All this will probably go to the Supreme Court. And just like Biden ignored the Supreme Court ruling on student loans and even boasted about it proudly on twitter - saying they cannot block the executive, the precedent was also setup for Trump to do the same.
https://imgur.com/gallery/doge-math-wow-very-bad-much-corrup...
It is not illegal. You can bookmark this comment for when it finally winds its way through the courts. Whether you love or hate the idea, this is a clearly legitimate exercise of executive authority and this judge is going to get smacked down hard, and the foolish abuse of TROs is going to wind up getting their use by lower-court judges severely curtailed. Read the legal justification in the orders yourself.
Unfortunately a lot of people have lost their minds over this, and are burning through their credibility - some judges and journalists included. I don't know why, other than Musk is a moron and a polarizing figure. The Alantic breathlessly quoting government employees terrified to file their taxes because they're afraid Elon Musk will have their bank account number and routing info had my eyes rolling into the back of my head. This is fearmongering, not journalism.
I don't understand why we can't oppose this without reporting on it honestly. The problem on matters like this seems to be getting much worse over time.
> They are unelected, and have been given unprecedented access to government data.
So is everyone else in the Treasury Department.
> They have simply...
Oh yes, because this is all very simple. What is "waste"? How is it defined? Who decides what is waste and what isn't?
> This Executive Order establishes the Department of Government Efficiency to implement the President’s DOGE Agenda, by modernizing Federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity.
There's nothing about government spending programs or staffing in there. Also the EO includes this funny sentence: "USDS shall adhere to rigorous data protection standards."
We see every day how technically inept and incompetent he is, I just wonder when the other shoe is going to drop for the average observer.
It is the emperor's new clothes writ large, and why I find Bezos's comment about taking him at face value so funny, is he slyly telling us he thinks the guy a fool, a troll, and nothing more?
We’re on a community that discusses, amongst other things, the running of firms and startups.
Just because someone is simply tasked with X, doesn’t mean we all agree to ignore the big picture. The big picture of
1) Complex projects
2) Security
3) High functioning teams
4) Ethics
This is fundamentally unethical, and irresponsible. I 100% think you agree with me on the irresponsible part.
You may sincerely stand on the reduction of waste, which frankly no one is going to argue. But a team this small, for a project this vital? This fast?
What was that saying? Good, Fast, Cheap? Pick 2? Why the flippty flip, is anyone here OK with fast and cheap?
Hell, What precisely are these people doing? What are the project milestones? Where can we see what’s going on?
And if the transparency of their actions is a cybersecurity risk - then which independent body is checking them?
Edit: Forget their elected, unelected status. Why should we turn around and trust them? What are they planning to do. I don’t want more outrage - you could find the whole thing was running on alien souls. What is the replacement method, and what is the gain we can expect from the changes?
If they’ve taken charge - then they should do the work, and do it well. And if it’s tech related or s/w related stuff, then talk about it, and explain.
More seriously, if it was true it would be a stupid task, with stupidly inappropriate people selected to do it. What is actually happening is idiot destruction. Whether that was the intent or simply the obvious outcome of stupidity is irrelevant to the damage being done.
I can't believe I'm reading such comments