It's not really a breach if it is from the same organization (i.e. the executive branch). It may lead to one.
Why
Take CCP is an example to form an emotional attachment to.
Their sense of world order requires there be a shadowy threat actor such as Russia or China, instead of the obvious truth that this is American capitalism operating as designed.
"Requires a shadowy threat actor such ad Russia and..."? Trump is trying to normalize US-Russian relations.
"This is American capitalism operating as designed" - Honestly what do you mean?
Trump and Musk's reforms looks different enough from anything else tried in the last 25 years that I am super curious to see where it goes. I'm not into fear porn that this is the end of the world, H*tler, or whatever.
I'm also curious about Billionaires being independently evil - what do you mean, are virtually all billionaires evil? Are they really morally worse people than the average or do they just have access to more resources and influence?
Arbitrarily firing arbitrary amounts of federal employees on the belief that this will make the gov't function better? Are you also currently in talks to buy the Brooklyn Bridge?
Are you are okay with Trump splitting Ukraine with Russia and blessing Russia's war on Ukraine?
There are historical parallels with Hitler annexing other countries. You not being into that reality is a choice.
Things will get better once more brown people are at Guantanamo. /s
Probably you wouldn't do that.
I do understand why this administration is trying very hard to centralize authority because it's faster than vetting a bunch of people they can trust to act on their behalf. But on the other hand federal employees making it as hard as possible to do what they perceive as bad/immoral is a soft-check on the executive.
In fact, if you were a cto and you carried out this request without any kind of due diligence or vetting, you'd probably be legally and criminally liable for it.
The same applies to anyone under the cto management (so basically all IT); they don't respond to the ceo, their top boss is the cto. I know, in smaller companies, where the ceo is also the owner, there is a tendency to confuse the boundaries of the roles - in my experience, it is up to the cto to politely deny these requests and educate the ceo on the "why"; if he still wants to move forward, he can hire another cto
Since the president and members of Congress are not posted up in there 24/7, the IRS has created internal controls and procedures so that when the president or Congress asks for a report, the IRS can give them an accurate one. It’s these controls that people are thinking of. The article has an example:
> Political officials do not have access to the Integrated Data Retrieval System, or IDRS. The IRS’s commissioner, national taxpayer advocate and even senior officials in the office of the chief information officer, do not have IDRS access either.
“Do not have access” in this case means they have made internal rules, essentially denying themselves access, in order to better document that they are doing what Congress wants them to do.
This is true in many agencies, and one of the concerns with DOGE is that they seem to be trying to circumvent these controls. That may impair the ability of an agency to meet their legislative mandate (e.g. protecting taxpayer privacy), and also impair the agency’s ability to even document what they are doing.
So the answer to “what oversight” is that Congress ultimately has the power of oversight, and the executive branch has the responsibility to operate in such a way that they can accurately satisfy requests from Congress.
(and the fact that the executive branch can be sued out of their pants for civil damages).
if the government agrees to allowing itself to be sued...
> The USAID systems the DOGE team tried to access included personnel files and security systems, including classified systems beyond the security level of at least some of the DOGE employees, according to three of the sources. The systems also included security clearance information for agency employees, two of the sources said.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/usaid-sec...
So some agency, authorized by the president or not, barging in asking for read/write access to card numbers should not be allowed, because the data aren’t the president’s to give.
Same should be valid for social security numbers. You can’t guarantee that 100% of DOGE’s employees are benign, or that they are have the best opsec, or that their devices are not exploitable (or exploited already). So you minimize this attack surface by minimizing access.
Because if anything happens, then you can be 100% certain that Musk/Trump will not voluntarily answer for it/make people whole. They will at best be taken to court where they will fight for years while the victims suffer the consequences in the present.
So you do everything you can to prevent this nebulous, blameless “we meant well, we couldn’t know this would happen, we’re sorry for all the pain, let’s move forward together” outcome.