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Comment by the_optimist | Hacker News Reader

Explain please.

The complaint alleges that DOGE was able to get unlimited-permissions admin accounts that were not subject to logging. They also downloaded external repositories that gave users of those repos lots of different IPs. The complaint further alleges that the DOGE person used the combination of these things to "download... more than 10 gigabytes of data from the agency’s case files, a database that includes reams of sensitive records including information about employees who want to form unions and proprietary business documents."

If this is all true, this is basically hacking sensitive data in the open. We already know the current administration has worked to hobble unions. So putting these things together, this act is not only wrong in and of itself, but the data is likely going to be used to harm americans' interests. So, deserving of punishment.

And they fucking illegally fired the IGs who are supposed to act as watchdogs for and light-shiners-on-of blatantly-illegal activity like this in the executive. The ones we added after Nixon's crimes. It was one of the first actions of the administration, blanket firing without actual cause, which is supposed to be required, and without the required notice-period to Congress.

That should have exhausted any benefit of the doubt right off the bat, even among those inclined to think Trump's maybe not great but also some ordinary amount of bad for a politician. You don't do that unless you fully intend to do some crimes. Not only that, they were so goddamn eager to crime that they couldn't wait the 30 days or whatever. They intended to do criminal shit immediately.

I wish the firings of the IGs was something that "Joe Sixpack" understood. Honestly, even that the IGs exist(ed).

(It wouldn't change the opinions of anybody who matters, I suppose.)

If you take a step back and realize that the intent is to utterly destroy the social safety net provided by social security, Medicare, etc that we have all been paying into our entire adult lives, tell me why every citizen affected should not pursue civil and criminal charges of theft and fraud with malicious intent?

And then the means to do so have involved ignoring the courts and bypassing constitutional checks and balances? Please tell me how this isn’t criminal if not treasonous?

Not only did you not explain the original comment, you added more assertions that are significantly more extraordinary without explaining your reasoning for those either.

Sensitive government data was (sure, allegedly) extracted to Russia via an account that was expressly created to hide / not create logs. This is treason. Allegedly.

This administration is doing a lot of things that are borderline treasonous. Hopefully they get prosecuted when they get voted out or ideally get removed form power.

Trump will blanket-pardon anyone who's still on his good side. And maybe some who aren't, just to limit the reach of investigations. And Trump himself's untouchable—while it remains technically possible to criminally prosecute a President for actions in office, it's in-practice impossible short of some unlikely hypothetical scenarios, thanks to the Supreme Court (the Roberts court loves leaving things technically intact, but actually not)

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2025/04/whistleblower-doge-sipho...

If I told you someone went to your bank and demanded the right to setup accounts with permissions to do everything and to have all logging of that users activity disabled, and then a whistleblower pointed out that they downloaded everyone's bank statements, you'd probably be pretty up set.

After all, why do they need unfettered access? Why do they need your bank statements? Why do they need to hide what they're doing with the unfettered access?

That's what's happening here. There is no good explanation other than bad actors

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