Supreme Court allows DOGE to access social security data | Hacker News Reader

Supreme Court allows DOGE to access social security data

nbcnews.com

165 pointsanigbrowl126 comments

The DOGE team included several convicted teenage hackers, one known as 'big balls', messing around in government systems and copying data to random laptops.

Fantastic.

I'll be interested to browse this sensitive data at some point when it inevitably becomes public in the next few years as a result of this kakistocracy.

> The DOGE team included the teenage hackers

It's amusing to me how so many people want to believe technical workers within the government are apparently all crusty, old, 50-something's instead of young "kids" in their twenties and thirties.

NSA, every branch of the military, and more are bursting at the seams with twenty-somethings that have access to some of the most sensitive information on the planet... yet nobody bats an eye.

Then we can consider the technical staff at places such as Experian, Capital One, and more... they're all fairly young too.

This has turned into quite the political narrative... "twenty-somethings have access to your data - be afraid, very afraid!"

There's a big difference in consequences. Military, copy wrong data to random laptop -> court martial.

Are you suggesting there are no consequences for government employees who willfully steal and/or leak confidential data?

The Espionage Act of 1917, Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, and Economic Espionage Act, among others, beg to differ.

with this administration, nobody is suggesting that at all. there is no doubt there are no consequences if you're taking orders directly from the supreme leader or his immediate staff. that's a certainty.

Wait, which administration are you talking about?

The one with a convicted criminal at the head of it who's been having a ball abusing his office because of an "immunity" that the Supreme Court invented specifically for him.

Prosecuting crimes under those acts requires an AG who's qualified and isn't kowtowing to a President more than willing to pardon traitors and a judiciary that isn't blindly following a conservative agenda.

We are fucked without even the benefit of lube.

> Are you suggesting there are no consequences for government employees who willfully steal and/or leak confidential data?

Depends on who your friends in government are.

> The Espionage Act of 1917, Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, and Economic Espionage Act, among others, beg to differ.

Assaulting police officers and trying to overthrow the government is also illegal. People have been convicted of it. And yet if you know the right people you won't suffer any consequences:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pardon_of_January_6_United_Sta...

Wow, and here I thought it's because the guy calls himself "Big Balls" and has a career in .. Discord crypto scams? You know, hacker as in "criminal", just too stupid to appear on Brian Krebs.

No, it was just the age apparently.

Are you alleging the government did not conduct the normal and required background checks/investigations for security clearances in Coristine's case?

Am I talking to GPT? Is your knowledge cutoff 2 years ago? Invoke the web tool, do the research. Bizarre redirect into statute reading, tremendously boring.

I’m thinking this is just one of those that’s become emotionally invested in defending a certain group for some reason and he’s going to make an argument against anything he perceives as a slight towards them.

> one of those that’s become emotionally invested in defending a certain group for some reason

Sunk cost fallacy is a hell of a thing. It's why Q-Anon was able to grow.

The current government certainly hasn't shown much reverence for following established protocols.

I'm not sure what what op meant. At least two people there were teenage hackers, but not in a positive sense. They were part of crime organisations.

But even concentrating on the age part - people in their 20s are working NSA and others. They're extremely unlikely to have access to the most sensitive information unsupervised since they're not senior enough. And definitely don't have a Yolo level decision making responsibilities. The restrictions, reporting, clearances and rules following in some of those places are unlike anything Doge ever did.

Teenagers, as you say, are entrusted by the government with weapons that can destroy and cause untold amount of damage on personnel and property and nobody has complained about that. There even 17-year-olds with such responsibility. Also, plenty of people in their early 20s either have access to sensitive data or have access to code accessing such data.

You say entrusted like it's some great honor. Teenagers are _used_ in wars because they are easy to manipulate, indoctrinate and control.

> weapons that can destroy and cause untold amount of damage on personnel and property and nobody has complained about that.

Yeah... No.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_protests_against_the_V...

"Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?" was about teens being sent out as well.

> It's amusing to me how so many people want to believe technical workers within the government are apparently all crusty, old, 50-something's instead of young "kids" in their twenties and thirties.

The word I used was 'teenage'.

These NEW 20 year olds are scary!

The whole 'big balls' thing is a silly ad-hominem that weakens your argument.

I've worked with payment processing and some of the guys I saw makes 'big balls' look like an experienced and reliable custodian. Not to mention the high turnover, bargain priced overseas software outsourcing sweatshops.

I don’t know that that makes the argument for them having access to this data any better.

> The whole 'big balls' thing is a silly ad-hominem that weakens your argument.

It's not an ad-hom, it's a metric to gauge the maturity of the teenager granted such high level access and responsibility.

BB is a script kiddie. How would you know how good his DOGE performance is to make a valid comparison.

"Ad-hominem" translates as "to the person" and means an argument that attacks the person they're arguing against rather than actually addressing the topic being discussed.

Here, the topic is a person. It's not an ad-hominem to describe facts about a person when your argument is explicitly about that person.

You're claiming that it's a logical fallacy to consider the conduct of people running an organization in order to evaluate its trustworthiness. That's absurd. Next time, take context into account when copy-pasting other people's arguments.

No this is the DOGE team that was demanding that none of their access be logged while also requesting access with no limits from any device at any time.

All jokes aside I’m confused why some people are responding to valid criticisms of this team by saying that we only care because they’re young.

Because they don't have valid defenses or counter-arguments.

Not only were the kids, and they were kids, they were also convicted criminals.

I don't know anyone who has worked with young 20 somethings and thought that they should have unrestricted access to sensitive data. This is not a comment on these people specifically, it's a comment on all people of that age. I include myself in that group. Under no circumstances should I have been allowed that kind of access at 22.

Right, but that's a comment on yourself, even if you meant that for everyone else. Society absolutely trusts 20 somethings for sensitive data all the time.

Don't give me the bullshit about "this situation". Go to your nearest hospital and notices a sea of young nurses handling you and your family's medical data on a clipboard, paper, and a very poorly secured 20 year old workstation.

You are inconsistent, and you will continue to be inconsistent. In fact, your bank account info is known by the teller who has similar qualifications, your purchases and address is known by the customer service representative hired straight out of high school or in a call center in Egypt, and so much more.

This talking point is entirely a political cudgel that only makes sense to the kind of folk that do not think past their favorite politician's tweets. On that fact, wanna know who's been managing your letters/calls that you've been sending your politician? These ones know your phone number, and any modern filter will be looking for your address.

Generically, the social security tech arm probably hires 20 somethings that have a way to access that data as well.

> Go to your nearest hospital and notices a sea of young nurses handling you and your family's medical data on a clipboard, paper, and a very poorly secured 20 year old workstation.

If you ignore the core difference - scale - you won't be able to see the difference. Young nurse won't be able to leak all data on all people even if those local papers and workstation are left on the sidewalk for anyone to see

But what’s different is the lack of security review, clearance, oversight, monitoring, and review. It’s actually less about age and more about accountability and oversight of access, with transparency to all use and access to every oversight function now and in the future. The fact they’re young correlates well with poor judgement, but that’s irrelevant. Everyone can demonstrate poor judgement, or malicious action. The demand their activity be unrecorded and unreviewable creates the perception of malicious intent and the fact of their youth makes their judgement impeachable without review.

I did have it (early email system).

I abused that access, and almost got fired.

Taught me a big lesson.

Snowdon, in his biography, recalls working with other 20-somethings in his work at the NSA. They abused their access egregiously. They were looking at people’s nudes and stuff.

NSA was, and probably still is recruiting kids right out of college.

I bet you also think men in their 80s shouldn’t run the country

They certainly haven’t done a great job of it.

I had access to nuclear emergency / war operations information and systems at 16-18. But it was far from unrestricted. I was working through a school program on a hazardous release modeling software system and needed access and everything was logged and reviewed. As it should be anywhere; and all my access to sensitive data over the following 30 years also was highly surveilled and I never had a problem with it because it’s sensitive data. This protects not just everyone else but me as well - I can demonstrate what I did with it was justified. It’s not about age it’s about accountability and judgement and these guys show neither.

That sounds interesting, I can't imagine such a thing being allowed. Can you tell us more about the program and what it involved?

It was some program between the federal programs in town and the school that provided for essentially internships. After mine was over I was offered a part time job. I had to go through a security clearance but being a kid I didn’t have much history to research. It’s not like I had a top secret clearance or anything, just enough for building access and basic non-prod development.

No, the joke is your naive statement. Unless you've been under a rock the last ten or so years, you'd understand how incredibly stupid the whole DOGE debacle is.

All the collected info will soon either be used against us or sold to the highest bidder. (No, that's not paranoia, that's how the current administration acts.)

It’s all fun and games until someone misreads the tone of your post on HN :(

Poor writing skills can be improved with practice. Besides, how will you know you suck at communicating, unless somebody tells you?

Same goes for context and understanding, no? ;)

You are the one in error here. You apparently skipped over the word 'valid'.

It's even worse than that. Right after they did this, intrusion attempts were made from Russia using their new credentials.

It is public knowledge that they were compromised and... just... nobody cared?

The US IC uses convicted hackers all the time. I was shocked when I learned that certain felons can still get a TS clearance, as long as they stay clean.

Source?

Personal experience. Sorry, I cannot provide anything else. Believe me or don't believe me. I had clearances for over 40 years, now I'm retired.

So do faang.

I don't mean to sound like a broken record, but we prove time-and-time-again that the GOP proudly elects puppets and lets them do whatever they want, and they barely care about governing, as long as they get the tax breaks in for the rich ASAP.

This is a great way to arrest someone when you need to get rid of them. When they work for you, you turn a blind eye and let them do what they want.

When you want to get rid of them, because they for example are disloyal, you start an investigation and arrest them for corruption or treason.

Basically how Russia and China work right?

Pretty much out of the dictators handbook.

> The conservative-majority court, with its three liberal justices objecting, granted an emergency application filed by the Trump administration asking the justices to lift an injunction issued by a federal judge in Maryland.

Wild. I remember when it was presumed that Conservative meant protector of individual freedoms, rights.

Were these the same conservatives trying to argue that chattel slavery should be legal, at the discretion of the state?

Republicans, not conservatives, might rightfully have been the party of protecting individual rights and freedoms. Back in the 1850s.

It's really a stretch to say that "individual freedoms" means protecting my data held by one federal agency from access by another federal agency.

It's fine if you want to call it a bad idea... but stopping this access really doesn't give me the freedom to do anything.

I mean DOGE is ... not a federal agency.

At least that's what the administration says when they want to argue that it's not subject to FOIA.

>I remember when it was presumed that Conservative meant protector of individual freedoms, rights.

Presumed by whom? I've always understood Conservatism to be explicitly Christian in its ideology, opposed to womens' rights, "non-traditional" sexual orientation and gender identity, abortion, multiculturalism, pornography, modern art, rock music, drug use and a litany of other things. The freedom to think and act outside of the box of "traditional American values and culture" has rather more often been championed by progressives and leftists.

Conservatives do support the individual freedom to own a gun, though. For individuals of a certain phenotype.

> Conservatives do support the individual freedom to own a gun, though. For individuals of a certain phenotype.

Which is funny, right? Their whole justification was to fight back if the government becomes authoritarian, when it turns out they love an authoritarian government that enforces their values.

There're more than one justification given. Gun rights supporters, like the Republican party itself (and the Democratic party too, of course), are a coaltion of different interests, and not all self-described convervatives would consider gun rights to be an important issue. Some people support gun rights for self-defense, others for hunting. Really it's only the wingnut conspiracy theorists who are silly enough to believe that they could successfully fight back against the modern militarized state.

Hunting is very much a cultural issue, passed down the generations by family tradition, so you'd be hard pressed to change minds on that.

That does not pass the smell test. If the issue was hunting, they would be fine with restrictions on non hunting guns, background checks etc. Hunting is a sound good excuse.

Keep in mind that politicians receive funding from the military-industrial complex and other lobbying groups, so they don't necessarily represent the interests of their constituents.

Except those constituents punish politicians and opposite party when those go against guns lobby. This is not a case of politicians going against what their constituents want.

That's not how money in politics works. Besides, among the issues that are most important to voters, guns are rarely among them.

Legislating them is important, most people with empathy would like the mass shootings to stop, but there are plenty of selfish people without it who don't see it as a problem.

They've even tried to intellectualize dictatorships by rebranding it as "unitary executive theory". They surround it with philosophical reasoning but it fundamentally boils down to "the president should be able to do whatever he wants guys!!!"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitary_executive_theory

It is ironic that a lot of the gun control laws conservatives rail about in California are a direct result of Reagan’s time as governor with the intent largely to suppress and allow enforcement against black people having guns.

Obamacare is basically a copy of the healthcare system Romney set up as governor of Massachusetts. Republicans running in more liberal states always have to posture a bit to the left in order to have any chance of getting elected, but once they're running on the national stage they can fully move to the right.

And also letting the States do most of the governing.

Except California, they're fucking wrong! ;)

What does DOGE auditing the Treasury have to do with 'individual freedoms, rights'? Set aside partisanship and explain please.

That was never the case, but like it didn't stop the presumption from appearing then, nothing stops from keeping the same presumtion now

That was always a lie. Conservatives were always about own right to abuse others and never cared about rights of anyone else.

The arguments are getting so silly I can’t even follow them now.

What does this have to do with protecting individual rights?

The government already has your data. Whether another part of the government has access versus another seems like splitting hairs?

DOGE is the US government. Whether Jane in the SSA can look up your medical records or whether Big Balls in DOGE can see it is two shades of the same color.

This is not how things normally work. Personal information within government is generally siloed to protect citizens' privacy, someone in the agricultural department who is annoyed about your your complaint letters on one topic cannot take a stroll through your tax return to look for something to threaten you with, by law.

I get that, but if an agencies remit is to root out fraud and abuse, it would seem their function demands access to certain data?

DOGE isn't an agency, a fact which has been extensively publicly discussed. They don't have a Congressional mandate or any of the institutional infrastructure (inspectors general, well-defined rules and procedures etc.) that qould qualify them as an agency. 'Waste fraud and abuse' is a collection of emotionally activating buzzwords with which to score rhetorical points, not an objective standard of the sort employed in auditing.

I am sure you can think of situations where arbitrary and capricious decisions are made and sold to the public or staff at a business in the name of 'security' or 'economic necessity' or whatever, and that these terms are designed to limit discussion and establishment of consensus by creating a false sense of urgency. We should be cautious about letting unknown persons inspect our wallets just because they insist its urgent without clearly specifying how or why.

Here's an example (from the last century) of such rhetorical techniques being proposed specifically for their effectiveness in swaying opinion rather than developing policy: https://users.wfu.edu/zulick/454/gopac.html

DOGE absolutely falls under the Dept of Digital Services agency. No different than an office within the CDC like HIV Care Iniative.

“Waste, fraud and abuse” is defined by the OIG well before Trump. Just because you don’t like him means it doesn’t exist or they are “emotional buzzwords”.

https://oig.usaid.gov/node/221

Hence why the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 DOGE can have access - clearly across ideological lines.

We both know you're over-simplifying or outright eliding the reality here, while ignoring points you don't have an answer for. Don't waste my time with such BS.

I directly answered your questions with actual facts that contradict each of your points. I even provided sources.

The conservative justices have been pretty obvious in their support for the so-called "unitary executive" for a while now, so this isn't anything new

I really dislike the billing of "injunction lifted" as "court decides that [...]". Finality matters more. And before you say that DOGE getting into Treasury is a problem blah blah blah they've already been there and the Secretary can do the things that DOGE wants independently of DOGE anyways.

I mean, they "decided" that it was an emergency that they needed to let it happen instead of waiting to actually decide if it's legal or not. They literally are saying that it would take too long for the case to finish for them to be able to do the work they want, which means that they only will "decide" in the sense you're describing after it's too late to do anything about. So in this case, yes, they've effectively "decided" it's allowed for this administration, and maybe we'll find out if it's legal or not in time for the next one.

Dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44204767

DOGE is over, they will blame Musk for its wind down. Trump would have to go against his advisors to keep it operating but DOGE has only ever delivered small savings and tremendous liability, so our genius president is unlikely to do that.

Not so fast:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/07/us/politics/trump-musk-do... (gift article link)

Interesting article. DOGE staffers are widely reported to be financially independent, genius technologists from Elon Musk's inner circle with a profound lack of ethics and very narrow world perspective that come from their extreme youth. Those guys aren't going to hang around for long and take the heat; if they do, they'll eventually hear Trump's two favorite words anyway. The name DOGE is also now politically toxic and remains associated with Elon Musk. NYT (and the liberal media they feed) will likely try to keep the DOGE name in the headlines as long as they can, since it is a tremendous embarrassment for Trump.

I do hope that after DOGE goes away, Trump goes back to supporting his base with respect to maintaining VA staffing and restricting H1B visas, especially after the R&D tax credit debacle cost so many tech jobs and the true potential for LLMs are being realized to increase productivity at all levels (as opposed to the halving the workforce at the bottom).

It seems likely that the Pentagon will force SpaceX to merge with another company, which should be good for Tesla and Boring, but sad for his Mars dream.

As for DOGE, Trump has a couple options. He can shut it down and blame Musk, or he can let it keep running against the advice of his team. After DOGE is gone, they will be able to get a warrant and start looking for copies of the data. The first place to look is X.

If a fraction of the lurid tales of corruption prove valid, then this is not a bad thing.

The SSA was never anything other than a Tenth Amendment violation to begin with, as shown by FDR's court packing threat[1], so a bit of external review seems in order.

Some sort of sane transition plan off of these socialized programs would be of great interest to a super-majority of voters, one expects.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judicial_Procedures_Reform_B...

What are these "lurid tales of corruption"?

There was the proven false claim that 40% of phone calls to SSA were fraudulent. I think it was DOGE fraud checking systems that proved that claim false, quite soon after Musk proclaimed it.

https://www.nextgov.com/digital-government/2025/05/doge-went...

Personally, it feels like the tiny nibbles that DOGE has managed to save from the massive banquet of spending that US government does is proof that there really isn't a lot of waste based on corruption. The spending is systemic and has built up over decades of various policy changes throughout many administrations of both colours.

Off topic, it feels as if this administration has also very effectively disproved any theory about the presence of a deep state controlling things from the background. Interestingly, Trump appears to be trying to show that it's possible, except for the fact that he's putting ridiculously unqualified and incompetent boobs into positions of influence. It'd be laughable except for the fact that this is not a TV show, this is real life.

Not laughable: the ridiculous deficit/debt.

> The spending is systemic and has built up over decades of various policy changes throughout many administrations of both colours.

Strong concur. Time for reform.

Except that the administration is about to create biggest deficit ever. And they were unabke to find waste.

It is funny ... employment by goverment was actually going down for years. America has low taxes so it could pay its debt, but it is choosing to lower them for richests and put more debt in.

> America has low taxes

For whom, pray tell? Look at your combined burden, top to bottom, at all levels.

The United States is generally considered a low-tax country compared to other high-income developed nations. In 2021, total taxes at all government levels in the US represented about 27% of GDP, which is significantly lower than the OECD average of around 34% and well below the 40% or more seen in several European countries like Denmark. The US ranks near the bottom among OECD countries in tax-to-GDP ratio, around 31st or 32nd out of 38 countries.

https://www.perplexity.ai/search/is-the-us-a-low-taxing-coun...

The problem is what "tax" means to US citizens as opposed to what taxes actually are. It's a communication / understanding issue.

If one earns X currency, and X/2 of the earnings are absorbed by government in various forms, then the tax burden is high, no matter the pettifoggery offered by those arguing against what is in front of one's lying eyes.

Otherwise said, I will complain about any tax no matter how low or high it is, either historically or in comparison to other countries. Yes, America is low taxes country. That is one of reasons why its debt was not seen as an issue by serious investors - there was an assumption it can pay it back any time via making taxes slightly larger.

Oh, and while I am doing it, I am also complaining about deficits, while making them larger by refusal to tax. And any program that helps someone not me is a waste of money, no matter how much money it actually saves via having functional country and society. I prefer things dysfunctional.

So, in summary, our federal government amounts to a vast pile of debt, technical or financial, and the Pollyanna[1] response brings scant comfort.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollyanna

Right now, the debt is about to become much bigger, because Republicans want to cut taxes while making USA less trustworthy for bond buyers. (And no, they were not able to save money with their random cuts).

Newsflash: most of that debt is because of republicans who slash taxes each time the democrats stabilize the situation.

Federal government actually has quite a lot of useful and effective services. And then one party (republicans) that is intentionally trying to make it innefective and bad.

> Newsflash: most of that debt is because of republicans who slash taxes each time the democrats stabilize the situation.

Please.

https://openthebooks.substack.com/p/social-security-for-200-...

SSA automatically stops payments to anyone older than 115, or older than 90 who hasn't used Medicare in 3 years and can't be regularly contacted to verify residence on this mortal plane. Why are unclosed database entries important if no payments are going out?

Trust has been destroyed. Your assertion does may be true, but is met with general skepticism.

> If a fraction of the lurid tales of corruption prove valid, then this is not a bad thing.

If my grandmother had wheels she would be a bicycle.

> The SSA was never anything other than a Tenth Amendment violation to begin with, as shown by FDR's court packing threat[1], so a bit of external review seems in order.

I know about the plan. But how did you make the jump from that to SSA being unconstitutional?

> Some sort of sane transition plan off of these socialized programs would be of great interest to a super-majority of voters, one expects.

A plan to eliminate program that keeps 22 million Americans out of poverty most of whom are seniors is of great interest to a super-majority of voters?

Kids, this is what happens when you read far right conspiracy theory websites for news.

> But how did you make the jump from that to SSA being unconstitutional?

The 10A was intended to preclude scope creep. In defense of FDR, the voters let the Progressives run plays.

So here we sit, decades later, waiting for a debt bomb to 'splode.

The progressives were never in power...

Tell me, how will the "Big Beautiful Bill", that adds multiple trillions to the debt while gutting essential social programs, will fix your "debt bomb"?

To me, it appears like straight up stealing, putting all the country's wealth in tax cuts to the rich and government contracts to military contractors. All the while placing the country on a sure path to financial and social ruin.

> The progressives were never in power...

Prohibition, state-run eugenics programs, the end of freedom of contract, Wickard v. Fillburn, the Imperial Presidency, internationalist interventionism, etc. were all born from the original Progressivism movement.

Notice that all these policies are antithetical to modern progressive movements.

> So here we sit, decades later, waiting for a debt bomb to 'splode.

Social Security has literally never missed a payment. It's arguably the most successful government program ever.

The reality is that all you armchair "ahhh deficit!!1" people have no answers to anything. We don't want granny dying in the street. I don't want that, you don't want that. Okay, so we need some social... security. It's not rocket science.

If you're not proposing real alternatives that actually at least have a chance of working, then you're just arguing in bad faith and nobody cares about you. And, to jump the gun here, no - private choice insurance IS NOT a replacement. That is explicitly not security and we run right back into "granny dying in street" problem.

Since "a bit of external review" was always there, what's your actual argument that a review by this specific team is in order?

> https://www.usdebtclock.org

More specifically, a stable system requires feedback loops.

Ours, like a vehicle without brakes, is running open-loop.

I guess that if all one cares about is blame management, then we can all just blame ${FIGURE} when the whole thing "unexpextedly" craters, rather than putting on the Big People Pants and reforming matters.

You can't use generic pants/vehicles metaphors instead of a specific response and say it's more specific - it isn't, even to those people who care about more than blaming "management"

The specific response is the elephant in the room, the debt/budget deficit.

My interpretation of your reply is that nothing short of catastrophic societal collapse will constitute an effective argument?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com