Comment by efitz | Hacker News Reader

Comment by efitz | Hacker News Reader

"…to transfer data from the Numident database to a private cloud within SSA's AWS cloud environment."

This clarified everything for me. The US government has entered into several large cloud provider contracts and as part of the contracts, the clouds have been evaluated and approved for use. Not for every use nor for every kind of data, but government security folks go over everything with a fine toothed comb, demand additional controls, and so forth.

AWS used to have at least two “private” clouds (existence of which was not secret) for the US government as of 2021; probably there are more now.

My impression is that this guy is a typical bureaucrat who has power based on his ability to gatekeep access to information; he’s upset someone went around him. His concerns might have some validity but they aren’t nearly so shocking as the story is being made out to be. Likely DOGE copied the data BECAUSE of this guy getting in the way.

The guy’s hysterical exaggeration makes me think he is part of the “resistance” and just wanted to be a wrench in the works for the Trump administration.

Trump is demonstrating on a near weekly basis (in lawsuit after lawsuit) that the president IS the executive branch, that the bureaucracy exists solely to help the president carry out his duties, and that bureaucrats who don’t follow instructions don’t belong in government.

The Supreme Court is backing him nearly 100% because he’s right and they are protecting the the presidency; this is not due to loving or even wanting to support Trump; several of the right-wing justices like ACB and Roberts hate him.

So IMO this guy is making a mountain out of a molehill and any “hostile work environment” is largely of his own creation.

That said, I admit I could be wrong, and will wait for the inevitable investigations and lawsuits.”, but I expect it to fizzle because I don’t think there is any “there” there.

The executive branch EXECUTES what the legislative branch LEGISLATES. Congress is article ONE of the constitution. The executive branch is article TWO. Take this to mean that Congress is the boss, not the president.

The two million employees including 1M+ military members are not private employees of the president. Everyone's job is to execute the will of CONGRESS.

The consequences of messing up custody of information on 330M+ American citizen is severe enough to require Congressional oversight and approval of big changes.

Changing how the data is managed warrants that.

I personally have a lot of questions for how this new arrangement was made. Was it made in secret from Congress? Who is overseeing the transfer of data and access controls? Who is doing the auditing? These questions should have been answered in front on Congress. When is DOGE going to testify in front of Congress under oath as to what they were doing?

Btw, wasn't that big balls guy from DOGE in the news recently for some borderline criminally negligent treatment of sensitive data on Americans?

You are just plain wrong about Congress and about the executive branch, but spot on about the president.

The president’s job is to execute the laws of the US, and is laid out clearly in article 2 of the constitution. I’ll go one further, it’s to “faithfully” execute the laws of the US- Article 2, section 1, clause 8.

The Constitution explicitly vests all executive authority in one person - the President. This is done in the “Vesting Clause” of article 2. This means it is the presidents job- alone- to execute the laws. Congress appropriates money for the executive branch to hire people, and Congress may organize the executive branch into departments headed by appointees of the President but approved by the Senate; nothing in that takes away from the President’s sole executive power and responsibility; it just gives him the resources he needs to do his job.

Congress’ powers are strictly enumerated in Article 1 of the Constitution- in fact they are explicitly listed in Article 1, section 8.

You are just wrong about Congressional supremacy. The Constitution is designed to establish 3 co-equal branches of government and a system of checks and balances.

It is absolutely up for debate whether Trump is incorrectly arrogating to himself powers reserved to Congress- the Supreme Court hasn’t ruled on many issues yet where this is the core controversy. It’s widely expected that Trump will ultimately lose at the Supreme Court on his use of tariffs for this reason.

Re: SSA data. It is absolutely the right (and responsibility) of Congress to have hearings on the matter. Their only recourse in response should they not like what they find is to cut off the money (technically they could impeach the president but I think that not even the most generous reading of “high crimes and misdemeanors” by fair minded people would include data handling practices.

> My impression is that this guy is a typical bureaucrat who has power based on his ability to gatekeep access to information; he’s upset someone went around him.

Gatekeepers exist for a reason. Sometimes the stuff inside the gates is important.

For someone to think that doing an end-run around this guy and creating a new non-authoritative copy of this database is reasonable, you have to think that there's a reasonable end that couldn't be achieved by going through the established channels.

The only thing that I've heard of is using AI to look for "waste, fraud and abuse", and it's very unclear to me how looking at, say, my parents' SSN application for my SSN several decades ago is going to tell you whether that application or any disbursements are fraudulent.

I can tell you that you know absolutely nothing about AWS. What I think you are referring to is “GovCloud”. The government does absolutely no more due diligence for GovCloud implementations.

The only thing that you have to do to be eligible to work on a GovCloud project is be a US citizen.

There is a separate “secret cloud” that’s not secret. But has higher security requirements.

Source: former AWS ProServe employee.

I specifically didn't discuss GovCloud or classified regions or other AWS specific stuff because because the original article was not clear about what "private AWS cloud" meant in terms of the SSA.

You're leaping to the conclusion that it was GovCloud. I don't assume that and the article didn't say it.

Former AWS principal engineer

There is no such thing as a “private AWS cloud” unless they are talking about AWS Outposts that are on prem. DOGE was fast and loose with security and incompetent. I worked with enough government agencies - I worked under WWPS - to know they are all mostly incompetent. If they weren’t, they would be making twice as much in the private sector.

There is no way in the world that the CIA would give DOGE access to the higher security secret cloud.

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