DOGE improperly accessed and shared Social Security data | Hacker News Reader

DOGE improperly accessed and shared Social Security data

blog.quintarelli.it

Not only that, they did it with the intention of overturning elections:

> The unnamed employees secretly conferred with a political advocacy group about a request to match Social Security data with state voter rolls to "find evidence of voter fraud and to overturn election results in certain States,"

https://www.npr.org/2026/01/23/nx-s1-5684185/doge-data-socia...

>they did it with the intention of overturning elections:

>[...] to "find evidence of voter fraud and to overturn election results in certain States,"

The actual election fraud allegations are probably spurious, but regardless we shouldn't be trying imply that intending to overturn elections in cases of fraud is bad in and of itself. The badness comes from inappropriate access to the data, not trying to find evidence of fraud.

>but regardless we shouldn't be trying imply that intending to overturn elections in cases of fraud is bad in and of itself.

How many allegations of fraud need to be taken to court and dismissed before it’s no longer conceivable that this is a good faith non-partisan search for evidence of fraud?

>The actual election fraud allegations are probably spurious

Sure, and my point is that we shouldn't apologize for people deliberately "investigating" bogus allegations on the grounds that investigating legitimate allegations is a good thing.

>Sure, and my point is that we shouldn't apologize for people deliberately "investigating" bogus allegations

But I'm not "apologizing" for them? I'm pushing back on OP's phrasing of "they did it with the intention of overturning elections". It's possible to push back on some person's criticism of [bad guy] without being accused of "apologizing" for [bad guy].

From my original comment:

>we shouldn't be trying imply that intending to overturn elections in cases of fraud is bad in and of itself

See also my sibling comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46734439

You said "The badness comes from inappropriate access to the data, not trying to find evidence of fraud." I disagree. I think that a blatantly bad faith partisan investigation demanded by a politician who stands for gain and executed by public servants would be bad even if they didn't inappropriately access this data. Both things are bad and would be still be bad independent of one another.

>I think that a blatantly bad faith partisan investigation

Sounds like you agree with me, because you're still not objecting to my original premise of "we shouldn't be trying imply that intending to overturn elections in cases of fraud is bad in and of itself". You might think "bad faith partisan investigation" is bad, but not the act of trying to overturn elections itself.

You explicitly applied it to this investigation, saying the investigation itself was not bad. If you intend to weaken your claim to "not all conceivable investigations of election fraud are bad," then yes, I agree, but that's such an extraneous comment that I would question the intent of including it.

>You explicitly applied it to this investigation, saying the investigation itself was not bad.

I'm not sure how you reached that conclusion given what I wrote was:

>we shouldn't be trying imply that intending to overturn elections in cases of fraud is bad in and of itself

We don't have to examine every situation in the theoretical. We can pay attention to context. These are not good faith actors, they are not seeking the truth.

Right, I'm not trying to argue that the actions in this case are praiseworthy, only that the OP is misidentifying the source of the badness. That's important, because if we establish a pattern of "overturning elections are bad", then that will come back to bite us when there actually is a legitimate reason for overturning elections.

> but regardless we shouldn't be trying imply that intending to overturn elections in cases of fraud is bad in and of itself

The only rational viewpoint is to assume everything this administration does is in bad faith, until proven otherwise.

In the legal realm, journalist and legal analyst Emily Bazelon analyzes the legal "presumption of regularity" which has been trashed by the current administration.

So is "find evidence of voter fraud" the same as "overturning elections"?

Or we all so partisan now that we don't care about the evidence or the reality of the fraud?

Your premise requires good faith actors to even merit consideration.

Let me guess. You're the kind of guy who looks at the videos of unoccupied daycare centers and then trundles out words like 'bad faith" to rationalize ignoring it. Because no one in my tribe would ever do something wrong.

Nah I'm a guy who saw a man with a greencard dragged out of a home depot parking lot while his wife screamed and cried.

Yeah man. In the broad faith spectrum of humanity, that’s up there with the worst of the bad faith actions, and actors.

Sorry, if I'm so partisan that I don't trust the guy spending literally hundreds of millions of dollars to elect one party to be an impartial jury on voter fraud.

But yes, yes we should have an impartial jury look for evidence of voter fraud.

Not surprised - data exfiltration and Tenant Owner Azure access for DOGE officials were previously reported via Whistleblower Aid.

https://www.eff.org/files/2025/10/06/085-15_ex_o_berulis_4.1...

"Furthermore, on Monday, April 7, 2025, while my client and my team were preparing this disclosure, someone physically taped a threatening note to Mr. Berulis’ home door with photographs – taken via a drone – of him walking in his neighborhood"

Here's me being shocked.

How could anything else possibly have happened? These amateurs (at best) were given unfettered access to everything with no accountability or rules.

Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46707507

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46696654

What’s the reason these always get flagged? Is there something inaccurate?

Anything negative about Trump or MAGA gets flagged so fewer people will see it.

What's their bail amount? Needs to be 10x the potential harm

Might as well change the link to https://www.npr.org/2026/01/23/nx-s1-5684185/doge-data-socia...

This thread too? The Voldemort rule is so vigoriously enforced.

The real link instead of incomprehensible blogspam.

https://www.npr.org/2026/01/23/nx-s1-5684185/doge-data-socia...

I'm sure they will face the consequences /s

May be overblown, the IRS accesses this data all the time. Broadly speaking, the government knows your SSN.

It was also my understanding many DOGE employees were Department of Treasury agents.

Doge employees were notably also teenage hackers with waived security clearances.

ah yes, this admin has been an avalanche of crimes and abuses, but let's keep giving them the benefit of the doubt and making excuses.

"Its just a prank bro, calm down"

The NSA, state and local police departments have been improperly accessing my data for years. The only reason people care about this is because of the (justified) general anger of DOGE. Yet there are far worse offenders, with far more intrusive access.

"why do you get mad at me when I do bad things? don't you see others are doing bad things too?! is it because you hate me?"

People care about those other things.

I don't know why you think people aren't complaining about state and local police accessing data. I've seen these complaints a lot (though the state and local data access is a lot less visible, especially with the gutting of local news)

Who cares? LinkedIn just locked my account (I don't log in often), and is demanding my driver's license to unlock it. Ostensibly to "protect me from identity theft".

That's right. They want me to send my identity documents to some third world contractor to protect me from identity theft. Apparently they're doing this with many people... I'm supposed to be worried about the NSA? I'm not a Russian spy, and I'm no drug cartel leader. The cops and NSA don't give a shit about me. Nor DOGE, come to that.

There is a phrase I like: don't fail with abandon. Just because the NSA broke public trust doesn't make it ok for anything like it to happen again.

This data breach from DOGE is worse in many ways. DOGE employees / contractors are have fewer scruples and guardrails. This data has been used primarily for Trump-and-Company's advantage. All to the detriment of American values, such as being for democracy and reasonable capitalism while standing against authoritarianism and kleptocracy.

The NSA's bulk metadata collection, while later found to violate FISA and likely unconstitutional, operated under a formal legal architecture: statutory authorization via Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act (from 2006 onward), FISA Court orders renewed approximately every 90 days, and at least nominal congressional oversight — though most members were kept uninformed of the program's scope until 2013.

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