Trump administration concedes DOGE team may have misused Social Security data

[highplainsdem]

Source: Politico

Two members of Elon Musk’s DOGE team working at the Social Security Administration were secretly in touch with an advocacy group seeking to “overturn election results in certain states,” and one signed an agreement that may have involved using Social Security data to match state voter rolls, the Justice Department revealed in newly disclosed court papers.

Elizabeth Shapiro, a top Justice Department official, said SSA referred both DOGE employees for potential violations of the Hatch Act, which bars government employees from using their official positions for political purposes.

Shapiro’s previously unreported disclosure, dated Friday, came as part of a list of “corrections” to testimony by top SSA officials during last year’s legal battles over DOGE’s access to Social Security data. They revealed that DOGE team members shared data on unapproved “third-party” servers and may have accessed private information that had been ruled off-limits by a court at the time.

Shapiro said the case of the two DOGE team members appeared to undermine a previous assertion by SSA that DOGE’s work was intended to “detect fraud, waste and abuse” in Social Security and modernize the agency’s technology.

-snip-

Read more: https://www.politico.com/news/2026/01/20/trump-musk-doge-social-security-00737245

---

Much more at the link, all of it outrageous.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

1. MaddowBlog-Trump admin. reveals to court: DOGE members may have misused Social Security data

For those concerned with the integrity of the Social Security system, the latest allegations are extraordinary — legal accountability or not.

Link to tweet

https://www.ms.now/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/trump-admin-reveals-to-court-doge-members-may-have-misused-social-security-data

Months later, Charles Borges, who served at the time as the SSA chief data officer, filed a remarkable whistleblower complaint that alleged members of the DOGE operation had uploaded a copy of a highly sensitive database to a vulnerable cloud server, creating “enormous vulnerabilities.”

In fact, The New York Times reported that the database in question included “individuals’ full names, addresses and birth dates, among other details that could be used to steal their identities, making it one of the nation’s most sensitive repositories of personal information.”

As this year gets underway, not only is the DOGE team facing new accusations about the misuse of Social Security data, but the Trump administration revealed in a court filing last week that this might actually have happened. Politico reported:

Two members of Elon Musk’s DOGE team working at the Social Security Administration were secretly in touch with an advocacy group seeking to ‘overturn election results in certain states,’ and one signed an agreement that may have involved using Social Security data to match state voter rolls, the Justice Department revealed in newly disclosed court papers.

Elizabeth Shapiro, a top Justice Department official, said SSA referred both DOGE employees for potential violations of the Hatch Act, which bars government employees from using their official positions for political purposes.

.....But for those concerned with the integrity of the Social Security system, the allegations are extraordinary, whether or not these individuals face any accountability. The court filing describes incidents in which members of DOGE shared Social Security data on unapproved third-party servers and might also have retrieved private information they weren’t supposed to be able to access under an existing court order.

An Axios report characterized the court filing as “a stunning admission from the Trump administration, after it battled in court over DOGE’s rights to access and use Social Security data as part of its effort to uncover fraud and waste.”

[yellow dahlia]

6. It is such a violation!!!

[turbinetree]

2. I have an idea lets sue the shit out everyone that was involved in that BS................starting with orange

hair traitor and then go down the f**king pecking order in the maga court, senate, congress and the asshole that is being compensate at 1 trillion with a T dollars and all of his minions............since they all violated the Social Security Act, Privacy Act and the Hatch Act because they enabled this shitshow.........don't cha just love that all your information can go to lets say Russia or China, and someone can run around and impersonate you because of this malfeasance ............and then these assholes are trying to pass that buck and say its all about fraud and abuse when in fact they created the BS in the first place...........and trying to lay the blame squarely on the seniors like me and others and the future people running around saying that the SS is going bankrupt............ ....

[duckworth969]

3. Damage is done

[SheltieLover]

4. Shocking

[Evolve Dammit]

5. All under the watch of MSM, and now just a distant memory. Big Balls and Elon stole mass amounts of information.

[yellow dahlia]

7. The Privacy Act of 1974 is an actual law.

I've been at a weekly vigil at the Social Security office. Our signs have been pointing out the theft of our data.