Social Security advocates and lawmakers are up in arms over the latest report that a whistleblower has accused a former Department of Government Efficiency employee of illegally copying two Social Security databases onto an unsecured thumb drive for personal gain.
The Washington Post reported Tuesday that the Social Security Administration's internal watchdog "is investigating a complaint that alleges a former U.S. DOGE Service employee claimed he had access to two highly sensitive agency databases and planned to share the information with his private employer."
The news comes on the heels of the recent admission by SSA that members of DOGE "tried to hand over sensitive personal records to an unnamed advocacy group seeking to 'overturn election results.'"
Politico reported on Jan. 20 that two members of Elon Musk's DOGE team working at SSA "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," citing newly disclosed court papers released by the Justice Department.
Congress Alerted to Latest Breach
The Post reported that SSA's "inspector general is investigating the disclosure and has alerted members of Congress of its existence, according to a letter by the acting inspector general to top members of four congressional committees," which the Post said it reviewed, also citing two people familiar with the process.
"The inspector general's office has also shared the disclosure with the Government Accountability Office, which has been conducting its own audit of DOGE's access to data," the Post reported.
According to the disclosure, the former DOGE software engineer, who worked at the SSA last year before starting a job at a government contractor in October, "allegedly told several co-workers that he possessed two tightly restricted databases of U.S. citizens' information, and had at least one on a thumb drive," according to the Post. "The databases, called 'Numident' and the 'Master Death File,' include records for more than 500 million living and dead Americans, including Social Security numbers, places and dates of birth, citizenship, race and ethnicity, and parents' names."
The complaint alleges that "after leaving government employment, the former DOGE member told colleagues he had a thumb drive with Social Security data and had kept his agency computer and credentials, which he allegedly said carried largely unrestricted 'God-level' security access to the agency's systems — a level of access no other company employee had been granted in its work with SSA," according to the Post.
"These continued revelations demand a full investigation with accountability if wrongdoing is confirmed," House Ways and Means Committee ranking member Richard Neal, D-Mass., and Social Security Subcommittee ranking member John B. Larson, D-Conn., said Tuesday in a statement. "This is criminal, and the result of a year of lawlessness and mismanaging the people's data that Republicans have insisted wasn't happening."
'A Gold Mine for Scammers'
The Post reporting "details the latest in a series of serious data breaches on the part of DOGE staff, enabled by an administration apparently more interested in leveraging Americans' personal data to advance political and personal agendas — rather than serving the public," Max Richtman, president and CEO of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, said Thursday in a statement. "The reported breaches are a direct consequence of last year's misguided Supreme Court decision to allow DOGE unfettered access to Americans' Social Security data."
Nancy Altman, president of Social Security Works, added in an email that "Over a year ago, Acting Social Security Commissioner Michelle King refused to give Elon Musk's DOGE operatives unlimited access to the American people's private data. In response, the DOGE operatives forced her out, replacing her with someone who would. Even since then, it's been clear that DOGE has been misusing private Social Security data, and today's news is just further confirmation."
Altman maintains that the revelations are "the tip of the iceberg for how the data is being misused, and could be in the future. The stolen data is a gold mine for scammers."
The Social Security "data is a treasure trove for AI companies, hackers, foreign governments, and other unscrupulous actors," Altman added. "The more people who have access to it, the more vulnerable seniors and people with disabilities are to scams and identity theft."
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