Re: The Egocentric Eccentric Exploits of Elon
Posted: Thu Feb 06, 2025 11:23 am
Elon Musk’s secretive government IT takeover, explained
Billionaire Elon Musk and his band of young Silicon Valley engineers have gained access to IT systems controlling critical functions of the federal government, from the Treasury Department to the Small Business Administration.
The problem is no one outside of the Trump administration really knows what Musk and his team at the newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) are planning to do with that access.
In the name of uncovering fat to trim, they now have the personal information of millions of Americans stored in government databases at their fingertips and newfound influence over key parts of the federal bureaucracy long controlled by nonpartisan career officials. It’s clear Musk has exceptional access to government data, but it’s still not clear how much he can do with it. Most saliently, watchdogs and Democratic lawmakers suspect that Musk’s endgame is not just visibility into the payments the government is making, but also control over them.
This is all part of the cloud of confusion surrounding DOGE.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed Monday that Musk is operating in his capacity as a non-Senate-confirmed “special government employee,” a category of employee that is typically brought on for a period of less than a year, hired for their expertise, and subject to less stringent conflicts-of-interest rules than other federal officials. Leavitt offered no further details on what Musk working on, though she claimed he is “abiding by all applicable federal laws.”
That claim will be subject to legal scrutiny.
The litigation arm of Public Citizen, a left-leaning consumer rights advocacy group, sued the Trump administration Monday on behalf of workers whose personal information is stored in Treasury Department databases, alleging that officials broke privacy laws in giving DOGE access. Other groups have raised similar privacy concerns about databases at other federal agencies to which Musk’s team has sought access.
Adam Schwartz, privacy litigation director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights advocacy group, said that reports of DOGE staff obtaining “extraordinary access” to government databases that contain sensitive personal information about millions of Americans marks a “huge departure from privacy and security norms.”
“Legal safeguards must be strictly enforced,” he said. “EFF is deeply concerned and learning all we can.”
Watchdog groups are also demanding more transparency into why DOGE is seeking access to these government IT systems in the first place, given their sensitivity and the host of potential conflicts of interest Musk brings given his stakes in Tesla and SpaceX. One fear is that DOGE could use its newfound access to the federal government’s payment system to slash the budget without Congress’s approval.
The Treasury Department wrote in a letter to Congress on Tuesday that Musk has “read-only” access to the payment system — at least for now. But if he were to gain operational control of it, Noah Bookbinder, executive director of the government oversight group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said he is skeptical that Musk will use that access just to “perform regular maintenance and do troubleshooting on tech problems.”
Musk and his team have rapidly sought to gain access to the IT systems of various government agencies and offices in recent days, including at least the Treasury, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), and the Small Business Administration (SBA).
Last week, Treasury’s acting Deputy Secretary David Lebryk resigned after DOGE requested and was granted access to the Treasury’s payment systems, which handle sensitive payments including to Social Security and Medicare customers.
DOGE also reportedly locked career civil servants out of OPM’s computer systems, which contain the personal data of millions of federal employees and contractors. Federal employees sought a temporary restraining order Tuesday to shut down a private server that DOGE had connected to OPM’s network to scrape sensitive employee information.
SBA employees were also informed Monday that DOGE would be granted access to “all SBA systems,” including HR, contracts, and payments systems. The agency has supported over 100,000 financings to small businesses in the last year alone.
Musk and his team have yet to publicly announce what they intend to do with all of that data, however, and that makes ethics watchdogs extremely nervous.
“Just from an accountability perspective, there is so much we don’t know about what’s going on,” said Don Moynihan, a public policy professor at the University of Michigan and co-director of the Better Government Lab, which identifies technological solutions in government to improve social safety net access. “We’re relying on these leaked reports, rather than someone going in front of Congress and explaining in detail what it is that these people are actually doing and why it’s not a security risk.”
Musk and his team’s efforts to control IT systems across the government raise concerns about privacy and conflicts of interest. They may also give Musk, a partisan political appointee, the ability to interfere in the management of the federal budget set by Congress.
Current and former government employees sued the Trump administration on Monday claiming that it violated privacy laws in allowing their data to be disclosed to Musk and his team.
“Federal laws protect sensitive personal and financial information from improper disclosure and misuse, including by barring disclosure to individuals who lack a lawful and legitimate need for it,” the complaint states. “The scale of the intrusion into individuals’ privacy is massive and unprecedented.”
The same concerns may apply to other federal agencies’ IT systems that DOGE has sought to access. The SBA, for example, keeps records of business owners and the health of their businesses.
Click on the link for the rest
Billionaire Elon Musk and his band of young Silicon Valley engineers have gained access to IT systems controlling critical functions of the federal government, from the Treasury Department to the Small Business Administration.
The problem is no one outside of the Trump administration really knows what Musk and his team at the newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) are planning to do with that access.
In the name of uncovering fat to trim, they now have the personal information of millions of Americans stored in government databases at their fingertips and newfound influence over key parts of the federal bureaucracy long controlled by nonpartisan career officials. It’s clear Musk has exceptional access to government data, but it’s still not clear how much he can do with it. Most saliently, watchdogs and Democratic lawmakers suspect that Musk’s endgame is not just visibility into the payments the government is making, but also control over them.
This is all part of the cloud of confusion surrounding DOGE.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed Monday that Musk is operating in his capacity as a non-Senate-confirmed “special government employee,” a category of employee that is typically brought on for a period of less than a year, hired for their expertise, and subject to less stringent conflicts-of-interest rules than other federal officials. Leavitt offered no further details on what Musk working on, though she claimed he is “abiding by all applicable federal laws.”
That claim will be subject to legal scrutiny.
The litigation arm of Public Citizen, a left-leaning consumer rights advocacy group, sued the Trump administration Monday on behalf of workers whose personal information is stored in Treasury Department databases, alleging that officials broke privacy laws in giving DOGE access. Other groups have raised similar privacy concerns about databases at other federal agencies to which Musk’s team has sought access.
Adam Schwartz, privacy litigation director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights advocacy group, said that reports of DOGE staff obtaining “extraordinary access” to government databases that contain sensitive personal information about millions of Americans marks a “huge departure from privacy and security norms.”
“Legal safeguards must be strictly enforced,” he said. “EFF is deeply concerned and learning all we can.”
Watchdog groups are also demanding more transparency into why DOGE is seeking access to these government IT systems in the first place, given their sensitivity and the host of potential conflicts of interest Musk brings given his stakes in Tesla and SpaceX. One fear is that DOGE could use its newfound access to the federal government’s payment system to slash the budget without Congress’s approval.
The Treasury Department wrote in a letter to Congress on Tuesday that Musk has “read-only” access to the payment system — at least for now. But if he were to gain operational control of it, Noah Bookbinder, executive director of the government oversight group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said he is skeptical that Musk will use that access just to “perform regular maintenance and do troubleshooting on tech problems.”
Musk and his team have rapidly sought to gain access to the IT systems of various government agencies and offices in recent days, including at least the Treasury, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), and the Small Business Administration (SBA).
Last week, Treasury’s acting Deputy Secretary David Lebryk resigned after DOGE requested and was granted access to the Treasury’s payment systems, which handle sensitive payments including to Social Security and Medicare customers.
DOGE also reportedly locked career civil servants out of OPM’s computer systems, which contain the personal data of millions of federal employees and contractors. Federal employees sought a temporary restraining order Tuesday to shut down a private server that DOGE had connected to OPM’s network to scrape sensitive employee information.
SBA employees were also informed Monday that DOGE would be granted access to “all SBA systems,” including HR, contracts, and payments systems. The agency has supported over 100,000 financings to small businesses in the last year alone.
Musk and his team have yet to publicly announce what they intend to do with all of that data, however, and that makes ethics watchdogs extremely nervous.
“Just from an accountability perspective, there is so much we don’t know about what’s going on,” said Don Moynihan, a public policy professor at the University of Michigan and co-director of the Better Government Lab, which identifies technological solutions in government to improve social safety net access. “We’re relying on these leaked reports, rather than someone going in front of Congress and explaining in detail what it is that these people are actually doing and why it’s not a security risk.”
Musk and his team’s efforts to control IT systems across the government raise concerns about privacy and conflicts of interest. They may also give Musk, a partisan political appointee, the ability to interfere in the management of the federal budget set by Congress.
Current and former government employees sued the Trump administration on Monday claiming that it violated privacy laws in allowing their data to be disclosed to Musk and his team.
“Federal laws protect sensitive personal and financial information from improper disclosure and misuse, including by barring disclosure to individuals who lack a lawful and legitimate need for it,” the complaint states. “The scale of the intrusion into individuals’ privacy is massive and unprecedented.”
The same concerns may apply to other federal agencies’ IT systems that DOGE has sought to access. The SBA, for example, keeps records of business owners and the health of their businesses.
Click on the link for the rest
