In the lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Virginia, the Electronic Privacy Information Center echoes a slew of lawsuits against Trump and DOGE, claiming they — along with the U.S. Department of the Treasury, the U.S. Digital Service, and the Office of Personnel Management — have perpetrated what it calls “the largest and most consequential data breach in U.S. history.”
The D.C.-based nonprofit says DOGE personnel, many of them associates of Musk, have gained access to sensitive information systems across numerous federal agencies like the Office of Personnel Management and the Treasury.
It claims the government, at the direction of DOGE, of abandoning privacy safeguards, “relinquishing control of these systems and, without legal basis, disclosing vast stores of personal information to individuals unauthorized by law to access them.”
Under normal circumstances, these systems are carefully protected by rigorous information security protocols and robust privacy protections, the group says. But now the nonprofits says, individuals connected to DOGE have “connected hard drives and at least one server to these critical systems.”
The Electronic Privacy Information Center seeks an order halting the the unlawful disclosure and computer matching of sensitive personal information. It asks the court to declare unlawful and halt DOGE access to or disclosure of personal or other protected information.
The nonprofit also names Office of Personnel Management Acting Director Charles Ezell and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent as defendants.
In the lawsuit, the group calls out Bessent for granting DOGE personnel access to the Bureau of Fiscal Service’s payment systems. They also say Ezell and others failed to provide and abide by legally required safeguards. Musk is mentioned in the lawsuit but not named as a defendant.
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