For now, there seems to be a tiny bit of good news which also confirms the previous reporting by Wired, myself and Talking Points Memo. I can exclusively report that Marko Elez had full “read and write” privileges. A source familiar with the situation stated to me:
It’s likely yours and WIRED’s reporting is actually doing something. On Saturday, they had given Marko read/write access and marked his access request as completed and closed. There was no mistake in their wording: they explicitly said they had given Marko read/write access to SPS [Secure Payment System]. On Wednesday, they reopened his access request and stated his permissions were now read only. [Emphasis Added]
So the reporting on this has had a dramatic effect on the U.S. Treasury. They are hearing the outside voices and the increasing alarm emerging throughout the country and they are reacting, however limited that reaction is.
It’s important to understand that this happened before the injunction which as of this writing was agreed to late on wednesday between Three Federal Unions and the Department of Justice over access to Treasury records. Unconscionably in my view, though I can’t speak to the legal specifics of the case (too much to do), the Union’s lawyers have agreed to “read only” access for Thomas Krause and Marko Elez. I hope the judge blocks the injunction and pushes for something more stringent.
A source familiar with the situation who I asked about the current circumstances and the latest state of play of “read only” versus ‘read and write” had this to say:
Again, it’s a distinction that doesn’t matter too much to me. He shouldn’t have access to this almost 5 trillion dollar payment flow, even if it’s “read-only”. He shouldn’t even be at Fiscal Service. None of this should be happening and it’s only going to get worse the longer “DOGE” is here and the more they learn about what they can do and get away with.
In other words, while it’s good news that they are reacting to our reporting, the situation still remains catastrophic at best and we can’t relent until this has been resolved.
Still, the question remains, is Marko Elez actually “read only”? I can exclusively report here that the answer is “kind of”. Specifically, a source familiar with the situation knows for a fact that Marko Elez’s access was set to “insert” for the Secure Payment System (SPS), which is distinct from “alter”. According to a source unfamiliar with the situation this type of permission lets you “add a row to a table” which is a “type of write access but very limited”. According to my source who is unfamiliar with the situation it lets you “create data but not change its structure or delete it, create tables etc.”
So from what we know as of this moment, DOGE’s Marko Elez’s permissions got switched from “read and write” to “read and limited write” for SPS, and there is reason to believe, but not confirmation, that this was true across systems. The capacity for “insert” to wreak havoc is not currently known by any source I have or any publicly known information. It requires understanding the system architecture and business logic of the most top secret mainframes in the world- well most top secret until Marko Elez got into them. Given DOGE’s outside, insecure equipment throughout the Federal Government and ability to get alone time with systems elsewhere, it can’t be ruled out that Marko Elez can break into the system and give himself his full “read and write” privileges back.
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