Probably the biggest ungotten scoop of 2025 is the inside story of what happened to all of the personal, financial and other sensitive data that was accessed by workers at the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). President Trump tapped Elon Musk to lead the newly created department, which was mostly populated by current and former employees of Musk’s various technology companies (including a former denizen of the cybercrime community known as the “Com”). It soon emerged that the DOGE team was using artificial intelligence to surveil at least one federal agency’s communications for hostility to Mr. Trump and his agenda.
DOGE employees were able to access and synthesize data taken from a large number of previously separate and highly guarded federal databases, including those at the Social Security Administration, the Department of Homeland Security, the Office of Personnel Management, and the U.S. Department of the Treasury. DOGE staffers did so largely by circumventing or dismantling security measures designed to detect and prevent misuse of federal databases, including standard incident response protocols, auditing, and change-tracking mechanisms.
For example, an IT expert with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) alleges that DOGE employees likely downloaded gigabytes of data from agency case files in early March, using short-lived accounts that were configured to leave few traces of network activity. The NLRB whistleblower said the large data outflows coincided with multiple blocked login attempts from addresses in Russia, which attempted to use valid credentials for a newly-created DOGE user account.
Where is DOGE now? Reuters reported last month that as far as the White House is concerned, DOGE no longer exists, even though it technically has more than half a year left to its charter. Meanwhile, who exactly retains access to federal agency data that was fed by DOGE into AI tools is anyone’s guess.
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