Fewer than 50 people have access to Social Security Administration databases containing hundreds of millions of people’s private financial and personal information.
But only one also has access to the government’s human resources and student loan files.
Akash Bobba is one of many Department of Government Efficiency staffers who have embedded in federal agencies the last few months with virtually unfettered access to the sensitive, compartmentalized sources of data collected by the government.
An NPR review of thousands of pages of records across more than a dozen lawsuits in federal court finds an alarming pattern across agencies, where DOGE has given conflicting information about what data it has accessed, who has that access, and most importantly — why.
Numerous court filings and affidavits paint a picture of agencies rushing to give DOGE access without accompanying rigor of protecting data or documenting the scope of its work.
Not even lawyers for the government can account for when and how DOGE staffers received access to sensitive databases. In a Labor Department lawsuit, Judge John D. Bates notes that “defendants themselves acknowledge inconsistencies across their evidence” regarding DOGE.
Government lawyers said [Doge “engineer” Marko Elez] was “erroneously” and “mistakenly” given the ability to change data on Treasury’s Secure Payment System, which a judge said demonstrates DOGE access was “rushed and undertaken by political pressure.”
“The government has also repeatedly failed to articulate a clear purpose for the unprecedented access it seeks to deeply sensitive information, and why the data it wants access to is necessary for that purpose,” said Kristin Woelfel, a lawyer with the nonprofit Center for Democracy and Technology. “If the government cannot answer those questions, then DOGE has no business accessing that data.”
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