Social Security Whistleblower Quits After Saying Americans’ Data Was Compromised

In the whistleblower disclosure, which was sent to the Office of Special Counsel as well as several congressional committees, Borges raised concerns that DOGE staffers bypassed safeguards, circumvented a court order, and created a copy of the SSA’s entire collection of data that was put onto the cloud, or a network of remote servers on the internet. Borges said the agency had no oversight of who had access to the file.

Borges also said that his requests for visibility into the potential federal violations of the agency’s data handling “have been rebuffed or ignored by agency leadership, with some employees directed not to reply to my queries.”

Borges said earlier this week that DOGE members had gained access to some databases containing sensitive data in March before a court order blocking their access went into effect. Although access was revoked after the court order, Borges said he later learned that DOGE representatives immediately requested access to data, which they were given.

After a Supreme Court decision in June cleared the way for DOGE to gain access to the data amid ongoing litigation, DOGE created a copy of the agency’s most critical database of millions of Americans’ personal information to put in the digital cloud within the agency’s Amazon Web Services system.

Borges has not alleged that the cloud had been hacked or compromised, but he warned that hosting a copy of one of the government’s most sensitive datasets on a cloud without security controls substantially threatened the safety of Americans’ information.

Earlier this week, an SSA spokesperson, Nick Perrine, said that the agency was “not aware of any compromise” to the storage of Americans’ Social Security information and that Bisignano takes whistleblower complaints seriously.

“SSA stores all personal data in secure environments that have robust safeguards in place to protect vital information. The data referenced in the complaint is stored in a long-standing environment used by SSA and walled off from the internet. High-level career SSA officials have administrative access to this system with oversight by SSA’s Information Security team,” Perrine said at the time.