The Trump admin admits even more ways DOGE [illegally] accessed sensitive personal data

quote:

---

For much of the last year, staffers who were initially part of the Department of Government Efficiency effort improperly accessed and shared sensitive personal data on millions of Americans. The Trump administration hasn't been able to answer how much data is at risk, what it was used for or why its unprecedented efforts to consolidate data are needed.

Those questions deepened last week, when the Social Security Administration said it discovered DOGE employees at the agency secretly and improperly shared sensitive personal data last year, but once again can't verify the extent of the violations. The admission came in a court filing last Friday, Jan. 16, that made numerous corrections to testimony given by top agency officials last year in a lawsuit alleging that DOGE was illegally accessing Social Security data.

In the filing, Justice Department lawyers representing the Social Security Administration wrote that two SSA DOGE employees were referred to a federal watchdog to determine whether they violated a law barring government employees from using their job for political activity, known as the Hatch Act.

The unnamed employees secretly conferred with a political advocacy group about a request to match Social Security data with state voter rolls to "find evidence of voter fraud and to overturn election results in certain States," the filing said. It remains unclear whether any data actually went to this group.

"Based on its review of records obtained during or after October 2025, SSA identified communications, use of data, and other actions by the then-SSA DOGE Team that were potentially outside of SSA policy and/or noncompliant with the District Court's March 20, 2025, temporary restraining order," DOJ attorneys wrote.

DOGE team members also circumvented IT rules to improperly share data on outside servers, sent a password-protected file of private records to DOGE affiliates outside the agency and had the ability to see data even after a judge temporarily halted access.

---