HomeNewsTrump administration admits DOGE could have misused Individuals’ Social Safety knowledge

Trump administration admits DOGE could have misused Individuals’ Social Safety knowledge

Two members of Elon Musk’s Division of Authorities Effectivity could have accessed and shared Social Safety numbers in an effort to assist an advocacy group “overturn election leads to sure States” final yr, in keeping with court docket paperwork. 

The revelation, which was first reported by Politico, comes as a part of a collection of corrections to earlier testimony by prime Social Safety Administration officers associated to authorized battles over DOGE’s entry to Social Safety knowledge. 

Neither the 2 DOGE members, nor the advocacy group, are named within the court docket paperwork.

In March 2025, a political advocacy group contacted two members of the DOGE group on the Social Safety Administration (SSA) “with a request to research state voter rolls that the advocacy group had acquired,” Elizabeth Shapiro, a Justice Division official, wrote within the court docket paperwork. 

“The advocacy group’s said goal was to search out proof of voter fraud and to overturn election leads to sure States,” mentioned Shapiro.

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Shapiro wrote that after these communications, one of many DOGE members, as an SSA worker, signed and despatched a “Voter Data Settlement” with the advocacy group. 

The DOGE members could have accessed non-public data that was dominated to be off-limits by a court docket on the time, and shared knowledge on unapproved “third-party” servers. 

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“Presently, there is no such thing as a proof that SSA workers outdoors of the concerned members of the DOGE Group have been conscious of the communications with the advocacy group. Nor have been they conscious of the ‘Voter Data Settlement’,” Shapiro wrote.

It’s unclear if the 2 DOGE members ended up sharing the info, in keeping with Shapiro, however emails “recommend that DOGE Group members might have been requested to help the advocacy group by accessing SSA knowledge to match to the voter rolls.” 

In line with Shapiro, the SSA referred the 2 DOGE workers for potential violations of the Hatch Act, a legislation that prohibits federal staff from leveraging their official positions for political actions. 

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Final yr, a federal decide issued an order to dam DOGE’s members entry to SSA’s techniques, which included SSNs, medical data, drivers’ license numbers, tax data, and different kinds of private data. In a while, an SSA whistleblower alleged that DOGE uploaded tons of of thousands and thousands of Social Safety data to a susceptible cloud server.

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