DOGE Social Security data access puts millions at risk

Political punishment via your personal information.

Mar 21, 2025

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Big one out today at Rolling Stone, so go there and read it. Lots of stuff in the works at the moment and I’m currently in Miami to check in with folks impacted by the Trump administration’s ongoing assault on Social Security. More on that in the coming days… Meanwhile, I’ve learned that Social Security insiders are very worried about DOGE’s access to all of your personal information. That’s right, you, reading this right now. The Trump administration could use it to target its political enemies — although there was a development last night that could put at least a temporary halt to that scenario. Read on below to learn more.

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Once again, the judicial branch has stepped in to prevent an illegal overreach by the Trump administration — this time, stopping Elon Musk’s DOGE from accessing the most private and personal information we as U.S. citizens have, thanks to DOGE’s sweeping access to data at the Social Security Administration (SSA).

As I reported last week, DOGE has had access — since late February — to the personal information of hundreds of millions of Americans. Republicans in Congress have done nothing about this and don’t care. They say it’s all part of DOGE’s work to root out fraud and waste. Meanwhile, agency insiders tell me for a story out today morning at Rolling Stone that all that personal information from the SSA could be used by the Trump administration to threaten, blackmail or punish its political enemies both in the United States and abroad.

And that’s in addition to the risk of this massive dataset ending up in the hands of a hostile foreign government or terrorist organization because DOGE didn’t secure it properly. That last scenario — not properly securing the data of every single person in the country with a Social Security number — is exactly why a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order last night stopping DOGE’s access to the data. There’s a lot going on right now, but if the White House and Musk get around to paying attention to this, they’ll surely be calling for the impeachment of the judge who issued the order, which you can read here in full.

The data would have allowed DOGE and the Trump administration to create databases or track people who are disabled, noncitizens, transgender, or have received treatment for HIV and AIDS, among many other categories of people. The data also included detailed tax, employment and earnings records for hundreds of millions of Americans, medical records like the identities of doctors someone has visited and prescription and non-prescription drugs that were administered. The SSA estimates that more than 450 million people have had Social Security numbers registered since the agency’s founding.

Judge Ellen Lipton Hollander tore DOGE and attorneys representing the Trump administration apart in her order, which didn’t just demand that DOGE stop accessing the data they’ve obtained from the SSA but delete any records it may have created. Hollander ordered what amounts to a stoppage of a major part of DOGE’s operations within the SSA based on a few findings:

DOGE does not appear concerned with violating the privacy rights of hundreds of millions of Americans, even as it argues it shouldn’t have to disclose the identities of its own employees. - “Ironically, the identity of these DOGE affiliates has been concealed because defendants are concerned that the disclosure of even their names would expose them to harassment and thus invade their privacy,” Hollander wrote. “The defense does not appear to share a privacy concern for the millions of Americans whose SSA records were made available to the DOGE affiliates, without their consent, and which contain sensitive, confidential, and personally identifiable information (PII).”
DOGE is not engaged in “business as usual” through its work at the SSA. - “Contrary to SSA’s well entrenched policy and practice, (acting SSA commissioner Leland) Dudek made the unprecedented decision to provide the DOGE Team with non-anonymized access to virtually all SSA records,” Hollander wrote. “And, when he did so, some of the DOGE Team members were not yet entitled to access, because they either were not properly detailed to SSA, or had not been vetted or adequately trained, or necessary work documents were not signed. Moreover, there was no demonstrated need for access to such a massive quantity of PII. At best, there was only a vague and conclusory assertion that access to the entirety of SSA’s systems of records was needed to root out fraud.”
DOGE can’t even explain specifically what it needs the data containing your personal information for. - “At the Motion hearing, the Court repeatedly questioned government counsel to explain the ‘need’ for the breadth of access to SSA records that was provided to the DOGE Team,” Hollander wrote. “Counsel offered no meaningful explanation as to why the DOGE Team was in ‘need’ of unprecedented, unfettered access to virtually SSA’s entire data systems in order to accomplish the goals of modernizing technology, maximizing efficiency and productivity, and detecting fraud, waste, and abuse.”
Again, DOGE and government attorneys could not even explain specifically what it needs your personal for. - “Defendants have not submitted declarations from the hired experts on the DOGE Team explaining why such unrestricted and unfettered access is necessary,” Hollander wrote. “They have not provided a particularized explanation of how or why virtually the entire data base of SSA is needed to conduct the investigation, or why redacted or anonymized records, at least initially, would be inadequate. The silence on this issue is deafening.”
Again, DOGE and the Trump administration could not explain what it needed you personal information for. - Instead, defendants disregarded protocols for proper hiring, onboarding, training, and access limitations, and, in a rushed fashion, provided access to a massive amount of sensitive, confidential data to members of the DOGE Team, without any articulated explanation for the need to do so.
One more time in case you missed it, DOGE and the White House cannot explain why it needed your sensitive, personal, private information. - “[DOGE] never identified or articulated even a single reason for which the DOGE Team needs unlimited access to SSA’s entire record systems, thereby exposing personal, confidential, sensitive, and private information that millions of Americans entrusted to their government. Indeed, the government has not even attempted to explain why a more tailored, measured, titrated approach is not suitable to the task. Instead, the government simply repeats its incantation of a need to modernize the system and uncover fraud. Its method of doing so is tantamount to hitting a fly with a sledgehammer.”

So what did DOGE need the data for? I have my theories, and they include the targeting of certain classes of Americans for removal from the rolls of Social Security benefits, but I’ll let future court filings play out a bit to see exactly who DOGE and the Trump administration were looking to go after. Because I know they’re going after somebody, and it’s not just as simple as “we’re reducing fraud.” There’s a personal, punitive angle to everything this administration does, and it’s only a matter of time before we find out — as long as the judicial branch holds — exactly who the White House and DOGE wanted to punish through Social Security.

Up next, definitive evidence of who they want to punish at the border, at airports, and when applying for official government documents.

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