Within weeks of Donald Trump’s second inaugural, members of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency team showed up at the Social Security Administration and started demanding access to files. The efforts were not well received: Michelle King, in her capacity as the acting Social Security commissioner, resigned after she refused a DOGE request to access sensitive government records at the agency.
The underlying concern did not go away. The New York Times reported:
Members of the Department of Government Efficiency uploaded a copy of a crucial Social Security database in June to a vulnerable cloud server, putting the personal information of hundreds of millions of Americans at risk of being leaked or hacked, according to a whistle-blower complaint filed by the Social Security Administration’s chief data officer. The database contains records of all Social Security numbers issued by the federal government.
The Times’ report added that the database in question “includes individuals’ full names, addresses and birth dates, among other details that could be used to steal their identities, making it one of the nation’s most sensitive repositories of personal information.”
It’s an open question as to why, exactly, DOGE would even want to upload such a database. (The controversial operation is ostensibly searching for fraud within the Social Security system, though its previous claims on the matter have fallen apart under scrutiny.)
The whistleblower in this case is Charles Borges, the Social Security Administration’s chief data officer, who alleges that DOGE members copied the highly sensitive data without any kind of “independent security monitoring,” which in turn created “enormous vulnerabilities.”
Borges didn’t say that the database had been breached, but his complaint added that there was no oversight to assess how and why DOGE was using the data. The Times’ report added:
‘Should bad actors gain access to this cloud environment, Americans may be susceptible to widespread identity theft, may lose vital health care and food benefits, and the government may be responsible for reissuing every American a new Social Security number at great cost,’ Mr. Borges’s complaint said. He alleged that DOGE did not involve him in discussions about the project, despite his role as chief data officer, leaving him to piece together evidence of what had happened after the fact.
A spokesperson for the department said in a written statement, “Commissioner [Frank] Bisignano and the Social Security Administration take all 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. We are not aware of any compromise to this environment and remain dedicated to protecting sensitive personal data.”
In recent months, a variety of federal whistleblowers have come forward, and for the most part, the congressional Republican majority has ignored them — even when confirming Bisignano to lead the Social Security Administration. Whether GOP lawmakers express similar indifference to Borges remains to be seen. Watch this space.
