DOGE shared Social Security data, DOJ says

People protest DOGE's incursion into the Social Security Administration

(Image credit: David McNew / Getty Images)

What happened

At least two Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) operatives assigned to the Social Security Administration accessed and shared sensitive data on unsecured servers, in violation of agency rules, a court order and possibly some laws, the Justice Department said in “corrections” to previous testimony made public Tuesday. The disclosure was a “notable reversal by Social Security officials, who had previously claimed there was no evidence that DOGE had potentially compromised personal data,” The Washington Post said.

Who said what

Two unidentified DOGE workers were secretly in contact with an unidentified advocacy group seeking to “overturn election results in certain states,” DOJ official Elizabeth Shapiro said in the filing, and one of them signed an agreement with the group and may have aided it “by accessing SSA data to match to the voter rolls.” The agency also “acknowledged for the first time that DOGE members had shared data with each other using an unsanctioned third-party service,” Cloudflare, the Post said. Social Security has been unable to access or “determine exactly what data were shared to Cloudflare,” Shapiro said.

The corrections affirm many of the allegations made by former SSA chief data officer Charles Borges in whistleblower testimony to Congress in August. “We have been warning about privacy violations at Social Security and calling out Elon Musk’s ‘DOGE’ for months,” Reps. John Larson (D-Conn.) and Richard Neal (D-Mass.) said in a statement. They called for the DOGE employees to be prosecuted.

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What next?

Federal lawyers “referred the two DOGE employees to the Office of Special Counsel for a potential violation of the Hatch Act,” The New York Times said. Outside privacy law experts said the operatives also appeared to have violated much more serious laws, like the Privacy Act.

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.