>Mr. Borges said DOGE members copied the data to an internal agency server that only DOGE could access, forgoing the type of “independent security monitoring” normally required under agency policy for such sensitive data and creating “enormous vulnerabilities.”
The fact that the courts (largely SCOTUS) has allowed this whole mess to go on is bonkers. These are potentially terrible results for citizens by an organization that continuously has shown no care for the rights of citizens ... and yet is given a free hand to do what it wants.
There's no negative impact to saying "no you can't do the thing until you get your security shit together".
Sort of off topic but this reminds me of a Hunter S Thompson quote I read yesterday about the Nixon administration
"Meanwhile, the Vice president of the United States has been lashed out of office and disbarred in his home state of Maryland, the president himself is teetering on the bring of a Burglary/Conspiracy indictment that will mean certain impeachment, and the whole structure of our government has become a stagnant mockery of itself and everybody who ever had faith in it"
You should assume that the identifying details in this database are already leaked. The Equifax breach in 2017 exposed about half of all Americans. The National Public Data breach last year included 272 million Social Security numbers.
You can get an inconvenient approximation of challenge/response by freezing your reports with the bureaus and only unfreezing them briefly when applying for new credit.
some psychopaths stole a lot of personal data from the US federal government, and we don't know who took it, what they took, what they did with it, or why.
but don't worry, that's Politics, and so we should just ignore the crimes being done in public and talk about how we can enrich the technofascists who might give you some equity if you work hard.
"Borges warned in the complaint that if this information were compromised, “it is possible that the sensitive [personally identifiable information] on every American including health diagnoses, income levels and banking information, family relationships, and personal biographic data could be exposed publicly, and shared widely.”"
Yeah, but this is always true. And it didn't happen.
We have every reason to believe Musk and his young sidekicks stole every bit of government data they had access to, which in the end was most of it. So while I'm sure they also opened up some security loopholes during their whirlwind tour of firing people so they could be rehired (efficiency!), I'm more concerned with the longer term threat that data represents in the hands of someone with the resources and inclination to use it against us.
It blows my mind that DOGE continues to brag about their “savings” using the most naive version of contract accounting (add up all the ceiling values, ignore money already spent or money that won’t be spent)
SSA's CIO "accepts all risks" - but what does that actually mean in practice? Is he going to be held accountable?
> The agency’s chief information officer Aram Moghaddassi approved the move to copy the database to the agency’s cloud, saying he “determined the business need is higher than the security risk” and that he accepts “all risks” with the project.
It sounds more like the CDO is butthurt that he's being ignored. Note that his claim says they uploaded it into an agency controlled aws environment that apparently lacking in independent security controls.
So he's saying his agency runs insecure cloud servers?
MAGA never ceases to amaze me on how they can create a problem from hosting an email server in your basement or create a conspiracy theory about pedophilia on the other side of the aisle, but when it comes to data they use the public cloud or services and when it comes to pedophilia they hide the records that prove the president is. Why are Americans accepting this?
Put at risk, or willfully given to their masters? All the ghouls suckling Yarvin's teats like Thiel want their tech driven tyranny, and SS data will help them on their way.
Who can prove to me that Elon Musk himself doesn't have a copy on a USB key/drive somewhere? This whole DOGE business has been an unmitigated failure. The savings are far, far, far from the claimed numbers.
Note the above story has already been submitted to HN - and flagged. Clearly there is a cabal of Musk/MAGA supporters gaming HN moderation to make sure a story from a reputable outlet, doing appropriate investigation and data analysis, about a tech/IT organization, claiming to do revolutionary improvements to the tune of billions of $, led by an "innovator" who might be the poster child of "hackers" and "startup founders" and whose interviews have been on HN front page repeatedly, is buried.
If the Therac-25 accident happened today and Musk was involved, would HN as it is now allow people to read and learn about it?
23 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 43.7 ms ] threadThe fact that the courts (largely SCOTUS) has allowed this whole mess to go on is bonkers. These are potentially terrible results for citizens by an organization that continuously has shown no care for the rights of citizens ... and yet is given a free hand to do what it wants.
There's no negative impact to saying "no you can't do the thing until you get your security shit together".
"Meanwhile, the Vice president of the United States has been lashed out of office and disbarred in his home state of Maryland, the president himself is teetering on the bring of a Burglary/Conspiracy indictment that will mean certain impeachment, and the whole structure of our government has become a stagnant mockery of itself and everybody who ever had faith in it"
You can get an inconvenient approximation of challenge/response by freezing your reports with the bureaus and only unfreezing them briefly when applying for new credit.
some psychopaths stole a lot of personal data from the US federal government, and we don't know who took it, what they took, what they did with it, or why.
but don't worry, that's Politics, and so we should just ignore the crimes being done in public and talk about how we can enrich the technofascists who might give you some equity if you work hard.
Yeah, but this is always true. And it didn't happen.
> The agency’s chief information officer Aram Moghaddassi approved the move to copy the database to the agency’s cloud, saying he “determined the business need is higher than the security risk” and that he accepts “all risks” with the project.
It sounds more like the CDO is butthurt that he's being ignored. Note that his claim says they uploaded it into an agency controlled aws environment that apparently lacking in independent security controls.
So he's saying his agency runs insecure cloud servers?
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/08/12/trump-doge-contract...
Note the above story has already been submitted to HN - and flagged. Clearly there is a cabal of Musk/MAGA supporters gaming HN moderation to make sure a story from a reputable outlet, doing appropriate investigation and data analysis, about a tech/IT organization, claiming to do revolutionary improvements to the tune of billions of $, led by an "innovator" who might be the poster child of "hackers" and "startup founders" and whose interviews have been on HN front page repeatedly, is buried.
If the Therac-25 accident happened today and Musk was involved, would HN as it is now allow people to read and learn about it?