The Senior Advisor of the White House of the President, Tesla and Space -CEO Elon Musk, will come to a meeting with the Republicans of the Senate in the US Capitol on March 5, 2025. Musk should meet with the Republican legislators to coordinate its ongoing costs for the federal government’s costs. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
While the role and actions of the Elon Musk Department of Government of Government remain somewhat gloomy for ELON’s efficiency, the data protection experts pursued the movements of the group and document potential violations of the protection of the federal data protection.
Before President Donald Trump took office in January, he described Doge as a advisory committee. to say it would “Advice and guidance of outside the government” in cooperation with the White House and the Office for Management and Household to eliminate the fraud and waste of government expenditure.
But Trump’s is on the inauguration day Executive order for the establishment of the group Said Musk would “have a complete and immediate access to all non -classified agency records, software systems and IT systems”.
In the nine weeks since it was founded, Doge from the payment system of the Ministry of Finance, information about the main and budget of a secret service agency and the social security numbers of Americans, health information and other demographic data accessed sensitive information. Musk and department employees also employ artificial intelligence when analyzing departmental cuts.
Although the Trump government has not provided transparency about what the data collected, several federal authorities have released tens of thousands of employees in the past two months. Thousands were cut From the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Education, Internal Revenue Service and the Ministry of Finance this month.
Frank Torres, Senior KI and data protection consultant of the Center for Civil Rights and Technology of the Leadership Conference, which researched the interface of civil rights and technology, said his organization has come together with the Center for Democracy and Technology, which researched and worked with the legislers on technical topics to clarify what Dog did. The organizations Published a resource sheet Document the measures of DOGES, the violations of data protection you are concerned about, and the lawsuits that several federal authorities have submitted on DOGE’s actions.
“It doesn’t have to be that way,” said Torres. “I mean there are processes and procedures and protective measures that are set up for a certain reason, and it does not seem that Doge follows anything about what is alarming.”
The organizations outlined potential violations of the protection of the data protection of the federal government, such as the data protection law of 1974, which prohibits the disclosure of information without written consent and the proper procedure in accordance with the fifth change that protects the privacy from state interference.
The deputy press spokesman for the White House, Harrison Fields, would not say whether Musche planned to give more insights into his plans for the data to which he accesses.
“Waste, fraud and abuse are anchored for far too long in our broken system,” Fields told States Newsroom in an e -mail declaration. “It requires direct access to the system to identify and remedy it.
The lack of transparency concerns the US representative Gerald E. Connolly (D-Virginia) and Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland) Submitted an inquiry from the Freedom of Information Act This month, the inquiries from Doge gives clear answers to his processes.
In the inquiry, the details ask who is responsible for Doge to conclude the scope of his authority to conclude federal authorities and to dismiss federal employees, the extent of access to sensitive state -sensitive databases and musk to describe how collected data can benefit their own companies and its foreign customers. They also questioned the feeding of sensitive information in AI systems that Doge advertised last month.
“The employees of Doge, including teenage people and twenty computer programmers from Mr. Musk’s own companies, were unleashed in the government’s most sensitive databases from those who contained national security and classified information on the personal financial information of all Americans up to those who contain trade secrets and sensitive commercial data from Musk.
Most Americans have actually submitted data to the federal government that Doge can now access, said Elizabeth Laird, director of equity in civic technology for the Center for Democracy and Technology – about a tax registration, a student loan or social security. Laird said the two organizations see great security concerns, how Doge collects data and what she could do with the information. In the first few weeks of his existence, a code discovered that Everyone could access the database in which updates were published On the Doge.gov website.
“We are talking about social security numbers, we talk about income, we are talking about important life events, e.g. whether they had a baby or married,” said Laird. “We talk about whether they have ever registered bankruptcy – like very sensitive stuff, and we talk about it for tens of millions of people.”
With this level of sensitive information, business needs should justify the risk degree, said Laird.
The employ of AI by Doge to comb and categorize the data of the Americans concerns Laird and Torres, since AI algorithms can create wrong answers, represent security risks themselves and Can have distortions that lead to discrimination against marginalized groups.
While Torres, Laird and their teams are planning to continue to pursue DOGES and their potential data protection violations, they published the first resource sheet to draw attention to the already endangered information. The data acquisition you have seen so far to reduce the expenditure of the federal government is worrying, but both said that they fear that the Americans’ data could be used as we have not yet known.
“The government has a wealth of data about all of us, and I would say that data on the open market is probably very valuable,” said Torres. “It’s almost like a dossier over us from birth to death.”
Musk fired back into critics in an interview published with Fox News on Thursday.
“You will say what we do is somehow unconstitutional or illegal or whatever,” he said. “We are like:” Well, which line of the cost savings do you not agree? “And you can’t point out anyone.”
