Acolytes of former White House adviser Elon Musk ignored privacy warnings and mishandled sensitive Social Security information, according to a whistleblower complaint filed Tuesday.
Officials from the so-called Department of Government Efficiency potentially put hundreds of millions of Americans’ sensitive information at risk by copying a critical Social Security database and uploading it to an insecure cloud server, according to the complaint, filed with members of Congress by the Social Security Administration’s chief data officer, Charles Borges.
Specifically, DOGE officials made a live copy of the numerical identification system, a database known as the Numident, in June — despite warnings that doing so violated security protocols and could expose Americans’ personal identifying information.
“Should bad actors gain access to this cloud environment, Americans may be susceptible to widespread identity theft, may lose vital healthcare and food benefits, and the government may be responsible for re-issuing every American a new Social Security Number at great cost,” said the complaint filed by Borges’ lawyers at the Government Accountability Project, a whistleblower protection group.
The complaint, first reported by The New York Times, is the latest fallout of a long-running effort by Musk’s underlings, whom he brought into government from his private companies, to gain access to the government’s most sensitive databases.
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