“One expert opined, ‘If I were a nation like China, Russia, or Iran, I’d be having a field day with a bunch of college kids running around with sensitive federal government data on unencrypted hard drives.’”
Not only did five current federal government employees establish standing to sue the Office of Personnel Management and the Department of Treasury under the Privacy Act for giving DOGE access to internal systems containing their sensitive information, a federal court in the District of Columbia found they adequately alleged they suffered actual damages by purchasing identity theft services to guard against potential fraud. Those purchases, said the court, “appear reasonable given contemporaneous public reporting on DOGE’s access to their data and its possible mishandling of data elsewhere within the government,” and “by the government’s recent admission that DOGE staffers have in fact mishandled agency data in precisely the ways Plaintiffs feared.” Accordingly, the court denied the government’s motion to dismiss (Nemeth-Greenleaf v. U.S. Office of Personnel Management, No. 25-cv-407 (CRC) (D.D.C. Mar. 4, 2026)).
Shortly after President Trump took office, he created the Department of Governmental Efficiency (DOGE) and tasked it with improving the quality and efficiency of government-wide software, network infrastructure, and IT systems. DOGE staffers immediately sought access to government databases and Treasury Secretary Bessent granted them access to the Bureau of...
By Ivan Kesic A drone strike on an electrical generator just outside the inner perimeter of the Barakah Nuclear Power Plant in the United Arab Emirates on May 17, 2026, suddenly brought the Persia...