Over a dozen lawsuits to stop DOGE data access are betting on a 1974 law
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What sensitive information does DOGE want to access?
Date of birth, home address, social security number. I mean, these are just a few examples of some of the personal information that the U.S. government collects on most of us and stores in databases across federal agencies. Well, the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, created by President Trump, has been causing alarm by making massive cuts to federal staff. But it has also been seeking access to the troves of personal information that the government has on Americans. Information that can go way beyond a social security number. The level of sensitivity of the information that we're talking about is really unprecedented. And it is the most sensitive information that people provide about themselves.
Elizabeth Lair directs the Equity and Civic Technology Project at the Center for Democracy and Technology. She spoke with NPR's Laurel Wamsley. It will include demographics about you, so your race, your sex, even if you have a disability. And then I think the thing that a lot of folks don't think about, because a number of the reports of the systems that they've attempted to access or have actually accessed are financial in nature, but they also include really personal information about you. So just to take your tax records, you know, it will include any major life events that you've had. So whether you were pregnant and gave birth to a child or you adopted a child or you got married or divorced, whether you went bankrupt, you know, things that maybe your closest friends and family don't even know are included in these systems.
And then there's the kind of information that's stored by agencies like Medicare, Medicaid, and the VA. If you are a veteran that's getting medical care from VA, your medical data is stored in VA databases. What conditions you're being treated for, what treatments you're receiving. If you have a VA therapist or you go to group therapy at VA, then therapy notes are being stored in VA databases. If you, I don't know, You have an opioid addiction because of an injury that you received while you were in service. That information is going to be potentially stored in the VA database. Jonathan Cammons has worked as a software engineer and cybersecurity professional for more than 30 years. His job was overseeing cybersecurity for the Department of Veterans Affairs' main website, or VA.gov. He was fired from the U.S. Digital Service on February 14th, along with about 40 other people.
Kamen says he doesn't know what Elon Musk and his team have access to at the VA, but he is worried about the kind of sensitive data that they could access from what's stored there. There's all sorts of financial information because, you know, in order to apply for benefits, sometimes you have to disclose details about your financial circumstances. So Doge claims that what it is trying to do is to find fraud and inefficiency and waste in the federal government so that it can be eliminated. And the single biggest budget line item at the VA is the benefits that are paid out to veterans. So if you're really looking for fraud and waste and inefficiency, you're not going to be able to do that at VA without looking at the veteran benefit databases, which are the ones that have the personal information in them.
Doge's efforts to access these government databases have a lot of people wondering, is there anything that can protect the personal information that we have to hand over to the federal government? Consider this. A little-known law exists to do just that, protect our sensitive data from government overreach. And more than a dozen lawsuits now invoke this 50-year-old law to stop Doge's access to this information. From NPR, I'm Elsa Chang.
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