The role and behavior of the Elon Musk-Head Government Efficiency remains somewhat vague, but data privacy experts have tracked group movements and documented potential violations of federal privacy protection.

Before President Donald Trump took office in January, he characterized Doge as an advisory body; He says that To eliminate fraud and waste from government spending, we will work with the White House and the Office of Management and Budget to “provide advice and guidance from outside the government.”

However, on the day of the inauguration, Trump Presidential Order establishing the group Musk said it will provide “full and quick access to all unclassified agency records, software systems and IT systems.”

In nine weeks since its establishment, Doge has access to confidential information from the Treasury’s payment system, intelligence reporting agencies and American Social Security numbers, health information, and other demographic data on personnel and budgets. Masks and department staff also use artificial intelligence to analyse departmental cuts.

The Trump administration has not provided transparency regarding what data collected is being used, but in the past two months several federal agencies have fired tens of thousands of workers under Doge’s direction. Thousands have been cut off This month, from the Environmental Protection Agency, Ministry of Education, Internal Revenue Agency, and Ministry of Finance.

Frank Torres, senior AI and privacy advisor at the Civil Rights Technology Center of the Leadership Council, which studies the intersection of civil rights and technology, said his organization is partnering with the Civil Rights Technology Center, which researches and collaborates with lawmakers on technical topics to sort out what Doge was doing. Organization Resource sheets have been released Document Doge’s actions, data privacy violations you are concerned about, and lawsuits that several federal agencies have filed about Doge’s actions.

“You don’t have to do this,” Torres said. “So there is a process, procedure and protection installed for a reason, and it doesn’t look like Doge is following it.

The organization outlined potential violations of federal privacy protection, such as the 1974 Privacy Act. This prohibits disclosure of information without written consent, prohibits substantial due process under the Fifth Amendment, and protects privacy from government interference.

White House Principal Harrison Fields, Associate Director of the Office, will not say whether he plans to provide more insight into the data plans Doge is accessing.

“Wash, fraud and abuse have long been deeply entrenched in broken systems,” Fields told the newsroom via email. “To identify and fix it, you have direct access to the system. Doge continues to shed light on the scams they are revealing, as Americans deserve to know what the government has spent their hard-earned taxes.”

The lack of transparency concerns US personnel. Gerald E. Connolly (D-Virginia) and Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland) A request for the Freedom of Information Act has been submitted This month, we are requesting Doge provide a clear answer to its operations.

The request calls for details on who is in charge at DOGE, the extent of his authority to close federal agencies and fire federal employees, the extent of access to sensitive government-sensitive databases, and how MUSK has collected benefits his own companies and his foreign clients. They also questioned the supply of confidential information to AI systems. Doge was promoted last month.

“Doge employees, including teenage computer programmers at Musk’s own company, have unlocked the government’s most sensitive databases, from people with national security and classification information to people with personal financial information for all Americans, to people with Musk’s competitors’ occupational secrets and delicate commercial data,” the representative wrote in the request.

Most Americans actually submit data to the federal government, and Doge is now accessible, says Elizabeth Laird, the impartial director of civil technology at the Center for Democracy Technology, whether it is via tax returns, student loans or social security. Laird said two organizations are seeing major security concerns about how Doge collects data and what it does with the information. In the first few weeks of its existence, the coder discovered it Anyone can access the database where the update was posted Go to the doge.gov website.

“We’re talking about Social Security numbers, we’re talking about income, we’re talking about major life events, such as whether you had a baby or got married,” Laird said. “We’re talking about whether you’ve ever filed bankruptcy — like something very sensitive, we’re talking about it for tens of millions of people.”

With that level of confidential information, business needs need to justify the level of risk, Laird said.

It is a concern for Laird and Torres that Doge examine and classify American data, as AI algorithms can generate inaccurate responses and pose security risks. You can have biases that lead to discrimination against marginalized groups.

Torres, Laird and their team plan to continue tracking Doge’s actions and potential privacy violations, but they have now released their initial resource sheets to bring awareness to information that is already at risk. While data collection has been a concern to date to reduce federal spending, both said they fear that American data will be used in ways they don’t know yet.

“The government has a wealth of data on all of us. I’ll probably say very valuable data in the open market,” Torres said. “It’s like a document related to us from birth to death.”

Musk fought back against critics Interview Fox News was released on Thursday.

“They’ll say whatever we’re doing is somehow unconstitutional or illegal,” he said. “We said, ‘Well, you don’t agree to which line of cost cuts?’ And they can’t point anything. ”

Last updated at 3:07pm, March 30, 2025