The U.S. DOGE Service is building a massive, centralized database using all the personal information scooped up by tech billionaire Elon Musk's underlings.
President Donald Trump's billionaire adviser has been collecting data from agencies across the government as his team moves to slash federal spending and lay off thousands of workers, but cybersecurity experts are sounding the alarm for DOGE's race to merge all that sensitive information into one central hub before Musk leaves his government perch, reported the Washington Post.
"The intensifying effort to unify systems into one central hub aims to advance multiple Trump administration priorities, including finding and deporting undocumented immigrants and rooting out fraud in government payments," the Post reported. "And it follows a March executive order to eliminate 'information silos' as DOGE tries to streamline operations and cut spending."
DOGE has at times removed protections around sensitive information — such as Social Security numbers, birth dates, employment history, disability records and medical documentation – and Department of Homeland Security told the newspaper that, in one case, a website for a new visa program hadn't been set up behind a virtual private network, as it typically would to safeguard that data.
“President Trump is leading the charge to modernize the federal government and make it more efficient — and DOGE is playing a critical role in fulfilling that vision,” said White House spokesman Harrison Fields. “By advancing secure data-sharing across agencies, DOGE is enhancing accountability, eliminating fraud, and streamlining operations across the board.”
But security analysts expressed concern that breaches could erode public confidence in the government, and civil rights advocates and some federal employees fear the massive data set could be used to target the administration's political enemies or guide decisions about funding basic government services.
“Separation and segmentation is one of the core principles in sound cybersecurity,” said Charles Henderson of security company Coalfire. “Putting all your eggs in one basket means I don’t need to go hunting for them — I can just steal the basket.”
Former government technologist Erie Meyer wrote in an affidavit as part of a lawsuit challenging the administration's cuts to the Social Security Administration that Musk's team was increasing the risk of "hacking and data exploitation," and multiple employees have reported that DOGE employees were ignoring long-standing protocols for accessing and handling sensitive data.
“You want people to have the least amount of access that they absolutely need,” said Faith Williams, director of the Effective and Accountable Government Program at the Project on Government Oversight. “So if someone comes in and asks a question, it’s not ‘here’s the master key.’”
