We today open our coverage here, of the still-unfolding abuses by DOGE, at the US Social Security Administration — with a banger. With a hat tip to EmptyWheel’s fine reporting, we note that USDC Judge Ellen Hollander has repeatedly caught the DOGE boys in lies, or at least highly misleading statements in sworn declarations — about the nature and scope of their highly intrusive access, prior to clearance for security was complete.
Specifically, Marko Ezel (an avowed racist) may be working inside SSA right now (after being run out of other agency roles), and he may well be looking at various individual Americans’ highly private earnings histories — for no legitimate governmental purpose. Here’s the bit of the opinion — and the full 137 pages of it, out of Maryland,now:
…Ironically, the identity of these DOGE affiliates has been concealed because defendants are concerned that the disclosure of even their names would expose them to harassment and thus invade their privacy. The defense does not appear to share a privacy concern for the millions of Americans whose SSA records were made available to the DOGE affiliates, without their consent, and which contain sensitive, confidential, and personally identifiable information….
For example, the Court asked counsel for the government: “[W]hat was the mission and what was the need? What was the purpose in providing access to all of this information?” ECF 45 at 23. The Court again pressed about why the DOGE Team would “need” the scope of information at issue here. Id. at 24, 38. And, toward the end of the hearing, the Court once again gave the government the opportunity to explain the “need for all of those records.” Id. at 84.
Besides cursory, circular statements about members of the DOGE Team in need of all SSA data because of their work to identify fraudulent or improper payments, counsel provided no explanation as to why or how the particular records correlated to the performance of job duties. See, e.g., id. at 21–22 (“The goal is to review… the Social Security Administration’s records to see if there are improper or fraudulent payments. Naturally if one is looking for improper or fraudulent payments, one looks at the data to see if any such payments are made.”); id. at 23 (“[If] one is looking for fraudulent or improper payments that may or may not be going out by the Social Security Administration, one would need to look at the records, the beneficiary data, the payment data in order to do an assessment of that and to recommend potential changes.”); id. at 24 (“I can tell you that they are looking for instances of improper or fraudulent payments and that it is natural that one would look at the data in that system to see if they’ve been substantiated….”); id. at 39 (“These particular people are working at the agency in order to carry out the sort of broad policy prescription contained in the Executive Order. They are also looking at improper payments and potential waste or improper or fraudulent payments….”); id. at 85 (“[I]f you wanted to decide whether or not [a claim for benefits] was improper or not, you would need to look at the records to see if the payment was properly made or if it was fraudulent.”)….
The number of young, feckless and deplorable reprobates spread now by Musk across the federal machinery of governance is… jaw slacking — and should lead to an indictment for him, in any sane world — after the dust settles here.
[And… perhaps trivially (but I do feel a need for some normalcy… in this time of chaos), Mr. Obama and I are tied after the first night on the men’s brackets — women’s tip off in mere moments! Woot?] Onward.
नमस्ते
