[HN Gopher] DOGE has 'god mode' access to government data
___________________________________________________________________
DOGE has 'god mode' access to government data
Author : perihelions
Score : 768 points
Date : 2025-02-20 07:36 UTC (15 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theatlantic.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theatlantic.com)
| cgcrob wrote:
| Having access to the data scares me less than the utter
| ineptitude demonstrated in presenting "findings". Findings in
| quotes because if I used that level of analytical rigour I'd be
| instantly fired, probably out of a cannon into the sun.
| MathMonkeyMan wrote:
| It's as if that's not what it's about at all.
| ksynwa wrote:
| What's Elon's beef with USAID? I would think he would go after
| something like food stamps first owing to his libertarian ethos.
| Maybe he sees USAID as a completely benevolent handout and a
| waste of money? I cannot begin to understand why.
| hnhg wrote:
| Perhaps he wants the budget reallocated to something he has
| more financial interest in and control over? Or something like
| that for Thiel or others?
| Terr_ wrote:
| They'll work their way up to anti-constitutional attacks on
| everything else if they get a chance, USAID is their starting
| point because it's a softer target in a few ways:
|
| 1. The people who'll suffer or die from their mal-management
| will generally be faraway foreigners, as opposed to people
| voters know.
|
| 2. More of the victims have a much more difficult time
| launching any kind of lawsuit in US courts.
|
| 3. It has a small veneer of Presidential-involvement-ness due
| to its proximity to diplomacy and foreign relations.
|
| 4. Like tariffs, being able to withhold aid allows Trump to
| commit extortion against other countries, much like how he was
| impeached for extorting Ukraine in his first term.
| techorange wrote:
| Ironically USAID might help Americans more than foreign
| folks, and disproportionately Trump's own supporters - if the
| money is being spent to buy American products, particularly
| food, that is then shipped overseas.
| cgcrob wrote:
| USAID is the facilitator for Starlink in Ukraine. Based on the
| garbage coming out of Trump about Zelensky in the last couple
| of days and Russia's positive comments regarding the "USAID
| meddling machine" I suspect they got orders from the boss.
| sen wrote:
| > U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID): The USAID
| Inspector General initiated a probe into Starlink satellite
| terminals provided to the Government of Ukraine
|
| From a House Committee report matching Elon's actions to
| agencies he has personal issues with:
|
| https://democrats-judiciary.house.gov/uploadedfiles/2025.02....
| danparsonson wrote:
| An easy win with his rabid xenophobic fan base? A soft target
| to hurt his opponents and distract from other terrible things
| they're doing?
| unsnap_biceps wrote:
| USAID was funding the StarLink deployment in Ukraine and was
| reexamining the deal[1], likely to try to negotiate a cheaper
| plan or to reduce the funding. My opinion is that it likely hit
| his ego a bit and it was a really sweet deal for StarLink, so
| losing out on it would suck.
|
| [1] https://www.newsweek.com/usaid-elon-musk-starlink-probe-
| ukra...
| Marazan wrote:
| USAID is a bogeyman agency in far-right conspiracy circles.
|
| Musk gets his world view from far-right conspiracists.
| DanielHB wrote:
| Funny thing is that kind of government foreign aid is the
| kind of soft-power over smaller countries thing that right-
| wingers politicians love, or at least used to. Similar to the
| BS that China pulls with the belt and road initiative (but
| probably not as bad in most instances).
|
| Basically give/loan money, get international political
| support back. Use political support to bully international
| institutions (UN, WTO, WHO, etc) to do what you want.
|
| I guess soft-power is not enough anymore, they want all the
| power.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Marco Rubio has been very vocal on his support for USAID
| for years if you want to see what the traditional right
| wing take on this has been. "Critical to our security" etc.
| And he is of course in charge of the smoking remains of it
| now.
| DanielHB wrote:
| The funny thing is just how inverted the situation is,
| for years leftists were saying that this kind of foreign
| aid is often used to hold small countries hostage. While
| the right wanted to keep the soft-power the aid gives and
| claiming this kind of aid is used to keep countries
| democratic.
|
| Now the right is "screw soft-power" and the left is
| "think of the children". And in the middle people
| suffering like always.
|
| The worse part is that a lot/most of that aid is probably
| of very benign influence, but it is definitely also used
| for nefarious reasons.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| This is dangerous sanewashing.
|
| When Trump attacks USAID (or the CIA or the FBI) from the
| nationalist authoritarian right, it in no way
| counterbalances people criticizing it from the left.
|
| In particular, the left criticism of USAID were always
| "think of the children" because they wanted it to do that
| more and better. They have remained consistent in that.
| troupo wrote:
| The "traditional right wing" has been vocal about many
| things over the years. Nearly every single one has bent
| their knee.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| Conservatism is pretty much dead in the US. It's all
| about cults of personality and grievance now.
|
| Oh, and of course, graft.
| soraminazuki wrote:
| Conservatism before Trump was George W Bush, and while
| they're very different, it definitely wasn't all sunshine
| and roses. I don't remember a time in my lifetime when
| conservatism represented anything good.
| DanielHB wrote:
| International aid is such a cheap way to get soft-power
| while also being able to, you know, help people. Even if
| a lot of it is misused or inefficiently used the soft-
| power is there.
|
| A lot of that soft-power has been spent on getting other
| countries to be more democratic, which is a good thing.
| Although I don't doubt it has been used for bad reasons
| as well.
| rl3 wrote:
| > _What 's Elon's beef with USAID?_
|
| They were investigating Starlink:
|
| https://oig.usaid.gov/node/6814
| ConfusedDog wrote:
| By the look of it, they were investigating how Ukraine use of
| Starlink provided to them. You make a great journalist. lol.
| rl3 wrote:
| Thanks. Admittedly "Probably something to do with Starlink"
| would've been more accurate.
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20250101100055/https://www.usai
| d...
|
| That's now removed from the live website.
|
| Point being, it's a little strange USAID was immediately
| targeted for destruction with extreme prejudice by the same
| man providing the terminals.
|
| Especially given their contentious history:
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-66752264
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| what's with people not having beef with USAID? It's done so
| many crazy and bad things, for example:
|
| USAID funded the hepatitis vaccination drive that the CIA used
| as a cover for espionage against the bin laden family, leading
| to polio outbreak in pakistan.
|
| https://pulitzercenter.org/stories/he-led-cia-bin-laden-and-...
|
| Distaste for USAID in any other time would be bipartisan; the
| Clinton Administration floated shuttering it too. If you go to
| DC a lot of insiders will say, 'yeah, USAID's got to go'.
| matthewmacleod wrote:
| Vaccination campaigns are "crazy and bad" because they might
| be hijacked by the CIA?
|
| I think you've identified the wrong culprit there buddy.
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| not might. Were. A USAID that isn't problematic would have
| stopped it. It failed to; just one symptom of the problems
| at USAID.
| rhcom2 wrote:
| This seems like a criticism of the CIA, not USAID, no?
|
| > The decision to enlist Afridi was probably made by the CIA
| station chief in Islamabad and was passed on to the
| Counterterrorism Center back in Langley.
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| don't fool yourself. USAID had the power to stop this.
| gambiting wrote:
| What makes you think so, exactly? It's not like CIA would
| let everyone within the organisation know they are doing
| it. Do you think USAID could just say no to CIA?
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| IF YOU ARE INVOLVED WITH LYING TO PEOPLE AND NOT
| ADMINISTERING VACCINES AND DOING DNA TESTS, THEN IT IS
| YOUR INDVIDUAL DUTY TO STOP YOUR ORG FROM CONTINUING.
| gambiting wrote:
| ....what happened with your capslock?
|
| Again, do you think the head of USAID could have just
| told the head of CIA "no we're not doing this"?
|
| What makes you think they were informed at all? That's
| kind of the entire MO of CIA - they don't inform other
| agencies what they are doing when it concerns national
| security, they just go and do it.
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| let me spell it out for you:
|
| If you're a midlevel program manager (or whatever role
| label they have) at USAID you should be noticing that
| vaccines are not being given out. If USAID doesn't have
| the capability to monitor its programs to the point where
| that level of accountability exists, then it shouldn't
| exist.
| gambiting wrote:
| Look, we can both play this game - let me spell this out
| for you the 3rd time
|
| "do you think the head of USAID could have just told the
| head of CIA "no we're not doing this"?"
|
| >>If USAID doesn't have the capability to monitor its
| programs to the point where that level of accountability
| exists
|
| If you think CIA hasn't thought about this and addressed
| it some other way, then I guess the assumption we're
| working with is that CIA is literally incompetent at
| their actual job.
|
| You're barking at the wrong tree. Be angry at CIA for
| doing this shit, not at USAID for running a program that
| got hijacked by them.
| wat10000 wrote:
| What in the world is going on with this country? How did
| we let ourselves be ruled by people who think such
| nonsense?
| ksynwa wrote:
| I didn't bring this up because it would be controversial on
| this website. I think USAID is a tool for advancing US
| geopolitical interests aims first and foremost and I would
| like it to be abolished as well. But someone like Musk
| wanting it to be shuttered doesn't make sense because these
| organisation in one way or another advance the interests of
| US businesses and he would benefit from that as well.
| amarcheschi wrote:
| I think that any sufficiently big organization has done bad
| things, this alone shouldn't be enough to close an agency.
|
| However, I'm sure Cia has done, does, and will do much worse
| things than usaid
| mbrumlow wrote:
| My understanding is USAID was one of those organizations thet
| refused to pause spending when Trump lawfully asked all
| agencies to stop spending (it was a 90 day hold, not a outright
| denial, only congress can do that). Agencies that should adhere
| to trumps orders went to the top.
| troupo wrote:
| > refused to pause spending when Trump lawfully asked all
| agencies to stop spending
|
| How do you imagine any agency to "stop spending"? Are
| salaries not to be paid? Are contracts not to be fulfilled?
| Are rents not to be paid?
| jpcom wrote:
| Scenario: You give someone $40B to feed people, and $1B
| actually feeds them while $39B vanishes into overhead and
| ideological reprogramming. Then they tell you they need more.
| If this is success, what does failure look like?
| troupo wrote:
| And you have the proof for these numbers, or are they pulled
| out of Elon's behind?
| Ray20 wrote:
| I have my own experience. As a non-American, I know a lot
| of hungry people. And I have never heard of any help for
| them from USAID. And who do you think received help from
| USAID out of all those I have encountered and ever heard
| about? Only left-leaning democrat's shield "independent"
| journalists, whose job mostly consist of ideological
| reprogramming and who now scream all over twitter how Trump
| destroys their lives. ONLY.
|
| So yes, I don't have any numbers, but I'm used to trusting
| my own eyes. And what I see (on this particular issue) is
| way more consistent with what Musk says than with what his
| opponents say.
| troupo wrote:
| > And I have never heard of any help for them from USAID
|
| Personal anecdotes are never a good proof of anything.
|
| > So yes, I don't have any numbers, but I'm used to
| trusting my own eyes.
|
| So you don't believe in viruses bacteria to name just a
| few things you can't see with your own eyes?
|
| USAID had _many_ programs, only a number which where
| about helping the poor, and it 's possible those didn't
| specifically target your country.
|
| E.g. between the poor and hungry people in Moldova (my
| own native country) and in Sudan USAID would probably
| chose those in Sudan (what with war and genocide and...).
| And they might chose to support businesses in Moldova
| instead (and they did).
|
| I'm not saying it's a perfect program devoid of any
| corruption. What I'm saying I can come up with as many
| bogus numbers, and with as many personal anecdotes as the
| next guy.
|
| And Elon sure as hell resists any attempts to shed light
| on his activities and claims.
|
| > Only left-leaning democrat's shield "independent"
| journalists, whose job mostly consist of ideological
| reprogramming and who now scream all over twitter how
| Trump destroys their lives. ONLY.
|
| Do you think they do that because they lost funding, or
| because, say, China or Russia stepped into the void with
| literally the same support programs?
| wat10000 wrote:
| > overhead and ideological reprogramming
|
| I despair at the thought process that crams these two things
| together.
|
| 2.5% overhead would be really good. Most charities don't come
| close.
|
| "Ideological reprogramming," whatever that actually means,
| would be completely different.
| jpcom wrote:
| It's called the US Agency for International Development.
| Everyone seems to think "AID" is a word here. It is not, it
| is an acronym.
| wat10000 wrote:
| OK, I'm aware, not sure what that has to do with anything
| here.
| jpcom wrote:
| It looks like USAID had 4B of the 40B budget actually reach
| endpoint users, which would make the overhead closer to 90%
| [1], not 97.5% like I originally estimated.
|
| [1] https://chatgpt.com/share/67b7a0c4-bf48-8011-9997-41b35
| 0dd0b...
| wwtw wrote:
| Reading this gpt answer: > In fiscal year 2022, nearly
| 90% of USAID's expenditures were allocated to
| international contracting partners
|
| How are you figuring that none of that is reaching
| endpoint users? E.g. I imagine the International Red
| Cross could be such a partner.
| wat10000 wrote:
| Seriously? Not even your own linked conversation supports
| this assertion, even though you tried to lead it there.
| jonp888 wrote:
| Eliminating foreign aid seems to be a common cause of neo-
| conservative movements.
|
| Boris Johnson shut down the British equivalent(Department for
| International Development) and scrapped the commitment to spend
| 0.7% of GDP on aid.
|
| It's simplistic, drastic and brings no specific domestic effect
| which could be a rallying point for unrest.
|
| It's also very easy to come up with rage bait stories of
| corruption and waste as justification, because in any
| organisation spending billions of dollars around the world you
| will always be to find _something_ ridiculous that got funding,
| even though the proportion of the budget it represents is
| insignificant.
| astroid wrote:
| Lol you clearly have no idea what a 'neo-conservative' is or
| their history.
|
| Neo-Conservatives were a branch of Democrat wark-hawks who
| wanted to police the world, that were upset about the
| pacifist attitude of the Democrats at the time - they emerged
| in the 60's and managed to largely take control of the
| Republican party moving forward, peaking under George W Bush.
|
| Their founding principal was "Peace Through Strength" and
| have a strong belief in worldwide interventionism.
|
| If you think the 'MAGA' / 'Trump' party is neo-conservative
| you literally just are ignoring the entire history, the power
| struggle (which Trump won) to retake the party from the Neo-
| Cons, and the fact that the trump admin is largely
| isolationist and opposed to being the world police.
|
| Don't get me wrong there are still some neo-cons in office
| and with roles in his admin, but the republican infighting
| can be summarized as neocon vs MAGA.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoconservatism
| https://www.britannica.com/topic/neoconservatism
|
| Words mean things. The MAGE/America First party is focused on
| non-interventionism, advocate against regime change abroad,
| with a focus on America and it's interest rather than the
| endless wars.
|
| You can debate the success or merit of that approach I guess,
| but the Neo-Cons are very happy to provide foreign aid as it
| is core to their ideology. They tend to do it via NED while
| the left uses USAID more (although both use both, but they
| each have lean in one direction).
|
| Just for fun, I just tried this little experiment you can try
| to: " CoPilot: Can you rationally describe Trump as a neocon?
|
| CoPilot: No, it would not be accurate to rationally state
| that Donald Trump is a neoconservative (neocon). Here are
| some key differences:
|
| Foreign Policy: Neocons: Advocate for interventionist foreign
| policies, promoting democracy and regime change abroad.
| Trump: Emphasizes "America First" policies, focusing on non-
| interventionism, reducing military engagements abroad, and
| prioritizing domestic issues.
|
| Military Engagement: Neocons: Support maintaining strong
| international alliances and a significant military presence
| globally.
|
| Trump: Criticized NATO, praised authoritarian leaders like
| Vladimir Putin, and negotiated troop withdrawals from
| conflict zones like Afghanistan.
|
| Economic Policies: Neocons: Generally support free trade and
| globalization.
|
| Trump: Advocates for economic nationalism, including tariffs
| and renegotiating trade deals to favor American interests.
|
| These differences highlight that Trump's policies and
| ideology do not align with neoconservative principles. If you
| have any more questions or need further details, feel free to
| ask! "
| rsynnott wrote:
| 'Libertarian ethos'. The guy who's hoovering up personal data
| on behalf of a guy who just claimed to be king, that one? Like,
| how are we defining 'libertarian' here?
| ksynwa wrote:
| I didn't mean it _too_ seriously. Just with regard to how one
| point in the ideology is about governments being small and
| how DOGE is at least in rhetoric trying to fire federal
| employees en masse.
| tokai wrote:
| libertarian
|
| / ,lIb@'te@rI@n /
|
| noun 1) an idiot
| intended wrote:
| Collateral damage.
| jeffbee wrote:
| He actually wants black Africans to die from AIDS.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| It's more likely it came from Trump instead of Elon. Trump is
| an isolationist and has long complained about money being spent
| abroad rather than at home.
| mindslight wrote:
| The only thing "libertarian" about Musk is his extreme interest
| in his own freedom - everyone else's be damned.
| imperial_march wrote:
| Less than 10% went to the needy. Most of the rest was either
| wasteful, political or a chain of NGOs performing kickbacks.
|
| They were funding censorship campaigns on American citizens etc
| aredox wrote:
| If they have the ability to change data, then absolutely none of
| their claims can be trusted. Neither Musk nor his A-team of
| hackers have demonstrated any integrity through their career -
| contrary to HN guidelines, the default position is to assume the
| worst from them.
|
| Think about it once they begin putting the opposition on show
| trials.
| riffraff wrote:
| their claims can't be trusted because they fail at basic
| accounting and reading. Something something malice
| incompetence.
|
| https://twitter.com/electricfutures/status/18918983362081056...
|
| > The single biggest ticket item is a DHS contract listed as
| saving $8 billion. Wow, that's a huge contract! Actually no,
| it's $8 million. They must have tried to automate scraping the
| FPDS form and failed.
| marsokod wrote:
| It is even worse, this $8M contract is alread partially
| executed, so only $5.5 millions are left.
|
| And it does not say anything about what is being cut by
| cancelling the contract and whether it is useful or not.
| FergusArgyll wrote:
| This is inaccurate. In September 2022, the agency contracting
| officer mistakenly wrote $8B instead of $8M when logging in
| the FPDS database. DOGE discovered this error in January
| 2025, and the agency updated FPDS accordingly.
| matwood wrote:
| Except DOGE (at the time of this article) kept their claim
| of saving $8B and pointed at the old contract to make their
| stats look better.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/18/upshot/doge-contracts-
| mus...
|
| _The DOGE website initially included a screenshot from the
| federal contracting database showing that the contract's
| value was $8 million, even as the DOGE site listed $8
| billion in savings. On Tuesday night, around the time this
| article was published, DOGE removed the screenshot that
| showed the mismatch, but continued to claim $8 billion in
| savings. It added a link to the original, outdated version
| of the contract worth $8 billion._
|
| Trustworthy and transparent. I guess fixing a typo is worth
| $8B?
| FergusArgyll wrote:
| "By examining past versions of the contract listed on the
| Federal Procurement Data System, The Upshot determined
| that the federal award, approved in September 2022, had
| initially listed a total value of $8 billion. But on Jan.
| 22 this year, that figure was updated to $8 million...
|
| It's possible that DOGE or someone else in the Trump
| administration can claim credit for fixing the error in
| the contracting database, given that the value was
| downgraded to $8 million two days after President Trump
| took office. "
|
| -NYT TFA
|
| So Bureaucracy incompetence, mistake is around for >2
| years, DOGE fixes it.
|
| Screenshot and FPDS DB were out of sync, "PDS posting of
| the final termination notices can have up to a 1-month
| lag."
| matwood wrote:
| It was a typo. No one was paid that amount and wouldn't
| have been paid that amount. If fixing a typo in a
| reporting system is a huge win for you I guess...ok.
| wat10000 wrote:
| Oh, so you mean they weren't incompetent, they knew the
| correct figure but deliberately lied about it?
| FergusArgyll wrote:
| No, the DOGE website scrapes from the FPDS DB. The DB
| wasn't updated immediately. Like I quoted in an adjacent
| comment "PDS posting of the final termination notices can
| have up to a 1-month lag."
|
| Your bias is blinding you to what is the obvious
| explanation that I'm sure you'd recognize if you saw it
| on a non-political website.
|
| I just want to point out one more thing: DOGE didn't
| advertise this 8M savings anywhere, there wasn't a speech
| about it etc. This was found on https://doge.gov/savings
| wat10000 wrote:
| Just incompetent, then.
| moduspol wrote:
| This talking point keeps blowing my mind.
|
| They occasionally make minor mistakes! If only voters had
| known that occasionally minor mistakes (in reporting of all
| places) might be made, they'd have insisted we stick with the
| bureaucracy they know and love!
|
| But hey, I guess it at least did happen. It's better than the
| grasping-at-straws "they'll probably leak your SS number"
| talking point. And the "he'll redirect treasury payments to
| himself" talking point.
| riffraff wrote:
| I think you're missing the point, which is not "they make
| mistakes" but "they have no idea what they're doing".
| moduspol wrote:
| That's the case being made, yes. It's not supported by
| the mistakes reported, at least yet.
| scarab92 wrote:
| Trump has only granted DOGE read only access to government
| systems to allow them to complete their audit.
|
| Anything more is accidental.
| drowsspa wrote:
| I find it wild that apparently there is no law onto which
| government workers can cling to refuse these requests. Is it all
| just based on conventions, goodwill and culture?
| kupopuffs wrote:
| who even knows the law in the moment? the seal of the president
| is p convincing. heck just look at all the social
| engineering/phishing that works
| afandian wrote:
| Do civil servants have trade unions in the US? This seems
| like a place they could step up to offer advice.
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| Yes, and they have sued over several events so far. I don't
| know what advice they could give in the moment.
| afandian wrote:
| If I were in their shoes I would take some small comfort
| from a constitutional lawyer even saying "officially we
| don't know".
|
| It's not often you're asked to do something that could
| break the law, with the whistle-blowing chain being
| potentially broken at the top.
| jpcom wrote:
| Why do you want them to refuse audit requests? There is no
| upside to hiding egregious government waste other than paying
| politicians via kickbacks more than what is legally mandated.
| InDubioProRubio wrote:
| Waste is all things i do not understand? And i dont
| understand all things, because i fired the experts. Thus all
| is waste. Its running a state, how hard can it be- my cousin
| was major of a town once.
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| Same reason you won't send me the credentials to your bank
| accounts.
| account42 wrote:
| I will however gladly send all credentials to my work-
| related accounts to authorized individuals in my company
| (with appropriate verification of course).
| vel0city wrote:
| You should never send _your_ credentials. Granting access
| to someone who should have access is one thing, but not
| _your_ credentials that individually identify _you_.
| Also, if it isn 't coming through standard protocols and
| procedures you probably shouldn't do it.
| goku12 wrote:
| 'Audit' is not something where you turn in the keys to your
| locker unconditionally to some random stranger who just walks
| in making demands. Audits are based on pre-determined and
| documented criteria, with the participation and supervision
| of responsible in-house officials. They just check if
| everything is in order. Auditors are rarely given
| unsupervised access to any data - especially to sensitive
| information. Meanwhile, the auditors themselves have to be
| held to a high level of integrity - elimination of conflicts
| of interest being the most important. This is a sham audit if
| it can be considered to be one at all.
| j16sdiz wrote:
| For auditing, you keep the data intact. you keep the people
| around in case if anything you don't understand or can't find
|
| Change the data, Firing everybody , leave no way to contact
| them, this is not auditing.
| ncr100 wrote:
| That's misinformation. They are not "audits".
|
| They are sincerely following Project 2025, decimating
| government, and very likely to fire A LOT more federal
| workers over the summer, then they will install Loyalists
| throughout.
|
| Billionaire Musk .. aka "The Auditor" .. is "primarying" or
| threatening to fund opposition candidates for Senators who
| fight him on this.
|
| It's an autogolpe.
| scarab92 wrote:
| I would expect any president to be able to appoint an advisor
| to review any government department, including provision
| necessary data to do their job.
|
| The pushback honestly seems to be "I don't like Musk in
| particular, and thus I don't like that Musk in particular has
| this access". But government cannot function this way, we have
| to respect the result of the presidential election, and their
| choice of advisors.
| jgilias wrote:
| Even if that advisor hires college kids with known links to
| The Com?
|
| There are reasons behind some processes. Such as getting a
| security clearance to access sensitive data.
| scarab92 wrote:
| It's the presidents call.
|
| All this is part of the executive branch.
|
| He has complete authority to determine who has access to
| what, within the limits imposed by congress.
|
| That's not a new privilege, all presidents have had this
| right.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Then you will admit that President Trump has idiotically
| terrible and absolutely unethical judgement? Or do you
| want to defend that?
| ModernMech wrote:
| We've come a long way from "Hillary shouldn't be
| President because she has demonstrated a disrespect for
| national security information protocol" to "its Trump's
| right as POTUS to disrespect national security
| information protocol"
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| Anyone is quite welcome to escalate to whatever level they
| think appropriate in opposition to whatever they feel
| motivated by.
|
| Just be aware of the consequences of failing, or succeeding.
| aqueueaqueue wrote:
| Why do you have to accept it? Trump doesn't accept the actual
| law.
| dkjaudyeqooe wrote:
| That's a gross misrepresentation of what's happening here.
|
| We don't have to respect anything, except the law. Trump and
| Musk's actions are neither legal, ethical nor sensible. If
| you're of that mind then removing Musk and Trump via any
| legal or political means is not only acceptable but, if you
| care about your country, an imperative.
|
| The biggest problem America has is how readily it normalizes
| incompetence and evil, to its detriment.
| scarab92 wrote:
| You're clearly wrong.
|
| Trump, and every president before Trump, has had the
| authority to do exactly this.
| dkjaudyeqooe wrote:
| No they don't. Do a bit of googling before you post.
| Trump's actions are in defiance of the conventions of
| government and the written constitution. It's not even a
| judgement call, it's bleedingly obvious.
| procaryote wrote:
| The reason they're now pretending that Musk is an "advisor"
| is that there are laws against what he proudly says he's
| doing, and Trump has said Musk is doing.
|
| He can't lead a government department without being confirmed
| by congress. If he's just an advisor, he and his Musk Youth
| army can't actually give orders to government employees the
| way they've been doing, much less fire them.
|
| If someone keeps lying every other breath for years and
| years, at some point you should stop taking their word at
| face value.
| matwood wrote:
| We've had a lot of these in 3 weeks, but this is an emperor
| has no clothes on moment. DOGE is running around saying
| they have access because of Musk. Even Trump has a hard
| time saying anything else. Now they are saying Musk isn't
| really in charge and has no power. They also won't say who
| runs DOGE. Everyone knows it's bullshit, but people accept
| it. That's the real lesson from 1984, and here we are.
|
| I'm really at a loss how anyone still believes or supports
| these people.
| matwood wrote:
| Let's suppose for a second you're right - Musk is just trying
| to do a transparent audit. Why do they feel to need to have
| DOGE and Musk operate outside of the usual channels for
| transparency?
|
| https://apnews.com/article/elon-musk-doge-white-house-
| layoff...
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/10/us/politics/trump-musk-
| do...
| scarab92 wrote:
| That's a good question, but not a legally necessary one.
|
| President has the discretion to make that call.
| matwood wrote:
| It doesn't make you wonder at all? All over this thread
| are supporters saying anyone fighting an audit is hiding
| something. Trump and Musk are literally fighting against
| transparency and your response is they have the
| discretion to do that. The cognitive dissonance around
| Musk and Trump is really unbelievable.
| sjsdaiuasgdia wrote:
| https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/the-purge-of-the-deep-
| sta...
| cmurf wrote:
| Is respecting the result of an election what Trump did for 3
| months after he lost in 2020?
|
| Trump ordered Mike Pence to overturn that election. Is that
| respecting the result of an election? When Pence refused the
| order, Trump sent a mob to have the VPOTUS assassinated and
| to stop Congress from doing its job. Not at all respectful.
|
| This is a political party that went apoplectic about Obama
| wearing a tan suit, while insisting he was illegitimate, i.e.
| the racist lie of birtherism.
|
| And then they elected a pussy grabbing rapist, felon, and
| vile insurrectionist.
|
| I think they're getting all the respect they deserve.
| InsideOutSanta wrote:
| There are laws, but you will get fired if you try to follow
| them, and lawsuits to remedy that take time.
|
| https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/usaid-sec...
| pred_ wrote:
| And when you have an executive on one hand stating that only
| the president and the AG can interpret laws for the executive
| [0] and that you can't break laws if you're "saving the
| country" [1], that approach also just doesn't seem too
| promising.
|
| [0] https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-
| actions/2025/02/ensu... Sec. 7
|
| [1] https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/1140091792
| 251...
| darkwater wrote:
| This will end badly and it will not be fun at all in the
| end, but it is fascinating to watch how this new wave of
| fascism unfolds.
| rob74 wrote:
| Yeah, if we (even in other countries) weren't all
| personally affected by it, I couldn't stop laughing. The
| way things are, I'd rather go with Max Liebermann, who
| reportedly commented on the previous wave of fascism with
| the words "I couldn't eat as much as I would like to
| throw up" ("Ich kann gar nicht soviel fressen, wie ich
| kotzen mochte" - https://www.aphorismen.de/zitat/93763).
| sjsdaiuasgdia wrote:
| A good read: https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/the-
| purge-of-the-deep-sta...
| rob74 wrote:
| Or, as JD Vance wrote, "Judges aren't allowed to control
| the executive's legitimate power."
| (https://x.com/JDVance/status/1888607143030391287). You
| really have to read it twice to understand just how far out
| that phrase is. So now it's the executive itself deciding
| what's "legitimate" (=conforming to the law), not the
| courts, whose role it is to interpret and enforce laws?
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| Or Trump fucking referring to himself as king yesterday
| .. signs are clear.
| kornork wrote:
| Honest question: who else, internal to the executive
| branch, and besides the president, should be able to
| interpret the laws for the executive branch?
|
| By my reading, this is a clarification that if an agency
| makes a significant policy change or regulation, they ought
| to run it by the president first.
|
| It doesn't preclude other branches of government from
| checking this power.
| acdha wrote:
| Agencies all have their own lawyers, and it's frequently
| useful to have them hash out agreements for the same
| reason that it's useful for scientists to get peer
| review. Beyond the basic efficiency argument, it's good
| to have multiple people validate your reasoning.
| tored wrote:
| Which laws? The article describes security clearance.
| InsideOutSanta wrote:
| Security clearances are based on laws, such as the ones
| compiled in Title 50 U.S. Code SS3341.
| tored wrote:
| So if DOGE have security clearances (unclear if the have)
| then their audit is legal?
| InsideOutSanta wrote:
| IANAL, but there are other laws governing what DOGE is
| doing that they are violating, such as transparency laws.
| throw0101d wrote:
| > _So if DOGE have security clearances (unclear if the
| have) then their audit is legal?_
|
| They're also responsible liable for keeping the data
| safe, which has already been broken at least once:
|
| * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43052432
|
| Possibly violating:
|
| > _Whoever knowingly and willfully communicates,
| furnishes, transmits, or otherwise makes available to an
| unauthorized person, or publishes, or uses in any manner
| prejudicial to the safety or interest of the United
| States or for the benefit of any foreign government to
| the detriment of the United States any classified
| information--_ [...]
|
| * https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/798
| tored wrote:
| As long as they keep the data safe the audit is legal?
| ttpphd wrote:
| No
| dmix wrote:
| CIGIE has done similar stuff in the past, it was created
| under George W Bush
|
| > continually identifies, reviews, and discusses areas of
| weakness and vulnerability in Federal programs and
| operations with respect to fraud, waste, and abuse;
|
| > develops plans for coordinated, Government wide
| activities that address these problems and promote
| economy and efficiency in Federal programs and
| operations, including interagency and inter-entity audit,
| investigation, inspection, and evaluation programs and
| projects to deal efficiently and effectively with those
| problems concerning fraud and waste that exceed the
| capability or jurisdiction of an individual agency or
| entity;
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_of_the_Inspectors_G
| ene...
| watwut wrote:
| It is possible to do legal audits of secret data. DOGE is
| not doing an audit.
| panzagl wrote:
| Clearance does not allow indiscriminate access, it just
| means you are theoretically trustable. You still need a
| reason to access the data, usually negotiated with the
| data owners, who is legally responsible for protecting
| the data. DOGE has bypassed all of that to just hoover up
| whatever they can.
| moduspol wrote:
| They were hired to, and authorized explicitly by the
| President to access that data. In writing.
|
| That's as valid of a reason as you can get in the
| executive branch.
| panzagl wrote:
| Not really, whoever allows access could be prosecuted for
| failing any of a number of laws and regs for just rolling
| over so it would come down to a damned if you do, damned
| if you don't situation. The proper way to do it would be
| to work through both the organization's chain of command
| and send clearances through the security chain. Maybe
| that's being followed, but given the stories and
| timelines, I doubt it- Musk's war boys wouldn't even have
| time to obtain a clearance from scratch 3 weeks into the
| administration.
| moduspol wrote:
| The clearances have already been granted [1].
|
| There is no "damned if you do, damned if you don't." The
| President and agency directory have authorized and
| ordered it. Career bureaucrats are not legally required
| to resist their bosses because they disagree with them.
|
| [1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-
| actions/2025/01/memo...
| panzagl wrote:
| Anyone who has a clearance has signed numerous statements
| acknowledging their personal responsibility to protect
| the information in their care. If you want access, follow
| the procedures, then that responsibility is fulfilled.
| And if DOGE posts whatever to some unsecured S3 bucket
| its on them, not the bureaucrat (well, let's be real,
| contractor) who let them in.
| femto wrote:
| Is it true to say that in practise there are no laws here? If
| anyone in DOGE breaks the law, can't the President just issue
| a blanket pardon?
|
| If the President himself breaks the law, he argues that it
| was in the course of his official duties [1].
|
| [1]
| https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-939_e2pg.pdf
| InsideOutSanta wrote:
| I'm assuming this is what they're betting on.
| k__ wrote:
| Don't know, but I read somewhere that the president can't
| pardon breaks of federal law.
| InsideOutSanta wrote:
| It's the other way around; the presidential pardoning
| power is limited to federal offenses.
| yoyoyoyop wrote:
| Perhaps why yesterday he was saying he should take over
| the running of DC..
| nickthegreek wrote:
| DC is already controlled federally.
| k__ wrote:
| Ah, thanks!
| sillyfluke wrote:
| What I found significant here is that Trump (yesterday)
| and/or the Whitehouse stated that Elon Musk does not work
| for Doge and has no authority over it at all, that Elon
| Musk has no authority regarding anything and is solely an
| advisor to the president.
|
| Of course, in practical terms "in the field" this is
| obviously not the case. But I wouldn't be surprised if it
| was Elon's ego that triggered this: that at the end of
| the day needing a pardon would be an insult and would
| bruise his ego so he wants to prevent any pathway for him
| to be charged with a crime. I'm not a lawyer, so I don't
| know if the Doge "interns" would need one regardless.
| jonstewart wrote:
| Cynically, Trump and Musk are using each other. They both
| want huge swaths of the federal government dismantled--
| Trump found his whims stymied by laws and regulations and
| the bureaucrats who abide by them in his first
| administration, while federal regulations are
| constraining both Tesla (cars should work and be safe)
| and Space-X (starships blowing up shouldn't pollute,
| Starlink shouldn't clutter space, etc).
|
| Musk is stealing the spotlight. At the appropriate time,
| Trump can fire him and blame him for overstepping his
| bounds--I have already seen this talking point privately
| from GOP operatives. They'll both have gotten what they
| wanted, and we'll all be stuck footing the bill.
| j16sdiz wrote:
| IMO, this sounds totally like what happened in China.
|
| Trump will get his unchallenged power like Xi or Mao did.
| alistairSH wrote:
| Not just that, but DoJ lawyers are simultaneously (in
| different court cases) arguing DOGE both is and is not a
| federal agency.
| throw0101d wrote:
| > _Is it true to say that in practise there are no laws
| here? If anyone in DOGE breaks the law, can 't the
| President just issue a blanket pardon?_
|
| For federal laws, yes.
|
| If you can find a state-level law that's been violated then
| he has no jurisdiction to pardeon.
|
| Trump himself was charged at the state level twice (and
| already convicted once):
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosecution_of_Donald_Trump
| _in...
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_election_racketeeri
| ng_...
|
| See also the civil case against him for rape:
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._Jean_Carroll_v._Donald_J
| ._T...
| roenxi wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._Jean_Carroll_v._Donald_J
| ._T... is weak. The allegation is rape in 1995 or 1996
| (year unclear) and a headline piece of evidence is a
| photo of Carrol and Trump together in 1987.
|
| If the Wikipedia summary is to be believed, the case
| undermines New York more than it does Trump. The damages
| for such thin evidence and wild claims are staggering.
| grobbyy wrote:
| My experience is that for anyone sufficiently famous and
| polarizing, there are widespread false allegations. It's
| hard work to work from primary sources and sort fact from
| fiction.
|
| It's impractical to check everything, do I tend to do
| deep dives spot checking a small number of things.
|
| For readers, I'd suggest the same thing here. Disregard
| claims on the Internet, or even court rulings, and just
| look at primary evidence. Pick a small number of issues.
|
| I make this statement generically, without prejudice to
| the outcome here.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| > Pick a small number of issues.
|
| I'm not sure what you mean. I generally agree with you --
| but I think in the case of Trump you have to disregard at
| least 26 [1] public allegations of rape if you want to
| give him a pass, blame his fame, or partisanship, or
| whatever.
|
| 1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump_sexual_misc
| onduct...
| mikeyouse wrote:
| Right.. the credulousness of these people is insane. "I
| can't believe the guy who said he liked to sneak
| backstage at the Miss Teen USA pageant and bragged about
| grabbing women by the pussy would assault someone!"
| InsideOutSanta wrote:
| It's worth noting that Stormy Daniels' description of her
| encounter with Trump also amounts to rape. I don't think
| she ever used the word, but it's clearly what she
| describes.
|
| _Ms Daniels said she "blacked out" despite consuming no
| drugs or alcohol after Mr Trump prevented her from
| leaving the room by blocking the door. She said she woke
| up on the bed with her clothes off._
|
| _" I was staring at the ceiling and didn't know how I
| got there, I was trying to think about anything other
| than what was happening there," Ms Daniels testified._
|
| _Ms Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, said
| she did not tell Mr Trump to stop. "I didn't say anything
| at all," she said and that she left the hotel room
| quickly afterwards._
|
| https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-05-08/stormy-daniels-
| testif...
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| >you have to disregard at least 26 [1] public allegations
| of rape if you want to give him a pass,
|
| Allegations mean little, and for celebrities they tend to
| pile up proportionate to their fame. We live in a society
| that has absolutely no disincentives for false
| allegations of rape, and that has only grown more true
| the last few decades.
|
| Instead of disregarding 26 allegations, one has to wonder
| why anyone would regard them in the first place.
| Furthermore, for many people, their regard/disregard is
| highly selective and comes down to the politics of the
| accused.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Wow, a free pass for celebrities.
| InsideOutSanta wrote:
| Well, Trump does agree with you:
|
| _" When you're a star, they let you do it. You can do
| anything. Grab 'em by the pussy. You can do anything."_
| electrondood wrote:
| Here's a list of people who are both famous and
| polarizing, along with their number of credible claims of
| sexual assault.
|
| 1. Elon Musk - 1
|
| 2. Donald Trump - 26
|
| 3. Kanye West - 0 known
|
| 4. Greta Thunberg - 0 known
|
| 5. Joe Rogan - 0 known
|
| 6. Jordan Peterson - 0 known
|
| 7. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez - 0 known
|
| 8. Andrew Tate - < 10
|
| 9. Vladimir Putin- 0 known
|
| 10. Mark Zuckerberg - 0 known
|
| The idea that just being famous and polarizing attracts
| false allegations, is false.
| Acrobatic_Road wrote:
| There is no incentive to make up allegations against most
| of those people. But if you make up a false allegation
| against a presidential candidate, it could cost him the
| election and move national politics in the direction you
| favor. How many allegations did Trump have against him
| before vs. after running for president?
| watwut wrote:
| My impression is that any allegation is considered false
| unless at least 19 women came forward and 3 of them have
| video evidence.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| Unless you were in the courtroom and heard the evidence,
| you don't have enough information to have an opinion. The
| jury heard the evidence, and made their determination.
| mapt wrote:
| There is a principal in democracy that there Should Not Be
| strong institutions that prevent a majority of the
| population from harming itself with its choices. We balance
| that against a Supreme Court in the US, but that court is
| almost uniquely powerful & active in forming policy
| relative to its place in the rest of the world, and right
| now, most of it has been appointed by fascists; Ultimately
| the population will have its say in the long term.
|
| Do you want an extra-democratic body who is capable of
| telling the population "No"?
|
| I think such a body (which exists in some system) would
| obviously be nice right now, but I am a lot less convinced
| that it would be a net positive in general.
|
| If we want to find our way out of this, I suspect a lot of
| people are going to need to feel directly harmed by this
| administration, and are going to need to basically erect a
| strong protest culture out of whole cloth. Something like
| 5% of the population in the streets can topple an
| authoritarian regime in the right circumstances, but not
| the 0.5% we might expect for a "large" protest.
| sul_tasto wrote:
| The electoral college was intended to serve this purpose.
| mrtesthah wrote:
| The purpose of the electoral college was to protect
| slavery.
| p_j_w wrote:
| For those who tend to fall for right wing talking points:
|
| "There was one difficulty however of a serious nature
| attending an immediate choice by the people. The right of
| suffrage was much more diffusive in the Northern than the
| Southern States; and the latter could have no influence
| in the election on the score of the Negroes. The
| substitution of electors obviated this difficulty and
| seemed on the whole to be liable to fewest objections."
|
| James Madison
| ckozlowski wrote:
| I really wanted to believe that it would step up to the
| occasion, but twice now, it didn't.
|
| I don't say such lightly. I genuinely believe that up
| until very recently, all portents of doom aside, none of
| the prior elected presidents truly threatened the
| Republic. Not Bush, not Obama, none of them.
|
| Trump has been the exception. It the electoral college
| had been working as intended when it was envisioned by
| the Founders, it would have said "Yeah, I hear you want
| Trump, but, no." and voted in someone who might be better
| suited to implement his (rough) ideas.
|
| I'm not completely onboard with the notion of abolishing
| said college just yet, as I believe that the electoral
| system prevents a candidate from say, simply winning all
| of the urban areas, or exploiting some similar
| demographic divide that would could exist in a pure
| popular vote system. We're a union of states, not a
| single monolithic country. And while I might place my
| bets on a popular vote providing me the results I'd like
| a majority of the time, I believe broad representation
| that at least aids towards unity is better than an
| outright majority. We strive to avoid "tyranny of the
| majority".
|
| I don't have any easy or simple answers as to what might
| fix all of this. It may not even be something our
| "system" can fix, but rather just a lesson we as a
| country have to learn. Let's hope it's not as painful as
| prior instances.
| jzb wrote:
| "Do you want an extra-democratic body who is capable of
| telling the population "No"?"
|
| There's value in having speedbumps that keep 51%* of the
| population from shooting 100% (or 99%) of the population
| in the collective foot... or in this case, head. The
| institutions aren't anti-democratic - they were put
| together by democratic processes, and each speedbump is
| usually there for a reason. Sometimes a long-forgotten or
| no longer good reason, and it needs to be dismantled,
| also by the same type of processes that put it there.
| Yes, I want people who won't be easily and summarily
| dismissed for following the law and regulations even when
| they're not popular. I want regulations and guardrails
| that can't just be swept aside by an administration that
| rotates out every four to eight years. (I'm generalizing
| a lot here, of course...)
|
| *Really much less than 51%, given that a large percentage
| of the population doesn't vote, another percentage of the
| population's vote is suppressed, and another significant
| percentage of the population is not yet old enough to
| vote...
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| >There's value in having speedbumps that keep 51%* of the
| population from shooting 100% (or 99%) of the population
| in the collective foot... or in this case, head.
|
| That metaphor breaks down here and is not really
| applicable. If two people are chained to each other at
| the ankles, they can both plausibly argue that the only
| way to save their own life is to take that of the other
| person. Whining "but I'm the good guy, I deserve to cut
| off his foot and let him be the one to bleed to death" is
| asinine.
|
| The solution here is, of course, to not be chained to the
| other person irreversibly. But any time that is
| suggested, we hear a bunch of "We're stronger together,
| that's crazy talk!" And here we are. 330 million people
| all chained together, and now people are upset that the
| other team has the hatchets and is menacingly staring at
| their ankles.
|
| >and another significant percentage of the population is
| not yet old enough to vote
|
| Not sensible enough to vote. Don't leave that part out.
| alasarmas wrote:
| This isn't 1861, sectionalism isn't strong enough. One
| part of what's going on here is cities at odds with the
| countryside, another part is the internet, smartphones,
| ubiquitous connectivity, filter bubbles. People are
| physically present in the same locations but they are not
| eating the same bread and drinking the same water,
| metaphorically speaking. I recommend looking at this
| Wikipedia article for a possible best-case scenario: http
| s://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_exchange_between_Gr.
| ..
| michaelt wrote:
| In the UK, the Prime Minister has a lot less
| _discretionary_ power, but much more ability to _get
| legislation changed_.
|
| So when a political question arises like "should we have
| net neutrality?" the elected politicians decide and pass
| legislation.
|
| That's in contrast to the US, where someone decide the
| executive was granted discretionary power over net
| neutrality in 1934, several generations before the net
| was invented. Then the executive decides there will, then
| won't, then will, then won't, then will, then won't be
| net neutrality.
| acdha wrote:
| > Then the executive decides there will, then won't, then
| will, then won't, then will, then won't be net
| neutrality.
|
| It should be noted that the backdrop here is legislative
| dysfunction: the congress could have resolved network
| neutrality at any point but that bogged down for ages.
| Many of the questions around statutory power look like
| someone trying to do something under existing rules
| because they see a problem which isn't going away but
| legislative attempts have failed.
| aredox wrote:
| There is one, it is called a Constitution, and any rules
| where changes are only accepted by a qualified majority
| not of 50% but of 66% aka 2/3rds.
| cryptonector wrote:
| > There is a principal in democracy that there Should Not
| Be strong institutions that prevent a majority of the
| population from harming itself with its choices.
|
| Wrong. Democracy means only majority rule. What you say
| is true of _republics_ , which the USA is. However no
| republic can be perfect in this regard, because it's all
| just human beings. In this case the president is
| plenipotent within the executive branch, the Congress is
| in the hands of the same party, and the SCOTUS is largely
| on the same page, therefore all the institutions in
| question are not going to stop him unless he does things
| that are outrageous to the public, keeping in mind that
| the HN commentariat is a tiny portion of "the public".
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| In that case, can't the next president just illegally
| imprison Elon or trump or whoever for their entire
| administration, ignore supreme court rulings or lawsuits or
| whatever, and then issue themselves a pardon at the end?
| aredox wrote:
| Yes, and restrict the 2nd amendment by fiat, etc...
|
| But Democrats "play nice" and respect the law. Biden
| could have ordered Trump assassinated as soon as the
| Supreme Court invented the new interpretation that puts
| president on a piedestal, but he was never going to do
| it.
| InsideOutSanta wrote:
| _But Democrats "play nice" and respect the law._
|
| That's the problem with the argument that Republicans
| need to be careful about setting precedents that
| Democrats will then also abuse: no Republican believes
| that any Democratic president will actually do this. In
| fact, a lot of Republicans probably don't believe that
| there will ever be another Democratic president.
| ethagnawl wrote:
| Based on last year's Supreme Court rulings and what
| Trump/DOGE have gotten away with thus far, it'd seem so.
| However, democrats insist on wearing kid gloves to a
| chainsaw massacre, so don't count on anything like that
| (or, more realistically, within a lesser order of
| magnitude) ever happening.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Trump has explicitly said he is above the law: "He who
| saves the country cannot break the law" is what he posted.
|
| He pardoned people who stormed the capital, threatened gov
| officials, and killed police officers. Pardoning DOGE
| employees is child's play -- but it would never get that
| far because the DOJ and FBI have been purged of those not
| fully subservient to Trump.
| cryptonector wrote:
| Yes, that is always true. It usually doesn't happen. Mainly
| because DoJ usually doesn't look. Congress can perform
| oversight and impeach if need be.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Easy for me to say, but I would like to think I would say,
| "Fire me, assholes." And have a good story for the grand
| children.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| obviously your young family would already be grown then..
| and the house paid off?
| ncr100 wrote:
| Perhaps why 'easy for me to say' was the first part.
|
| Would be interesting to know if the poster would
| financially support a person in an UNSTABLE position, to,
| you know, Unite the States in opposition to what's an
| authoritarian and approaching a fascist dictatorship?
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| You'd like to think that there are at least some people
| for whom doing the Right Thing is more important.
| cryptonector wrote:
| Statutes can't really constrain the president's authority to
| do this sort of thing (firing appointees, firing employees
| for cause, laying people off, auditing the executive
| agencies). Constitutionally the president is just plenipotent
| within the executive branch.
| snickerbockers wrote:
| It's the executive branch and Trump is the executive. The
| federal bureaucracy is not a separate branch of government that
| gets to have its own checks and balances on the president. They
| are people that he hires to carry out his duties in his stead.
| If you don't like it you can resign.
| cmurf wrote:
| That is the unproven unitary executive concept.
|
| It's true only insofar as Congress won't impeach and remove
| from office.
| mola wrote:
| In most rule of law democracies the law is above the
| president. The civil servants are beholden to the law as
| passed by the representatives of the people, the chief
| executive can only give orders as allowed by the law. Granted
| there will be times of murkiness that require interpretation.
| But "fuck it I'm the president and everything I say is legal"
| is not a valid interpretation in any democracy I know of.
| bofadeez wrote:
| This is (merely) an argument to roll back the power of the
| executive branch. It is what it is.
| zmgsabst wrote:
| It is the president who is tasked with carrying out the
| law, through which those people are hired.
|
| They are an extension of his authority and duty, not
| independent actors.
| rat9988 wrote:
| Given the context in which you answered, it is wrong. The
| president carries out the law, but isn't above the law,
| doesn't decide what is the law, and his actions are to be
| verified, if necessary, if conform to the law. His
| authority is not the law, but executing the law.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Oh but there was a supreme court ruling that said that
| official presidential actions are in fact above the law,
| and he signed an executive order that says he gets to
| decide what the law is, which is not illegal because it's
| an official presidential action.
|
| ...yeah.
| Propelloni wrote:
| That's not what the EO the other day said. The EO claimed
| and confirmed policy-making power, ie. interpreting the
| law and pouring it into policy, for the executive branch.
| It is quite common internationally that the elected
| executive has this power and it is weird that it has to
| be spelled out in the US.
|
| What _is_ worrisome is the overreach in claiming that
| power for institutions that are not in the executive 's
| purview with the argument "everything is in the
| executive's purview". No, it is not, and there are
| reasons why institutions are spread over the three basic
| powers of a state, one is called "checks & balances". Ah,
| well.
| zmgsabst wrote:
| >> The federal bureaucracy is not a separate branch of
| government that gets to have its own checks and balances
| on the president. They are people that he hires to carry
| out his duties in his stead.
|
| > The civil servants are beholden to the law as passed by
| the representatives of the people, the chief executive
| can only give orders as allowed by the law.
|
| And I restated the first point.
|
| This is the context in which I am responding -- and that
| point is true: they are not a fourth entity that is
| created by law, but an extension of the president
| carrying out his duty to enact laws.
|
| To the extent the president gives a lawful order, failure
| to comply by the bureaucracy isn't lawful -- it's a coup
| against the elected government of the US.
|
| > the chief executive can only give orders as allowed by
| the law
|
| The mistake is here: the law does not permit the
| president to carry out executive functions, but restrains
| what he can do from the presumption of anything. He does
| not need permission in law; the absence of restraint is
| sufficient.
|
| I understand many people (such as yourself) don't respect
| that because you favor an autocratic politically aligned
| bureaucracy -- and hence are outraged that the public
| will is imposing itself on the rogue bureaucrats.
|
| That fascism is disgusting.
| Aeolun wrote:
| Generally when you reach that point it ceases to be a
| democracy.
| tored wrote:
| Important to note that USA is a republic, typically in
| Europe parliamentarianism.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Is that meant to support some position, what do you even
| mean? In republics the executive has all the powers?
| tored wrote:
| US president has a lot of powers, I'm not aware of any
| elected official in Europe with the same amount of powers
| (ignore Russia).
|
| President of France is probably the most comparable, but
| in France you also have the prime minister, selected by
| the president but supported by the parliament.
|
| In Sweden we have a separation of powers within the
| executive branch. Government agencies are independent of
| the cabinet.
|
| DOGE's audit wouldn't be possible in Sweden, that would
| have required legislation or even constitutional changes.
|
| Sweden has already an independent government agency that
| audits the rest of the government, but it has support in
| the constitution for that and it is technically
| administered by the parliament and not the cabinet.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_National_Audit_Of
| fic...
|
| My personal opinion is that the US system of government
| is vastly inferior to Sweden's.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| The so called "audit" is not "possible" in the US either,
| except nobody intervenes when the laws are broken. Where
| is the security clearance?
| tored wrote:
| If they have security clearance then the audit would be
| legal?
| actionfromafar wrote:
| I don't know. I know if they don't, it's illegal.
| justin66 wrote:
| You've hammered away on this question in multiple
| comments. Are you under the impression you're consulting
| with experts in US federal law?
| tored wrote:
| It seems that many objects to the audit on technicalities
| and use that as an argument that the audit itself is
| illegal or unconstitutional. It is a flawed argument.
| justin66 wrote:
| > audit itself is illegal or unconstitutional
|
| The audit might be unconstitutional because it's coming
| from a department which is wielding a great deal of
| Article II power even though it's not led by a cabinet
| official who was confirmed by congress. In other words,
| unconstitutional for organizational reasons that are
| unlikely to land any one person in criminal trouble. I
| wouldn't want to argue that point either way, but I bet
| the question of DOGE's constitutionality will be
| considered by a federal court in the coming years.
|
| The notion that the audit is illegal because of
| "technicalities" is a lot more sympathetic. The handling
| of secure information in the government in unorthodox
| ways can be deemed to violate the law, or not, in some
| surprising (or maybe even arbitrary) ways. The last
| really big time this played out politically in the US was
| probably Clinton's email server.
|
| As I hinted at above, I don't think anyone here is really
| conversant with that area of the law. On the other hand,
| I'm fairly certain even if DOGE has broken the law, the
| current DoJ will not find that DOGE has done anything
| requiring legal action, for the obvious political
| reasons.
| dmatech wrote:
| In the USA, both are true. Civil servants can (and should)
| refuse to follow an order they think is unconstitutional,
| illegal, or simply unwise. But this won't stop them from
| being fired for insubordination. I don't think the courts
| will attempt to force the president to retain subordinates
| that are actively opposing him on the job.
| wat10000 wrote:
| If they can still be fired, then what does it even mean
| to say that they can refuse to follow an unconstitutional
| order? Refusal to follow _any_ order is not illegal. If
| the consequences for refusing to follow an illegal order
| are the same as the consequences for refusing to follow a
| legal order, then there is no sense in saying civil
| servants can refuse illegal orders.
| dmatech wrote:
| The consequences for following an illegal order include
| being sued, being held in contempt of court, or being
| criminally prosecuted by a subsequent administration.
| They don't have the same immunity that presidents do
| because they don't have a direct vesting of authority
| under Article II.
| wat10000 wrote:
| Ok? The question is, in what sense are they allowed to
| _refuse_ an illegal order, given that the consequences
| are the same as refusing to follow a legal order?
| Maken wrote:
| So, if the president orders a public employee to execute a
| random person on the street, they have no legal basis to
| refuse?
| tored wrote:
| Probably not.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposition_Matrix
| intended wrote:
| This was the specific argument raised in the SC verdict -
| but this is a question of whether the President is immune.
|
| The question here is just BS. The President created
| organizations to enact the executives will.
|
| The executive is now saying they want the power to come
| back to them. Which it always was - they had to work
| through the structures they created.
|
| Apparently they dont want the institutions.
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| That's simply not true. Congress has the power to
| organize the executive branch, not the president.
| Congress created the agencies and departments and they
| cannot be closed by the president.
|
| Edit:
|
| Constitutional explanation:
| https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-
| conan/article-2/sec...
|
| report on Congress control of executive branch agencies h
| ttps://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R45442/2#:~:
| te...
| intended wrote:
| I am talking about this EO
| https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-
| actions/2025/02/ensu...
|
| > the Constitution also provides for subordinate officers
| to assist the President in his executive duties.
|
| > Therefore, in order to improve the administration of
| the executive branch and to increase regulatory
| officials' accountability to the American people, it
| shall be the policy of the executive branch to ensure
| Presidential supervision and control of the entire
| executive branch.
|
| And of course: > President and the Attorney General,
| subject to the President's supervision and control, shall
| provide authoritative interpretations of law for the
| executive branch. The President and the Attorney
| General's opinions on questions of law are controlling on
| all employees in the conduct of their official duties.
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| I am referring to your assertion that the president
| created organizations or can get rid of them, which is
| false.
| intended wrote:
| Got it. I'm talking about this President's EO and the
| implications it makes about independent agencies. Which
| are effectively his officers, so they are exercising his
| powers.
| conradev wrote:
| My understanding is that everyone takes the same oath of
| office to the constitution, not their boss:
|
| > The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the
| Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive
| and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the
| several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to
| support this Constitution ...
| sjsdaiuasgdia wrote:
| Yes, like the 7 DoJ prosecutors who chose to resign last week
| rather than sign a dismissal of the charges against Eric
| Adams, because it was an obvious quid pro quo, and the case
| against Adams is very strong. There's absolutely no
| legitimate justification for not prosecuting Adams.
|
| The dismissal was eventually signed and filed by Emil Bove, a
| very recent Trump appointee, whose former job was as one of
| Trump's criminal defense lawyers.
|
| The stink of corruption is heavy around Trump and Musk.
| RichardLake wrote:
| The enforcement of these laws should be a function of the
| executive. There are ways for the supreme court or congress to
| intervene when the executive isn't doing their job. Sadly that
| requires them to believe a series of checks and balances is
| necessary.
|
| Given that it is down to the voters, and they thought a racist,
| rapist, conman should be president giving them the power of the
| executive - which has been growing increasingly powerful for my
| adult lifetime.
| jrs235 wrote:
| It seems the only thing the supreme Court can do now days is
| rule if something is unconstitutional or if a last has been
| broken. But has no check on the executive according to the
| regimes arguments. The only check is for Congress to impeach
| and convict apparently. And there are too many demagogue
| followers in those changes for that to ever happen.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| The real check here is for congress to write laws that are
| actually specific in their text. That is hard, though, so
| they instead write laws that empower parts of the executive
| branch to do some broadly-defined thing, including the
| power to make the relevant rules. When you get an executive
| who doesn't play your game, those poorly-written laws come
| back to bite you.
| alistairSH wrote:
| That's an overly simplistic view of governance.
|
| You're effectively says Congress should mandate every
| detail of every regulation. Even in areas where knowledge
| is changing (level of chemicals that are toxic, which
| medicines are useful and safe, etc).
|
| The whole premise of our system is that the people within
| the system operate in good faith. And that's worked for
| most of 200+ years. I would posit that no amount of
| legislation will be able to stop bad-faith actors from
| screwing up the system, even more so when they convince
| ~50% of the voting popular that "burn it to the ground"
| is a reasonable take.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| > You're effectively says Congress should mandate every
| detail of every regulation. Even in areas where knowledge
| is changing (level of chemicals that are toxic, which
| medicines are useful and safe, etc).
|
| The scientific advisors who currently make rules at the
| EPA (to name one example) probably should have been
| giving advice to congress to make laws instead. Congress
| can pass an annual bill of "here's the new science." They
| already pass laws of unimaginable length and complexity,
| so I see no reason why Congress can't pass a huge omnibus
| "these chemicals are bad" bill every year, even if that
| bill is 5000-10000 pages.
|
| By the way, speaking of the EPA, there's a lot of
| whiplash in that arm of government based on which party
| holds the presidency. If the EPA's rules were actual
| laws, they would need a much stronger mandate from the
| people to change. IMO this would be better for both
| environmental protection (since you don't have the party
| of "drill baby drill" arbitrarily changing things
| whenever they want) and for business because there is
| more certainty.
|
| > The whole premise of our system is that the people
| within the system operate in good faith.
|
| The whole premise of the American system of government is
| that power corrupts and a functioning government needs a
| series of working checks and balances. One arm of
| America's tripartite government has ceded most of its
| real power to another arm. This mostly works because the
| people who get into that other branch (presidents) want
| to play an iterated game, where burning things to the
| ground doesn't benefit them. We are seeing what happens
| when you have someone in power who is playing to win this
| round without regard for the iterated game.
| alistairSH wrote:
| _The scientific advisors who currently make rules at the
| EPA (to name one example) probably should have been
| giving advice to congress to make laws instead. Congress
| can pass an annual bill of "here's the new science."_
|
| All that would do is transfer power from bureaucrats
| within the executive to bureaucrats within the
| legislature. No Congressperson is fully knowledgeable on
| all the areas on which they pass laws. Maybe it is a
| better approach than what we have today, but I'm
| unconvinced. At least with the system we have today, the
| bureaucrats are generally experts within their areas.
| Congressional staffers have no such experience and
| generally rely on lobbyists.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| The transfer of where the bureaucrats work is exactly
| what I am proposing, and has very significant differences
| in terms of the mechanics of government. A law has much
| more binding power over the executive branch than a rule
| made by the executive branch, and if the last month
| hasn't convinced you of that, I don't know what will.
| Laws can also establish private causes of action that
| require no intervention from a bad-faith executive to
| enforce. Congress today already has no knowledge of the
| laws they pass, anyway.
| alistairSH wrote:
| Good points. My next concern would be the churn inherent
| in such a system. Every two years, the entire House and
| 1/3 of the Senate is re-elected. That doesn't give much
| time for a bureaucrat to gain experience before needed to
| concentrate on the re-election of their benefactor (I use
| that word purposefully here, because the US did away with
| patronage for career bureaucrats in the executive in the
| late 19th century - no such rules exist in the
| legislative).
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| The executive branch churns every 4 years, and is forced
| to churn at least every 8 years. In practice, it's not a
| concern, and it wouldn't be under congress, either.
|
| Think about this in good faith and try to make it work in
| your head, and you will see that this proposal is
| actually not that different from how the executive branch
| rule-makers work today from a day-to-day perspective,
| while carrying very different legal implications.
| alistairSH wrote:
| _The executive branch churns every 4 years, and is forced
| to churn at least every 8 years._
|
| That only applies to political appointees. The rank and
| file are permanent employees (or were until a few weeks
| ago).
|
| Anyways, not saying your idea couldn't work, only that
| it's not easily implemented and needs a lot of
| consideration to do well. It's a wholesale change to how
| we've governed ourselves for ~150 years. But, the idea of
| a permanent set of legislative experts has some appeal.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| >And that's worked for most of 200+ years. I would posit
| that no amount of legislation will be able to stop bad-
| faith actors from screwing up the system,
|
| This doesn't even require bad faith actors for it to
| become a clusterfuck. It's a scaling issue. Things that
| used to work at smaller scales accumulate cruft and other
| issues, until things ultimately fall apart. 200 years is
| of course a good run, but it wasn't going to last
| forever. Actually 200 years is such a long run, one
| doesn't have to bring "bad faith actors" into the
| equation at all to reach this conclusion, but I guess
| when things start to fall apart some people need someone
| to blame. Ask yourself this though... if the system was
| doing so great, how would it have allowed someone like
| Trump to ever win in the first place (let alone in the
| second place, as he did in 2024)? That's not a healthy
| system. Too many were disillusioned, and that's not their
| fault.
|
| >~50% of the voting popular that "burn it to the ground"
| is a reasonable take.
|
| They are disgusted with what they see, and have for a
| very long time felt powerless to change it. Not really
| just "felt", but were powerless to change it. Trump ran
| for office, they saw an opportunity. It's not exactly
| unreasonable, it's just inconvenient to a class of people
| who have grown comfortable because they're a little
| closer to the spigots of graft that pour forth. Being
| "reasonable" in the way you'd use that word hasn't really
| ever worked for those people, and they waited quite a
| long time for it to do the trick.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > The whole premise of our system is that the people
| within the system operate in good faith.
|
| It very much is not.
|
| It is, however, that the people will not simultaneously
| elect sufficent majorities in both houses of Congress and
| a President who _all_ fail to do so, such that the
| systems by which the political branches check eachother
| continue to function in a way which constrains those
| actors in either that do act in bad faith.
|
| > I would posit that no amount of legislation will be
| able to stop bad-faith actors from screwing up the
| system,
|
| Electoral reforms to the legislative branch that could be
| done through statute could go a long way to reducing the
| probability of a sufficient concentration of bad faith
| actors to overwhelm the system, and electoral and
| structural reforms to the executive branch to make it
| less unitary, which would take a Constitutional
| amendment, could increase the necessary concentration to
| achieve a total breakdown.
| unyttigfjelltol wrote:
| No, the real check is impeachment of executive officers
| when they flagrantly violate the law.
|
| The tradgedy of Trump's first term was that the House of
| Representatives undermined the legitimacy of that check
| by using it in partisan, ambiguous and non-compelling
| circumstances, and failing as a result to obtain a
| conviction. Using the heavy machinery of impeachment
| ineffectively made it harder to use should the executive
| take the tremendous steps you're suggesting.
|
| Anyway, Trump just mocked the leader of a foreign ally
| for refusing to hold elections. Viewed together, his
| comments sound like an extended troll of the political
| opposition.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Before 2016, we all thought impeachment was reserved for
| transgressions that can't be fixed any other way since it
| is congress overriding the will of the people. It's not a
| real check on small overreaches. The balance of powers
| between the branches is a real check (when it works).
| jrs235 wrote:
| >since it is congress overriding the will of the people.
|
| Say what?!
|
| It's Congress keeping the President in check. BTW, the
| President is not directly elected by the people and
| doesn't actually [directly] represent them. The President
| is elected by the state governments (legislatures) and is
| supposed to be chosen because the States belief the
| President will faithfully uphold the Constitution and the
| laws passed by Congress. It may happen the the States use
| a popular election to choose their electors that elect
| the President, at least for now, but the President isn't
| supposed to represent "the mob" (majority or the
| populace). It's also why the electoral college is used
| for electing the President rather than straight popular
| vote.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| It is congress overturning the result of an election.
| Ergo it is congress overriding the will of the people.
| ben_w wrote:
| > Given that it is down to the voters, and they thought a
| racist, rapist, conman should be president
|
| And multiply-bankrupt, and (on the second term) multiply-
| convicted felon.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_and_business_legal_af.
| ..
|
| Vox populi, vox Dei, but unfortunately the Deus in question
| is Koalemos
| alsoforgotmypwd wrote:
| Musk Crassus and Donald Caesar comprise a de facto
| duumvirate.
| ncr100 wrote:
| > [voters want STRONG MAN] which has been growing
| increasingly powerful for my adult lifetime.
|
| Political scientist Robert D Putnam suggests that this is in
| part due to the culture fragmenting and isolating.
|
| Watch 10m video
| https://youtu.be/5cVSR8MSJvw?si=5NxRUnYENhfzTbXe easy
| interview with him from recently on that. Interesting.
| intended wrote:
| The most distressing thing I learned in the past 3 ~~Years~~
| edit: months,, was how MUCH laws are about norms.
|
| Norms, are basically the way laws work in the real world.
|
| I despaired, because this is natural to lawyers, and alien
| entirely to the layperson.
|
| No one is going to think Justice, and then accept "Oh, our
| norms are how laws work".
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| The past three years? Why that time period? (I thought trumps
| first term was when it all became obvious).
| intended wrote:
| Crap. Typo; I learnt about it in November, while hearing a
| magistrate and lawyer discuss something.
| csomar wrote:
| Laws come from norms with a few practices to make them seem
| "legit". It's too hard and expensive for the ruler to oppose
| the masses. It has a significant political cost. Successful
| rulers just ride the masses current trend. It's like a tamed
| down hysteria.
| ReptileMan wrote:
| There is no constitutional way the president to not have access
| to any data in the executive branch. And since doge is
| reporting to him - it just send the data to the president and
| he will forward it to whomever he pleases.
|
| Even the concept of independent executive agencies is probably
| more vulnerable constitutionally than more people think.
| gg82 wrote:
| All the court cases being brought is going to end up in the
| SCOTUS over
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitary_executive_theory .
| There is a pretty good chance that this will be confirmed.
| drowsspa wrote:
| Yeah, that's my point. Not even the president should have
| unrestricted access to that data. He's not a king or the head
| of a corporation. And government workers aren't his subjects
| or employees. In most places, at least honest government
| workers can stand their ground because they're backed by a
| law governing this access.
| ReptileMan wrote:
| Change the constitution then.
| drowsspa wrote:
| Should have made it clear that I'm not American and I'm
| just finding it wild from afar.
|
| I guess it's a testament to American democratic cultural
| history that no coup has occurred in American history
| when the president has such an absolute authority over
| the executive branch, as informed to me by the other
| comments. Let's hope for the sake of the whole world it
| remains like this.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Laws are only a suggestion, they are not being enforced and
| there are no consequences.
|
| The other thing is that in the US, people's lives depend on
| their jobs, with half of polled people indicating they live
| paycheck to paycheck. This makes them easy to manipulate into
| complying, putting their morals aside because standing up for
| morals or indeed the law will mean they lose their job.
|
| I mean the US president declared yesterday that only he gets to
| decide on law and called himself king on his social media.
| There's heaps of 'legal' texts that indicate it means he can be
| deposed and yote into jail, but if there's nobody enforcing
| them they're useless.
| _heimdall wrote:
| Democracy is held together by people willing to follow the
| rules.
|
| In Trump's first administration they realized the trick is to
| just move so fast that you flood the system and can do whatever
| you want before anyone sees through all the noise or has a
| chance to stop you. Steve Bannon was interviewed on camera
| saying as much.
| tmountain wrote:
| Here's Bannon's quote verbatim -- "I said, all we have to do
| is flood the zone. Every day we hit them with three things.
| They'll bite on one, and we'll get all of our stuff done,
| bang, bang, bang. These guys will never--will never be able
| to recover. But we've got to start with muzzle velocity."
| ncr100 wrote:
| Smells like traitor meat.
| vuln wrote:
| This is also the MO of startups.
|
| Look at AirBnB, Uber, Lyft.
|
| All illegal businesses that had enough capital to burn
| through lawsuits and keep operations going until they were
| too big to fail and whipped the snot out of city and state
| legal counsels.
| stainablesteel wrote:
| no it's based on elections
| pembrook wrote:
| Why would you want a law that says government workers have zero
| accountability over how they spend the money they extract by
| threat of violence from the citizenry?
|
| We should all have "root access" to everything but the most
| national-security sensitive topics.
| laserbeam wrote:
| The value of laws (in general) is being challenged in the US
| right now. At least, so it appears from afar. Enjoy going
| through a power grab.
| RandomTisk wrote:
| One side is understandably on edge but nothing DOGE has been
| doing is unexpected, except in the sense that it's actually
| happening or seems to be happening. It went through the whole
| political process's standard change control mechanism, in other
| words the current Administration literally campaigned on it and
| received a mandate via both the EC and popular vote.
| misiti3780 wrote:
| That is the definition of an unelected bureaucrat
| cryptonector wrote:
| The Constitution vest all executive authority on the president.
| The president can delegate that authority. That's what all is
| happening here. Within the executive branch the president has
| practically total power, hardly if at all possible to constrain
| by statute, and that's _by design_ in the Constitution.
|
| The president needs the Senate's "advice and consent" to hire
| principal officers, and does not need the Senate's "advice and
| consent" for certain other officers as specified by _statute_.
| The US Digital Service ( "DOGE") is an agency where he did not
| need the Senate's advice and consent.
|
| The president does NOT need the Senate's advice and consent to
| fire anyone in the executive branch. For principal officers
| this was established by the _failed_ impeachment of Andrew
| Johnson for firing a confirmed cabinet secretary nominated by
| Lincoln. For other officers this was established by judicial
| precedent fairly recently when Biden terminated two Trump
| appointees to minor offices and they sued (and lost).
|
| Similarly the president needs the Senate's advice and consent
| to enter into treaties. The Constitution is _silent_ as to
| terminating Senate-confirmed executive officers, officers whose
| appointments did not require Senate confirmation, or treaties
| (abrogation). It 's essentially settled law that the president
| does not require the Senate's advice and consent for any of
| those kinds of terminations.
|
| Therefore, under the Constitution and the political and binding
| judicial precedents, _there can be no law_ "onto which
| government workers can cling to refuse these requests."
| drowsspa wrote:
| Thanks for the explanation. Like I said, sounds wild that
| yes, the American Constitution does establish the president
| as basically a king over the Executive branch.
|
| Copying what I typed elsewhere, I guess it's a testament to
| American democratic cultural history that no coup has
| occurred in American history when the president has such an
| absolute authority over the executive branch. Let's hope for
| the sake of the whole world it remains like this.
| neonate wrote:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20250220063358/https://www.theat...
|
| https://archive.ph/Oa42l
| stuaxo wrote:
| They will have had to impose this too.
|
| The systems were built as separate systems to avoid (in a systems
| designers most fevered nightmares) a scenario like this.
| flanked-evergl wrote:
| The executive branch was intended to be separate from the
| judicial and the legislative branch, not separate from itself.
| _heimdall wrote:
| And this is why the executive branch was never meant to have
| as much power as it has today.
|
| We've spent the better part of 80 years moving power from
| legislative to execute _and_ granting executive a whole host
| of new powers.
|
| We made this bed, now it sure seems like Trump is making us
| sleep in it.
| Loughla wrote:
| Why do people seem drawn to having a king? What is it in
| human nature that makes us want a strong man in charge with
| absolute power?
| oblio wrote:
| Laziness. Convenience is the most powerful force in
| humanity and it's driving us to self destruction.
| Obesity, car oriented everything, etc.
| krapp wrote:
| Most people _don 't_ want a strong man in charge with
| absolute power. Dictators rule by fear and naked force,
| far more so than even the "monopoly on violence" claimed
| by modern states. A king is just another word for
| dictator, it's all the same. Although I would say
| Americans aren't really drawn to the model of a king so
| much as a "CEO in chief," but CEOs are essentially kings
| within their domain.
|
| The people who do support it believe that they themselves
| will be granted noble status within the new regime,
| rather than being serfs.
| 52-6F-62 wrote:
| Natural order. We structure all of nature into kingdoms.
| They flower out from a core archetype. And it also helps
| project an inheritable identity.
|
| The problem above any American political and
| philosophical questions (moral questions
| notwithstanding), is mistaking Trump for anything
| resembling a worthy king. It will bring trouble.
|
| In the ancient world the king was a symbol of the
| prosperity of the people and scapegoat for the sins and
| troubles of the people and was ritually killed and
| replaced when things weren't working out. History
| whispers that one should be careful what one wishes for.
| alsoforgotmypwd wrote:
| Social Darwinistic systems are inherently unstable.
| People eventually get tired of corruption and being
| abused.
| cindylmcindy wrote:
| In my experience, your statement is opposite of true.
| Hence the term, 'die hard fan'. In fact, the more fans
| get abused, the deeper their love and loyalty grow.
| alsoforgotmypwd wrote:
| That's because many current regimes have exploited
| anocracy with the appearance of individual choice while
| manufacturing consent. Previously, it was done by force
| which is what doesn't scale.
| cindylmcindy wrote:
| Give the people what they want.
|
| If they want to be abused, then lean all the way in.
| doitLP wrote:
| It's very easy to reason about when someone says "I alone
| can fix this." You have a single person to look at and
| listen to. Not a faceless sprawling beauracracy and slow
| wheels of legislative progress.
|
| It's the same reason the antagonist in nearly every film
| is a single bad guy who is eventually karate-chopped down
| to size. It's the same reason WW2 is a 'simpler' and more
| palatable narrative (a couple main bad guys) than WW1
| (complex political and social movements across many
| countries led to war). Even though the same complexity of
| politics and social changes were also at play
|
| In a big society where end effects are far away, we look
| to the strong men to handle the big problems
| _heimdall wrote:
| Fear. In my opinion these decisions and problems always
| come back to fear.
| wan23 wrote:
| It shouldn't be hard to understand why absolute power in
| the hands of yourself is the best political system. Since
| everyone can't be king, their next preference is going to
| be absolute power in the hands of someone who has their
| interests in mind. Unfortunately, we live in a world
| where people have varied interests and you can't really
| trust that anyone is fully aligned with you anyway.
| alsoforgotmypwd wrote:
| Desperation, ignorance, and failure of the golden rule.
| They want their cult to win, and are fine with
| inconsistency and illegality when it benefits them. This
| is perhaps the ultimate vulnerability of representative
| government that cannot be remedied except through
| education and socially-enforced norms, or else democratic
| government must be abandoned but not for a malicious
| emperor.
| dmix wrote:
| I remember reading Glenn Greenwald in the 2000s when he was
| railing against the expansion of executive power under GWB.
|
| > But the same individuals peddling this theory are
| simultaneously objecting quite vigorously to the notion
| that they are bestowing George Bush with the powers of a
| King. Bill Kristol and Gary Stevenson, for instance, called
| such claims "foolish and irresponsible" in the very same
| Washington Post Op-Ed where they argued that Bush need not
| "follow the strictures of" (i.e., obey) the law, and the
| President himself angrily denied that he is laying claim to
| a "dictatorial position" in the very same Press Conference
| where he proudly insisted on the right to eavesdrop on
| Americans without a warrant even though FISA makes it a
| crime to do so.
|
| https://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2005/12/do-bush-
| defender...
|
| And he was equally critical of Obama admin not only keeping
| those powers but further expanding them.
|
| Americans stopped caring around the Patriot Act and
| executive power has only grown under every administration
| since
| monetus wrote:
| Glenn greenwald has been supportive of unitary executive
| theory the past few years, now. What a sad turn around.
| dmix wrote:
| Do you have a link where he talks about that?
| tabakd wrote:
| Is there any reason this data shouldn't be public for everyone to
| read?
| jpcom wrote:
| define "everyone" -- elected officials who are supposed to have
| oversight and insight into where our tax dollars are going?
| It's not like they're providing replicas over bittorrent.
| procaryote wrote:
| Give it time. Centralised access managed by junior engineers
| pretty much guarantees the data gets stolen.
|
| Perhaps the first foreign adversary nation state getting
| there will patch the security flaws after stealing the data?
| Amezarak wrote:
| A Chinese APT had unfettered access to the Treasury
| Department, discovered back in December. It's interesting
| that people are much more excited about new government
| employees accessing these systems as part of their duties
| than they are about this.
| xnx wrote:
| True, but the Chinese also can't order malicious tax
| audits against political opponents like Trump can.
| Amezarak wrote:
| Are you arguing that people are at risk because a
| comparison of Treasury and IRS records is going to reveal
| tax fraud or something? I don't think that's on the
| table. At any rate, Trump doesn't need DOGE to do that,
| he can just order the IRS to do it like FDR did if that's
| what he's going to do.
| procaryote wrote:
| A foreign adversary hacking a governmental system isn't
| good, but it's also kinda expected that they'll try.
|
| That "just an advisor (but not really)" Musk and his
| ragtag group of junior developers get god mode access to
| lots of governmental systems is less expected. There are
| legal ways for the president to direct these departments,
| so when he opts for the illegal path, it's definitely
| noteworthy.
| pyrale wrote:
| Would you want a prospective employer to have access to your
| past tax returns when negociating salary?
|
| The article also mentions information about employees operating
| in conflict zones.
| cobertos wrote:
| Salary information is already easy to get thanks to The Work
| Number
| jhardy54 wrote:
| Does TWN provide income data for background checks? I'd
| imagine that the data depends on your permissible purpose.
| cobertos wrote:
| Hard to say. I only know the salary data ends up at less
| scrupulous data brokers (e.g. ones that sell directly to
| advertisers, though perhaps TWN does this too, idk)
| chipsrafferty wrote:
| A lot of jobs don't use TWN. None of the ones I've had did
| so.
| WhyNotHugo wrote:
| USAID collaborates in fighting for worker rights when they are
| in exploitation or near-slavery.
|
| They likely have records of the people inside organisations who
| provide data for them. These people usually want to remain
| anonymous because they fear retaliation. And in many cases,
| we're not just talking about being fired or legal actions as
| retaliation.
| intended wrote:
| Because you have a right to privacy.
| willis936 wrote:
| You personally are cool with me personally knowing your salary
| and where you live? Please just post that here right now.
| Etheryte wrote:
| That might sound incredibly foreign to you, but this is the
| norm in many Nordic countries, see Norway, Sweden and
| Finland, for a start. Tax returns for everyone are public,
| and so are addresses through a national registry.
| stackedinserter wrote:
| Why do they need it? Besides dumb envy, why would I need
| someone's tax return? What's in it for me?
| Etheryte wrote:
| Salary negotiations are a very simple example, you can
| easily compare your salary to that of your peers and to
| similar positions in other companies. If your boss tells
| you they pay you the industry average or company average
| or whatnot, you wouldn't be able to check whether that's
| actually true otherwise. You can also have a rough
| ballpark of what a company pays before you apply for a
| job there. In general, information like this being public
| empowers people, whereas in most countries companies hold
| all the cards and use this information asymmetry to their
| advantage.
| pembrook wrote:
| Fairness and efficiency. If someone is making
| significantly more money than you, they are either:
|
| a) creating more productive value than you or doing
| something more in demand by society [strong signal you
| should join them!]
|
| or
|
| b) manipulating their situation for better outcomes
| unfairly or fraudulently
|
| In both cases it's in the interest of the greater good to
| have these things out in the open.
| trash_cat wrote:
| While true, this is currently being debated if the access
| of public data should be reduced [0].
|
| [0] https://lexing.network/swedens-latest-inquiry-into-
| protectin...
| rdm_blackhole wrote:
| Agreed.
|
| As a foreigner who moved to Sweden, it was quite shocking
| first to see all this info displayed online for everyone to
| see but there are definitely some good sides and bad sides
| to it.
|
| One of the good side is that, you can look at the people
| living in a given area and decided if this is the kind of
| neighborhood where you want to live. Lower (declared
| income) can have a correlation with crime so if you just
| want to have a quite life, you may want to select an era
| that has loads of working people with a higher than average
| income.
|
| One bad side, some people have used it in the past to
| harass people, think ex-lovers and so on. There is a
| procedure in place where if you are afraid of being stalked
| you can ask for your information to be removed from these
| registries or at least be hidden from public view.
| staticelf wrote:
| Which works, until you have mass immigration from MENA-
| countries that results in a huge rise in criminality which
| makes everyone afraid because any criminal can look you up
| from the license plate or simply by searching for your name
| and instantly know where you are.
|
| I hate this system. It used to be a good system when most
| people was law abiding and there was no gang criminals. But
| today? Jeez, you are like a fish just hoping not to get
| struck by the sharks and there is no protection available
| due to the failing state.
| patapong wrote:
| Yep! In Sweden, this is part of the constitution. I think
| it beautifully demonstrates that the state works for the
| public, and that all information held by the state should
| by default also be accessible to members of the public,
| unless there is an important exception, such as personal
| medical privacy or national security.
|
| It acts as a great tool for journalists, who are able to
| obtain meaningful insight into the actions of the state at
| all levels. While of course there are downsides, I think
| this is a very important principle.
| ncr100 wrote:
| Here you get SWATted for "fun" by kids, and targeted by
| Right-Wing extremists with death-threats for "political
| speech", and targeted by criminals based upon your
| vulnerability. USA is sooooo not Sweden.
| pembrook wrote:
| Not just that, so are the tax returns of private
| businesses. You can look up any company and see exactly how
| it's doing.
|
| In Finland they publish everyones salaries over a certain
| threshold in the newspaper every year.
| mr_toad wrote:
| In New Zealand public servants salaries were published in
| the "Public Service List" from 1866 through to 1988.
|
| https://teara.govt.nz/en/zoomify/33070/page-from-the-
| public-...
|
| Anecdotally they were mainly used to evaluate potential
| dates.
| exDM69 wrote:
| Neither is really true at least for Finland.
|
| Addresses are not public information, you can opt out from
| having your info public. They are not even a national
| registry (one exists, not public) but your telco will put
| you in "the phone book" if you don't opt out.
|
| Taxes are public information but only to a degree. You can
| opt out from having them shared en masse (primarily to the
| media) but you can still inquire someone else's paid taxes
| from the tax office but it requires you to know their full
| given name, year of birth and home town.
|
| Salary is not public information, only the total amount of
| paid income taxes. You can correlate them to some degree
| but you won't be able to know how many jobs a person has or
| where their capital gains are from.
|
| Access to this information can also be limited in
| exceptional cases (politicians, harassment victims,
| identity theft etc).
| Philpax wrote:
| Tom Scott video about this:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bO8zEaSuWg
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| What is it called when people cry free speech, democracy, and
| transparency while actively assaulting these ideals?
| morkalork wrote:
| Acting in bad faith, exploiting flaws and asymmetries in a
| system?
| calebm wrote:
| Employers almost always know the salary and location of their
| employees. Government workers are (in theory) employees of
| the citizens.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Employers almost always know the salary and location of
| their employees.
|
| Employers do, individual stockholders of the employing firm
| do not, generally.
|
| > Government workers are (in theory) employees of the
| citizens.
|
| No, they are in theory employees of the government, in
| which the citizenry are stakeholders. They are not, even in
| theory, direct employees of the citizens.
|
| A US Attorney is not, in theory, _your_ attorney just
| because you are a US citizen.
| maronato wrote:
| > Government workers are (in theory) employees of the
| citizens.
|
| Not in theory nor in practice, for the same reason a
| teacher isn't the employee of a student's parents.
| xnx wrote:
| I would love it if tax returns were public (as they are in
| other countries), but that's not what's happening here.
| dralley wrote:
| Most of it already was, but normies don't go looking for public
| expenditure databases, so they assume it doesn't exist. Then
| DOGE comes along and pretends they're doing something new.
| ncr100 wrote:
| Many. It's private for basic reasons, as are PII in your
| workplace.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Lets start with Trump and Musk.
| jpcom wrote:
| If you want accountability someone needs to have root access. If
| you don't want accountability, you are a politician getting
| kickbacks through obfuscation.
| TheCondor wrote:
| That someone needs accountability themselves. Musk is not
| elected, his role isn't defined. Really, he's a patsy, he can
| do what he does, fortify his corporations, maybe trim some
| waste, have a falling out with Trump (it's inevitable) and then
| trump blames him for the damage.
| snickerbockers wrote:
| So how is this any different from all the random employees who
| might have access to this data as part of their jobs? I would
| understand if there was this sort of scrutiny over every federal
| employee but as it stands I never know who has access to my data
| and if they can be trusted.
| pyrale wrote:
| I strongly suspect no single employee had access to all that
| data.
| thebeardisred wrote:
| This is generally quite restricted. I personally had to undego
| a "Public trust" civilian security clearance (which is binding
| for life unlike the 75 years of TS-SCI).
| imafish wrote:
| And do we know the DOGE employees don't undergo this?
| drawfloat wrote:
| Given the little background we know of the employees
| includes a guy who was fired for leaking secrets, I think
| it's safe to say they didn't
| mexicocitinluez wrote:
| It's surreal arguing with people like this.
| https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c93q625y04wo
| mexicocitinluez wrote:
| lol
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c93q625y04wo
|
| I already know the answer to this, but if Obama had George
| Soros hire a bunch of anti-white people to oversee the Doge
| systems, would you still be supporting it? Or it's okay
| because you're white and the people are in charge are
| white.
| ritwikgupta wrote:
| Public trust is not a security clearance; it is simply a more
| involved background check. A security clearance is only
| granted after a T3/T5 investigation and adjudication of the
| request. The SF312 NDA signed in order to receive your
| clearance does not expire.
| wodenokoto wrote:
| Usually you don't have access to "everything". It might even be
| illegal to cross reference certain data, e.g., the same person
| or department might not even be allowed to have access to two
| databases.
|
| I don't know if the cross reference is true for the US, but it
| is for other countries.
| scarab92 wrote:
| Musk's remit is broader than typical, so it's not surprising
| that the president decided to grant him a broader
| authorisation than is typical.
|
| There's nothing wrong with it. He's just more ambitious than
| other advisors.
| intended wrote:
| Course theres something wrong with it. When the frik did
| Americans, and American techies - get so blase about
| personal information security! America fought against the
| idea of biometric ID cards. People on HN have railed
| against giving more information to the government forever.
|
| What the hell? Like this shit didn't happen back home in
| INDIA, and that's a nation which is comfortable with a
| stronger state.
|
| It's NOT OK, and you can very well acknowledge that fact
| because you can just imagine what eviscerating a legacy
| code base without a replacement looks like. It looks like
| the disaster you wish on your worst enemy while you quit
| the firm and look for a new job.
|
| This isn't beyond the project execution and technical
| ability of most people here to grasp.
|
| ask yourself how many consecutive miracles would it take
| for this to go off without a hitch. Then ask yourself if
| you are that lucky.
| tourist2d wrote:
| So more ambitiousness means you should get access to more
| user information?
| leet0rz wrote:
| It is not, it's the same there are just different people
| viewing your private information, probably more corrupt who
| banks all that money to themselves now instead of it going to
| whoever it was going to previously.
| rsynnott wrote:
| Except in exceptionally poorly run or small organisations,
| random employees do not have access to everything; generally
| they need a reason to look at stuff, and there's a paper trail
| indicating that they looked at it.
| sherburt3 wrote:
| Oh sweet summer child
| bdcravens wrote:
| The fact that it crosses departmental boundaries. The fact that
| the employee has multiple businesses that could benefit from
| such data.
| mexicocitinluez wrote:
| > So how is this any different from all the random employees
| who might have access to this data as part of their jobs?
|
| Are you asking why it's any different a non-American
| billionaire who has multipole government contracts having
| access to your data any different than Joe Bob who was hired
| and vetted by those same people unlike the other guy?
| andsoitis wrote:
| > a non-American billionaire
|
| This is false.
|
| Elon Musk has South African, Canadian, and US citizenship.
| Let's not play the xenophobia card.
| sherburt3 wrote:
| Yeah I more concerned "God Mode" is a thing that exists. One
| would hope that these systems are heavily locked down but my
| experience maintaining legacy systems makes me think "God mode"
| is a thing you get because you have to run a quarterly report
| and it is too much of a hassle setting up the correct
| permissions.
| jeffrallen wrote:
| Anyone who has ever had root on a database server has that
| access. There's no technology available that prevents the
| people responsible for correcting failing RAID volumes from
| reading blocks from /dev/sda. In theory, yes, there are DRM
| technologies that prevent you from getting a copy of a song
| Spotify stores in your cache. But those technologies are not
| used on multi-gigabyte databases.
|
| The only thing that protects that data is professional
| ethics, and in extremely paranoid (i.e. airgapped)
| environments, metal detectors.
|
| Sincerely, God Mode on x DBs, where x > 1.
| unsui wrote:
| accountabilty and role-based permissions based on least-
| privilege.
|
| None of that matters with what DOGE is doing. That should worry
| you.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| There are considerable processes to make sure that happens,
| including proper background checks, seniority at the job, etc.
| You don't just hand some rando newbie the keys to the kingdom
| -- any company that did that would be laughed at.
| mandmandam wrote:
| The moment they had physical access to the system, it was
| necessary to assume this. It's called an 'evil maid' attack, and
| of all communities this one should have been blowing the whistle.
| Loudly, repeatedly, and in open defiance of people who argue that
| this is a storm in a teacup, a non issue, just another MOT, etc.
|
| _Especially_ when you look at the background of the Doge team -
| 'ex' hackers, 'security specialists', full-on racists...
|
| Perhaps surprisingly, the CEO of YC and Paul Graham have been
| publicly supportive of the DOGE team, despite all the racism and
| existential threat. I don't know if that's from fear, or greed,
| but there are strong arguments for both.
|
| Some of the stories about this topic which have been flagged here
| can be seen in my favorites. I'd be interested in collecting more
| examples, if you know of any missing.
|
| > In the coming weeks, the team is expected to enter IT systems
| at the CDC and Federal Aviation Administration, and it already
| has done so at NASA, according to sources we've spoken with at
| each of those agencies. At least one DOGE ally appears to be
| working to open back doors into systems used throughout the
| federal government.
|
| If discussing this openly and often this isn't possible due to
| _very simple_ flag abuse, then what is this community actually
| even worth.
| CalRobert wrote:
| I think this community stopped caring about actual hacking some
| time ago. Remember when we cared about privacy?
| intended wrote:
| I didn't get something until it was pointed out very
| recently.
|
| The issue isn't what we think. The issue is what we think
| OTHERS think.
|
| This is what social media truly fucks up. We can't see the
| people nodding in disagreement. We can only see their
| silence, and we must respond to the person who IS talking and
| holding our attention.
|
| Practically - I care about privacy, and I expect that damn
| near most people here care about it.
|
| People can have their "well actually" arguments, but when
| push comes to shove, techies on HN should vocalize their
| annoyance with the way this is being done. Even if you
| support their politics, this ISNT how you execute secure
| projects.
|
| Wrong from the start. The Emperor isn't wearing any clothes
| territory. We dont have to agree on other things.
| trymas wrote:
| > Perhaps surprisingly, the CEO of YC and Paul Graham have been
| publicly supportive of the DOGE team, despite all the racism
| and existential threat. I don't know if that's from fear, or
| greed, but there are strong arguments for both.
|
| > ...
|
| > If discussing this openly and often this isn't possible due
| to very simple flag abuse, then what is this community actually
| even worth.
|
| Just want to add to this topic that HN advertises YC AI Startup
| school: https://events.ycombinator.com/ai-sus - where Musk is
| listed as a first speaker.
|
| Though it doesn't surprise me - YC is in the same circle of
| radical technocrats (a16z, Altman, Musk, etc.) and hosted
| Balaji talking about dystopian plans about techno-authoritarian
| city states 10 or 15 years ago.
| amarcheschi wrote:
| It would be fun if someone did the funni at him there
| mexicocitinluez wrote:
| Paul graham has his head so far up his on ass it's unreal.
|
| Listening to him talk about Elon taking over Twitter and that
| leading to more free speech was embarrassing. Like, actual
| adults believe this shit.
| trymas wrote:
| I just checked his blog. Latest post "The Origins of
| Wokeness".
|
| Protesting against police brutality of suffocating
| apprehended person is apparently "peak woke".
|
| Musk apparently "succeded in neutralizing" twitter -
| "without censoring either" (left or right). He argues in
| the notes that Musk prioritized paid users and paid users
| are more right wing and hence left wing users self censored
| themselves, but left "could tilt it back if they wanted
| to".
|
| EDIT: also again proving my original comment - PG is
| thanking Sam Altman for proof reading the post...
| mexicocitinluez wrote:
| Christ they are truly dumb people who just got good with
| computers.
| jonahbenton wrote:
| Agree. Shameful.
| hotpotatoe wrote:
| It's not surprising the CEO of YC supports this, he also
| supports the idea of the network state. This community is now
| primarily exists to launder Curtis Yarvins galaxy brain ideas.
| alabastervlog wrote:
| The most surprising thing about the fascist takeover is that
| it's so incredibly stupid.
| beepbooptheory wrote:
| Please, someone, give me somewhere else to go other than here.
| kfrzcode wrote:
| [flagged]
| cmurf wrote:
| [flagged]
| Aeolun wrote:
| As much as I want that last paragraph to be true... the
| results speak for themselves.
| dang wrote:
| Could you please stop posting flamewar and ideological battle
| comments? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's
| not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
|
| If you wouldn't mind reviewing
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking
| the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be
| grateful.
| dang wrote:
| Could you please stop posting flamewar and ideological battle
| comments? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's
| not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
|
| If you wouldn't mind reviewing
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the
| intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
|
| Also: please don't use 'edit' to do deletions that deprive
| replies of context. That's unfair to readers.
| karel-3d wrote:
| Honestly when DOGE was first announced, I thought it will be a
| tiny department that does almost nothing and produces
| recommendations and PDFs that nobody reads. I didn't expect this.
| scarab92 wrote:
| Musk isn't a do-things-by-half kind of guy.
| cm2187 wrote:
| But also when you make cuts, you go hard, fast, and recover
| from there. Any effort of small trimming over a long period
| achieves no saving while producing the same negative
| publicity. I doubt such cutting effort will happen for
| another 30y.
|
| There is a french say I like. If you need to cut a dog's
| tail, don't cut an inch every day, chop the whole thing quick
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| This isn't just cuts though, this is dismantling checks and
| balances, international relationships, and many people will
| die from this.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Several employees have already been put at risk:
| https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/foreign-
| servic...
|
| Dismantling USAID overnight will do a lot of damage.
| intended wrote:
| Same thing for butchery. Cut the carcass and sell the
| parts.
| Smithalicious wrote:
| The French, famous for their budget cuts and government
| efficiency.
| catlifeonmars wrote:
| > There is a french say I like. If you need to cut a dog's
| tail, don't cut an inch every day, chop the whole thing
| quick
|
| Well there's cutting off the dogs tail, and then there's
| accidentally cutting off your own fingers in your haste to
| get the dogs tail.
|
| There is another saying:
|
| Slow is smooth and smooth is fast.
|
| Act quickly when needed but not so quickly that you don't
| have time to assess. You should know what you're cutting
| before you cut.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| In the French saying is cutting the tail off a dog seen as
| a cruel and unnecessary action, that you shouldn't prolong
| any longer than necessary, or a valid task that needs done?
|
| I see the legal status of tail docking is slightly laxer in
| France but in North America the US and Canadian Vetinary
| Associations disavow the practice as bad for the dog.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Docking_(dog)
| blharr wrote:
| Or is this slicing the dog in half?
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| There were signs but people thought it implausibly stupid:
|
| > Vice-president JD Vance has cited Yarvin as an influence,
| saying in 2021, "So there's this guy Curtis Yarvin who has
| written about these things," which included "Retire All
| Government Employees," or RAGE, written in 2012. Vance said
| that if Trump became president again, "I think what Trump
| should do, if I was giving him one piece of advice: Fire every
| single midlevel bureaucrat, every civil servant in the
| administrative state, and replace them with our people. And
| when the courts stop you, stand before the country and say,
| 'The chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce
| it.'"[17][52]
| Tarsul wrote:
| hm, maybe it's better if Trump stays president for 4 years
| (instead of Vance coming up). The devil you know...
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Vance is just a figurehead for Theil, Musk, Sacks etc.
|
| It's obvious from recent video of Musk and Trump that Trump
| is also a figurehead at this point.
| sjsdaiuasgdia wrote:
| Trump primarily cares about two things:
|
| 1) Staying out of prison
|
| 2) Being adored
|
| What happens to the country is beside the point, from his
| perspective. Which is why he's more than happy to let
| Musk and the Heritage Foundation call the shots. He has
| no interest in actually running things, that's too much
| work.
| xnx wrote:
| 3) Golfing
| ipv6ipv4 wrote:
| Vance doesn't have Trump's sway with the 'base', or mob.
| Vance can have all the dictatorial aspirations in the
| world, but he doesn't have the popular support or
| influence, like Trump does, to act on them.
| phire wrote:
| My brain immediately latched on to how much control could be
| exerted through the guise of "efficiency", you could effetely
| run a whole government from there. But I was expecting more
| installing a bunch of so-called "efficiency officers" in every
| department to report back when they weren't being loyal... er
| efficient.
|
| I was not expecting the complete takeover of computer networks
| and rapid firing of large numbers of employees.
| lurker616 wrote:
| Musk has basically discovered that you can ignore existing
| laws, since by the time lawyers sue and courts order
| injunctions, it'll be too late and too expensive. Especially
| when lawyers can argue against basic facts like "Musk doesn't
| head DOGE". It's the same playbook as the twitter layoffs -
| when you are so rich, you don't need to care about laws.
| karel-3d wrote:
| Move fast, break things.
|
| Easier to ask for forgiveness than for permission.
|
| YOLO.
| jrs235 wrote:
| And move fast enough to get dirt on your prosecutors so
| you can, at first, kindly ask them to leave you alone. If
| that fails, release the dirt and cause chaos, confusion,
| and doubt...
| dionian wrote:
| Trump's biggest mistake was not firing all the Obama
| holdovers on the first term, like Obama did for GWB's. He
| isn't making that mistake this time around apparently.
| dionian wrote:
| I am actually really inspired by the Big Tech efficiency
| brought into gov't bureaucracy. I hope the next Democrat
| admin does the same.
| intended wrote:
| Why?
| janice1999 wrote:
| Read the Bufferfly Revolution by Curtis Yarvin (April, 2022)
|
| > We've got to risk a full power start--a full reboot of the
| USG. We can only do this by giving absolute sovereignty to a
| single organization--with roughly the powers that the Allied
| occupation authorities held in Japan and Germany in the fall of
| 1945.
|
| > Trump himself will not be the brain of this butterfly. He
| will not be the CEO. He will be the chairman of the board--he
| will select the CEO (an experienced executive). This process,
| which obviously has to be televised, will be complete by his
| inauguration--at which the transition to the next regime will
| start immediately.
|
| https://graymirror.substack.com/p/the-butterfly-revolution
| theossuary wrote:
| For context, this is Moldbug, the leading voice in the "Dark
| Enlightenment" movement. Basically he convinced the tech bros
| this was a good idea
| bpodgursky wrote:
| That was the Vivek plan. He got sidelined.
| tim333 wrote:
| Nobody expects the DOGEish inquistion! Yeah I kinda thought
| that too.
| lucasRW wrote:
| Isn't this the idea of an audit ?...
| fraggleysun wrote:
| Wouldn't you expect some sort of forensic accountant leading an
| audit of a multi trillion dollar organization?
| lucasRW wrote:
| No
| harrisontbooth wrote:
| Why not?
| randerson wrote:
| An audit only needs read access, not God mode. It should be
| conducted by a neutral third party, not someone on a witch hunt
| who has conflicts of interest. The people on the ground should
| have auditing qualifications, clear background checks, and
| knowledge of specific systems or processes, not a random
| 19-year-old named "Big Balls" with a history of selling company
| secrets to a competitor. Their findings should go through QA,
| and they should take the time to come up with an accurate
| report, rather than rushing through and blurting out whatever
| they think is happening.
| myflash13 wrote:
| Ah, so more bureaucracy, bureaucracy, bureaucracy.
| mexicocitinluez wrote:
| This response is so funny to me.
|
| You'll be on your knees begging for bureaucracy after all
| your info is sold to the highest bidder and you spend the
| next 20 years fighting identity theft.
| lucasRW wrote:
| https://www.zetter-zeroday.com/court-documents-shed-new-
| ligh...
|
| "New court documents shed light on what a 25-year-old
| DOGE employee named Marko Elez did inside Treasury
| Department payment systems. They also provide extensive
| new details about which systems Elez accessed, the
| security precautions Treasury IT staff took to limit his
| access and activity, and what changes he made to the
| systems. The documents indicate that the situation at
| Treasury is more nuanced than previously reported."
|
| (...)
|
| "Additionally, he could only connect using a government-
| issued laptop that had "cybersecurity tools" installed on
| it to prevent him from accessing web sites or cloud-based
| storage services with the laptop or connecting a USB or
| other external storage device to it to copy large amounts
| of data from Treasury systems. "
| mexicocitinluez wrote:
| It's so funny you think quoting a newspaper that says
| some random staffer doesn't CURRENTLY have access is some
| sort of gotcha. Do you know how time works?
| lucasRW wrote:
| Correction: - not quoting a newspaper, but court
| documents. - not a random staffer, but THE staffer you
| are so concerned about.
| mexicocitinluez wrote:
| THE staffer? I don't remember singling anyone out so I
| have no clue what you're talking.
|
| You're argument is "This document said this one dude
| isn't currently accessing the system" as if that somehow
| means they aren't going to in the future and or that
| other team members don't have access. What are you even
| talking about? No one is saying "It's all this guy"
| mrguyorama wrote:
| No, you are quoting a newspaper "zetter-zeroday" which is
| talking about court documents. You are not quoting court
| documents.
|
| Also, not all court documents are the same. You can make
| whatever claims you want in some of them.
| dionian wrote:
| Is DOGE releasing private info?
| actionfromafar wrote:
| DOGE should not be even near private data without a
| clearance.
| mexicocitinluez wrote:
| I think that ship has sailed.
|
| His first term, he handed out security clearances to
| anyone who would ask. There is even less stopping him
| from just giving them out this term too.
| mexicocitinluez wrote:
| I don't know AND THAT'S THE POINT. No one knows. There is
| ZERO oversight except for a guy who just coincidentally
| made his billions on US government subsidies.
| hcurtiss wrote:
| Neither was there before.
| mexicocitinluez wrote:
| hWUT?
|
| WTF are you talking about? What govt agency does haven't
| oversight the way DOGE does? Stop lying.
|
| congress didn't create DOGE. no one is overseeing that
| goon running it. you're a child if you believe the words
| coming out of his mouth
| lesuorac wrote:
| Yes.
|
| They're using public LLMs to analyze it. Every single LLM
| provider collects the data you put into it.
|
| There's also the NRO incident recently where they
| publicly released the classified org chart.
| randerson wrote:
| Would you buy shares in a company if the sole auditor of
| their financials was the CEO's best friend, who had no
| experience or qualifications in auditing, and he was not
| accountable to anyone if he was wrong? "Trust me bro" does
| not cut it. These structures and processes can be onerous
| but they exist for good reason. BTW our government is not
| so strapped for cash that they can't afford to do this
| properly.
| snisarenko wrote:
| Your analogy is absurd.
|
| In a publicly traded company you get to chose whether to
| buy or sell the shares of a company based on how the CEO
| is running the company (including who he appoints to
| audit it)
|
| In US Govt, we don't get to chose whether to "invest" in
| the govt or not, our taxes our collected by force.
|
| So instead we have the power to vote for people in
| congress (who decide home much taxes are collected on how
| they are spend), and the president (who can execute on
| the spending directed by congress, but also has the power
| granted by constitution to audit and spend effiecntly)
|
| The US Govt Shareholders (Voters) have SPOKEN, and SPOKEN
| LOUDLY! (Electoral College victory, and Popular Vote
| victory). They elected republican majority congress, and
| President Trump. Thus the voters voted for a deep gov't
| audit headed by Musk (Trump publicly campaigned on
| auditing and cleaning up spending, and publicly stated
| who will be in charge of the audit).
| randerson wrote:
| The point I was trying to make is that DOGE is not doing
| a proper audit, and this should concern everyone
| including those who voted for him.
|
| Many of the findings Musk has published have been proven
| to be mischaracterized or erroneous (numbers off by 1000x
| etc), which gives us grounds to question the rest. Except
| their process and data is opaque. Trump is firing entire
| departments based on this bad information. This could
| ironically _increase_ govt expenditure when they realizes
| we need to hire new people, possibly at higher salaries
| (after paying the old people a severance).
| snisarenko wrote:
| Fair point. But i don't think a few mistaken reports,
| justifies calling it as an invalid audit.
|
| They are auditing a Multi-Trillion bureaucratical
| behemoth (with terrible record keeping on top of it).
| Even a "certified auditor" can make a few mistakes.
|
| Instead of focusing on onef misreported 8 billion line
| item, you should focus on the fact that they discovered 3
| TRILLION in payments with no budgetary codes (literally
| TRILLIONS in blank untraceable checks)
|
| I would rather have an businessman experienced making
| billion dollar companies efficient doing the audit, and
| doing it FAST, but making some mistakes.
|
| Than having a typical beurocratic "certified auditor"
| audit, that does it slowly and won't even make a dent in
| a budget in a single year.
|
| The US Govt is paying TRILLIONS in just INTEREST on the
| debt every year, and not even paying down the principal
| right now. And they have to borrow MORE MONEY, just to be
| able to cover the INTEREST payment next year. The US
| Gov't is in dire financial straights. We don't have time
| for a typical "bureaucratic auditors" auditing a trillion
| dollar bureaucracy.
|
| We need an experienced businessman to come in and start
| cutting, and cutting FAST.
| randerson wrote:
| Don't downplay it as just a few mistaken reports or one
| wrong line item. The majority of the dollar value they
| claimed to have saved was wrong.
|
| Now they _allege_ to have found 3 trillion in mystery
| payments, but we can't take them seriously because of
| their lack of proper audit techniques. They have no idea
| what they are doing.
|
| I believe the entire country is watching in real time as
| a teenager tries to navigate his first legacy system and
| he just hasn't found the rest of the business logic. Just
| like how they implied that millions of dead 150 year olds
| were still receiving social security payments. It was a
| known issue that dead people are still in the database,
| but they are not in fact receiving payments. A real
| auditor would have known what to ask and where to look.
| GoldenLox wrote:
| its a fucking audit
| 28304283409234 wrote:
| Yes. Democracy's intent is not efficiency. It is to provide
| a rule of law that is fair enough for most citizens. All
| other forms of rule are worse. As soon as you have
| 'efficient government', you no longer have democracy. But
| something worse.
| lucasRW wrote:
| They have read-only access, as the latest court documents
| (Google "Zeitner DOGE") show, and contrary to the fakenews
| that were peddled in the early days of that stuff. Big Balls
| can only use this read access from a provided Treasury
| laptop, on premises, and he's operating under review of other
| Treasury employees.
| imperial_march wrote:
| Yeah exactly.
|
| The article is hyperbola and ultimately trying to push the
| "Auditing and finding corruption is bad"
| maCDzP wrote:
| European here, giving my two cents on how this looks from the
| other side of the Atlantic. Heh
|
| In my country there are laws stopping agencies doing a simple SQL
| join between two databases, even within the same government
| agency. There is a separate agency that handles the requests when
| agencies want to join information.
|
| I am not an expert in the matter. But my gut is telling me that
| our experiences with east Germany and Stasi left a scar.
|
| It can quickly turn into a real nightmare, and there for there
| are check and balances to make it slow. It's deliberate
| inefficiency.
| ReptileMan wrote:
| Very few countries have as strong executive branch as the USA.
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| We call those ones "monarchies" or "dictatorships".
| lacy_tinpot wrote:
| You call the first and one of the most successful
| democracies in the world a monarchy/dictatorship? The
| American Executive branch is given broad powers since the
| very beginning and considering the success there might be
| something to it.
|
| In contrast the Europeans have descended into petty mass
| wars and dictatorial regimes multiple times, and each time
| America has come to save Europe through that very Executive
| branch.
|
| A bit thankless don't you think?
| lupusreal wrote:
| Europe has more or less managed to avoid descending into
| a mass war for _almost_ a century now, if we assume the
| one brewing now is just a mirage, so basically they 've
| got it all figured out and their smugness is totally
| justified.
|
| This is what democracy looks like, Americans should learn
| from Germany's example:
|
| > _According to the court document, the public prosecutor
| stated "public interest" in pressing criminal charges as
| the retweet was "punishable as an insult against people
| of political life". It potentially constituted
| "incitement of the people"._
|
| > _Publicly insulting a politician has been a criminal
| offence in Germany since 2021 when a set of laws "against
| hate and hate speech" were passed under then-chancellor
| Angela Merkel._
|
| https://brusselssignal.eu/2024/11/german-police-raid-
| mans-ho...
| lacy_tinpot wrote:
| I can't tell if you're being ironic or not, because those
| examples are basically definitionally Orwellian.
|
| Also how about never descending into dictatorships and
| authoritarian regimes?
| throwawayqqq11 wrote:
| Not descending into a dictatorship requires democratic
| participation, a pluralistic mindset and a zeitgeist to
| uphold it. In a pivotal moment, just a single judge
| collapsed and enabled hitlers takeover.
|
| The erosion of trust in institutions and elections, up to
| insurrections are way out of that picture. Infront of
| that background, boasting about a strong executive
| branch, being cleansed not by merit (opposed to trumps
| own standard) sounds so absurd to me as a german.
|
| Your orwellian interpretation about limited free speech
| is rooted in your free speech absolutism. We distinguish
| between limited freedom speech and unlimited freedom of
| oppinion. We also have processes involving courts to ban
| new, factually incorrect statements, aka. non-oppinions,
| to make it illegal bullshit.
| card_zero wrote:
| Courts determine certain aspects of reality and ban
| dissenting ideas, got it.
|
| To be fair, those probably _are_ dangerous bullshit.
| buttercraft wrote:
| That's pretty much the opposite of what they said
| lupusreal wrote:
| Insulting politicians isn't free speech and America is
| going to descend into fascism because they allow people
| to get away with shit like that. Germany is leading the
| way, showing the rest of the world how democracy is done.
| veny20 wrote:
| Europe has been more or less militarily occupied and
| subjugated for that time. Conquered nations tend to be
| pretty docile on the international level and generally
| don't go around waging war independently.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| > Europe has more or less managed to avoid descending
| into a mass war for almost a century now, if we assume
| the one brewing now is just a mirage, so basically
| they've got it all figured out and their smugness is
| totally justified.
|
| Europe hasn't descended into total war since WWII because
| the US has military bases all over Europe, mostly in
| Germany.
| IsTom wrote:
| The common sentiment is that it's because of deepening
| cooperation because of ECSC, which was one of its
| explicit purposes. Not US military bases.
| the_why_of_y wrote:
| Elsewhere we can read:
|
| > The Bavaria resident is also accused of posting Nazi-
| era imagery and language earlier in 2024. According to
| prosecutors, this post may have violated German laws
| against the incitement of ethnic or religious hatred.
|
| > The man was arrested on Thursday as part of nationwide
| police operations against suspected antisemitic hate
| speech online.
|
| https://www.dw.com/en/germany-greens-habeck-presses-
| charges-...
|
| This article is more informative:
|
| Translated (with DeepL.com):
|
| > The public prosecutor's office in Bamberg has now
| announced: The search had already been requested before
| the Green politician himself filed a criminal complaint
| in the case.
|
| > Habeck only filed a criminal complaint in the case more
| than a month after the search warrant had been requested.
|
| > According to the public prosecutor's office, the
| suspect is also facing another charge: According to this,
| in spring 2024, he allegedly uploaded a picture on X with
| a reference to the Nazi dictatorship, which could
| potentially constitute the criminal offense of incitement
| to hatred. According to the investigators, it shows an SS
| or SA man with the poster and the words "Germans don't
| buy from Jews" and the additional text "True democrats!
| We've had it all before!".
|
| https://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/schwachkopf-
| belei...
| IsTom wrote:
| > You call the first and one of the most successful
| democracies in the world
|
| That's the level of delusion in your own greatness that
| led to Trump. USA was the first (representative!)
| democracy with _written constitution_ at best. And that
| 's if you overlook the fact that only _some_ people were
| entitled to vote at all.
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| America has never saved anyone unless they thought it was
| from a threat to America.
|
| And no, the executive branch had much less power "in the
| beginning". As many people have learned, what America's
| constitution _says_ has never really matched what America
| _does_. The increasing mindless worship of a dead text,
| called "originalism", is part of what will destroy it.
| scarab92 wrote:
| There's no suggestion that DOGE analysts are cross referencing
| data between agencies.
|
| They have simply been tasked with eliminating waste from over
| 400 agencies, which requires them to distribute their team and
| parallelise their activities in order to meet the 12 month
| deadline.
| alt227 wrote:
| Except that they, an unelected private group, have already
| attempted to get all private and confidential citizen data
| from the US treasury, and have been blocked by the courts as
| it is illegal.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/feb/08/judge-
| tem...
|
| They have tried to get data of all payments to US citizens
| including pensions, 401k, benefits and allowances etc. All
| foreign aid and diplomacy payments are included, and they
| have been charged with trying to find ways to illegaly stop
| these payments.
|
| Be very careful in supporting what Musk and DOGE do. They are
| unelected, and have been given unprecedented access to
| government data. Scary times are ahead.
| scarab92 wrote:
| > blocked by the courts as it is illegal
|
| False. It was a temporary injuction until the judge has
| time to review it.
|
| > They are unelected,
|
| So are 2.5 million other employees and advisors in
| government.
|
| Do you actually have a cogent argument, or are just
| inherently anti-Musk and playing loosey goosey with the
| justification?
| scott_w wrote:
| > False. It was a temporary injuction until the judge has
| time to review it.
|
| It was in fact multiple injunctions because people at
| DOGE kept trying to work around it in increasingly stupid
| ways.
|
| > So are 2.5 million other employees and advisors in
| government.
|
| Those employees are employed by a government agency
| established, funded and given their mission by Congress.
| The heads of these agencies are approved by the US
| Senate.
|
| None of these statements above apply to Elon Musk or
| "DOGE."
| whatever1 wrote:
| I agree with all of the above, but to be blunt, even if
| they were to go through the congress, they would be
| approved since Republicans have majority everywhere and
| they seem to have given a blank check to the President.
|
| We did this to ourselves.
| scott_w wrote:
| That's definitely possible. Ultimately, it was up to the
| public of the USA to be the backstop against this and
| they chose not to.
|
| I think it's worth pointing out that it's not a given
| Congress would have approved it all. For a start, it
| would take longer to legally setup the instruments that
| Musk wanted. Also, the current situation allows
| Republicans to conveniently wash their hands of any
| negative consequences. Which is likely a big reason
| they're not pushing on this at all, as demanding a vote
| would require them to take a clear side on DOGE.
| xnx wrote:
| They're doing it by executive order because they don't
| have the votes to do it in congress with their slim
| majority.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Musk has publicly threatened to fund a primary challenger
| for any Congressman who gets in his way so, in some very
| real sense he's the one doing it, rather than the voters
| who voted for their congressman, perhaps not expecting
| them to be threatened into compliance by the richest man
| in the world.
| john_the_writer wrote:
| These are also staff of the government.. Or contracted by
| the government. The government contracts out all the
| time.
| sympil wrote:
| _> They are unelected, So are 2.5 million other employees
| and advisors in government._
|
| The 2.5 million you speak of operate within agencies
| whose mandates have been given by Congress and their
| actions are subject to judicial reciew. There is no
| Comgressional mandate for DOGE. They are the rogue agency
| people like you spent years worrying about.
| zpeti wrote:
| > There is no Comgressional mandate for DOGE.
|
| There is. It was given during Obama. You might not like
| it, but it looks like DOGE is likely to be completely
| legal and working within the frameworks of the
| government.
| refurb wrote:
| DOGE is an agency, it took over the digital services
| agency that existed before.[1]. Obama had created the
| original agency, not Congress, so Trump had the ability
| to change it.
|
| _" The United States Digital Service is hereby publicly
| renamed as the United States DOGE Service (USDS) and
| shall be established in the Executive Office of the
| President."_
|
| And I'm not sure why you think a "congressional mandate"
| is required for the executive to do things, it's not.
| Especially for an agency that a former President created
| on his own.
|
| As for data access, my understanding is the digital
| services agency already had data access to other agencies
| through pre-existing agreements (it goes back to the
| original mandate to fix the Obamacare website which
| required pulling data from numerous databases).
|
| [1]https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-
| actions/2025/01/esta...
| toyg wrote:
| The mandate and personnel of the Digital Service are
| completely different from DOGE, so they are effectively
| different things. Renaming an existing one was just an
| administrative shortcut taken by an executive that
| clearly does not care for the spirit or the letter of any
| law (as stated by the president himself in his infamous
| tweet).
| briandear wrote:
| Doge doesn't need a congressional mandate. There's
| Article II.
| Timwi wrote:
| > or are just inherently anti-Musk
|
| The dude made a Nazi salute in public in broad daylight.
| So yes, I'm inherently anti-Musk because I'm inherently
| anti-Nazi because Nazis are inherently anti human rights
| and anti basic freedoms.
| brigandish wrote:
| Are Nazis for big government or for small government?
| throwawayqqq11 wrote:
| Big on authoritarianism and small on everything else.
|
| Can you tell me a cost reduction plan involving police or
| military or do i have to label it law-and-order with a
| sharp salute for you to understand what i am talking
| about?
|
| Communication is so messy man, two sides, same
| iterpretation ... just tell me when i can lower my arm of
| friendship, that absolutely noone could misunderstand.
| john_the_writer wrote:
| Just on the un-elected private group bit. This would apply
| to every one of the staff members of these departments. How
| many elected software developers worked on the original
| software? How many private contractors were elected? Are
| there a pile of elected software developers working as
| cobol and java devs?
|
| It's not the stupidest argument, but it applies to every
| last staff member of the us treasury.
| roenxi wrote:
| I wouldn't dismiss the concerns; which seem reasonable.
| But the argument is pretty stupid.
|
| None of the bureaucrats are elected, and this data has
| been gathered by the government to perform its functions.
| Insofar as Elon's team are pretty much just a couple of
| new bureaucrats bought in by Trump; they can use this
| data to streamline government. The office of president is
| pretty powerful; odds are he can appoint people to do
| work for him. It'd be crazy if he can't.
|
| The problem is the government shouldn't be storing a
| whole bunch of sensitive data. It is like being shocked
| that someone in the NSA is actually looking at all the
| data they collect - there is a big problem there, but it
| is that they're collecting and storing the data.
| Obviously once they have it people will look at it. That
| is why it is being gathered and stored. It should be
| criminal to store on the grounds of privacy; but it
| isn't.
| xnx wrote:
| > The problem is the government shouldn't be storing a
| whole bunch of sensitive data
|
| Like tax returns? What legitimate need does management
| consultant have to see the individual tax returns of any
| person without any accountable transparency?
| roenxi wrote:
| There is a pretty reasonable case for tax returns being
| public by default - I'd certainly like to know how much
| of the financial burden my fellow citizens are upholding.
| I bet I could spot a bunch of tax evaders right quick.
| Rather than asking why someone should be able to see
| them; I'd prefer to ask why I can't.
|
| It gets back to this basic issue of what this data is
| that I don't want anyone to know but the government needs
| to have a permanent record of. The overlap of those two
| things should be tiny. If it is so terrible that Musk &
| team can't look at it, why is it OK to be recorded? It
| isn't like the security of these departments is expected
| to be that great; data leaks. All the data that a large
| organisation holds is likely to become public sooner or
| later even if that happens because it is sold on the
| darknet. And the employees that looks it it regularly are
| who-knows-who doing who-knows-what on a good day.
| notahacker wrote:
| I'm not sure how it would be possible to run a
| functioning government without some departments storing
| some sensitive data.
|
| "On the grounds of privacy it should be criminal for the
| agency authorised to fund medical treatments to store
| people's sensitive medical records related to treatments
| they pay for" sounds like a much less defensible
| proposition than "on the grounds of privacy it should be
| criminal for what is nominally the government's IT advice
| body to hire a bunch of script kiddies without proper
| vetting or any genuine auditing credentials to download
| said sensitive medical records, store them as insecurely
| as they like, cross reference them with whatever other
| sensitive data they find on the grounds that they might
| be able to use them to tweet dubious claims about
| waste"...
| roenxi wrote:
| If people checking that the records make sense isn't
| kosher; why do they need to store those records? The
| government only really needs to hand out money and the
| technical details can happen somewhere else; sign them up
| for #n recurring payments, keep some anonymised aggregate
| stats and throw away the records. They can even keep
| their own records signed off by the government; we have
| the tech where none of this stuff needs to be stored
| centrally.
|
| We can call anyone a script kiddie. I know some people
| who do data analysis for government health departments.
| Calling them a script kiddie wouldn't be respectful but
| they are youthful and do run scripts. The process
| appointing Musk is was more public and accountable than
| the one appointing my friends. Musk even gets public
| debate on the subject of whether hiring his people is a
| good idea or not. They're being very well vetted.
|
| People are weird. I feel like a lot of ink gets spilled
| pointing out that one day the government will be
| controlled by people you don't like no matter who you
| are. But that argument doesn't seem to get through to all
| these people who panic every time it turns out that
| democracies don't always elect the same people with the
| same ideologies over and over. Government isn't
| trustworthy and people shouldn't be discovering that en
| masse in February 2025.
| notahacker wrote:
| > If people checking that the records make sense isn't
| kosher; why do they need to store those records? The
| government only really needs to hand out money and the
| technical details can happen somewhere else; sign them up
| for #n recurring payments, keep some anonymised aggregate
| stats and throw away the records. They can even keep
| their own records signed off by the government; we have
| the tech where none of this stuff needs to be stored
| centrally.
|
| I mean, even if it was as simple "$n recurring payments
| for $drug to $SSN over $period", that absolutely _is_
| sensitive private information, especially when linked to
| _originally entirely separate_ but equally critical
| records about someone 's employment by a body tasked with
| firing people...
|
| It absolutely makes sense for records to be audited with
| great care by qualified people in an airgapped
| environment with anonymization by default, but that's not
| what's happening here, is it? It's like I'm actually
| pretty convinced that it's necessary for the state to be
| able to arrest and incarcerate people, but I'm not
| convinced that the "due process" bit doesn't matter or
| that untrained edgelords to be making the decisions on
| incarceration is fundamentally the same as having police,
| prosecution and a trial to lock people up. I don't think
| the answer to the fact I might not like every executive
| the electorate votes in (or every law that exists) is to
| defund police, I think the answer is to have due process,
| and not due process that is _de facto_ abolished on the
| day a new executive assumes power. It 's much the same
| with governments being able to store some data
|
| > We can call anyone a script kiddie. I know some people
| who do data analysis for government health departments.
| Calling them a script kiddie wouldn't be respectful but
| they are youthful and do run scripts.
|
| I think it's a pretty accurate description for a 19 year
| old whose short and undistinguished career history
| involves being fired from an internship at a
| cybersecurity firm for leaking its secrets to a
| competitor, and soliciting DDoS attacks on The Com.
|
| Certainly better than "very well vetted".
|
| I imagine young people you know that do data analysis for
| health departments have more auditing experience, fewer
| red flags, very carefully controlled access to data and
| senior people training them and checking their work. They
| would, I imagine, also be competent enough to be unlikely
| to confuse $8b and $8m when estimating cost savings...
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| True. The actual difference between this troupe of clowns
| and employees who can be trusted is the hiring process
| and background check required before getting access to
| all this data. And of course, all regular employees
| report up to an official who was confirmed by congress,
| as required in the constitution. Just small things known
| as "checks and balances".
| Amezarak wrote:
| > Except that they, an unelected private group, have
| already attempted to get all private and confidential
| citizen data from the US treasury, and have been blocked by
| the courts as it is illegal.
|
| It is not illegal. You can bookmark this comment for when
| it finally winds its way through the courts. Whether you
| love or hate the idea, this is a clearly legitimate
| exercise of executive authority and this judge is going to
| get smacked down hard, and the foolish abuse of TROs is
| going to wind up getting their use by lower-court judges
| severely curtailed. Read the legal justification in the
| orders yourself.
|
| Unfortunately a lot of people have lost their minds over
| this, and are burning through their credibility - some
| judges and journalists included. I don't know why, other
| than Musk is a moron and a polarizing figure. The Alantic
| breathlessly quoting government employees terrified to file
| their taxes because they're afraid Elon Musk will have
| their bank account number and routing info had my eyes
| rolling into the back of my head. This is fearmongering,
| not journalism.
|
| I don't understand why we can't oppose this without
| reporting on it honestly. The problem on matters like this
| seems to be getting much worse over time.
|
| > They are unelected, and have been given unprecedented
| access to government data.
|
| So is everyone else in the Treasury Department.
| briandear wrote:
| Doge isn't private. They are government employees. Also
| USAID was unelected. Nobody working at the IRS was elected
| either.
| goku12 wrote:
| Do you mean to say that the lack of expertise, conflicts
| of interest and lack of adequate security clearances are
| not considered as disqualifying factors for a US
| government employment?
| lenkite wrote:
| The motion to block DOGE has also been dismissed by courts
|
| https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/doge/judge-denies-states-
| bi...
|
| Nobody complained about "unelected" Obama or Biden
| appointees accessing the treasury or SSN, but now that
| Trump is exposing corruption en-masse and stopping the
| gravy train, many folks are suddenly very concerned. The
| FUD is unfortunately not working.
|
| All this will probably go to the Supreme Court. And just
| like Biden ignored the Supreme Court ruling on student
| loans and even boasted about it proudly on twitter - saying
| they cannot block the executive, the precedent was also
| setup for Trump to do the same.
| MourYother wrote:
| The dogs working at DOGE haven't the idea on what are
| they looking at and are lying to cover it. I wouldn't
| count on them exposing anything but their asses.
|
| https://imgur.com/gallery/doge-math-wow-very-bad-much-
| corrup...
| alt227 wrote:
| "The ruling does not end the case"
| basejumping wrote:
| Maybe it's temporary, not 'once you build it they will use
| it'. Time will tell, if in the end a dictatorship proves
| itself to run things more efficiently and make everyone
| richer, then other countries will follow the US and adopt the
| same model.
| amarcheschi wrote:
| Ahem, tell me this again once you get punished for what you
| are as an individual, for your striking, for not joining
| the political party (...)
|
| I can't believe I'm reading such comments
| basejumping wrote:
| He doesn't need to follow that recipe for dictatorship.
| He just needs to do whatever he wants, being a bully
| without consequences both internally and externally,
| transforming the image of the US into an aggressive
| nation. At this moment Americans are as guilty as
| Russians for allowing this to happen.
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| Who has been tasked? Under what authority? Not Elon Musk,
| according to Donald Trump.
|
| More seriously, if it was true it would be a stupid task,
| with stupidly inappropriate people selected to do it. What is
| actually happening is idiot destruction. Whether that was the
| intent or simply the obvious outcome of stupidity is
| irrelevant to the damage being done.
| ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7 wrote:
| Do you have an alert setup to tell you when people are
| bashing the DoGE?
| MortyWaves wrote:
| Including the copy pasta that the department created by an
| elected official is "unelected".
| shrikant wrote:
| Wouldn't be a DOGE thread without scarab92 carrying water
| for this nonsense.
| 3D30497420 wrote:
| What are their guardrails? Do they have accountability? Does
| "parallelise" mean compiling data on people from different
| systems? Dossiers? Are they even following the law?
|
| > They have simply...
|
| Oh yes, because this is all very simple. What is "waste"? How
| is it defined? Who decides what is waste and what isn't?
| exe34 wrote:
| if it's not funding tax cuts and corporate handouts for
| Elon's companies, it's waste.
| goku12 wrote:
| Serious question to those who are cheering for the
| 'elimination of waste'. What do you expect to happen to the
| money thus saved? In what ways do you expect those savings
| to benefit you or the broader citizenry?
| xnx wrote:
| I expect the "saved" money to be given (no air quotes) to
| the richest 0.1% via additional permanent tax cuts.
| intended wrote:
| "Simply been tasked with X"
|
| We're on a community that discusses, amongst other things,
| the running of firms and startups.
|
| Just because someone is simply tasked with X, doesn't mean we
| all agree to ignore the big picture. The big picture of
|
| 1) Complex projects
|
| 2) Security
|
| 3) High functioning teams
|
| 4) Ethics
|
| This is fundamentally unethical, and irresponsible. I 100%
| think you agree with me on the irresponsible part.
|
| You may sincerely stand on the reduction of waste, which
| frankly no one is going to argue. But a team this small, for
| a project this vital? This fast?
|
| What was that saying? Good, Fast, Cheap? Pick 2? Why the
| flippty flip, is anyone here OK with fast and cheap?
|
| Hell, What precisely are these people doing? What are the
| project milestones? Where can we see what's going on?
|
| And if the transparency of their actions is a cybersecurity
| risk - then which independent body is checking them?
|
| Edit: Forget their elected, unelected status. Why should we
| turn around and trust them? What are they planning to do. I
| don't want more outrage - you could find the whole thing was
| running on alien souls. What is the replacement method, and
| what is the gain we can expect from the changes?
|
| If they've taken charge - then they should do the work, and
| do it well. And if it's tech related or s/w related stuff,
| then talk about it, and explain.
| viraptor wrote:
| That's actually not what they've been tasked with:
|
| > This Executive Order establishes the Department of
| Government Efficiency to implement the President's DOGE
| Agenda, by modernizing Federal technology and software to
| maximize governmental efficiency and productivity.
|
| There's nothing about government spending programs or
| staffing in there. Also the EO includes this funny sentence:
| "USDS shall adhere to rigorous data protection standards."
| randomcarbloke wrote:
| that that moron has been tasked with finding inefficiency
| is so concerning, he is a man so convinced of his own
| intellectual superiority that he has zero respect for
| complexity.
|
| We see every day how technically inept and incompetent he
| is, I just wonder when the other shoe is going to drop for
| the average observer.
|
| It is the emperor's new clothes writ large, and why I find
| Bezos's comment about taking him at face value so funny, is
| he slyly telling us he thinks the guy a fool, a troll, and
| nothing more?
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| > It's deliberate inefficiency.
|
| Inefficiency is a useful property of many systems [0,1].
| Current cultural obsessions around the word are a burden and
| mistake, and the word "efficiency" now feels rather overload
| with right-wing connotations.
|
| [0] https://cybershow.uk/blog/posts/efficiency/
|
| [1] https://cybershow.uk/blog/posts/cash2/
| a-saleh wrote:
| I have strong feeling that in the past 50 or so years, we
| often have traded resiliency for efficiency. I think we might
| have gone too far.
|
| That doesn't mean that being deliberately inefficient will
| improve resiliency. Also, some of the deliberate inefficiency
| (i.e. looking at weird thing us healthcae/health-insurance
| system has going on) is more ... extractive? That sounds like
| the word I am looking for.
| kioleanu wrote:
| Which law are referring to? I work in such an agency and I've
| never heard of such a thing
| sam_lowry_ wrote:
| Dunno about Germany but in Belgium there is Crossroads Bank
| for Social Security which effectively controls the flow of
| information between various social security and public health
| organizations: https://www.ksz-bcss.fgov.be/
|
| In its current form, it's a set of SOAP or REST APIs that
| your organization gets access to after completing paperwork
| about your needs.
|
| It was established by a 1990 law [1].
|
| There is also a similar legal and technical setup for
| information on companies [2] where most information is
| public, and the register of residents [3] which is even more
| guarded.
|
| [1] https://www.ksz-bcss.fgov.be/fr/page/loi-
| du-15-janvier-1990-...
|
| [2]
| https://economie.fgov.be/en/themes/enterprises/crossroads-
| ba...
|
| [3] https://www.ibz.rrn.fgov.be/fr/registre-national/
| kioleanu wrote:
| Yes, that makes sense, we don't allow people to connect to
| our databases directly either, and in any case the systems
| should be built so they are separated, it's good
| architecture.
|
| I was very much more intrigued about the statement that
| data can't be easily/legally shared within the same agency
| sam_lowry_ wrote:
| This is also true, to some extent. You have to have valid
| reason to access PII (Personally Identifiable
| Information). All access is logged and the DPO (The Data
| Privacy Office, one of the good things GDPR formalized)
| monitors access on a regular basis.
|
| And since the current understanding is that even the
| combination of an IP address and a timestamp is
| personally identifiable... many organizations are
| actively not collecting usage stats. Which leads to the
| abuse of public funds, but this is a different story.
| orwin wrote:
| It's to avoid corruption.
|
| I worked for the equivalent of the IRS for two month in
| my country (student job basically). When people asked for
| a deferred payment, i could accept it if it was the first
| time, but when they asked for a deffered payment the
| second time, or for reduced taxes (recent job loss, loss
| of a house or big events like this), i had the mean to
| verify who the person asking for this was, but not the
| mean to approve it.
|
| I verified the information and filled a form, then asked
| for approval. The person approving had no idea who the
| person asking was (he had no access to the tool i used to
| match the internal ID to an actual person), but had the
| form i filled, and approved of the deferred
| payment/reduced taxes without any knowledge of who asked.
| Also i did not know who that person was, and he did not
| know who i was.
|
| All of that is not very effective, but it reduces the
| risk of corruption from civil servants: you either have
| limited information, or limited power (this isn't the
| case with mayor or other elected officials though).
| michaelt wrote:
| _> I was very much more intrigued about the statement
| that data can't be easily /legally shared within the same
| agency_
|
| Consider it from this hypothetical perspective: My mom is
| an analyst in the health service and has database access
| to produce various reports. Her access is extensive, to
| allow reporting on things like whether the courses of
| antibiotics prescribed by doctors are of the recommended
| length.
|
| Meanwhile, I'm a rebellious teenager. My doctor asks me
| how often I smoke, drink, take drugs and engage in
| promiscuous sex. If my doctor enters my answers into my
| electronic medical record - should my mom be able to look
| at my record?
|
| The answer, of course, is that her right to access data
| depends on what she's doing.
| Yeul wrote:
| Culture is more important on whether or not a country can
| slide into a dictatorship.
|
| Americans are ultimately conditioned to accept leadership.
| Belgians have never and never will agree on anything.
| NicoJuicy wrote:
| Belgium has 3 official languages for 10 million people.
| It's a bit more complex :)
| cassepipe wrote:
| But when culture fails you, it's nice to have guardrails.
| This is why we have a constitution, law, institutions
| etc. It's defense in depth, it can buy you time and
| that's important because the more time you have, the
| higher chances that the wind start blowing in another
| direction.
|
| This is why the electoral college is a weak point in
| American democracy and no wonder it was the actual target
| of the Jan 6th coup attempt, the Capitol invasion being
| merely a distraction. Weak points like this must sealed
| over so that the overall system is more robust to
| attacks.
| eecc wrote:
| Well, in Italy the "IRS" (Agenzia delle Entrate) is not
| allowed to cross-check banking statements with its own data
| from Tax Returns.
|
| Whenever anyone proposes to allow it, the members of the
| informal "Party for Tax Evasion" scream and denounce the
| descent towards "Taxation Fascism". It's so pathetically
| cheeky, that it feels a bit endearing (how dare them, what
| rascals!)
| amelius wrote:
| That's putting it mildly. What it really looks like is a fast
| descent into madness.
| tossandthrow wrote:
| It is to avoid totalitarianism.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| Having a slow and archaic birocratic system doesn't stop
| governments going totalitarian on their citizens.
|
| Case in point In Germany the Polizei will SWAT and arrest
| you if you post a meme on social media that angers
| someone's dignity. That's not a joke that actually happens.
|
| This typical German "our government is not slow and
| inefficient, it's just protection against totalitarianism"
| is pure cope.
|
| Edit: @helloplanets Source:
| https://youtu.be/-bMzFDpfDwc?si=eIUkEuDBx3iX_TEx
| helloplanets wrote:
| > Case in point In Germany the Polizei will swat and
| arrest you if you post a meme on social media that angers
| someone's dignity. That's not a joke that actually
| happens.
|
| Source?
| literalAardvark wrote:
| That's because slander isn't protected speech and is
| directly illegal. It's not totalitarianism, just encoded
| politeness.
|
| You can still say anything, with a modicum of decency.
| Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote:
| Sounds like a system which could easily be abused.
| "politeness" and "decency" are ripe for all manner of
| interpretations.
|
| In the US we see that the only things keeping
| authoritarianism at bay is larger the people following
| norms (like the peaceful transfer of power after losing
| an election), and the executive obeying orders from the
| judiciary. All it takes is for a group to not to that any
| more and boom.
|
| Short road to where 'slander' means any criticism
| (however objectively true and justified) of people in
| power and you get a swat team at your door and steel boot
| on your neck.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> Sounds like a system which could easily be abused._
|
| It is constantly abused, the issue is Germans have gaslit
| themselves into thinking that it's the right thing to do
| "because nazism was bad", so they have Nazi levels of
| speech censorship to fight imaginary Nazism, because once
| you label someone who disagrees with you as a Nazi you
| are free to censor them, which then in turn is causing
| the uprising of actual Nazism because people are tired of
| being censored for having opinions that oppose the
| mainstream narrative. Germans are really a difficult
| bunch to reason with logically.
| computerthings wrote:
| What do you know about the deliberations and discussions
| went into these laws.
|
| > because once you label someone who disagrees with you
| as a Nazi you are free to censor them,
|
| Show examples of it.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> That's because slander isn't protected speech and is
| directly illegal. _
|
| In one case it wasn't slander. A person pointed out a
| politician's Nazi/Stati past on social media and he still
| sued abusing the "muh dignity" bullshit law.
| fooker wrote:
| Which country and what law are you referring to?
|
| Laws rarely include technical language like SQL joins.
| viraptor wrote:
| They obviously didn't mean the laws prevent sql joins
| directly. Those prevent data aggregation, which in practice
| prevent various technical implementations of that.
| cinntaile wrote:
| I think the advantages of this in a digital age are vastly
| overblown. If an extremist government comes to power they won't
| care and they can just do the SQL join. Let it go to court, the
| extremist government will decide anyway so the outcome is
| already predetermined.
|
| Compare this to a physical storage of paper documents that need
| to be SQL joined, the effort required is several magnitudes
| more.
|
| What it is good for is data breaches, it effectively limits the
| data that can be leaked at once.
| pintxo wrote:
| I would not count on those separate databases using a common
| key. Joining could be quite a pain.
| cinntaile wrote:
| Regardless of the actual implementation, do you agree that
| it's likely much easier to match data when you have it in
| an organized digital form than an organized physical form?
| cmurf wrote:
| [flagged]
| briandear wrote:
| [flagged]
| HighGoldstein wrote:
| > $50,000 to Sri Lanka for "climate change" isn't a
| "popular program."
|
| Is that $50,000 annual? Because if so that's less than a
| rounding error for the budget of almost any country, much
| less the US. The costs associated with ending this program
| (organizational, employee time) may even be higher than
| just continuing to pay it.
|
| > Paying dead people social security isn't popular.
|
| Is there any public statistical data on this? As far as I
| know US social security does periodically verify if
| recipients are still alive. Of course some cases will slip
| through the cracks, but unless DOGE plans to individually
| track down every recipient and see them in person I don't
| see how they can solve this problem. This inevitably
| happens with pretty much any social security system,
| anywhere.
|
| > Sending money to the Taliban isn't popular.
|
| Is there a source for this?
|
| > When you say Trump doesn't care about waste, that isn't
| supported by the facts. The deficit isn't about waste,
| fraud or abuse, it's about overspending. They aren't the
| same thing.
|
| He could start by reducing overspending on the US' titanic
| corporate subsidies, but something tells me he won't.
| briandear wrote:
| When it comes to government spending though, shouldn't the
| public have a right to know precisely, with dollar-level
| accuracy what they are being asked to pay?
|
| As far as the experiences of the Stasi and previous German
| governments, it must not have too much of a scar: Germany still
| asks people to register their religion -- ostensibly for tax
| purposes, but if I recall correctly, Germany had a problem in
| the past with having a list of all people in a specific
| religion.
| throwawayqqq11 wrote:
| Some insights or decisions cannot or should not be placed on
| the public, thats why you elect representatives in the firt
| place. Insight can be granular, like an oversight commitee
| publishing a redacted report, but i agree on full
| transparency about anything regarding our representatives.
| fifticon wrote:
| a lot of countries already have this, and without handing
| e.g. Elon Musk the keys to the kingdom. America for example
| has this: https://www.foia.gov/
| tzs wrote:
| > When it comes to government spending though, shouldn't the
| public have a right to know precisely, with dollar-level
| accuracy what they are being asked to pay?
|
| Doing that does not require anywhere remotely near the level
| of data access DOGE has been given.
| flanked-evergl wrote:
| European here. Governments in Europe, even ones that have GDPR
| on their books, literally act as oppressively as they want to
| act: U.K. orders Apple to let it spy on users' encrypted
| accounts [1]
|
| [1]:
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/02/07/apple-e...
| Gud wrote:
| European here.
|
| There are vast differences between how the different
| governments operate.
| lupusreal wrote:
| It's a classic Motte and Bailey. _" Europe acts in this
| way, so much better than America. [...] No no, not THAT
| Europe, I of course was only talking about this other part
| of Europe!"_
|
| How is the most populous state in the EU doing?
|
| > _The German parliament amended two laws on June 10th
| granting enhanced surveillance powers to segments of the
| federal police and intelligence services. They allow the
| use of spyware to hack into phones and computers
| circumventing encryption used by messaging applications
| such as WhatsApp and Signal, raising concerns about the
| right to privacy._
|
| > _The new federal police law allows interception of
| communications of "persons against whom no suspicion of a
| crime has yet been established and therefore no criminal
| procedure measure can yet be ordered". This fails to ensure
| the necessary protection against unjustified and arbitrary
| interference in people's privacy, required under
| international law. Human Rights Watch and the United
| Nations have pointed out the importance of encryption and
| anonymity for data protection and the right to privacy._
|
| > _The government argues that new legislation is needed to
| keep up with technological developments and claims the new
| powers are to help federal police stifle human trafficking
| and undocumented migration._
|
| https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/06/24/germanys-new-
| surveillanc...
|
| ...oh
| Gud wrote:
| Exactly. Most European countries have turned into
| surveillance states. I think only Switzerland is holding
| their banner high.
| HighGoldstein wrote:
| Please provide examples of how the following countries
| are surveillance states:
|
| Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Estonia, Latvia,
| Lithuania, Poland, Czechia, Croatia, Romania, Bulgaria,
| Albania, Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, France
| Gud wrote:
| I don't know much about many of those countries, and I
| have no reason to spend hours googling them.
|
| but I know my home country Sweden, which used to have
| solid freedoms, have deteriorated quickly in the last few
| years.
|
| Which is why I have moved to Switzerland, where the
| citizenry respect each other privacy(no country is
| perfect, but I do believe their decentralised direct
| democracy will keep protecting their liberties).
|
| A recent law has enabled the Swedish police to open mail
| to private individuals if they suspect there might be
| drugs in them. This is just one change of many that has
| reduced the liberties of the citizens.
|
| Don't get me wrong, the Swedes want it this way. They are
| no longer a freedom loving people, sadly.
|
| https://www.sverigesradio.se/artikel/police-to-contact-
| thous...
| HighGoldstein wrote:
| > I don't know much about many of those countries, and I
| have no reason to spend hours googling them.
|
| A good reason might be to back up the serious accusation
| a few comments above.
|
| > A recent law has enabled the Swedish police to open
| mail to private individuals if they suspect there might
| be drugs in them. This is just one change of many that
| has reduced the liberties of the citizens.
|
| While this isn't ideal in a vacuum, I don't see the
| alternative. If physical mail is given inviolable
| privacy, you're pretty much handing bad actors the
| perfect delivery system on a silver platter. I'm sure
| there's other examples of decisions that increased
| Swedish authorities' surveillance capabilities, but to
| call a country a surveillance state requires a little
| more than "They can check your mail if they suspect
| you're using it for drug delivery".
| Gud wrote:
| who said mail should be given 'inviolable privacy'?
|
| Now there is enough reason to open private mail if the
| mail is a little squishy and it was sent from the wrong
| address.
| tmnvdb wrote:
| Isn't this something the US has had on steroids for many
| years? I.e. Patriot act, PRISM, FISA, national security
| letters?
| Sammi wrote:
| That's orthogonal to what op is saying.
|
| You're saying agencies can be directed to opress people and
| organisations.
|
| Op is saying agencies don't get to willy nilly look into the
| db of other agencies.
| dandanua wrote:
| It's not inefficiency. You don't drive 200km/h on city streets,
| although you can. Limits exist for the safety of others and
| you.
| pjc50 wrote:
| This sort of thing already exists in America for cases where
| Americans _actually_ care about privacy: the gun tracing system
| is forced to be on paper.
|
| https://www.nbcnews.com/news/s-just-insanity-atf-now-needs-2...
|
| Guns are constitutionally protected in a way that humans
| aren't.
| theodric wrote:
| While I agree in principle, that's not an entirely
| intellectually honest evaluation. The government is
| prohibited from creating an electronic registry of guns, not
| because of the guns themselves, but _ultimately_ because of
| the judicial understanding of the Second Amendment confirming
| (not granting) an inherent right of citizens to possess them.
| The restriction is in service to the gun owners by protecting
| them from government overreach. The guns are merely a layer
| of abstraction on that.
| hunvreus wrote:
| What you're describing is very similar to what most large
| enterprise companies do: layers upon layers of red tape and
| convoluted regulations for the sake of "security."
|
| This is a big reason they can't get anything done or retain
| talent.
|
| Government is no different.
|
| European democracies have been dying from the same sclerosis
| their legacy multinationals have.
|
| The US is going through actual change. The outrage over things
| not being done as they always have is nonsensical.
| scarab92 wrote:
| Trump tasked "DOGE" with reviewing government spending across
| it's 400+ agencies, and coming up with recommendations on how
| to reduce wasteful spending
| moron4hire wrote:
| This is either woefully naive or active disinformation.
|
| Edit: OP dramatically edited their post. It originally made
| all kinds of claims of process and propriety that just
| aren't happening. This was the original that I was replying
| to:
|
| "Most of the animosity comes from misunderstanding. Trump
| tasked "DOGE" with reviewing government spending across
| it's 400+ agencies, and coming up with recommendations on
| how to reduce wasteful spending. They have 1 year to
| complete this task. To make sensible recommendations, DOGE
| needs data about the major programs within each agency.
| They can't tackle each agency consecutively, since there
| are more agencies than days until the deadline, so they are
| parallelising the work.
|
| The access is read only, and they are not linking personal
| data between agencies, but rather doing a bunch of separate
| audits in parallel.
|
| Trump has prohibited Musk from being involved in with the
| review in agencies where he was a material conflict (FAA
| for example)."
| throw0101d wrote:
| > _Trump tasked "DOGE" with reviewing government spending
| across it's 400+ agencies, and coming up with
| recommendations on how to reduce wasteful spending._
|
| "Make recommendations" ?
|
| Firing the folks that maintain nuclear weapons sounds like
| an action, not a recommendation:
|
| * https://apnews.com/article/nuclear-doge-firings-trump-
| federa...
|
| Firing the folks dealing with bird flu sounds like an
| action, not a recommendation:
|
| * https://apnews.com/article/usda-firings-doge-bird-flu-
| trump-...
|
| Then there's the folks making a list of all the agents who
| were pulled off other tasks and told to investigate Jan 6:
|
| * https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-administration-
| compili...
|
| Also firing a whole bunch of folks at the FAA even though
| it's already short staffed:
|
| * https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cly9y1e1kpjo
|
| Seems to be it's less about finding savings and more about
| blindly purging people with no regard to how useful or
| inefficient things actually are.
| javcasas wrote:
| Have you heard about Chesterton's fence?
| computerthings wrote:
| Apart from government being very different from private
| business indeed; I wouldn't want to eat food, drive a
| vehicle, or use software made by a company made with that
| mindset. "Safety first" is also a hard rule in all sorts of
| sports where people move faster than non-expert spectators
| can fully comprehend. If you need to cut corners to "gain
| efficiency" it just means you're bad.
| Vilian wrote:
| It's not euro democracies that look like they are dying,
| comparing government to companies, yeah, iro ic that is USA
| that forgot the meaning of the word democracy
| javcasas wrote:
| Do you know why in Portugal they have 4 different ID numbers?
|
| It is like that to prevent the state from persecuting people on
| the base that it is hard for a branch of the government to
| figure out who is someone based on a number from a different
| branch.
|
| Do you know why they want to prevent the government from
| persecuting people?
|
| Because it has already happened, and the portuguese don't want
| it to happen again.
| scarab92 wrote:
| Most of the animosity comes from misunderstanding. Trump
| tasked "DOGE" with reviewing government spending across it's
| 400+ agencies, and coming up with recommendations on how to
| reduce wasteful spending. They have 1 year to complete this
| task.
|
| To make sensible recommendations, DOGE needs data about the
| major programs within each agency. They can't tackle each
| agency consecutively, since there are more agencies than days
| until the deadline, so they are parallelising the work.
|
| The access is read only, and they are not linking personal
| data between agencies, but rather doing a bunch of separate
| audits in parallel.
|
| Trump has prohibited Musk from being involved in any reviews
| where he was a material conflict (FAA for example).
| ethbr1 wrote:
| And where can one find technical and transparent details
| about what data DOGE is looking at, why, and what
| safeguards they're taking?
| scarab92 wrote:
| It would be a good idea for DOGE to publish something
| like that, for the sake of transparency, but there's no
| historical precedent for doing that, and they are under
| time pressue so they probably won't.
| rollcat wrote:
| Move fast and kill things?
| ethbr1 wrote:
| So an organization is massively accessing sensitive
| government data on citizens without transparency or
| safeguards?
|
| Hence why people are reacting negatively.
| scarab92 wrote:
| They'll be following the safeguards that each agency has
| defined.
|
| Most likely this involves scrubbing any personal data
| whenever possible, or anonymising it whenever it's not.
|
| Most of their work doesn't involve personal data at all,
| and they only come across it incidentally.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Where can we learn this information?
| ModernMech wrote:
| > Most likely this involves scrubbing any personal data
| whenever possible, or anonymising it whenever it's not.
|
| Don't you think it's a problem you can't say this with
| certainty or point to an authority who has assured us
| this, and there's no way to verify if it's true because
| theres's no oversight of DOGE?
|
| Would you tolerate such uncertainty from even a SaaS
| provider? Why should we tolerate it from our government?
| oblio wrote:
| Awesome, so everything is trust based with 2 of the most
| untrustworthy people on the planet.
|
| Phew, and I was worried for a second...
|
| Edit: to the down voters, go do some basic fact checking
| for Trump and Musk tweets and then we'll talk.
| matwood wrote:
| Has nothing to do with time pressure. They are actively
| fighting against transparency that doesn't fit their
| narrative.
| paulluuk wrote:
| > they are not linking personal data between agencies
|
| > Trump has prohibited Musk from being involved in with the
| review in agencies where he was a material conflict
|
| I'm not saying these are or aren't happening, but it seems
| like a lot of "good faith" assumptions here. If you assume
| Musk is an unethical actor, these seem mostly meaningless.
| scarab92 wrote:
| You don't really need to assume anything about Musk other
| than self-interest.
|
| If he got involved in a review of a program where he has
| a conflict, there's plenty of discontent government
| employees who would blow the whistle, moreover, if he
| made any recommendations relating to this, it would be
| obvious.
|
| Regarding personal data, I'm not sure what technical
| safeguards they have in place, but given the potential
| reputational harm to the Trump admin if anything leaked,
| I'm sure they are doing everything possible to avoid
| touching it whenever possible, and anonymising it when
| they have to process it.
| crabmusket wrote:
| You haven't yet learned the lesson of the Trump
| victories. The lesson is that he can just do whatever he
| wants, and there are no adults in the room to stop him.
|
| Elon is starting to catch on.
|
| https://www.techdirt.com/2025/02/19/its-easy-to-save-
| billion...
| rollcat wrote:
| The ends do not justify the means.
|
| These means can easily lead to a nightmare. We've been
| through that a century ago. Look up Dehomag. Never Again.
| javcasas wrote:
| > they are parallelising the work
|
| That's an interesting rephrasing for "sidestepping all
| security to get access".
|
| > The access is read only, and they are not linking
| personal data between agencies
|
| Yup, that's exacly what someone who wants to change the
| beneficiaries of a few contracts and payments, as well as
| fire some of the people overseeing my companies would say.
| recpai wrote:
| Since you seem to know what you are talking about:
|
| I am a bit confused by your stressing the access is read-
| only. Isn't that obviously given (apologies for the
| redundant words, but I really don't know how to convey my
| confusion). For what purpose they could ever be given a
| write access to the hundreds of federal databases they are
| supposed to analyze?
|
| Also, if they don't have the manpower to go over the data
| one by one then they don't have the power to go over them
| in parallel. When you say "parallelising the work" what
| exactly does that mean? What is it specifically that they
| are "parallelising"? Is there an engineer/analyst looking
| at multiple screens simultaneously and arriving conclusions
| for multiple agencies at the same time?
| tene80i wrote:
| No, the animosity is coming from the belligerent way DOGE
| is going about its work, and the lack of security clearance
| or any oversight of these people, some of whom are very
| inexperienced and some of whom have clear conflicts of
| interest, and the enormous power they are accumulating.
| jonahbenton wrote:
| All of these assertions are provably false.
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| _Trump has prohibited Musk from being involved in any
| reviews where he was a material conflict (FAA for
| example)._
|
| You keep saying things that are blatantly untrue, people
| give you massive evidence they aren't true, then you keep
| saying them. Why is that?
|
| _Elon Musk's Companies Were Under Investigation by Five
| Inspectors General When the Trump Administration Fired Them
| and Made Musk the Investigator_
|
| https://wallstreetonparade.com/2025/02/elon-musks-
| companies-...
|
| https://www.levernews.com/trump-purges-inspectors-general-
| in...
|
| _Agency sent a memo to all agency staff notifying them
| that "all election security activities" would be paused
| pending the results of an internal investigation. The memo
| also stated that the administration was cutting off all
| funds to the Election Infrastructure Information Sharing
| and Analysis Center--a Department of Homeland Security-
| funded organization that helps state and local officials
| monitor, analyze, and respond to cyberattacks targeting the
| nation's election hardware and software._
|
| https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2025/02/trump-doge-
| layof...
|
| _FDA staff were reviewing Elon Musk's brain implant
| company. DOGE just fired them._
|
| https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/02/17/fda
| -...
|
| https://gizmodo.com/doge-reportedly-cuts-fda-employees-
| inves...
| scarab92 wrote:
| DOGE can't fire anyone, only agency directors can.
|
| Secondly, Trump has clearly stated that Musk is not
| permitted to act where he has a conflict, and the agency
| directors will be aware of this.
|
| Thirdly, you're giving examples of DOGE "firing" people
| in agencies where they aren't even active yet.
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| So by your logic, after musk donated $288 million to his
| campaign and then trump fires five inspector generals
| that are investigating his companies, that's not a
| conflict of interest?
|
| _Secondly, Trump has clearly stated that Musk is not
| permitted to act where he has a conflict, and the agency
| directors will be aware of this._
|
| Trump is honest and can be trusted in your experience?
|
| If these aren't conflicts of interest, what would an
| actual conflict of interest look like?
| dialup_sounds wrote:
| > agencies where they aren't even active yet
|
| Deferred resignation offers ("fork in the road" emails)
| and terminating all probationary employees (those without
| civil service protections) are cross-agency
| recommendations by DOGE since the beginning. It doesn't
| make sense to say they "aren't even active yet" when 8
| days after inauguration the entire civil service was sent
| the same email that Twitter employees got.
|
| Additionally, the EO establishing DOGE required all
| agency heads to assign a team from DOGE within 30 days,
| which has passed. They're everywhere.
| FollowingTheDao wrote:
| DOGE is literally making up that people had bad work
| reviews to justify firing them. They are liars 100% down.
|
| They are literally firing people first and then calling
| them back? How is that efficiency?
|
| I cannot believe we are talking about these people
| seriously with all the BS "We saved $* Billion dollars to
| stop Mind Control News" on the DOGE "website".
| dkjaudyeqooe wrote:
| Musk is not in a position to identify waste and fraud.
|
| What does he know of the genesis and status of these
| payments? Congress directs spending and oversees the
| administration, not the other way around.
|
| Why does he have to finish in an arbitrary time frame?
|
| This is all justification after the fact for those who
| support Musk/Trump unconditionally.
|
| It's all fun and games until your Medicare/Social
| Security/Tax Refund or other legitimate payment gets
| cancelled arbitrarily, illegally and unconstitutionally.
| card_zero wrote:
| Dictatorship from 1926 to 1976, and yet a strangely obscure
| one, probably due to neutrality during world war two.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Same here in Germany, only recently we got the tax ID number
| as a global primary key to the objections of _many_ privacy
| activists.
|
| Ex-Yugoslavian countries have had a global ID forever - the
| JMBG or, in Croatia, OIB [1].
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unique_Master_Citizen_Number
| arunharidas wrote:
| still, Germany arrests citizens for calling a politician an
| idiot.
| api wrote:
| > check and balances to make it slow. It's deliberate
| inefficiency.
|
| It's an important thing about free countries that is seldom
| appreciated: aspects of their governments are designed to be
| tar pits, on purpose. It's a way of restraining government.
|
| I have a personal saying that touches on something adjacent. "I
| like my politicians boring. Interesting government was a major
| cause of death in the twentieth century."
|
| When I think of governments that are both interesting and
| streamlined I think of the Nazis, the Khmer Rouge, Stalin era
| USSR, Maoist purges, etc.
| XorNot wrote:
| It's worth noting all those regimes were really only
| streamlined at getting people killed one way or the other.
| Their internal history is always a story of wild incompetence
| and corner-cutting. The Nazis in particular got a lot of
| undue credit for effectiveness.
| frigg wrote:
| [flagged]
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| Even completely ignoring the dubious ethics invoked - a lot of
| non Americans will get worse outcomes than the US because of
| this. Given the work that has been cancelled so far, some of
| those non Americans are likely already dead.
| amelius wrote:
| Most people probably wanted "change" and there was no
| alternative option. If your democracy offers only two options,
| then polarization is the outcome.
| zimpenfish wrote:
| > You Americans voted for this
|
| A thin majority in an election with a poor (and/or constrained)
| turnout in a lop-sided nonsense of an electoral system with
| disproportionate weightings voted for parts of this.
| Amezarak wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_turnout_in_United_States.
| ..
|
| The 2024 election had historically high turnout. The 2nd
| highest turnout since 1968, the 7th highest since 1932.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_turnout_in_United_States.
| ..
| defrost wrote:
| Trump won 77,284,118 votes, or 49.8 percent of the votes
| cast for president.
|
| Voter turnout nationally in 2024 was 63.9 percent (below
| the 66.6 percent voter turnout recorded in 2020).
|
| So 31.8 percent of the eligible voters in the USofA voted
| for Trump in the 2024 elections, most eligible voters
| didn't vote for Trump.
|
| Eligible Voters aside, an even greater percentage of people
| in the USofA didn't vote for Trump being too young or
| otherwise disenfranchised.
|
| Of those that did vote for Trump it's a leap to say that
| all of them voted to fire the chief government records
| keeper, to empower DOGE to gut departments, etc; like
| Brexit, many of those who voted for it had no real idea
| what they had voted for.
|
| In the campaign Trump ran to avoid jail he repeatedly
| stated he wasn't aware of the Project 2025 playbook, that
| he would be all things to all people. People who voted for
| Trump voted for what they heard, what they _thought_ he
| promised.
|
| Most of the citizens in the USofA did not vote Trump, not
| all of those voted to gut the government, the sciences,
| foreign aid, etc.
| Amezarak wrote:
| Did you mean to respond to another comment? I was
| responding specifically to the claim that election
| turnout was low. As I said, it's the 2nd highest since
| 1968 - 2020 was indeed the higher year.
|
| Like Brexit, people who don't like what's happening come
| up with all sorts of convoluted explanations for why
| democracy doesn't apply when their position loses. It
| seems to regularly boil down to "people who don't vote
| the way I would like are too foolish and were tricked or
| brainwashed and if only they were enlightened they would
| vote my way." I don't think this is a winning message but
| we seem to be doubling down.
| bdcravens wrote:
| It actually wasn't even a majority of the popular vote.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Not quite a majority, but a narrow plurality:
|
| 49.8% Trump, 48.3% Harris
|
| Though you could include the .49% that voted for RFK (you'd
| maybe need to decide which side to add Jill Stein Green and
| Libertarian candidate too).
| tremarley wrote:
| Why do they deserve the worst outcome?
| flanked-evergl wrote:
| Not gonna lie, sitting here in a collapsing and feckless
| Europe, I'm supper jelly.
| bilvar wrote:
| Same, the UK government definitely needs a similar audit.
| stackedinserter wrote:
| America is and will be fine.
| dang wrote:
| Nationalistic flamewar isn't ok here, regardless of which
| nation you have a problem with or how right you are or you feel
| you are.
|
| Please don't post flamewar comments to HN generally. It's not
| what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
|
| (Fortunately your earlier comment history seems fine, so this
| should be easy to fix.)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| eecc wrote:
| IMHO it's a bit of a shame that the productivity and efficiency
| gains that computing and cybernetics can bring to complex systems
| -- including government -- are always tainted and currently
| championed by anti-social elites that use them to break apart
| these collective machines.
|
| Bureaucracies are a common good, and it should be in everyone's
| interest to apply state-of-the-art system engineering to make
| them as valuable as currently possible.
| glutamate wrote:
| Didn't know Max Weber was lurking on HN.
| ffsm8 wrote:
| It's true if you're ignoring the no-true-scottman fallacy.
|
| Bureaucracy doesn't have to be to the detriment of society.
| As a matter of fact, it can potentially put breaks on the
| worst exploitative behavior.
|
| But over time... It has the potential to grow too much with
| bad legislation, effectively making the positive potential
| into a very real negative that stifles unnecessarily.
| analog31 wrote:
| So far all of the bad things I've heard about our system,
| such as the economic unsustainability and now this, are
| effects that will happen in the perpetual future.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| You have to think about who you're listening too. The
| economic sustainability of the actions Trump has taken so
| far is a pittance:
|
| * The beauracracy today is about the size it was in 1980
| on a per capita basis. It's not the largest per capita
| it's ever been.
|
| > The federal government's workforce has remained largely
| unchanged in size for over 50 years, even as the U.S.
| population has grown by 68% and federal spending has
| quintupled, highlighting the critical role of technology
| and contractors in filling the gap.
|
| > Compensation for federal employees cost $291 billion in
| 2019, or 6.6% of that year's total spending
|
| So firing everyone is a 6% improvement to the federal
| budget while a complete government collapse for a number
| of reasons including that the government won't have
| anyone to collect revenue or prosecute crimes.
|
| [1]
|
| * The largest discretionary spending area is the military
| at 800 billion in 2023. Of that, personnel accounted for
| 173 billion, or 20%. Personnel is a tiny fraction of the
| government's spend each year. Even [2] which is a right
| wing think tank supporting this effort, claims that the
| liabilities improvement is 600B over 10 years which makes
| it a <1% dent seeing as how we spend >6T each year and
| just hand-waves the pension improvement as "significant".
| But cuts aren't focusing on the biggest employer within
| the government like the military.
|
| * The people Trump & Musk are firing now are people who
| haven't been on the job long enough to have protections.
| This drastically reduces the numbers above as a best case
| since that assumes a uniform 10% reduction across all
| salary bands whereas the current 10% reduction is almost
| certainly across the lowest bands since the government
| pays based on seniority.
|
| This is what Trump does - he often identifies a real
| problem and then does a sleight of hand trick to make you
| think the actions he's taking, because they're highly
| visible, are solving the problem when in fact he's not
| actually making any meaningful dent. That's why he made a
| big show about the deportation flights but not talking
| about how the places he's sending them to aren't the
| places the people are from - he's bullied Costa Rica into
| accepting whoever he send [3].
|
| [1] https://www.brookings.edu/articles/is-government-too-
| big-ref...
|
| [2] https://epicforamerica.org/education-workforce-
| retirement/fi...
|
| [3] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/us-
| deportation-fl...
| Gormo wrote:
| > Bureaucracy doesn't have to be to the detriment of
| society.
|
| Bureaucracy is an organizational model that reflects human
| intentions and choices, just like every other
| organizational model in society.
|
| Attributing specific moral inclinations to an
| organizational model is as absurd as attributing them to
| any other tool. Debating whether bureaucracies per se have
| good or bad intentions is as ridiculous as debating whether
| handwritten documents convey better or worse intentions
| than printed ones.
| justin66 wrote:
| > IMHO it's a bit of a shame that the productivity and
| efficiency gains that computing and cybernetics can bring to
| complex systems
|
| They're just firing people at random, they haven't discovered
| any innovative new way to make systems more efficient.
|
| ("at random" is a bit generous and ignores the retaliation
| against political adversaries)
| mrayycombi wrote:
| He's going to fill the empty slots with loyal cronies he can
| fire at will.
|
| This is, I think, just "stage 1"
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Changing the rules so gov employees can be fired "at will"
| is an explicit goal of Project 2025
| theshrike79 wrote:
| It's not "at random". Every shuttered department had been
| investigating one of Elmo's properties...
| throw0101c wrote:
| > _It 's not "at random". Every shuttered department had
| been investigating one of Elmo's properties..._
|
| _?Porque no los dos?_ Firing the folks that maintain
| nuclear weapons:
|
| * https://apnews.com/article/nuclear-doge-firings-trump-
| federa...
|
| Firing the folks dealing with bird flu:
|
| * https://apnews.com/article/usda-firings-doge-bird-flu-
| trump-...
|
| Also firing a whole bunch of folks at the FAA (including
| maintenance mechanics) even though it's already short
| staffed:
|
| * https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cly9y1e1kpjo
|
| Random _and_ spiteful (?).
| agumonkey wrote:
| pseudo random then ?
| whymeogod wrote:
| To add to hrow0101c's list
|
| USAID was investigating Starlink
|
| Consumer Protection Bureau has numerous investigations open
| vs Musky companies
|
| Treasury is involved in regulating Muskys X for Finance
| thing
| sanderjd wrote:
| Right. Even random would be more principled.
| DAGdug wrote:
| I personally support trimming bureaucratic fat, but the way
| the current administration is doing it is the worst way
| possible - with no due diligence - and will lose public
| support soon.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| _> lose public support soon_
|
| Sooner than you think.
|
| My tax refund is quite late.
| cratermoon wrote:
| I told my family that if they expect a refund and haven't
| already filed their taxes to do so ASAP.
| JTbane wrote:
| I have to wait until March to get all my documents from
| brokerages, so I guess I am personally screwed by DOGE if
| returns are delayed.
| janalsncm wrote:
| No kidding. Been waiting 15 days for what should be a
| routine return.
| ozmodiar wrote:
| I really wish I could still believe that last part.
| mostertoaster wrote:
| Yeah unlikely. I don't even care that Elon isn't just
| being altruistic and is in on all this just to benefit
| himself. My support of what they're doing thus far is
| pretty steadfast, and I just want to see more and more
| people fired, and more and more budget cut.
|
| I don't care what happens to Ukraine, just don't want us
| to send another dime. Hoping it can just end soon, which
| is more likely now than it was with previous
| administration.
|
| Tariffs are a terrible idea though, but would take them
| if we got rid of the income tax.
|
| As of now DOGE and Trump are doing exactly what I hoped,
| and I'll check back in a year and see if I'm worried.
| jcranmer wrote:
| From the reporting I've seen, they're not firing "at random",
| they're firing more or less every single new hire they can,
| because new hires have less protections than more established
| employees.
| theossuary wrote:
| Not just new hires, but also anyone who took a promotion or
| lateral move, which also puts them into a probationary
| period. So they're firing all the new employees and all the
| employees exceptional enough to be promoted or recruited to
| another department.
| ConfusedDog wrote:
| You mean Peter Principled into another department...?
| Sorry, just joking. It's terrible and unfair to fire
| people like this. They are removing the low hanging
| fruits first.
| evilduck wrote:
| You need to find more reporting then. It's both, and more,
| and worse. The folks fired at DOE's NNSA were not
| exclusively probationary employees. DOGE doesn't even know
| the function of the departments they're eliminating. It's
| not evident they even know _what_ they're eliminating. See
| the "find and fire" approach to the word transitional.
| Oops... turns out that one's used in more than the context
| of gender.
|
| Even firing all probationary employees explicitly _for
| cause_ when there's no evidence of performance problems
| with most of them is worse than random, it opens them up to
| legitimate legal backlash. Have you ever worked anywhere
| where the last two years of hires were all just completely
| worthless as employees? Of course not, that's basically
| impossible. Eliminating these people would have been harsh
| but understandable if it were said to be done for simple
| budget reasons, because yes they indeed are in a vulnerable
| less protected situation, but to call them all poor
| performers at the same time is worse than random, it's an
| obvious and transparent lie.
| oooyay wrote:
| The people they fired at the VA weren't probationary and
| one of the first changes they made to the VA was removing
| gender identity from the account information.
|
| This isn't about efficiency, money, or employees. It's
| about power and the consolidation thereof. They will have
| ransacked the VA and the American people not only gave them
| the keys but they cheered them on.
| cratermoon wrote:
| Not just new hires. They are firing people on
| "probationary" status, and people in civil service go
| through a brief probationary period after being promoted or
| moved to a new position.[1] This means some people being
| fired are long-time senior civil servants with expertise
| and knowledge. The reason they are firing probationary
| people is because they are easier to let go, by civil
| service rules.
|
| I suspect the people in charge of the firings are under the
| same mistaken impression as you are, that all the
| probationary people are new hires who aren't yet essential.
| Witness the "oops, we fired the wrong people" rush to
| rehire.[2][3]
|
| 1 https://www.npr.org/2025/02/15/nx-s1-5298182/trumps-
| probatio...
|
| 2 https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4g3nrx1dq5o
|
| 3 https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/doge/usda-accidentally-
| fire...
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| It's not just new hires. Employees who move to a new
| position, even if they've been in that agency for a long
| time, also have less protections and are being fired.
|
| But as others have noted, these are not the only ones being
| mass fired.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| This[0] doesn't seem random, and is just one example of many
| similar ones.
|
| And that's not counting the firings at the DOJ and FBI which
| were explicitly retribution (though you could argue DOGE had
| nothing to do with those firings, which may be true, but I'm
| referring to Trump's mass firings in general).
|
| [0] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-02-18/fda-
| offic...
| bdd8f1df777b wrote:
| Bureaucracy is always risk averse. Without outside
| intervention, they will always try to operate as before.
| datadrivenangel wrote:
| This is the point: A well functioning bureaucracy allows for
| repeatable predictable outcomes
| alistairSH wrote:
| But is that a problem? Or is that functioning as intended?
|
| Generally speaking, I want my government to be stable,
| predictable, and consistent over fairly long time horizons.
| DAGdug wrote:
| Depends on how they weigh the cost of a false positive
| versus false negative decision. The former seems to often
| be the key focus of a bureaucracy, slowing down the rate of
| diffusion of new technologies even among willing adopters.
| agumonkey wrote:
| Every human knows that governments and bureaucracies are
| inefficient in some way. It's been mocked since the dawn of
| times. The issue is that you don't toy around with big legacy
| systems like you do with twitter. To satisfy their little
| immaturity and get political points on their fans they start
| ripping off everything without enough time. If they started
| real medium term efforts to analyze, organize and then
| migrate it would be different. Plus there are other factors
| due to human group and political time that will come back
| later and muddy things up again when someone feels like
| fixing elon's patch.
| palmotea wrote:
| > Bureaucracy is always risk averse. Without outside
| intervention, they will always try to operate as before.
|
| Same with your body, by the way.
| sanderjd wrote:
| Not _always_. Both the Digital Service and 18F appear to be (to
| have been...) good faith efforts to apply state of the art
| system engineering to the federal bureaucracy, and quite
| successfully.
|
| This is just one administration co-opted by one anti social
| elite to do the opposite. Don't extrapolate it out. Place blame
| where blame is deserved.
| lenerdenator wrote:
| I don't think it's just one, unfortunately. It's not even
| much of a co-opt; more just an inevitable progression of the
| ideology that was held by that administration since the
| beginning.
| JohnHaugeland wrote:
| Trump tried to make DOGE, and was slapped down by congress,
| so he took an existing department, removed all the people,
| switched it to do a different job, moved it to a different
| state, and replaced its name.
|
| It's not just a co-opt; it's a complete replacement. DOGE
| is in no sense USDC; it's just wearing its skin.
| cowboylowrez wrote:
| yeah from what I understand the original focus of the
| department was to make the software better serve its
| customers. its obvious that trump doesn't like congress,
| judicials, laws. heh cutting government waste is actually
| a good cause but you need skilled no nonsense auditors
| and well I think by inspecting trump's resume and
| reputation, I bet he REALLY doesn't like auditors haha
| skissane wrote:
| > Trump tried to make DOGE, and was slapped down by
| congress,
|
| When was he "slapped down by congress"? He signed the
| executive order establishing DOGE on inauguration day -
| obviously his transition team's lawyers had drafted it
| for him in the weeks prior. And his lawyers came up with
| an inventive way of hijacking existing Congressional
| authorities for DOGE. But it wasn't like he asked
| Congress first and only resorted to this scheme when they
| said 'no' - he planned to bypass them all along.
|
| Okay, some Republicans introduced some enabling
| legislation for DOGE early this year. But I don't think
| either they or Trump were ever expecting it to get
| passed, and they weren't seriously trying. Introducing
| the legislation was just a political stunt to get
| attention and demonstrate loyalty. "Bypass Congress" was
| the plan all along
| croes wrote:
| The government's system should mainly be secure, relibale and
| durable.
|
| State-of-the-art is seldom all three of them.
| rrr_oh_man wrote:
| > all three of them
|
| or even one
| acdha wrote:
| That's just a question of how you define "state-of-the-art".
| The term doesn't preclude secure or reliable - prior to the
| "move fast and break things" era where adtech dominated the
| tech industry, those used be considered a requirement.
| ideashower wrote:
| Bureaucracies are a "common good" because of their human
| element: the ability to exercise discretion, recognize unique
| circumstances, and be held accountable to the public they
| serve.
|
| The challenge is harnessing technology while strengthening
| these essential human capacities. Anything otherwise erodes
| public trust and sows division.
| dionian wrote:
| I don't think unelected bureaucrats should have more power
| than the elected leaders of the Executive. Try the "shoe on
| the other foot" principle: Imagine if Trump put lifetime
| leaders in those agencies and they fought against the next
| Progressive president.
| KittenInABox wrote:
| Unelected bureaucrats don't have more power than the
| elected leaders of the Executive. The power to remove them
| arbitrarily is simply not a power that the leaders should
| have. Ideally, Trump's lifetime leaders in those agencies
| would have been installed by committee between both parties
| and so are apolitical whose sole focus is their job duties
| and serving the people, and can fight against the next
| Progressive president purely on that basis.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > I don't think unelected bureaucrats should have more
| power than the elected leaders of the Executive.
|
| It depends on which bureaucrats we're talking about. Most
| agencies are the creation of congress, and the executive
| should have minimal power over them. The president's job is
| to implement the laws of the legislature.
| acdha wrote:
| They don't have more power. Whoever is telling you that has
| been lying to you, starting with the idea that these are
| lifetime jobs or lack accountability.
|
| The American system of government is based on checks and
| balances between the branches. Congress passes laws which
| delegate some power and the Executive Branch implements
| them. In many cases, the high level positions are
| presidential nominees who are mutually agreed upon with the
| Congress and serve a set number of years or until recalled
| by one or both parties. Each agency has specific rules
| governing what they're allowed to do and how they do it, as
| well as oversight and transparency for their actions.
|
| What we're seeing now is the conflict caused by Republicans
| deciding that following the law is too hard and creating
| conflicts with people who are following the law. When Musk
| was pushing people to grant access to restricted data, for
| example, it was proclaimed as disobedience but was simply
| that the people charged with protecting that data do not
| have person discretion in that matter: the operator of a
| SCIF knows they face heavy consequences if they allow
| unauthorized access. In all previous administrations, this
| hasn't been a problem because people just waited a few
| weeks to get clearances.
|
| Similarly, when Trump illegally tries to fire inspector
| generals it isn't that there's no way for him to do that,
| he just didn't feel like giving Congress 30 days notice.
|
| In all cases, the law is what matters: if there is a real
| disagreement about how one of the independent agencies
| operates, Congress can change it at any time and given the
| Republican majority it would not be hard for any reasonable
| change to be quickly enacted, at which point an agency head
| would be removed or even prosecuted if they fail to comply.
| JohnMakin wrote:
| It's interesting you invoke the constitution and law here
| when law is being violated per the constitution - funds
| are being unilaterally revoked by unelected individuals,
| funds that were voted on by congress. Congress has the
| power of the purse. Weird you leave that little tidbit
| out of this whole screed, it's almost like you're being
| purposely dishonest.
| acdha wrote:
| It's definitely a problem that money appropriated by
| Congress isn't being spent as intended, but I'm not sure
| how you got the idea that I support the Trump
| administration's decision to do so.
| IggleSniggle wrote:
| The unelected bureaucrats should be responsible for
| upholding the Law and the mandates of their position, not
| to any individual or party. And the Law is set by Congress,
| not the Executive. The Law is enforced by the Judiciary,
| not the Executive. The whole point is to have an engine
| that can keep working and keep accumulating domain
| expertise regardless of which political party is in
| control, beholden to the Laws set by the Congress over
| time, representing all constituents over time, held
| responsible by the courts, and not the whims of any given
| administration (or, for that matter, any single Congress).
| The entire problem _is that_ we now have what may
| effectively be lifetime leaders being put into positions
| and _being told to ignore the law and their government
| issued mandates_.
|
| And so much reeks of a Watergate like situation, except
| done publicly instead of in secret, with Congress and the
| Judiciary refusing or unable to hold any of these people to
| account. "We will now gather all information about our
| adversaries and fire anyone who doesn't give us the keys to
| the vaults, and if anybody doesn't like it, good luck,
| because the courts are going to be VERY busy, indefinitely,
| as we proceed to break every law the Legislature has
| issued, and is unlikely to have time to hear your case for
| a few decades."
|
| But let's take at face value the idea that the Executive
| doesn't need to follow or even acknowledge the decisions of
| the Legislature, and that they can tell anyone to do
| anything whenever they feel like it. There's a pragmatic
| issue, not just a separation of powers issue: How can you
| possibly accumulate domain expertise, and what motivation
| would you have to accumulate that expertise anyway, when
| every agency is going to be dismantled every 2-4 years?
|
| Besides, these bureaucrats are "elected" in a way similar
| to the Electoral College. We vote in the Legislature, and
| the Legislature votes on the appointments. If we don't want
| "lifers" then we should be voting on term-limits for these
| positions, not allowing the wholesale remodeling of our
| bureaucracy every election, where "just anybody" can come
| in and walk away with whatever they can loot each cycle.
| cratermoon wrote:
| Elon Musk is an unelected bureaucrat, as is all of the DOGE
| team.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| It's not uncommon for some agency leaders to be replaced -
| particularly those dealing with policy-oriented matters,
| like say the FTC. But that doesn't apply to the rank-and-
| file because of various civil service reforms which are
| designed to provide continuity between administrations and
| avoid partisan flip-flopping of large numbers of employees.
| They were also designed to avoid corruption or the
| "selling" of government positions to those favored by the
| president, which was common back in the 1800s. Trump is
| taking us back towards greater corruption while disguising
| his acts in a cloak of "rooting out corruption".
| Gormo wrote:
| I don't think elected leaders in the executive branch
| should be allowed to supersede the role of the elected
| legislature in formulating public policy.
|
| The whole problem can be sidestepped by pulling back on the
| excessive levels of discretion and rule-making that have
| been delegated to executive agencies in the first place.
| vixen99 wrote:
| Of course some level of bureaucracy is essential for any
| human society but your generalization takes us nowhere
| because it's riven with assumptions about that 'human
| element'.
| okeuro49 wrote:
| > Bureaucracies are a "common good" because of their human
| element
|
| This is a joke --right?
| JohnHaugeland wrote:
| Efficiency efforts are common.
|
| It's just that the abusers are the only ones who make an effort
| to talk about it, because talking about it provides them cover.
|
| Otherwise it's a regular part of the daily job.
| kmlx wrote:
| > Bureaucracies are a common good
|
| never saw it like that. to me bureaucracy represents
| inefficiency. today we have automation that can be quite
| advanced. as long as you have a structured, rules based system
| there is no need for bureaucrats. i do understand that there
| will always be edge cases, or moral issues with automation, but
| there should be a constant drive in society to dismantle as
| much bureaucracy as morally possible, as that implies adopting
| automation and as such efficiency.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| Even if this was true, breaking things with reckless abandon
| has real human costs today and will until they're fixed.
| That's part of the reason government is 'inefficient' is the
| responsibility to serve everyone and get as close to zero
| downtime as possible.
| kmlx wrote:
| yours is a stability-over-change argument: bureaucracy
| exists to prevent reckless, harmful disruptions.
|
| you're assuming the alternative to bureaucracy is reckless
| destruction, but what about the harm bureaucracy already
| causes? slow government processes, redundant approvals, and
| outdated rules waste time, money, and even lives. how many
| people suffer due to delays in healthcare, housing permits,
| or business licenses?
|
| you're framing efficiency as 'reckless abandon' but
| efficiency doesn't mean chaos, it means designing systems
| that work smoothly without unnecessary friction. if private
| companies can process global transactions in seconds, why
| does it take months to approve basic permits?
|
| if bureaucracy ensures stability, why does it fail so
| often? government shutdowns, dmv backlogs, and welfare
| mismanagement don't scream 'zero downtime'. in reality,
| bureaucracy is often fragile, not resilient.
|
| other industries use automation and streamlined processes
| to reduce friction without 'breaking things recklessly'.
| why should government be any different?
| mikeyouse wrote:
| I'm framing these specific DOGE initiatives where they're
| firing people at random as reckless. Because they are and
| there are real human costs that are just being glazed
| over.
|
| I 1,000% agree that in general, we should reduce
| bureaucracy and minimize the steps people need to take /
| the approvals required and make things as streamlined as
| possible. But if those things are small fires, having the
| current Republican majority with DOGE in support is
| asking arsonists to put them out. Often you need
| substantial upfront investment to fix e.g. the social
| security infrastructure - but when one party is opposed
| to all government spending, the infra will never be
| improved and the proposed fixes are to fire a bunch of
| employees that are maintaining the current system to save
| costs.
| gopher_space wrote:
| > as long as you have a structured, rules based system there
| is no need for bureaucrats.
|
| Bureaucrats consider, implement, and modify the structured,
| rules based systems our society comes up with.
| kmlx wrote:
| what you write is true, but very concerning.
|
| in theory, laws and policies are crafted by elected
| officials or experts, and bureaucrats are just the
| executors. but in reality, bureaucracies interpret, refine,
| and sometimes even reshape these rules through policy
| implementation. this is where a lot of inefficiency, red
| tape, and unintended consequences creep in.
| pqtyw wrote:
| That hardly ever works or did ever work in reality.
| Almost no legislation (unless it solves and issue that is
| very straightforward) is written with such granularity
| that would makes this possible.
|
| The people writing it are not necessarily subject experts
| in the area and even if they were or consulted such
| experts they can't foresee all eventualities. So those
| laws would need to be constantly updated all the time
| which is simply infeasibly (especially in the US where
| the legislative branch is stuck in a near permanent
| gridlock by design). IMHO that would make the system
| much, much more inefficient.
| gopher_space wrote:
| It's impossible to tell the difference between
| inefficiency and a timing hack unless you're deep in the
| guts of a system. Civic maintenance of snow plows can be
| a good real-world example.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| > apply state-of-the-art system engineering to make them as
| valuable as currently possible
|
| Sure, and if DOGE was doing that, it would be a worthy mission.
| But we have seen no evidence of that, while we have seen a lot
| of evidence of ideology and retribution based purging.
|
| There is already a government agency who has been working to
| overhaul and modernize the government's systems -- very much
| needed -- for years, and they all just got sidelined and/or
| fired. The DOGE team that took over that agency (USDS) isn't
| even talking to them.
|
| The people at the FDA responsible for oversight of Neuralink's
| medical device approval just got fired. Don't tell me you
| believe that was to make the FDA's system more efficient.
| Gormo wrote:
| > Bureaucracies are a common good
|
| Bureaucracies are just organizations of humans, who have the
| same motivations, biases, and incentives ans everyone else,
| everywhere else in society.
|
| They're not a "common good", they're just people, and because
| they have de jure authority over certain domains, they need be
| subject to oversight and accountability if we're to trust them.
|
| Bureaucracies often have perverse incentives, ulterior motives,
| and are themselves co-opted by the very "anti-social elites"
| you're complaining about (and such language indicates a
| conflict-based rather than an error-correction-based approach
| to dealing with these issues, which is itself an error).
| Increasing the efficiency and efficacy of such organizations
| _without_ proper oversight can easily lead to more abuse and
| corruption.
|
| In this situation, I think that neither the established federal
| bureaucracy _nor_ DOGE and the current administration have
| interests and intentions that are necessarily aligned with the
| broadest interests of the public at large. At this point the
| best we can do is hope that the adversarial relation between
| them leads to a favorable equilibrium rather than an
| unfavorable one.
| whymeogod wrote:
| > Bureaucracies are just organizations of humans, who have
| the same motivations, biases, and incentives ans everyone
| else, everywhere else in society
|
| No, the biases and incentives are different in government
| than in business. Yes, there are biases and incentives, but
| they are different.
|
| The main attraction of government work is the ability to
| serve your country, and to be rewarded by taking actions
| which produce (what you believe is) long-term social good.
|
| Your belief that an adversarial relation between forces of
| government leads to a favorable equilibrium is indeed the
| basis of the US constitution, and the very thing which
| DOGE/Trump are attacking with such force.
| Gormo wrote:
| > No, the biases and incentives are different in government
| than in business
|
| Not really, no. Certain cognitive biases and elements of
| self-interest are fundamental to all humans in all
| situations, and while different scenarios lead to those
| biases manifesting in different forms, they still share the
| same underlying substance.
|
| > The main attraction of government work is the ability to
| serve your country, and to be rewarded by taking actions
| which produce (what you believe is) long-term social good.
|
| No, the main attraction of government work is the ability
| to have a decently-paying career with a high degree of job
| security. Most people in such jobs simply dutifully do the
| tasks asked of them in exchange for a regular paycheck, and
| don't deeply consider the broader effects of their work on
| society (except to convince themselves of the importance of
| their work, as we all do).
|
| A few outliers will prioritize theoretical ideals about
| doing "social good" over their own career goals, and a few
| outliers on the opposite end will prioritize having access
| to political power and opportunities for graft. (And some
| mistakenly think they are doing "social good" by forcefully
| advancing their own particular normative ideology.)
|
| > Your belief that an adversarial relation between forces
| of government leads to a favorable equilibrium is indeed
| the basis of the US constitution, and the very thing which
| DOGE/Trump are attacking with such force.
|
| No, I don't DOGE and Trump attacking the concept as much as
| _participating_ in it here. None of the parties involved
| have good intentions, as far as I can evaluate, but, again,
| there 's a chance that things will work out in the balance.
| mempko wrote:
| You do realize one of the first users of private computers was
| the IRS. You miss the other side of the coin when it comes to
| efficiency. An efficient bureaucracy is a large bureaucracy.
| There is no possible way the IRS could do it's work today
| without computers. The rules are too complex, and computers
| made it possible to have such complex rules.
| borgster wrote:
| The President is the head of the executive branch. If _anyone_ in
| the executive branch has access to information, it feels like the
| presidents office should too.
|
| Why is this hard to accept?
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| Because it's Musk following his own agenda and he apparently
| isn't the president
| snvzz wrote:
| Musk is acting with full president support.
| jonahbenton wrote:
| Because it isn't the case. For good reason. So it isn't
| acceptable. Spend some educating yourself about security
| standards like FedRAMP and build a mental model of things that
| are or have been true, and the reasons they were made so.
| mexicocitinluez wrote:
| > If _anyone_ in the executive branch has access to
| information, it feels like the presidents office should too.
|
| Are you an idiot? Can you point to the last time some foreigner
| was given access to American's personal data without any
| oversight?
| Extropy_ wrote:
| Elon Musk has Canadian, US, and South-African citizenship
| mexicocitinluez wrote:
| Yes, when you're not from this country (a foreigner), you
| need a citizenship card to reside and work here (or a
| visa). Thanks for verifying that for me.
| TeaBrain wrote:
| You may be thinking of a green card. Once someone is
| granted citizenship in the US, they're no longer
| considered a foreign national.
| envp wrote:
| So it's okay because he's rich?
| mrguyorama wrote:
| If the CEO of my ecommerce company had easy, unmonitored access
| to all our data, we would fail industry audits and not be
| allowed to take credit card transactions. Sure, they have
| access if they really need it, but it's logged and monitored,
| and if you use it too much there will be questions.
|
| It's a joke that any of you assholes are defending this. This
| does not pass any sniff test.
|
| Stop making excuses.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| Most people in the US don't know that there are three branches
| of government, or if they do, they don't know WHY there are
| three, and even if they know that, they don't know what each
| branch's purpose is.
|
| This is absolutely the job of the executive branch.
|
| Perhaps DOGE should have been created by an act of congress,
| but in reality that's just a formality because the Republicans
| control Congress right now.
| moduspol wrote:
| Trump renamed USDS to DOGE via executive order. It's true
| that it's not an agency, but it was created during the Obama
| administration.
|
| I'm not sure it'd be better as an agency because there are
| strict rules and hierarchies around agencies. The way DOGE is
| operating right now, seemingly, is:
|
| - Agency directors are directed by executive order to work
| with DOGE and give them access to what they need
|
| - DOGE team members are actually hired as employees of the
| agencies in which they are operating
|
| - DOGE makes recommendations to agency directors on what
| things to cut
|
| - Agency directors review recommendations and make cuts
|
| This means that all cuts are being recommended and made
| within the scope of each individual agency. It is not the
| case that one agency is telling another what to do, and all
| decisions are ultimately being made by each agency's
| director. It simplifies the hierarchy and authority.
| TomK32 wrote:
| It is only the job of the executive because Congress told
| them so via Acts of Congress. Looking at e.g. the firings of
| the inspector generals, Congress has put very clear language
| into its laws on why and when those inspector generals can be
| removed by their post, yet Trump and his cronies ignored
| this.
|
| It should not be a formality because while it is true that
| the Republicans have a slight majority in Congress, the
| founding fathers never intended this most powerful of the
| three branches to be run by parties. The power in Congress is
| split up geographically for this very reason, but the party
| system, that secured its seats with gerrymandering, is highly
| toxic for a functioning legislative power in the US. It is
| disappointing to see Republicans in Congress not restricting
| the executive orders of the new self-proclaimed King.
| moduspol wrote:
| Somehow Musk has surpassed Trump as a target. Cynically: I
| think it's because polls show Trump's approval rating at record
| highs, but Musk's isn't.
|
| As a result, opponents are hyper-focused on Musk's involvement
| instead of Trump's.
| meijer wrote:
| Ultimately it's about trust.
|
| And why would you trust Trump or Musk?
| 28304283409234 wrote:
| He is not a monarch. The core principles of a well functioning
| democracy include that there are multiple, balanced powers and
| that none of the powers can overrule the other too much. It is
| cumbersome by design, because the other path leads to
| dictatorships.
|
| That was the whole basis of your constitution.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| So are you saying that the President's office could not get
| this information, or any information it needed, from government
| agencies before? Of course it could. doge going in and getting
| unfettered access to computer systems is not at all the same
| thing.
| jsight wrote:
| > Why is this hard to accept?
|
| Because a lot of people on the other side of the aisle from the
| current executive said it is bad.
|
| And then they used ad hominem attacks and random slanders to
| try to shout down anyone who says otherwise.
|
| It's unfortunate.
| imperial_march wrote:
| You're right. Though the replies you get will sound like the
| end of the world.
|
| You'll have to deal with people replying who have been driven
| literally insane by propaganda.
|
| Money was sent to media agencies (e.g. 9mil Reuters) , to run
| this massive psyop.
|
| You can't put a band aid on what has been done to them, and
| they can't critically think their way out of it.
| weregiraffe wrote:
| Surely it's 'dog mode'
| greatgib wrote:
| Just imagine one second if Poutine really have a file on Trump
| and this is the ultimate holdup to give Russia access to all US
| systems...
| belter wrote:
| Here is my prediction...I know nobody asked for it :-) But they
| are only fun if you make them before the events...A massive,
| unpriced risk looms over financial markets... Its scale defies
| prediction.
|
| The current administration's safeguards are faltering, running
| like a government still in FSD beta. With U.S. debt dismissed as
| "just debt," inflationary tariffs in play, and an emergency Fed
| rate hike imminent, shockwaves are inevitable.
|
| Deficit panic may soon lead to manipulated figures and a
| narrative bent to suit unstable agendas. The bond market's
| credibility will collapse, making the Liz Truss debacle seem
| trivial compared to the turmoil expected over the next two years.
|
| Even the most sophisticated hedge funds and quants can't quantify
| an administration gone off the rails... But just look at the
| current price of gold...
|
| The narrative already started: "Trump says US may have less debt
| than thought because of fraud - Trump says some Treasury payments
| might 'not count'" - https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/trump-
| says-us-might-have-...
|
| "The World's Most Important Market Sends a Warning" -
| https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2025-02-18/the-wo...
| javcasas wrote:
| > Trump says US may have less debt than thought because of
| fraud - Trump says some Treasury payments might 'not count'
|
| Ugh, is that different words for "we ain't paying this because
| we say it's fraud"?
| Extropy_ wrote:
| A lot of Government contracts that are on the surface multi-
| million, even billion dollars, aren't payed out immediately
| in full. Thus, at first glance it may look like they've spent
| more than has left their pockets
| verzali wrote:
| Yes, the real check on Trump isn't congress or the courts any
| more, it is the bond markets. It they get scared, he is in big
| trouble.
| belter wrote:
| You bet: https://www.aei.org/op-eds/donald-trump-needs-to-
| fear-the-bo...
|
| HN clearly not :-))
| kombine wrote:
| "In the coming weeks, the team is expected to enter IT systems at
| the CDC and Federal Aviation Administration, and it already has
| done so at NASA"
|
| If this isn't a glaring conflict of interest and corruption, I
| don't know what is.
| calrain wrote:
| Are they really just going to use this to train AI models, to
| build the 'GrokGovAI' models?
| dzdt wrote:
| Related to a comment on a now-flagged subthread: can anyone who
| believes that DOGE is uncovering fraud please post a reliable
| reference that gives a specific example of fraud uncovered by
| DOGE? To be clear, this should be a third-party analysis of some
| credibility, not DOGE's or Musk's twitter feed or "receipts"
| website which shows cancelled contracts with no clear link to
| fraudulent activity.
| onemoresoop wrote:
| They will twist the narrative and not provide any evidence. I
| appreciate your request but please don't be naive. Have you
| heard of trolling?
| xtiansimon wrote:
| I'm happy with a description of a higher standard than, say,
| a Reddit discussion.
| grobbyy wrote:
| There is widespread fraud in the government. It needs to be
| addressed. There is widespread inefficiency too.
|
| I think the people in DOGE have the skills and access to
| address it.
|
| I have no evidence that they are doing so, and some evidence
| of widespread loyalty tests which, while not identical,
| remind me of how Stalin came to power.
|
| However, absence if evidence is not evidence of absence, and
| some evidence is not the same as proof.
|
| I have dozens of explanations which fit the facts, and I
| don't have any way to determine which, if any, is correct.
| croes wrote:
| I bet much of this fraud benefits big donors of both
| parties.
|
| I doubt they will fix that
| abirch wrote:
| Some government jobs were basically UBI. They provided
| incomes in rural America.
| techorange wrote:
| This is sort of the group that interests me the most,
| there is some notion of the government as sort of an
| employer of last resort in some areas which is a
| progressive/liberal idea, though id imagine with the
| areas most impacted by offshoring these jobs are
| disproportionately in red / Trump supporting states.
|
| And even if you're ok with getting rid of these jobs, the
| biggest impact might not even be the loss of these jobs
| but the loss of the consumers who had these jobs spending
| money in their local communities.
| abirch wrote:
| In addition to the money that's spent, these people had
| great health insurance. This helped to subsidize rural
| hospitals. Between this and cuts to medicaid, more rural
| hospitals will close.
| grobbyy wrote:
| There's a lot of just plain simple fraud too. I've seen
| embassies issue visas only with bribes, or employees
| simply collect salaries without doing their jobs. As in
| you're hired to review documents by some legally mandated
| criteria, and they simply toss them into piles without
| even glancing at them and go home early.
|
| That benefits no one, except for the employee.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| I'm certain that happens, but that can't possibly be the
| trillion dollars they think they are going to save.
| croes wrote:
| Sure, but about what amount are we talking?
|
| Millions vs billions.
| lowercased wrote:
| > There is widespread fraud in the government.... There is
| widespread inefficiency too... I think the people in DOGE
| have the skills and access to address it.
|
| Given that just getting the names of the people involved in
| this process incurred Musk's wrath and accusations of
| criminal behaviour... how can you have any justified belief
| in people having 'skills' to address 'fraud' and
| 'inefficiency'?
|
| We'd need some common definition of 'fraud' in the first
| place. Many of the things that have been labelled
| 'corruption' seem to just be 'things Musk doesn't like'; I
| suspect 'fraud' would be similar.
|
| "Inefficiencies" - we have the Chesterton's Fence idea to
| illustrate that what might be 'inefficient' is intentional
| with an overall positive purpose. Again, define
| 'inefficiency'. The rate at which firings have been
| happening may certainly be 'efficient' from an operational
| standpoint, but having to scramble to rehire key people who
| shouldn't have been fired in the first place is
| 'inefficient' at best.
|
| > I have dozens of explanations which fit the facts, and I
| don't have any way to determine which, if any, is correct.
|
| I'm not sure we have enough verifiable 'facts' that can
| support many conclusions at all, and I think that 'fact'
| itself is evidence of intentionality in keeping the public
| in the dark about what's going on and why.
| oblio wrote:
| > I think the people in DOGE have the skills
|
| Do we know any of them? How many are accountants, auditors,
| etc, people with decades of experience with government
| affairs?
| lowercased wrote:
| Even trying to determine _who_ the workers were brought
| down threats of criminal prosecution and investigations.
| knicholes wrote:
| With LLMs, it's close to having someone with that
| experience and knowledge right there with you.
| redeux wrote:
| LLMs tend to be very naive in their outputs when you
| start asking for anything below surface level. If you ask
| it how to audit something, it'll probably give you a
| solid high level answer - look at a, b, c and try to
| build a narrative about how they relate and then look for
| deviance (I'm not an auditor and I didn't use an LLM for
| this). Once you start trying to look at the mechanics of
| how to actually do that, that's when it will start
| "hallucinating" or just generally swirl. It's the side
| effect of having a ton of training data on what something
| is but not much data on how to do it in practice.
|
| This may change at some point in the future, but I would
| hardly say that using an LLM is "close to having someone
| with that experience and knowledge," or maybe it is
| "close" but it isn't a substitute for "having" when
| dealing with serious topics.
| contagiousflow wrote:
| Knowledge of what exactly?
| knicholes wrote:
| The entire Internet and whatever context you provide to
| it. E.g. COBOL, standard auditing practices, step-by-step
| guidance on what to do next.
| contagiousflow wrote:
| I've found that when cross checked against my own
| expertise, LLMs have dubious "knowledge" at best.
| Trusting the output with anything you already don't know
| would just be Gell-Mann amnesia.
| Capricorn2481 wrote:
| I'm sure the 5 people investigating Musk's companies for
| wasteful spending were all fired because they were
| fraudulent.
| hcrisp wrote:
| The government itself self-reports $149B in "improper payments"
|
| https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/doge-musk-government-was...
| dse1982 wrote:
| So it was not uncovered by doge? and it is also not simply
| fraud? ,,Every year, agency reports posted online document
| billions in improper payments, which include fraud but also
| underpayments, duplicate payments, payments to ineligible
| recipients or for ineligible goods or services." (from the
| article you linked)
| SilverBirch wrote:
| The claims of fraud are a pretext for going into the agencies
| and making the partisan changes they wanted to make anyway.
| There's no point asking for a detailed discussion because the
| whole plan is to use the discussion of fraud as cover for the
| thing they're actually doing.
| clumsysmurf wrote:
| I think wired nailed it:
|
| "This is incompetence born of self-confidence. It's a
| familiar Silicon Valley mindset, the reason startups are
| forever reinventing a bus, or a bodega, or mail. It's the
| implacable certainty that if you're smart at one thing you
| must be smart at all of the things."
|
| "And if you don't believe in the public good? You sprint
| through the ruination. You metastasize from agency to agency,
| leveling the maximum allowable destruction under the law.
| DOGE's costly, embarrassing mistakes are a byproduct of
| reckless nihilism; if artificial intelligence can sell you a
| pizza, of course it can future-proof the General Services
| Administration.
|
| https://www.wired.com/story/doge-incompetence-mistakes-
| featu...
| chatmasta wrote:
| It's marketed as "fraud, waste and abuse."
|
| The top-line summaries are definitely consistent with "waste."
| Probably some of them have more nuance when you dig deeper, but
| does anyone disagree that there is _not_ waste in the
| government?
|
| Fraud and abuse are less clear. But it's also difficult to
| ascertain the legitimacy of payments when they're leaving
| treasury on checks with no memo or reference, and they're
| compared to "do not pay" lists that lack frequent updates.
|
| Here are some of my opinions, as someone who is mostly
| supportive of the effort but also realistic about its outcomes
| and risks:
|
| 1. The people voted for smaller government, and if the
| executive doesn't have the power to reduce the size of its own
| bureaucracy, then there is no check on ever-expanding
| government. The executive must have full authority to examine
| all data produced by itself.
|
| 2. Federal spending on salary, agencies and operations is a
| drop in the bucket compared to entitlements and defense budget.
| Slashing jobs and even deleting entire agencies will not make a
| significant dent in the deficit. But if DOGE can really cut $1
| trillion by end of year, it will have positive knock-on effects
| in the bond market.
|
| 3. Entitlements shouldn't be treated with same bull-in-a-china
| shop approach as the current one towards agencies.
|
| 4. Social security probably has some fraud but I doubt it's
| significant and is better resolved by identifying and punishing
| retroactively. Most of the "150 year old people" problems are
| exaggerated or outright wrong. However, it's worrying that a
| system of age-based payouts has such uncertainty in its data.
|
| 5. It's widely known there is significant fraud in Medicaid and
| Medicare. The true volume of this fraud is unknown and any
| effort to quantify it would be welcomed. But while fraudulent
| claims may be an issue, the real problem is unaccountable
| pricing of the healthcare system that allows for "legitimate"
| claims to cost more than any sane person would pay out of
| pocket.
|
| 6. In general, "if nothing breaks, you're not cutting enough"
| is obviously true. But it does not follow that "things
| breaking" is an acceptable cost to pay. The approach needs to
| come with a well-defined rubric for evaluating not only "what
| to cut," but also "which cuts to rollback."
| michaericalribo wrote:
| So, no third party source.
| tbihl wrote:
| So, you would like another independent non-government
| entity with full access so they can evaluate DOGE? Like a
| DO(DOGE)E?
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| Yes. Exactly. It's checks and balances.
|
| The 'right' are all about being open. If something is
| being cut, or fired, then publish those finding openly.
| Make the data public, for open review.
|
| Funny how all of a sudden "we need to keep what we are
| doing secrete" is a fine argument.
|
| Otherwise you are just putting in place a new 'Deep
| State'. Guess that is fine and dandy now.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| That shouldn't be necessary. Just literally any
| independent source corroborating the claims. I would also
| be immensely interested in that.
| alabastervlog wrote:
| It'd be cool if we still had the independent IGs in place
| to make sure everything's on the up-and-up. That would
| definitely make me feel better about this.
|
| But one of the first things Trump did was fire a bunch of
| them. Blatantly illegally, because of course that's how
| he'd do it.
| lowercased wrote:
| > However, it's worrying that a system of age-based payouts
| has such uncertainty in its data.
|
| The data itself may have to be interpreted, which I would
| classify as 'suboptimal', but seemingly 'normal' for most
| projects I work with. I often have to join together various
| tables, remembering to include or exclude specific data via
| conditional logic. The conditional logic may be context-
| dependent, and documenting those cases is really key. Why
| include/exclude specific subsets of data to answer questions
| XYZ? Have those criteria changed over the years (and if so,
| why?)
|
| Looking at raw data tables it's often quite easy to come up
| with ways to show the data to support whatever case you're
| trying to make.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| Every large organization needs reviews/audits to find waste.
| I think the problem with the 'right' is the idea that because
| there is waste, then government is evil and we should abolish
| it.
|
| But, every organization accumulates waste, and then needs to
| have a review process to make corrections. The whole burn it
| all down is pretty immature take on leadership.
|
| Every corporation has waste, and bloated salaries,
| entitlements (the bosses son doesn't do much but has fat
| salary). Should DOGE go in and cut them also?
| dzdt wrote:
| > The top-line summaries are definitely consistent with
| "waste."
|
| Can you give a reference for an analysis of some cancelled
| contract or program that illustrates your point that it was
| wasteful spending? I'm looking for something that explains
| what the contract or program did beyond the 10-word title of
| the appropriations document saying something like "DEIA
| Training". (I work for a big private corporation and we also
| have such training, and I don't think from the corporate
| perspective its waste; I strongly suspect they attempt to
| balance the spend on that training to the cost reduction on
| lawsuit payouts. And especially from the government
| perspective, harm reduction should also be accounted
| separately from pure cost considerations.)
| sightbroke wrote:
| > But if DOGE can really cut $1 trillion by end of year, it
| will have positive knock-on effects in the bond market.
|
| It will certainly be interesting to see how the US economy
| will be affected by $1 trillion less money circulating.
|
| How and why would this produce positive knock-on effects in
| the bond market?
| hx8 wrote:
| I presume the idea of $1 trillion less bonds being issues
| would decrease supply and decrease the price we need to
| charge. (More demand for the same supply decreases bond
| prices). This would have the impact of reducing the
| interest payments in the federal budget, which is becoming
| burdensome.
|
| I personally am just as worried that reducing US gov
| spending will worsen a potential 2025 or 2026 recession
| (which might lower rates...)
| Symmetry wrote:
| With regards to (4), it's been well known for a while that
| since Social Security doesn't check the payments being made
| into the program with any sort of scrutiny illegal immigrants
| can often get away with giving the social security numbers of
| dead people to their employers. Here's an article from 2024
| that mentions the problem.
|
| https://bipartisanpolicy.org/explainer/immigration-social-
| se...
|
| From a policy perspective making it harder for illegal
| immigrants to be employed might make it worth cracking down
| on this. But doing so would cost the government money both by
| preventing these payments into Social Security that don't
| have to be paid out and also the cost of the crackdown
| itself.
| cha42 wrote:
| If I may:
|
| Their is a huge conflict of ingerest of giving this power to
| a major economical actor that vastly depends on public
| investment and under public scrutinity.
|
| Executive should have the audit right and in some measure
| probably it should be widespread to all citizens up to
| sensitive data not being leaked. But what good is there to
| give this power solely to one of the richest and more
| powerful man in the world? This is crazy.
| throw0101c wrote:
| > _1. The people voted for smaller government_ [...]
|
| The people voted for President and the people voted for
| Congress. If Congress, who under the US Constitution controls
| the purse, votes for a level of "X" spending why does the
| President get to decide to spend <X?
|
| > _6. In general, "if nothing breaks, you're not cutting
| enough" is obviously true._
|
| It is _not_ obviously true. Because what you 're cutting may
| be resiliency.
|
| To use a tech analogy: if I have two firewalls in an HA
| configuration, then decommissioning one to save on support
| costs will not break things... until the first one goes
| belly-up and there's no failover.
|
| There's a reasonable argument to be made that more government
| capacity is actually needed (at least in certain sectors):
|
| * https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/america-needs-a-bigger-
| better-...
|
| The IRS for example would probably do better with more
| resources:
|
| > _That's one reason that five former commissioners of IRS,
| Republican and Democrat, have argued eloquently that
| additional IRS resources would create a fairer tax system.
| The logic is simple. Fewer resources for the IRS mean reduced
| enforcement of tax laws. Though the tax code has become more
| complex, prior to the IRA real resources of the IRS had been
| cut by about 23 percent from 2010 to 2021._
|
| * https://taxpolicycenter.org/taxvox/cutting-irs-resources-
| and...
|
| > _Congress asked the IRS to report on why it audits the poor
| more than the affluent. Its response is that it doesn't have
| enough money and people to audit the wealthy properly. So
| it's not going to._
|
| * https://www.propublica.org/article/irs-sorry-but-its-just-
| ea...
| runako wrote:
| > 1. The people voted for smaller government, and if the
| executive doesn't have the power to reduce the size of its
| own bureaucracy, then there is no check on ever-expanding
| government.
|
| Congress specifies the size of most government bodies through
| its Article 1 power of Appropriation. The Executive's job is
| to administer what the People's delegates have decided to do.
| Deciding how much to spend is not the President job, and
| never has been.
|
| The Republican Congress that was also presumably just elected
| to reduce government can at any time send legislation to the
| Republican President that will reduce the size of government;
| in fact, they are working on a budget bill right now. They
| are free to restructure government as much as they want,
| because Congress has been explicitly vested with that power.
|
| A lot of people don't like this, but the Constitution is very
| clear on this point. It's also quite readable; you can read
| it yourself and verify that I am not making this up!
| mrguyorama wrote:
| >1. The people voted for smaller government, and if the
| executive doesn't have the power to reduce the size of its
| own bureaucracy, then there is no check on ever-expanding
| government. The executive must have full authority to examine
| all data produced by itself.
|
| The people should educate themselves then. The way to reduce
| the budget is to elect different congresspeople. We did this
| in the 90s. It sure is funny how insistent all these people
| are that we can't just do what we've done before. Are they
| children who didn't live through the deficit hawk era?
|
| 2. "Their claim is impossible, but if they did it, that would
| be great"
|
| 4. "However, it's worrying that a system of age-based payouts
| has such uncertainty in its data."
|
| SS payouts ARE NOT based on age, but "eligibility", which age
| is an input to. The government purposely keeps very gentle
| records on it's citizens because once we saw a country keep
| really good records on it's people and then Bad Things
| happened, and also stuff about the mark of the beast. More
| importantly, the government takes a light touch to data
| integrity because _the data doesn 't matter_. If you say you
| are eligible for benefits, the data says no, you can verify
| your eligibility a lot of ways and the data does not get
| updated, because we aren't supposed to be a surveillance
| state like that. If you want to update your records with the
| government, you can contact the Social Security admin and do
| it that way. One of the things Social Security pays out for
| is Ex Spouses, and that includes Abusive Ex Spouses. Your
| Abusive Ex I'm sure would love if the SS admin had accurate
| records about where they can find you. This is a legitimate
| concern that people working in government have had to address
| regularly.
|
| 5. Define significant. "Everyone thinks X" is a stupid
| heuristic when ONLY 47% of the country can even name the
| three branches of government. I don't care what Tim or Sasha
| think of medicare fraud, I care what GAO or an AG say about
| medicare fraud.
|
| 6. "if nothing breaks, you're not cutting enough" is
| obviously true. Nope. Sometimes you just cannot recognize the
| breaks right away. The stricken vessel can keep going for
| quite some time before fully sinking. Cutting until shit
| breaks means you have to figure out _what else is broken but
| not obviously so_
|
| And all this nonsense is shattered anyway when the basic
| premise of "Reducing the debt" is horseshit, which you can
| see from the tax plan being pushed.
| babycheetahbite wrote:
| I am shocked, and overjoyed, that this post has not been
| downvoted; well said.
| miohtama wrote:
| One month (2 weeks?) is too early to tell if something will be
| uncovered, so there are no examples yet.
| dzdt wrote:
| If it is too early for them to have uncovered a meaningful
| understanding about what the contracts/programs/employees are
| doing, why is it also not too early for the contracts to be
| cancelled/programs ended/employees fired?
| CyrsBel wrote:
| CAT should audit DOGE.
| scottcha wrote:
| WSJ reports today that the gao Itself reported 140 billion in
| improper payments. https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/doge-
| musk-government-was...
|
| This is based on their statistics so I imagine the next step is
| to find the actual waste and fraud and stop it or get the money
| back.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Fraud means anything that they don't like.
| chasing wrote:
| If they were actually trying to eliminate waste, they'd be
| working in tandem with these departments instead of just
| trashing them.
|
| More broadly: People who care about improving things move
| carefully and deliberately and involve all stakeholders. They
| are open and transparent and they _listen_. Trump and Musk are
| exhibiting horrible leadership skills because they do not care
| about improving things. Trump wants to hurt his perceived
| enemies and feel like he's a big smart boss man. Musk wants to
| be the first trillionaire. That's the start and end of it.
| greenie_beans wrote:
| i hope they try to use cjis data bc it's taken me 6 months to
| build a system that is technically compliant and it still doesn't
| fully pass. they definitely will fail the data security policy
| requirements.
| mrbigbob wrote:
| This isnt a dig at you but something i have noticed over the
| last few weeks. People keep saying X/Y wont be able to do
| something because of rules, laws, requirements and i have to
| keep reminding people rules/laws are only as good as those
| willing to enforce them
| greenie_beans wrote:
| fair point! i guess it does sound like an inept democrat lol.
|
| though you don't wanna fuck with the fbi
| https://le.fbi.gov/cjis-division/cjis-security-policy-
| resour...
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| The FBI reports to the president. They aren't going to stop
| anything.
| greenie_beans wrote:
| well, at least they are trying:
| https://www.justsecurity.org/wp-
| content/uploads/2025/02/fbi-...
| mrayycombi wrote:
| I think I have a hunch what Trump is going to do next.
|
| He's going to fill these fired probationary workers with new
| loyal probationary workers hand picked by him.
|
| He will then make these new probationary workers in charge of the
| agency.
|
| If they don't do what he wants, they can be fired at will.
| Loughla wrote:
| I disagree. He'll wait until things start breaking, use that as
| more reason that government isn't effective, and start selling
| the parts to new, different contractors.
|
| I legitimately believe his reasoning is money and ego pumping.
| But mostly money.
|
| This is basic disaster economics, but with a self-made disaster
| instead of a natural disaster.
| mrayycombi wrote:
| I don't disagree, I think some disasters will be or are being
| made.
|
| However, he needs these groups to some extent to roll back
| regulations. He can't be assured existing people will play
| ball.
|
| So with hand picked cronies with no job security pushed to
| run the show over the ones with some job security he can push
| for deregulation.
|
| If disasters happen along the way he can blame Brandon er
| Biden, etc and sell a heroic fix for profits.
| imperial_march wrote:
| Yes, good.
| kardianos wrote:
| I actually believe the executive branch should actually control
| the executive branch.
| nxobject wrote:
| I, on the other hand, would prefer the executive branch to have
| a modicum of process and transparency when trying to access
| private information, as opposed to learning of things a week
| after the fact from leaks.
| kardianos wrote:
| Is that your preference or what the constitution says?
| bullfightonmars wrote:
| The presidency is not a monarchy! The president might be
| commander-in-chief but it can't just order random people killed
| just because he is "in charge" of the military. There are laws
| and layers of control saying who can do what. These laws are on
| the books and are being completely ignored!
|
| Most of this power is vested in congress whom is abdicating
| their power.
| kardianos wrote:
| In a sense, I agree.
|
| The president should not be able to declare war without an
| act of Congress. The constitution grants the power to make
| law to congress, but then congress has enacted many laws
| which create agencies under the executive branch, which in
| turns empowers the executive branch.
|
| So I agree that Congress should make/repeal laws that reduce
| the size of the executive branch so that only necessary
| powers are entrusted to the executive branch.
|
| However, until that day comes, the separation of powers is
| the Legislative, Judicial, and Executive. Within the
| executive, inward looking (not external like killing people),
| yeah, the president and his appointed cabinet should have
| control. Without that control, you are defining an
| unaccountable form of government.
| electrondood wrote:
| Then you should likewise believe that the legislative branch
| should continue to determine how funds are allocated, and which
| agencies and departments are created and continue to function.
|
| Let's not be disingenuous.
| TeaBrain wrote:
| I don't think these two things necessarily go hand in hand.
| If the head of the executive branch should have absolute
| control over the branch, as the above user suggested, then if
| congress wants to control government agencies that are
| currently in the executive branch, those agencies should be
| placed outside of the executive into a different category
| that is either under the legislative branch or shared with
| the executive. In the status quo, all of the large government
| agencies being cut by DOGE are technically under the
| executive.
| thrownaway561 wrote:
| I honestly have not a single idea why there wasn't this type of
| department before monitoring and auditing everything.
| thesuperbigfrog wrote:
| >> I honestly have not a single idea why there wasn't this type
| of department before monitoring and auditing everything.
|
| You mean like the Government Accountability Office? [1] Or the
| dozens of Inspector Generals at most agencies? [2]
|
| [1] https://www.gao.gov/
|
| [2] https://www.oversight.gov/where-report-fraud-waste-abuse-
| or-...
|
| The US federal government has lots of laws, agencies, and
| procedures to address, investigate, and remediate fraud, waste,
| and abuse.
| Capricorn2481 wrote:
| It's like people think every agency just got infinite money
| until Musk came in.
| thrownaway561 wrote:
| And they have been doing a bang up job. Bottom line is that
| this sort of transparency was needed in the last
| administration.
| popularrecluse wrote:
| Chump
| imperial_march wrote:
| Because then they would have found the fraud, and some very
| powerful people would be out of money....
| UI_at_80x24 wrote:
| Why not just say they have root access? 'god mode' is a
| ridiculous expression and just obscures the truth. I
| get that some people need information dumbed down but this is
| pathetic.
| ck2 wrote:
| Federal level government is not a startup
|
| Breaking things will destroy lives if not literally kill people
|
| If it was this "easy" someone would have made a proposal years
| ago even if it was turned down
|
| And Congress, not ANY President controls spending
|
| We do not elect Kings in this country, there was an entire very
| brutal war to make it that way
|
| This data is going to leak if it's not copied already into
| insecure sources and every foreign adversary is going to have it
|
| Cannot be undone
|
| And there should be investigations and prosecutions for this to
| prevent it ever happening again by ANY President
| MyneOutside wrote:
| Well put and straight to the point.
| KittenInABox wrote:
| > Breaking things will destroy lives if not literally kill
| people
|
| It is already killing people. They fired people giving out food
| and medicine. They fired people on suicide hotlines. And of
| course, people have been killing themselves in response to
| being fired.
| myflash13 wrote:
| Well, it is a government agency tasked with audits. Why shouldn't
| it have root access?
| barkerja wrote:
| Therein lies the problem: it's not a government agency, at
| least not without Congressional approval.
| djaychela wrote:
| Is it an actual government agency? From what I've (casually)
| read, it's an ad-hoc thing that isn't actually genuinely
| legitimate, from that standpoint?
| mexicocitinluez wrote:
| It's not. But pseudo-intellects and idiots are still under
| Elon's spell.
| redeux wrote:
| Technically DOGE is part of the United States Digital Service
| (USDS)
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| >> Is it an actual government agency?
|
| Yes. In 2014, after the disastrous rollout of the
| Healthcare.gov site, President Obama created the "United
| States Digital Service" (USDS). Its stated mission was to
| modernize technology and improve efficiency across all US
| departments and agencies.
|
| President Trump renamed the USDS to the "United States DOGE
| Service" (USDS) and created a temporary "Department of
| Government Efficiency" (DOGE) organization within the USDS
| that will operate until July 4, 2026.
|
| Every US government agency is required to establish a DOGE
| team within that agency to work with the USDS to "improve the
| quality and efficiency of government-wide software, network
| infrastructure, and information technology (IT) systems".
| snvzz wrote:
| >Is it an actual government agency?
|
| Yes. With full support from the recently democratically
| elected president of the united states.
| michaelt wrote:
| Your employer is being audited. An unaccompanied stranger
| wearing a visitor pass comes up to your desk. He says "Hello
| I'm the password security auditor, tell me your password so I
| can make sure it's secure"
|
| Will your company fail the audit if _don 't_ hand over the
| information?
|
| Or will your company fail the audit if if you _do_ hand it
| over?
| pembrook wrote:
| You've clearly never been audited by the federal government.
|
| In the case of the IRS, generally, you must hand over the
| data they request or you go to jail.
|
| Whether or not it's behind a password protected internal
| system is irrelevant. Everything is potentially material to
| any conspiracy to commit tax fraud.
|
| I see no reason why the Federal government itself, which
| works for us, should not be subject to reciprocal treatment.
| preciousoo wrote:
| Big difference between the IRS and random friends of the
| President. Congressional Acts is one
| pembrook wrote:
| Federal government can audit and wiretap citizens,
| citizens should be able to audit and wiretap the Federal
| government.
| catlifeonmars wrote:
| I'd prefer it if random citizens don't have access to my
| personal information, that happens to be stored in
| federal government systems. Especially without any
| guarantees or regulations around the access.
| pembrook wrote:
| Bad news, there's a spreadsheet of every Americans SSN,
| Residential Address, and more widely available with a bit
| of googling.
|
| It's currently being passed around Lagos on zip drives as
| we speak, and has been for years.
| preciousoo wrote:
| Good old security by full data disclosure. Are you
| available for CISO positions by any chance? Your methods
| are revolutionary
| dgfitz wrote:
| That is unfortunate. The point was refuted so you attack
| the messenger.
| preciousoo wrote:
| > Good old security by full data disclosure
| barkerja wrote:
| Your position is any citizen should be able to access the
| private information of any other citizen? Because that is
| in essence what "wiretapping the Federal government"
| would lead to.
|
| Personal privacy aside, how are secrets imperative to
| national security protected if you allow full audits by
| any American citizen?
| pembrook wrote:
| That's not what I said.
|
| Musk is roughly as democratically elected as the average
| IRS bureaucrat (arguably more so, since the guy auditing
| you most certainly never appeared on the campaign trail),
| so I view it as a wash.
| skyyler wrote:
| Which is a good reason we don't have average IRS
| bureaucrats behind the resolute desk, right?
| vlovich123 wrote:
| I agree as long as all of that flows through the courts,
| since by law that's what's required of the federal
| government. The FOIA mechanism is the mechanism we have
| today to audit and wiretap the government although it's
| generally quite weak. That's NOT what's happening here.
| mexicocitinluez wrote:
| This is an idea you just made up to defend this BS.
|
| Like, audit's require root access? What? Is this real life? Are
| people just making things up and saying whatever to defend
| someone who has no allegiance to this country getting the keys
| to the kingdom while also coincidentally making a fortune off
| of taxpayers through federal subsidies? Are you slow?
| catlifeonmars wrote:
| Usually, you do not hand out "root access" to auditors.
| Auditors are there to gather information (e.g to audit) and
| report.
|
| In general, you don't give out broadly permissive access to
| sensitive systems because people (yes even incredibly competent
| people) are prone to getting confused or mistyping and you
| really don't want anyone deleting the entire database at the
| drop of a hat because they didn't have enough coffee that
| morning and were logged into the wrong system.
| chasing wrote:
| Not a government agency.
| Volundr wrote:
| > Well, it is a government agency tasked with audits. Why
| shouldn't it have root access?
|
| Why should it? I've participated in a number of audits. None of
| them involved giving the auditors root access. They get read-
| only access to exactly what they need and nothing more, if they
| get access at all. Oftentimes it's the people with access
| pulling data based on what they request.
| whymeogod wrote:
| No, it is not a government agency.
|
| No, it is not tasked with audits. It is not performing any
| audit before its actions, nor is it producing anything
| resembling an audit.
|
| No, audits do not require root access. And in fact root access
| (the ability to change data) contradicts audit best practices.
| Bhilai wrote:
| Just curious: have you ever been a part of any audit? May be at
| your workplace or a tax audit?
| sebastianconcpt wrote:
| Nice :)
| josefritzishere wrote:
| Doooooooooooooooooooooooom
| redeux wrote:
| Does anyone else see the eery comparison between the name DOGE
| (department of government efficiency) and the things Orwell
| warned about in 1984? It seems very prescient, but I know this
| isn't the first time in history that regimes have played this
| game.
| dennis_jeeves2 wrote:
| It did cross my mind ( like ministry of truth in 1984). But I
| suspect it's just a coincidence. Overall I think, in my
| judgement DM/EM have been transparent, at least significantly
| more than their detractors.
| gattr wrote:
| Perhaps the whole situation will finally convince the "I don't
| mind, I have nothing to hide" crowd about the need to scrutinize
| & limit as much as reasonably possible the personal data
| collection and retention by government and other entities. What
| good are rules, statutes, checks & balances, passwords and ACLs,
| if at some point someone you don't like or trust can just come in
| "as a root" and circumvent everything?
| nerdponx wrote:
| The "I don't mind, I have nothing to hide" people are cheering
| this on. They don't know or care about any of the things you
| just said.
| ToValueFunfetti wrote:
| Do you have cause to believe "nothing to hide" is a partisan
| position? I'd expect that half of such people are on the left
| and are critical by default of the new administration. Seems
| to be supported by the second chart here:
| https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2023/10/18/how-
| american...
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| It's a position held by extremists on both sides and the
| natural ally of extermists, the lazy.
| ToValueFunfetti wrote:
| I also find this a bit suspect- the more extreme you are,
| the more likely you are to have something to hide. The
| extreme left is well aware of the way communists and
| hippies were treated through the 20th century, while the
| extreme right has been subject to a lesser version in the
| 21st and are very skeptical of intelligence agencies.
| Moderates seem much more likely to trust institutions and
| accept the status quo.
|
| I have no idea how to investigate this empirically,
| though.
| nyeah wrote:
| They will care when they personally get badly screwed.
| chrz wrote:
| They will not know that theyre screwed because media will
| tell them theyre doing great
| flycaliguy wrote:
| Best angle with that crowd is that insurance companies are
| going to screw them over with all the data.
| phreeza wrote:
| I'm not so sure there is complete overlap, there were plenty
| of pro national security democrats.
| dtquad wrote:
| You can be pro national security and pro privacy.
| duped wrote:
| The "I don't have anything to hide" argument usually misses
| that you can't know today what you should be hiding from the
| government tomorrow.
|
| You have everything to hide by default and the onus is on every
| actor to prove why they need information and how it's isolated
| from other information.
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| Such as your genetic ancestry
| electrondood wrote:
| The "I have nothing to hide" perspective on privacy is
| immediately revealed as disingenuous when you ask them to place
| a web cam in their shower.
|
| Privacy clearly is valuable for it's own sake.
| nielsbot wrote:
| i like to ask those people "fine, but do have shades on your
| windows? i mean if you have nothing to hide..."
| redsparrow wrote:
| "I have nothing to hide" really misses the point of what
| privacy is for. I don't close the door when I'm taking a crap
| because I have something to hide, I do it for privacy.
|
| Also, blackmail isn't the only way to have personal or intimate
| information used against you. As the absolutely massive
| advertising industry can tell you, knowing more details about
| people makes them easier to influence and manipulate.
| CyrsBel wrote:
| This is an interesting side effect indeed. The people I know
| irl who have espoused this view are, ironically, the people who
| never liked Elon Musk in the first place. It'll be interesting
| to see how their narrative evolves now, if at all, as they
| stare at a practical example which contradicts them!
| rich_sasha wrote:
| It's a bit of a straw man. I might get labelled as part of that
| group. But in reality, I have nothing to hide _given_ a search
| warrant of my digital data, issued by a court in accordance to
| tight privacy-respecting laws. And I am happy the bandwidth-
| limited court can issue these against me, and against everyone
| around me, as opposed to no data ever being available for
| anyone.
|
| That's quite different to Musk's minions taking a DB dump onto
| a USB stick.
| 542354234235 wrote:
| I don't have anything to hide but I still close the door when I
| take a dump.
| nyeah wrote:
| I fear that only very bitter experience will convince those
| folks.
| kardianos wrote:
| 1. I don't want the federal government to know much about me.
|
| 2. I think the federal government executive branch should be
| able to control itself and inspect itself.
| Aaronstotle wrote:
| Good reminder of why people should be wary of governments
| collecting data because this a stark reminder that the
| government can change at any time.
| sepositus wrote:
| For some people, it literally changes based on the
| administration. We need to teach people to always be skeptical
| of government overreach, no matter who is in office.
| torpfactory wrote:
| Hear me out. Elon wants ultimate control over people's lives and
| choices. Why he would want this is a psychological question about
| which we can only speculate. This is a change from (at least in
| appearance) his previous libertarian leanings. Whatever the case,
| this is the plan:
|
| 1) Acquire god mode access to government systems and citizens
| information (contacting, grants, spending, taxes, SSI benefits,
| you name it).
|
| 2) Add features to the Treasury Department's software to allow
| him to, with extremely high granularity, control what payments go
| out. Friends can be rewarded, enemies punished. At first it will
| take the form of government entities he doesn't like (USAID, for
| example). Next will be government opposition in our federal
| system, mostly blue cities and states with whom he disagrees.
| Next will be large private entities with whom he disagrees or are
| business competitors. Finally, individuals opposing him or the
| government will be personally targeted (for example, by not
| paying SSI benefits or paying out tax returns, perhaps extended
| to family members of the opposition, etc). These individual
| sanctions could extend to large geographic area he dislikes (all
| of coastal California, for example). He's putting in place the
| tools to accomplish this right now as we speak.
|
| 3) Fire all bureaucratic opposition elements who might prevent
| this. Dress it up as a government efficiency measure if you like.
|
| 4) Eventually they will pressure large (and maybe small, too)
| private financial institutions to take part in this scheme (they
| may have already succeeded, see Citibank and NYC federal funding
| for migrants).
|
| He's putting in place the tools for total control by controlling
| access to money and resources. I don't exactly know what he plans
| to do with them but I don't want to find out given constant
| interaction with racists and neo nazis on his site.
| nprateem wrote:
| It's pretty obvious isn't it? Trump stacked the Supreme Court
| the first time round which turned out to be the best thing he
| ever did.
|
| Now they'll control payments to defund opponents as well as
| sacking anyone who doesn't support them to gain total loyalty.
| In fact, the way they're doing this is clever: Sack and then
| make former colleagues compete to be rehired. That way they'll
| feel extra grateful to have a job and will toe the line in
| future.
|
| I expect they'll use this data for leverage against opponents
| in future. They probably haven't decided how yet, which is why
| they're in hoover mode. Loot the systems quick while they still
| can.
|
| But it's ok. Half the US thinks there's nothing to worry about.
| Good luck getting fair elections ever again.
| thechao wrote:
| The plans were laid down with "Red Map" in 2010, and
| reinforced in 2020: this is control of the GOP "at the base"
| via gerrymandering and primary control. It means that the
| individual representatives no longer control their own
| districts since a central authority (Trump) can easily out
| primary the individual representatives if they don't toe-the-
| line. One of the non-obvious impacts of the 2010 gerrymander
| we learned was that the populace actually votes _roughly_ in
| line at the state-level as they do at the district level;
| this means you can use the district-level gerrymander to
| control Senate-level seats. This has bought the GOP a ~+3-+8
| bias in the Senate.
| ncr100 wrote:
| You are not alone in this supposition.
|
| I believe it's called an autogolpe as Trump is supporting him
| in this.
| imperial_march wrote:
| I think what is worse is people literally driven insane by the
| psyops that bad been running for last few years.
|
| Documentation found of US agencies funding psyops to basically
| crush critical thinking skills and scream what their handlers
| want them to scream. "Hate the smoke detector, not the fire!"
|
| For this situation, that these agencies and their psyops have
| put you in, you have my greatest sympathy.
| theflimflamguy wrote:
| Move fast and break things meets root kernel access to
| government.
|
| What could go wrong?
| pkdpic wrote:
| Is this the sort of data that could be useful in training LLMs or
| in terms of demographic data that would be valuable to
| advertisers?
| erellsworth wrote:
| I'm certain it's both.
| lithos wrote:
| DMVs already sell your demographics and contact information to
| advertisers. Along with attempts at making this illegal being
| stopped by Washington (IE Washington considers it their free
| speech to call you with the bought information).
| gcr wrote:
| Imagine: if you dunk on Elon on Twitter now he could get mad and
| post your tax return in the replies
| lucasyvas wrote:
| Because there are bigger fish to fry, I think people don't
| appreciate the sheer cost of the system rebuild that will be
| required for security reasons later.
|
| There's absolutely no telling what additional software has been
| installed alongside existing, or which systems have been modified
| that would require audit. Purging this will be an absolute
| fucking nightmare to the American taxpayer.
|
| This may turn into one of the most significant IT incidents in
| world history.
| laserbeam wrote:
| And there's no telling how many backups they compromised (let's
| be generous and assume backups exist).
| thih9 wrote:
| > The team could then feed this classified information into AI
| tools, either for training purposes or to mine the data for
| insights. (Members of DOGE already reportedly have put
| sensitive data from the Education Department into AI software.)
|
| Perhaps it's cheaper to assume everything leaked or will leak
| soon.
| lucasyvas wrote:
| Even if you were to argue AI systems would eventually have a
| place in government, which they almost certainly would have
| anyway long term, the sheer carelessness and lack of
| oversight of its implementation by a private citizen and
| group of individuals of proven, questionable ethics is enough
| reason in itself to have to burn the forest down.
|
| Thinking of it objectively, almost nobody here can say they
| would stand for this at any company they worked at or ran.
| This is not an acceptable IT practice no matter which side of
| the fence you are currently sitting on - allowing an unvetted
| entity to modify your internal systems without audit or
| oversight is completely absurd.
| CyrsBel wrote:
| You are correct. And the nonchalant way in which the
| leaders who are supposed to oversee this thing are treating
| it is appalling. It will have consequences during mid-terms
| and beyond. It is clear that some people believe elected
| office to mean that they are then given authority and
| rights with which to increase in...being voyeurs rather
| than visionaries???
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| > nobody here can say they would stand for this at any
| company they worked at or ran
|
| This is what leaves me incredulous about so many people
| here defending this. I've been on this site daily for how
| many years I don't know but the one thing that has been
| consistent is the security idea that an outside entity
| gaining physical access to your server means that it is
| irreparably compromised, and that it should be treated as a
| liability and re-built from the ground up. But somehow it's
| fine if it's public data in a federal database?
| lucasyvas wrote:
| Thank you for citing that because it is really the basis
| of my point. It is meant to be apolitical and to
| demonstrate that we are not OK with this otherwise so
| shouldn't be now.
| gunian wrote:
| i love when we pretend the NSA is dumb makes my day :)
| CyrsBel wrote:
| Yes. Even if DOGE is operating without any ill intent, and I
| don't think they have ill intent, the possibility of errors
| alone is massive and they need to slow down.
|
| https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/02/17/trum...
| lucasyvas wrote:
| I thank you for highlighting that the intent isn't actually
| the problem. I do feel the opposite to you but I'm happy you
| can see the practice itself is not acceptable / is a bad
| practice.
| dmix wrote:
| You mean misunderstanding the data, coming to the wrong
| conclusions, etc? Data science always has an issue with
| bullshit KPIs, shallow depth of statistics, and mostly
| mangling stuff keeping the manager happy. Still it's much
| better than not having any data analysis.
|
| Whether it benefits from being in a single datalake idk. We
| really don't know how the operations are being done, we're
| mostly just reacting to news reports and outside guessing.
|
| I'm assuming it will be basically how Palantir works in
| government health care and intelligence agencies where they
| aggregate multiple data sources from a bunch of old and new
| databases and have complex analytical tools on top.
| amarcheschi wrote:
| This time you're not dealing with a data scientist, you're
| dealing with someone who willingly spews lies, those
| situations aren't comparable
|
| Furthermore, another comment went in depth about how
| boosting the irs and following other agencies guidelines
| would have had a positive return, but none of this
| happened. On the contrary, we're seeing agencies such as
| the irs being infiltrated by this thing that resembles a
| metastasis
| CyrsBel wrote:
| In the abundance of precaution, DOGE should indeed be
| quarantined and all its work reviewed. CAT should be
| operating alongside DOGE to review everything.
| watwut wrote:
| There is no reason to think they don't have ill intent.
| mandmandam wrote:
| And many, many reasons to think that in fact they do. See
| my favorites for flagged stories about the DOGE staff.
|
| Even their stated reason - to fund trillions in tax cuts
| for the .1% [0] - is heinous. Inequality is already
| breaking the economy. 4.5 trillion dollars ($13k for each
| and every American) being transferred to the yacht class
| _will_ inflict generational harm.
|
| 0 -
| https://www.usnews.com/news/us/articles/2025-01-10/trump-
| tax...
| nprateem wrote:
| The Mump playbook relies on wild exaggeration.
|
| In this case Musk reckons he can save $2tn which some
| (better informed) analysts are saying is bollocks.
|
| In fact, it's cover to let him destroy/neuter agencies
| they don't like and get endless material to pressurise
| any opponents.
|
| One positive though: if there is any alien tech, Musky
| will find it. You can bet that's high on his list, as
| improbable as it may be.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > In this case Musk reckons he can save $2tn which some
| (better informed) analysts are saying is bollocks.
|
| A lot of this depends on how you measure. For example,
| there are a lot of social assistance programs that
| provide in-kind benefits (e.g. you get subsidized
| housing) and those programs both require a bureaucracy to
| administer them and are less efficient than cash transfer
| payments, so they could be converted into refundable tax
| credits. Then the program costs somewhat less (you
| eliminate the administrative bureaucracy) and is more
| efficient and with better outcomes, but you can count the
| entire cost of the program as a reduction because it's
| now a tax credit (i.e. a tax cut) instead of a government
| budget item.
|
| Do that with the entire social assistance system and you
| could get a sizable budget reduction before you even get
| into overpriced government contracts etc.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Even the theory that the executive can just not spend
| money it finds wasteful doesn't extend to the executive
| being able to unilaterally reconfigure an in-kind
| assistance program into a refundable tax credit.
| Admittedly, an even bigger grab of dictatorial power is
| not out of character for this administration, though.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| Oh, they couldn't reconfigure those programs by executive
| order. But they could reasonably be doing this to _find_
| ways to reduce the budget and then pass new legislation
| through Congress.
| NickC25 wrote:
| >One positive though: if there is any alien tech, Musky
| will find it. You can bet that's high on his list, as
| improbable as it may be.
|
| That tech has been handed over to the private sector as a
| precaution and also as a method of keeping the
| politicians' hands off it. Gives them cover to honestly
| say "I know nothing, I was briefed on nothing, we have
| nothing". Plausible deniability.
|
| Elon Musk is also quite possibly the last person I'd ever
| want to touch world-changing technology. let alone be the
| sole arbiter of who gets to get near it.
| Teever wrote:
| Man it's pretty crazy seeing all those reasonable looking
| stories flagged and made dead.
|
| Also what's with the blue non-link links? Never seen that
| before on HN.
| mandmandam wrote:
| > it's pretty crazy seeing all those reasonable looking
| stories flagged and made dead.
|
| It really is. There have always been 'third rail' topics
| that get rapidly flagged despite community interest, but
| I've never seen so many.
|
| > what's with the blue non-link links? Never seen that
| before on HN.
|
| No idea; all the links seem to work for me anyway.
| Teever wrote:
| What's interesting to me is how what constitutes a 'third
| rail' topic changes over time.
|
| A quick search will show that it used to be fine to talk
| about Curtis Yarvin on here a decade ago but now that
| he's more relevant than ever it's suddenly taboo?
|
| Did Curtis Yarvin and the ideas he espouses suddenly
| become less interesting or are a group of people working
| together to prevent critical discussion of his ideas?
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > to fund trillions in tax cuts for the .1%
|
| That isn't even what your link is saying. To begin with,
| it's citing a Treasury Department document requested by
| the Biden administration to do an analysis comparing the
| proposed tax cuts with a contrived alternative.
|
| If you do generic across-the-board tax cuts, _not_
| targeting any particular income group, everyone 's taxes
| are reduced in proportion to how much they were paying to
| begin with. Obviously then the people who make more money
| and pay more taxes have them reduced by the given
| percentage and that is a larger absolute number.
|
| The same thing happens even if you target only the
| brackets for people who make less money. Suppose you
| lower the rates by 2% for every bracket below $400,000.
| That's not even enough to be in the 1% (for which you'd
| need to make ~$800,000), much less the 0.1%, but what
| happens in that case? Well, everyone's taxes go down by
| 2% of their income up to $400,000. If you make $40,000,
| they go down by $800. If you make $400,000, they go down
| by $8000. If you make $4,000,000, they also go down by
| $8000, from your first $400,000 in income. The absolute
| amount of the reduction is still highest for people who
| make more money, simply because it's a percentage of
| higher number.
|
| The analysis the Biden administration requested was to do
| the tax cuts for people making less than $400,000 and
| then _raise_ the tax rates on people above $400,000 to
| make sure they didn 't get _any_ net reduction, and their
| contrived example would have people making $400,000
| paying a higher tax rate than people making $500,000+.
| Basically the purpose of the analysis was to generate a
| large number to put in a headline rather than compare it
| to a real proposal to lower taxes in general. This is
| also why they announced the cumulative total over a
| decade rather than listing the annual number as you would
| when comparing it against an ordinary government budget.
| Because "~3.5% of the budget" sure sounds a lot less
| than "trillions of dollars".
| ckbishop wrote:
| Your default assumption should be ill intent when it comes
| to information security, my friend.
| CyrsBel wrote:
| In this case, DOGE should be quarantined from making
| further changes until CAT can operate alongside DOGE for
| auditing purposes. Every change and access should be
| reviewed.
| doublerabbit wrote:
| Yes. But it's not. That's the issue. They have unlocked
| access to systems to which they can control how they
| desire, unmonitored.
| CyrsBel wrote:
| If this was the case at any point, or is still the case,
| DOGE should definitely be quarantined until CAT audits
| DOGE's accesses and changes. There should be two teams
| operating alongside each other on this. Not just DOGE. I
| do believe so far they were claimed to have received
| read-only access...but other reports were that they even
| had some admin access. Do we know for sure what access
| they had unmonitored?
| CyrsBel wrote:
| My nature is to give the benefit of the doubt, but after
| seeing that they are rushing and it manifests in laying off
| even teams of highly skilled and critical nuclear safety
| staff...that means someone there doesn't know what they're
| doing or the chaos could be the point as well. I would hope
| it's not to that extent, but this is why I maintain that
| CAT should be auditing DOGE's changes.
| palata wrote:
| I generally try to assume that people are well
| intentioned. But when they start doing Nazi salutes...
| CyrsBel wrote:
| I was shocked by the appearance of that aspect too but
| then a day or two later, the ADL and Netanyahu supported
| him on that.
|
| https://x.com/netanyahu/status/1882392668497756279
|
| https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5097676-elon-
| mus...
|
| Definitely good to keep a watch, though.
| hobs wrote:
| So, the guy who held off a genocide to get trump elected
| and the people who are in direct cahoots say its ok, big
| "All my black friends I can say the N word so its ok"
| energy there.
| Tubbe wrote:
| And then he went to speak at an AFD rally so I guess we
| are back at the Nazi interpretation
| entropicdrifter wrote:
| If you believe right-wing-specific sources about Musk's
| intentions, then I've got a bridge to sell you.
| alxjrvs wrote:
| Who do you trust, the Party, or your lying eyes?
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| And prior to this he was forced to do a 'nazi death camp
| PR tour' because he agreed with the nazi agenda on X. But
| sure, it's unfortunately old boy just keeps accidentally
| being a nazi. Last is he now tweets 14 flags.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| If they did have ill intent, towards what is that ill
| intent targeted, and why should I care? These aren't
| organizations or missions I much care about. This isn't
| _my_ government, except by an accident of geography. I have
| little say in how it 's managed or what it does, but I have
| a high burden for it. It's unclear that this government
| protects me in any substantial way (or even in indirect,
| insubstantial ways). Meaningful reform is impossible at the
| sociological level, it requires too much buy-in too slowly,
| and that will always be hijacked by those with influence or
| watered down to meaninglessness.
| watwut wrote:
| Otherwise said, you want to destroy government, because
| you never cared about learning what various agencies do.
| And you want reform it, but without knowing what it does
| and without knowing what you want to improve other then
| "let it go away".
|
| If on DOGE, that is ill intent.
| gigatexal wrote:
| Elon wants to build the X everything app and nuked the CFPB
| to do it and now has access to the fed system... I think he's
| just biding his time. Aaaaand now that he has every
| American's info he can dox anyone on Twitter. Makes you think
| twice about telling Elonia to go fuck himself on X ... which
| is why I do it on Mastodon and BlueSky ;-)
| ethagnawl wrote:
| Yes, exactly this. The chilling effect caused by this is
| real and terrifying.
| CyrsBel wrote:
| I have definitely contradicted Elon Musk on my X profile
| (@cyrsbel) quite a lot. I have never once lost my blue
| checkmark, though, so I believe he is well-intentioned and
| a good person who is trying to do the right thing. (I am
| also subscribed to him and having that sub and the blue
| checkmark means he has payment details already so I'm not
| worried about doxxing via CFPB data.) However, you raise a
| legitimate security risk and concern. It is not feasible to
| trust a single person with this much power and access.
| Furthermore, regardless of how much I or anyone else love
| Elon Musk...he has said things that didn't happen multiple
| times and too much is riding on his claims about what can
| or will happen.
|
| So yeah, I don't trust him. Ever since he reneged on
| interns, I noticed that...he has a tendency to think about
| things as if they're entirely meat and to worship the false
| god Scarcity. He's been gargling Ron Paul's gold coins so
| much that he completely fails to comprehend basic nation
| state financing and why deficits are manageable and our
| debt is also manageable given our $160T+ net worth and
| climbing...
| tobr wrote:
| Are you talking about the man who does Nazi salutes from
| the bottom of his heart? A good person?
| CyrsBel wrote:
| The complication here is that the ADL and Netanyahu and
| others at that level all said they do not believe it was
| a Nazi salute. I am relying on what they said.
|
| https://x.com/netanyahu/status/1882392668497756279?lang=e
| n
|
| https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5097676-elon-
| mus...
| gigatexal wrote:
| Bibi wants to curry favor with Trump. Of course he's
| going to say it wasn't a Nazi salute.
|
| The ADL doesn't want to get sued out of existence so...
| of course they going to say it wasn't a Nazi salute.
|
| This is the same chilling effect that Trump suing ABC and
| ABC settling so yeah nobody feels comfortable enough to
| speak truth to power because nobody has the money or the
| army to back it up
|
| But those of us with ears to hear and eyes to see know
| what we saw. He might not want to exterminate Jews but he
| knows what MAGA likes and he like they loves the power a
| fascist dictator like Hitler wielded
| zwirbl wrote:
| But you did see the videos? You still trust a right wing
| politician, who stands to profit immensely from Trump and
| Musk in power, more than your own eyes? That's wild
| doublerabbit wrote:
| Netanyahu a fascist war criminal and ADL a back pocketed
| political party paid by elite right-wing evangelists.
|
| Of course they'll claim not.
| satiric wrote:
| They're siding with the Republicans because they don't
| want to be seen agreeing with the folks who hate what the
| Israeli government has been doing in Gaza; Netanyahu
| especially so. So the strongly pro-israel sources are too
| biased.
| alxjrvs wrote:
| Who do you trust, the Party, or your lying eyes?
| CyrsBel wrote:
| If I had to make a determination about it, I'd trust my
| eyes and quarantine DOGE's access until its accesses and
| changes can be audited by CAT. That is because the
| consequences of being wrong on this are too high, and
| there is plenty of time to be cautious about things and
| to ensure that everything is good. Zero legitimate reason
| has been provided for the level of rushing observed.
| alxjrvs wrote:
| I would agree! Let us both continue to trust our eyes.
|
| It was a nazi salute.
| Hikikomori wrote:
| So you trust a war criminal and Israels propaganda arm
| more than your eyes?
| chipsrafferty wrote:
| Seriously??
| alxjrvs wrote:
| > I believe he is well-intentioned and a good person
|
| You should read more about the things he says, does, and
| the way he treats people, especially from those who are
| close to him. The picture it paints is something I'd
| consider "cruel, bordering on inhuman" (and thats
| _before_ the nazi salute.)
|
| Alternatively, I have a lucrative investment opportunity
| I'd love to get you in on.
| hnthrow90348765 wrote:
| Intent to drop in, make major changes, and pretend like they
| won't break anything is ill intent
|
| We criticize engineers who drop into a code base and try to
| make changes without understanding. You can be forgiven for
| doing it a few times, but after that you're doing it
| intentionally. And if they hired engineers that didn't know
| this, that's incompetence at both levels.
|
| Not only is this different code bases and IT products, it's
| across organizations and done very rapidly.
|
| I am also not convinced that they don't simply have malicious
| intent most of the time.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable
| from malice
| CyrsBel wrote:
| This is correct. Depending on the stakes, the right
| answer would be to err on the side of caution. Certainly
| repeated incompetence in a private setting would be
| grounds for suspension or termination.
| cempaka wrote:
| People with malice like Elon Musk have noticed the
| widespread use of this aphorism and repeatedly leverage
| it to their advantage.
| specialist wrote:
| Yes and: fraud and errors are often indistinguishable.
| godelski wrote:
| At what point does incompetence /become/ malice?
|
| There is certainly a level of incompetence that requires
| active ignorance to one's naivety. I'd certainly consider
| a stubborn person who arrogantly ignores concerns of
| experts malicious. The active nature certainly matters.
| tshaddox wrote:
| Yes. Consider the concept of negligence. It is malicious
| to take action without exercising reasonable care, and
| part of reasonable care is ensuring that you are the
| slightest bit qualified to perform the action.
| godelski wrote:
| I obviously agree, but for anyone reading along, this is
| also the legal definition: reasonable care. Reasonable is
| determined by peers, not the general population. So...
| smallmancontrov wrote:
| Elon has been operating in bad faith since the Twitter
| Files (so, the very start). Announce X, publish receipts
| that show ~X, but nobody reads receipts so checkmate.
|
| The "140 year old people in social security DB" post is
| just the latest example of bad-faith. Either there is
| actually >>$100B of social security fraud and that's the
| story or he wants to pretend like that's the case when he
| knows full well that presence in the DB does not indicate
| eligibility or payouts.
| lowercased wrote:
| Agreed. Show the check numbers, mailing dates, bank
| transfers, etc. If there's actually really tens of
| billions flowing out to dead people monthly...
| demonstrate that. Should NOT be hard at all.
| smallmancontrov wrote:
| Should not be hard... if it exists. Which is why I'm 99%
| sure it doesn't. But the lie will go twice around the
| world before the truth gets its pants on, as always.
| freedomben wrote:
| For sake of testing your position, let's assume the fraud
| is true and he does what you want and publishes the
| details like that.
|
| What about the corner-case person who actually _is_
| legitimate and now has incredibly private information out
| there to make stealing their identity trivial? As a
| statistical anomaly who is often that corner case, I 'm
| glad you're not the one making the policy. I wish Elon
| wasn't as well, and I'm sure there's going to be a giant
| mess at the end, but using government power (which Elon
| has, whether rightly or wrongly) to publish personal
| information about people (which they get by force giving
| their monopoly on government power) especially without
| trial or due diligence is very wrong IMHO.
| smallmancontrov wrote:
| This is what courts and process and testimony are for.
| Doing this reliably in the face of bad actors with
| minimal stepping-on-fingers is a solved problem.
|
| Unless you don't actually care about the truth and want
| to send a convenient lie twice around the world before
| the truth gets its pants on. Then you should act like
| Elon is acting.
| cheema33 wrote:
| > What about the corner-case person who actually is
| legitimate and now has incredibly private information out
| there to make stealing their identity trivial?
|
| Elon usually has doesn't have any compunction about
| throwing innocent people under the bus if he thinks he
| gains something even if indirectly.
|
| But that aside, you can show evidence of massive fraud,
| without revealing private information to general public.
| Can certainly reveal it to relevant authorities.
| kristianbrigman wrote:
| To relevant authorities who are properly vetted? Feels
| like ouroboros...
| mbrumlow wrote:
| You would have to quantify what properly vetted is a
| unelected bureaucrat is. I guarantee vetting for three
| positions are probably little more than validating you
| don't have outstanding warrants.
| BuyMyBitcoins wrote:
| I understand that these 140/150 year old recipients are
| actually the results of incomplete birthdate data.
|
| To steelman the argument though, it seems reasonable to
| audit these recipients so that we can get their true
| birthdate entered. The number of recipients who lack a
| valid birthdate because they found a way to fraudulently
| claim benefits is likely non-zero, but probably low. But
| in any event, cleaning up the data can't be a bad thing.
| smallmancontrov wrote:
| Why spend money chasing people who aren't collecting
| checks? That sounds like waste to me.
| Terr_ wrote:
| Also those identities _can 't_ collect checks, because if
| they tried it would set off alarm bells and reviews
| because they're over a standard "assume they're already
| dead" limit.
|
| Imagine the brouhaha these same folks would be raising
| about "wasting your tax dollars hiring historians" if
| that other direction was in their self-interest.
| jacurtis wrote:
| This is also the same argument made against IRS audits on
| lower tax brackets. Basically, its not generally worth
| audits of low income citizens. Because the manpower
| required to perform the audit exceeds the revenues
| recovered.
|
| Yet audits of individuals making < $25k per year is over
| 5.5 times higher than those in all other income brackets
| (1.27% vs 0.25%). So we chase down citizens when likely
| they probably don't even had a tax burden anyway. Maybe
| they misfiled some taxes and should be taxed a few
| hundred or even a thousand dollars more. But the manpower
| to chase down these little checks is a net negative on
| the department.
|
| Sure, it is possible you find fraud in some of these low
| income cases. Someone claims to only make $25k but really
| they run a cash business and make $80k. But these are
| likely so limited thanks to other validations the IRS has
| access to, that the number of cases that reveal this is
| extremely tiny. So back to another argument on here,
| there an expectations that fraud is non-zero, and we
| accept that because getting fraud to zero is not worth
| the cost.
| jghn wrote:
| If something costs more to fix than it costs to leave
| sitting around, fixing it is _less_ efficient. In this
| case it 's already been investigated prior to DOGE, and
| deemed not worth the effort to clean up [1].
|
| [1] https://oig.ssa.gov/assets/uploads/a-06-21-51022.pdf
| rincebrain wrote:
| I think the problem they should be considering more
| acutely is, eventually the number of people trained in
| that specialized knowledge will go to 0, and they will
| then be paying the cost to either train more (and the
| increased risks of less familiar people) or replace the
| whole thing with no backup plan.
|
| Given the age of the COBOL programmers I know, that
| window is rapidly shrinking...
| mbrumlow wrote:
| You fix the system not because of the cost today but
| because the cost it will eventually cause.
|
| Poor record keeping and bad policies about data
| validation tied to sending money to people if not today
| will eventually result in massive fraud.
|
| Furthermore the notion you put forth is trash lazy
| thinking. Cost or no cost you do things the right way.
| But I don't even buy you can calculate the cost of doing
| it wrong correctly to even have a sound conjecture that
| fixing it is more costly.
| Brybry wrote:
| Your point is also covered in the audit report linked by
| the parent.
|
| Cost was not the only factor. They seem to be trying to
| handle missing data the right way rather than use a
| kludge.
|
| They did not want to add inaccurate death data to
| Numident records, for a variety of reasons, one being
| that it could cause release of information for living
| people when they're accidentally added to dead people
| records. The SSA also thought adding annotations would
| legally require a new regulation and would have impacts
| on other consumers of the data (ie. states, etc).
|
| How to handle missing death data in this case does not
| appear to have a clear and simple solution. But it also
| does not appear to be evidence of poor record keeping for
| _modern_ records or a major cause of concern for
| "eventual massive fraud".
| mbrumlow wrote:
| Missing data means == no payments until data is updated.
|
| This creates a driver, somebody who is motivated to get
| it fixed. If the person does not exist they won't be
| calling for their check, or if the entry fraudulent,
| fraudster will run the risk of exposing them self in the
| process of trying to get the checks flowing again.
| jf22 wrote:
| But what if the right way is judging the pros and cons of
| perfection and doing what makes the most sense?
| adolph wrote:
| OIG Response: We acknowledge that almost
| none of the numberholders discussed in the report
| currently receive SSA payments. However, SSA issued each
| of these individuals a valid SSN and these SSNs
| could allow for a wide range of potential abuse.
| [...] We also note we initiated our 2015
| review upon the receipt of information that a man
| opened several bank accounts using SSNs belonging to
| numberholders born in the 1800s who had no death
| information on the Numident. In addition to being
| used to obtain employment or open bank accounts,
| identity thieves can potentially use these SSNs to create
| synthetic identifies, obtain credit, government benefits,
| or private insurance.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _these 140 /150 year old recipients_
|
| What is the evidence these exist?
| milesvp wrote:
| To quote patio11,
|
| "The optimal amount of fraud is non-zero
|
| He was talking about the banking system. But he was also
| hinting at something bigger. There is a game theory
| problem often referred to as the meter maid problem. What
| is the optimal amount of meter maids in a city, where
| optimal can be defined in at least a few different ways,
| but roughly means the cost to revenue optimal. You end up
| with a couple of obvious extremes, no parking enforcement
| means no cost, but no revenue (plus parking may end up
| out of control if charging for parking is more than just
| revenue generating). The other extreme is thay you have
| enough people policing parking that no one ever fail to
| comply, this is the highest cost, but not the highest
| revenue, because you don't get revenue from ticketing. So
| the answer is that the optimal number lies somewhere
| where the number of meter maids allows some percentage of
| people get away with failing to comply with parking rules
| (whether deliberate or accidental can further complicate
| the problem since both will happen).
|
| So back to your steelman. Cleaning data is most certainly
| a desirable thing, but it is likely not the optimal
| thing, especially if the cost is high. And unauditable
| access to systems is a very high cost. Seems to me much
| of this auditing could be done in a much more acciuntable
| way.
| spankalee wrote:
| On top of that, there's an assumption that there's no
| existing cleaning effort. I'm sure there is and it's just
| a difficult problem. The cases left must be either in
| progress, hard to track down, or not actually
| meaningfully active.
|
| Or, as is really common with the federal government, the
| agency is actually underfunded and hasn't been able to
| modernize because the Republicans in congress have been
| trying to starve the administrative capacity the classic,
| slow way until now.
|
| Like with the IRS. I've made mistakes in filing, and
| gotten a notice from the IRS about it, but sometimes
| years later (!). In the meantime, if you "audited" the
| IRS records, you'd see that my records are out of
| compliance and could claim "See, there's fraud!". In
| reality, the IRS just has slow antiquated systems, and is
| barred from giving taxpayers direct access to their
| records. Which is by design from the rich and anti-
| government.
| bak3y wrote:
| Presence in the DB allows for downstream fraud, even by
| accident. If that DB is the source of truth for SS
| payouts elsewhere, clean up the data. There's no reason
| for it to be there.
| Terr_ wrote:
| > Presence in the DB allows for downstream fraud, even by
| accident.
|
| That's like saying null columns in a particular database
| table _must_ be filled in (or have the row entirely
| erased) because someone, somewhere, somehow, might infer
| the wrong thing about them, if they completely ignore all
| the other tables and business rules.
|
| ___
|
| "Hello, I am Oldy McOldperson. Give me money."
|
| "...Sorry sir, but that person would be almost 150 years
| old now, and that's well past our Impossibly Old
| threshold of 115 years. Furthermore, one our other
| databases says that person was reported as missing 90
| years ago."
|
| "But Oldy's--I mean, _my_ precise confirmed date of death
| is still blank, therefore I 'm alive, so give me money!"
|
| "Sir, only a complete moron would believe that's how it
| works."
| Brybry wrote:
| The reason given that the SSA does not clean up the data
| is it would cost too much for little to no administrative
| benefit. They also don't want to add new inaccurate data
| to the system.
|
| The no administrative benefit bit checks out with napkin
| math. Of the 18.9 million entries for people age 100 or
| older they are paying out benefits to 44,000. The total
| number of people in the US age 100 or older is around 90k
| to 100k, depending on time period for comparison.
|
| There's an Inspector General audit report in a nearby
| comment for source.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| Social Security _receives_ payments as well as makes
| them. SSNs are keys for both.
|
| The "super old person" SSN numbers are in the DB mostly
| because non-citizens are using them to pay into the
| system. If you delete those numbers, the next payroll run
| will inject them right back in.
|
| And you would remove important accounting metadata for
| each payment. Metadata that is consumed by the systems
| that prevent fraudulent payments from going out.
|
| The only way to stop the fake/bad SSNs is to go into the
| field and address each instance with employers. This is
| time-consuming and expensive, which is why no one has
| done it much.
| mjevans wrote:
| Show us the (public) Court Filings. The formal start of
| education to evaluate if there is truth, if there is a
| guilty party, and to legally render a verdict. The check
| numbers and other PII can be evaluated by the courts. We
| the People can know the numbers; the scale per case and
| in sum, of the 'fraud' identified.
| UltraSane wrote:
| Elon has been operating in bad faith since he called that
| hero diver a pedo
| SrslyJosh wrote:
| Elon has been operating in bad faith since he came to the
| US on a student visa and then illegally worked for a
| startup.
| chipsrafferty wrote:
| And then faked his degrees
| bugtodiffer wrote:
| > I don't think they have ill intent
|
| ...
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Irrelevant. Even if they did nothing, the amount of exposure
| to the foreign intelligence services will devastate whatever
| we don't footgun for a generation.
| CyrsBel wrote:
| They should absolutely be regulated as to not expose data
| to foreign intel.
| dTal wrote:
| Regulated?? The entire point of DOGE is to be
| unregulated. They are ignoring existing regulations
| (read: laws), and specifically targeting regulatory and
| oversight bodies for destruction. Wake up!
| CyrsBel wrote:
| Different contexts. Regulated in my comment meaning
| observed, reviewed, audited in kind. They should not be
| operating on any site and in any system without someone
| watching over their shoulder, figuratively and literally
| too.
|
| Whereas the regulation in your context pertains to
| regulations that are codified as laws or rules to follow.
| entropicdrifter wrote:
| Yeah, if only we had independent regulators in our
| government who could oversee and regulate it in order to
| prevent and reduce corruption. Oh wait, Trump fired them
| all like 3 weeks ago. On purpose. Because they are not
| operating in good faith, my dude.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Like many Elon fans, you quack "audit" and don't know
| what the word means.
|
| Audits measure compliance to an process or objective.
| They require that you have written down the process or
| objective, and retain sufficient information to measure
| whether you achieved it or not.
|
| In this case, the DOGE boys do whatever Elon says. What
| is said isn't recorded or written. People who attempt to
| do their duty who are seen as obstructive of the whim of
| the DOGE "agent" are fired.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| If any of the income tax data they are touching at IRS is
| out in one of those AI tools that have been referenced,
| each disclosure is a federal felony punishable by up to 5
| years in prison.
|
| But remember, Elon doesn't follow the rule of law, and
| has no doubt engineered things in such a way that his
| little minions are accountable.
| excalibur wrote:
| Their intentions are irrelevant. They are actively attacking
| the United States. They are enemy combatants and should be
| treated as such.
| amelius wrote:
| > Even if DOGE is operating without any ill intent, and I
| don't think they have ill intent
|
| Eh, they are going in like a bunch of bloodhounds smelling
| blood.
|
| Musk killed USAID because he had a personal axe to grind.
| anon2549 wrote:
| I think they have nothing but ill intent. Everything they've
| said and done so far just screams it.
| ushiroda80 wrote:
| He is being criminally reckless
| whymeogod wrote:
| > I don't think they have ill intent
|
| Perhaps you could read their statements? DOGE communications
| are filled with ill intent, and their publicly stated goal,
| and the goal for which their supports seem to support them,
| is the destruction of the bureaucracy. That's ill intent.
|
| That's before we look at their actions.
| JBSay wrote:
| Most of government agencies are errors themselves
| mcmcmc wrote:
| You don't think they have ill intent? Really? They have made
| it abundantly clear how much joy they get out of slashing
| services for everyday citizens, cutting jobs, and outright
| harassing federal workers. They are full of malicious intent
| for the people they view as the enemy.
| pacomerh wrote:
| Well when you have a white supremacist on the dodge team
| (confirmed by his comments on social media) working in this
| team, and you know white supremacists are very hateful...
| then I would assume there's obviously risk.
| alsoforgotmypwd wrote:
| The intent is completely ill. DOGE is RAGE. Move fast and
| break everything before the courts can step in.
| pstuart wrote:
| The intent is to dismantle the federal government.
| UltraSane wrote:
| "and I don't think they have ill intent"
|
| Elon Musk absolutely has ill intent or else DOGE wouldn't
| have all this access that they absolutely DO NOT NEED!
| snvzz wrote:
| Or maybe it'll accelerate the much needed improvements.
| lucasyvas wrote:
| It still has to be torn down though, don't you see that? Even
| if a following government wanted to keep things of benefit,
| it was implemented in an untrustworthy way without oversight.
| It has to be rebuilt either way now because they didn't
| follow best practices for the implementation. They
| objectively fucked up.
| nilamo wrote:
| Yeah, all of every American's banking information being
| permanently exposed is a totally OK cost for "improvements".
| root_axis wrote:
| Indeed, and its not just a problem for future democratic
| administrations (assuming they come to pass), it's doubtful
| that Trump's inevitable republican successors will be
| comfortable with Elon having a back door to their government.
| lfmunoz4 wrote:
| This kind of thinking is what leads to zero progress. Also I
| think most people will be surprised how unless a lot of the
| data is compared to private sector data. I.e, in 2017 Equifax
| leaked data on 150 million people and no one cared (you get a
| free 6month credit check). That data went to foreign
| governments and private databases and it is easy to access on
| darkweb so real actual scammers and criminals have it. Millions
| of people were targeted for scamming because of this. That is
| just ONE leak. Now imagine the amount of data Visa has on your
| for example, all your purchases. Apps that have collected your
| browsing history and actual GPS location. Don't think this data
| isn't sold and combined with other databases. There are
| companies that just collect data and buy data. And you are
| worried about 1 database with people given explicit access
| makes me think the real objection is something else.
| lucasyvas wrote:
| What company do you work for so I can tell them to fire you
| for negligence? Nobody hire this person.
|
| How can you possibly disagree with this and call yourself
| good at your job or a technologist? What an embarrassing
| take. Seriously you might want to delete your post if you
| want to ever be employed again. Actually trying to help you
| here.
| tucnak wrote:
| He works for 127.0.0.1 you should look them up!
| tech_ken wrote:
| > I.e, in 2017 Equifax leaked data on 150 million people and
| no one cared (you get a free 6month credit check)
|
| What are you even talking about? People (myself included)
| were fucking livid! The reason we got the 6mo credit check
| was because so many people tried to claim the monetary
| compensation (which the court had ruled they were owed!) that
| Equifax was unable (unwilling) to pay the resulting volume of
| money. The 6mo credit check was the weasel compromise that
| the Trump regulatory apparatus rubber stamped.
| lfmunoz4 wrote:
| Okay so you care, do you think politicians who are now
| pretending to be concerned for privacy reasons care? Think
| the average american realizes that they have never cared
| about privacy and they look like clowns pretending like all
| the sudden they do.
| tech_ken wrote:
| Why does other peoples' sincerity or lack thereof dictate
| what I am allowed to be outraged by? "Whatabout whatabout
| whatabout"; what about you worry less whether other
| people meet your standards for legitimate outrage and
| worry more about an unelected billionaire giving the
| federal government the old private equity pump 'n dump?
| nmz wrote:
| The average american citizen doesn't care about privacy?
| Go outside and look through the window inside peoples
| homes. See how long you last until the cops are called on
| you.
| lfmunoz4 wrote:
| I was trying to say that the average american does care,
| but the average politician does not care. But the point
| is that recently there has been a reason to pretend to
| care. i.e, to oppose dodge. They need a reason to oppose
| dodge and concerned for privacy has that "for the people"
| tone to it. So the insane part is how a cause like
| privacy suddenly is important when there is a political
| need for it to be important, i.e, to find a reason to
| oppose dodge. When the opposing party is trying to solve
| a problem you as a politician you need to oppose it. It
| doesn't matter if it is good or bad. You as the opposing
| party need to find the bad side of it. And the reason
| cannot be "I am in the opposing party" or "because I want
| to be the one to solve the problem". It has to be a
| possible real reason. So which came first actual concern
| for privacy or the need to be concerned for privacy.
| Clearly the need to be concerned for privacy. This kind
| of why two party system works, because you always have
| someone opposing what you are doing even if it is right,
| just to keep it in check.
| hiddencost wrote:
| Liar.
| scottLobster wrote:
| By your logic we should just do away with cybersecurity in
| general. Clearly, it's all already out there so it isn't a
| problem!
|
| We've already had the occasional large leak and survived, why
| not just leak continuously! Also leave your doors unlocked,
| you wouldn't want robbers to break an expensive door to get
| into your house, and most of your stuff isn't worth anything
| anyway!
| tmaly wrote:
| Assuming they have a read only copy to the data, how would
| having access to just data require rebuilding the systems?
| kevingadd wrote:
| It's common for stray passwords or authentication tokens to
| be found in data dumps of i.e. someone's email, dropbox, or
| whatnot. So getting read only access to all the data in a
| given agency means you probably have access to a trove of
| stray passwords and authentication tokens that can be used to
| pivot into write access there or somewhere else.
|
| As a concrete example, if you have read-only access to
| someone's email inbox that's enough to steal most of their
| accounts on other services since you can request a password
| reset link and then click on it.
| mkolodny wrote:
| > security reasons later
|
| What about security reasons now? The federal government
| includes the military. Giving DOGE "God mode" on the federal
| government is a national security risk right now.
| lucasyvas wrote:
| Now is definitely relevant, however the ones steering the
| ship don't care about now. Someone will care later, that's
| all I personally know for sure.
| dhosek wrote:
| "later" as in as soon as we can get the infestation removed,
| which would be the bigger fish needing frying.
|
| Not to mention the open question of whether we will ever
| arrive at later.
| ethagknight wrote:
| This is a very dramatic take on something you (and many others)
| are making extremely broad presumptions upon. It's clear that
| DOGE is reviewing payment data and has the same access to
| various components of the US Govt that Obama's US Digital
| Services, created to rebuild the ACA website but also
| provisioned for a number of other digital services. DOGE has
| the same access to services that USDS had. USDS was praised for
| its "speed and cutting through red tape"
| lenerdenator wrote:
| The question isn't what's being accessed, it's who is
| accessing it.
|
| There's at least some belief that the people looking at the
| data haven't been vetted or instructed as they should be when
| handling data of this nature.
|
| It doesn't help that the guy who is running the show is
| basically doing it as a friend of the president and has some
| conflicts of interest.
| epa wrote:
| Government employees already have access to every text,
| call, and email you have ever sent. Where was your outrage
| since the Snowden leaks?
| lucasyvas wrote:
| Not a totally unfair point, but to be fair, some people
| are still outraged after the Snowden leaks.
| pmalynin wrote:
| I think a lot of people on hacker news were equally if
| not more outraged about Snowden leaks. Not sure what
| you're trying to say.
| anon7000 wrote:
| It's another side of the same problem. We REALLY need
| data privacy laws in this country.
| godelski wrote:
| Which is why I personally disagree with
| >> The question isn't what's being accessed, it's who is
| accessing it.
|
| It certainty is a question of what is being accessed. I
| don't care if it is god damn Mr Rogers with the best
| intentions. The more sensitive the data, the stronger
| roadblocks need be in place. Often to the degree of
| impossible to access because it shouldn't be gathered in
| the first place.
|
| There will always be good reasons to access data, and
| sensitive data. There is always good that can come out of
| this. But just because you can do something good with it
| doesn't mean you should. You can do a lot of good with a
| nuclear bomb, but I don't want any ever built because it
| takes only a small mistake (not an act of malice!) to
| have huge consequences. There is always a cost, you must
| always consider if the costs are worth the benefits.
| arunabha wrote:
| Surely the response to the Snowden leaks should not be
| 'Well, Snowden showed that we have a lot of illegal
| snopping, so all snooping in the future is also ok'?
| acdha wrote:
| First, if you've used HN at any point since the Snowden
| leaks there has never been a shortage of outrage here.
|
| Second, while that was a major topic in international
| news for years, it did at least stay in the national
| security space where access is restricted. A lot of the
| concerns around DOGE are because they bulled through all
| of the normal rules for who gets access to sensitive data
| and how it's handled. Say what you will about the NSA,
| and many here have, they didn't just hand out credentials
| to inexperienced people with a history of leaking data or
| condone use of personal computers for government work.
|
| This is especially of concern if the reports of write
| access being used to push code changes or deploy
| monitoring keyloggers are true: do you really want to bet
| that the guys who made a .gov site world-writable
| couldn't be compromised by a foreign intelligence agency?
| There are legitimate concerns about the level of process
| overhead in government IT but that doesn't make the
| reasons for it go away.
| HaZeust wrote:
| >"Where was your outrage since the Snowden leaks?"
|
| It's been there, and growing, ever since.
| kvakerok wrote:
| Doesn't feel like it's growing to be honest.
| rchaud wrote:
| Telegram and Signal having hundreds of millions of
| "regular person" users since then says different. It
| doesn't seem apparent because in the past decade Big Tech
| has dropped any pretensions around caring about privacy
| other than for themselves. In the past 5 years, they've
| deepened their role in the natsec apparatus as well.
| mempko wrote:
| There was a huge amount of outrage since the Snowden
| leaks. What are you talking about?
| joshlemer wrote:
| Classic deflection and whataboutism.
| tshaddox wrote:
| > Where was your outrage since the Snowden leaks?
|
| Did you also miss the global protests against the 2003
| invasion of Iraq?
| lucasyvas wrote:
| It is not dramatic at all. Because of the very fact it's
| contentious, a rebuild will be undertaken by the next
| government to not trust it. It's an absolute guarantee
| regardless of how any one side feels about it.
|
| I and many people would argue to rebuild it based on the lack
| of transparency we have seen. There are enough people that
| feel that way that a rebuild is inevitable, regardless if you
| end up right. The position is that we really don't _know_ ,
| so the only way to be _safe_ is a do-over. Or at the very
| least, a completely transparent audit, which is also insanely
| expensive and very hard to scope.
| UltraSane wrote:
| Do you actually trust Elon Musk?
| lucasyvas wrote:
| If it wasn't obvious, _no_. I have a position but I 'm
| _really_ trying to make a neutral point here.
| fazeirony wrote:
| i appreciate the optimism that there will be something left
| to actually have this 'do-over'...
| namuol wrote:
| > the same access to various components of the US Govt that
| Obama's US Digital Services
|
| ...but also much more. It is intellectually dishonest to
| equate these two.
|
| Cutting through red tape can technically be done by nuking
| the red tape, but why cause all this harm when you can use
| scissors?
| llamaimperative wrote:
| Sadism! That's why.
| rapido-gato wrote:
| I don't think intellectually honest people can support the
| current takeover.
| ttpphd wrote:
| This is wrong and naive.
|
| https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/doge-dives-into-core-
| na...
|
| "DOGE currently has far deeper and far more extensive access
| to U.S. government computer systems -- and is far deeper into
| the national security space -- than is conceivably necessary
| for anything related to their notional brief and goals."
| jsbisviewtiful wrote:
| > This is wrong and naive.
|
| I am honestly shocked at the amount of wrong or naive takes
| being posted on HN as of late.
| pas wrote:
| Considering how crazy the general population is (and
| other online spaces) it's a small miracle that HN still
| has this (sub?)culture.
|
| Also things are happening at a breakneck pace and, uhm,
| the media is tragicomically incompetent.
| Freedom2 wrote:
| It's more important that the takes generate "curious"
| discussion, regardless of how naive and wrong they are.
| Especially during a "MOT", where things quickly get
| hidden.
| ethagknight wrote:
| Maybe naive, but not wrong. They have access that any
| American citizen should have access to, and the only
| authority they really have is to flag items for review. The
| DOGE team is sensational, but i would bet an enormous sum
| that Trump has a much larger team that the sensationalized
| DOGE team at making decisions. It's childish to believe the
| media's talking points that there's a bunch of children
| being allowed to run rampant controlling the government,
| especially in light of the recent "Biden is sharp as tack"
| media narrative.
|
| From your link written by John Marshall, a "progressive
| liberal": "It's obvious that you'd want to be very cautious
| about centralizing this much power in anyone's hands,
| especially people working outside all existing frameworks
| of oversight and accountability." It's called.. the
| President. The whole point of electing a president
| alongside of congress is to have a consolidated point of
| power.
| sandeepkd wrote:
| There are lessons that people learn over time and come up
| with best practices to avoid repeating the mistakes. If the
| intent is to really uncover waste and fraud then one way
| could have been
|
| 1. To ask for READ access to all the data with PII/sensitive
| scrubbed.
|
| 2. Any action to modify the content/data should ideally have
| followed the existing path/mechanism
| wilg wrote:
| Even if what you say is true (and as other posters point out,
| it isnt), DOGE and the Trump administration are staffed by
| _confirmed_ Nazis and white supremacists who should be
| nowhere near the government. And Musk and VP Vance (both of
| whom interact with and support both Nazis and white
| supremacists regularly) supported and reinstated at least
| one, so this whole thing is rotten to the very top.
|
| https://www.texasobserver.org/ice-prosecutor-dallas-white-
| su... https://gizmodo.com/doge-engineer-resigns-over-
| extremely-rac... https://www.theguardian.com/us-
| news/2025/feb/07/musk-doge-st...
| UltraSane wrote:
| I have no reason to trust Elon Musk and many many reasons not
| to.
| thinkingtoilet wrote:
| >It's clear that DOGE is reviewing payment data and has the
| same access to various components of the US Govt that Obama's
| US Digital Services
|
| How is that clear? What proof do you have of this other than
| Musk's word?
| amarcheschi wrote:
| But this time we're dealing with a malicious actor on one's
| end. And I say malicious, because in all honesty I can't
| justify someone spewing lies continuously while holding a
| public charge without being malicious
| ddalex wrote:
| You make the very weird assumption that this will go "back to
| normal" at some point.
| cryptonector wrote:
| The system was almost certainly already so-accessible.
| rchaud wrote:
| All systems are accessible when you claim the right to
| arbitrarily fire people tasked with protecting access to it.
| emsign wrote:
| DOGE is a joke
| snvzz wrote:
| With god mode, it isn't a joke.
| hermitShell wrote:
| With 'dog mode' access to government IT systems
| imperial_march wrote:
| People being convinced it's a bad idea, By the same politicians
| and beaurocrats who have wasting, laundering and getting
| kickbacks, They are the joke.
|
| "Blame the smoke detector, not the fire" people are demoralised
| people driven insane
| moffers wrote:
| I can understand feeling wary because someone may be watching
| your work, but conceivably this was always the case? I know it's
| uncomfortable having this agency with no oversight gaining access
| to systems within the government, but it's got to be huge right?
| I'm sure Elon's tapped some smart fellas to be bulls in this
| china shop, but there's no way they can put an eye on every
| single piece of information that flies through all of the systems
| of the federal government. You'd need a huge staff, tools to be
| built, never mind trying to solidify all those interfaces.
|
| It seems more likely that they'll gain access to all these
| systems, be completely overwhelmed about what to do, and then do
| small things that wouldn't actually have an impact but would gain
| headlines, and then call it a day.
| electrondood wrote:
| "Smart fellas"? The guy is a billionaire, and all he can find
| are a few 20-years old edgelords with names like "Big Balls"
| who make racist comments in online forums?
| moffers wrote:
| Sorry, that was intended to be facetious
| adam12 wrote:
| "Do I file my taxes this year or not? I had to sit and debate
| that."
|
| good question
| axus wrote:
| Government should have access to its own data. Justice and
| Congress should have the same access for oversight. The only
| problem I see is personal data about non-government people is
| being exposed to the entire planet.
|
| They should have developed good security practices first and
| maybe spent more than a week reviewing a plan, and not having a
| double standard about their own activities.
| dimal wrote:
| > Government should have access to its own data. Justice and
| Congress should have the same access for oversight.
|
| On its face, that's a reasonable comment. But that's not what's
| happening here. This is not oversight. This is the world's
| richest man arbitrarily seizing control of the government's
| data. He's able to do this because he bought the presidency for
| Trump.
|
| Are you ok with that?
| axus wrote:
| I blame the people who were bought as much as the buyer, and
| the Citizens United decision for facilitating the buying.
|
| I'm OK with democratic elections and executive appointments.
| I'm OK with the "read access" part of the control, the "write
| access" should only go as far as the laws passed by Congress
| permit.
| IggleSniggle wrote:
| The thing is, Government already had access to its own data. It
| just was required to follow the law that was put in place by
| the voted in Legislature to prevent abusive situations that
| could arise from limitless unrestricted access without
| oversight. It was there, and even non-government citizens could
| get access to it by following the procedures; procedures put in
| place to prevent "selling the farm," voted on by elected
| officials, with the support of their constituents.
| acdha wrote:
| The government already had access to its data, including
| oversight and regular auditing. This was solely about removing
| the safeguards so they didn't have to follow good security
| practices or have a plan, and given how intensely politicized
| it has been it's hard not to think that's because the plan is
| not something they'd want to document where the public could
| see.
|
| As an example, Musk mislead the public with claims about Social
| Security fraud. None of that was unknown, and in fact the
| independent inspector general had a much better quality report
| years ago where they confirmed that the old records did not
| show signs of fraud and recommended paths for improvement. DOGE
| made a lot of noise but added nothing but risk.
|
| https://oig.ssa.gov/assets/uploads/a-06-21-51022.pdf
| TomK32 wrote:
| Justice doesn't need the same access like Congress, it's enough
| if they can subpoena relevant data. Even personal data about
| government people shouldn't be exposed as this opens weakness
| the be exploited by social engineering.
| 9dev wrote:
| Government is doing a lot of work here. We're talking about
| thousands of people, who, other than working for the
| government, also are humans with their own agenda. Are you okay
| with just giving all of them access to your most personal data?
| Even if some of them live right next to you, have a personal
| grudge, and may be slightly psychotic? No? Well apparently,
| then, it's not just as hand-wavy as you claim it to be. The
| only reasonable thing is granting access to data on a need-to-
| know basis, with tight access control, audit logging, and
| anonymisation where not strictly impossible. That would be the
| reasonable thing if you're handling data for hundreds of
| millions of people. It isn't what's happening.
| axus wrote:
| It would have been better for the government not to collect
| all this information in the first place. For decades
| libertarians have been warning about the scenario we seem to
| find ourselves in.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| > Government should have access to its own data.
|
| You think it didn't already have access to its own data? Please
| explain how it did not.
| goshx wrote:
| Don't they need security clearances to do this?
| FranzFerdiNaN wrote:
| King Trump says they dont.
| delecti wrote:
| Legally, probably. But in the US, "legally" is enforced by the
| executive, and that's who's telling them to comply.
| lesuorac wrote:
| To be clear, Security Clearances is just an EO thing.
|
| The actual laws just speak about things being critical to
| national security and don't use the words like "Top Secret"
| and etc.
|
| The whole actually labeling things "Top Secret" and etc
| started off with Clinton [1] but then Bush [2] and Obama [3]
| modified the rules around classification.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_12958
|
| [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_13292
|
| [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_13526
| imperial_march wrote:
| They do. Elon already had top secret due to NASA/military work.
| The rest were authorised/given clearance for the work.
| FigurativeVoid wrote:
| At my first gig, I had "god" level access to our production
| database.
|
| All I learned is that nobody should have this level of access
| unless it is some sort of temporary break glass situation. It is
| extremely dangerous and even experienced engineers can cause
| irreparable data loss or some other bad outcome. In our case,
| some engineer accidentally sent around 10,000 invoices to
| customers that shouldn't have gotten them.
|
| There are far better data access patterns. In the case of US gov
| data, I don't see why the DOGE team would need anything more than
| a read replica to query. It could even be obfuscated in some way
| to protect citizens' identities.
| cratermoon wrote:
| I loathe working places where they just give you all the
| permissions because it's "easier". One risk is if something
| _does_ happen, and they don 't have exceptional tracing and
| logging, (and let's be honest, at an organization sloppy enough
| to hand out privileges like candy, what's the chance of that?)
| it's difficult or impossible to pin down the source to any
| individual. As a result, both responsibility and suspicion is
| diffuse.
| FigurativeVoid wrote:
| I have so many horror stories from there.
|
| When they did decide to lock down the database, the DB admin
| only locked in down in the sql server client most people
| used. If you used some other client, you still had access.
| _sigh_
| tomrod wrote:
| What DB system operates that way, that's nuts.
| cratermoon wrote:
| My favorite security anti-pattern! Locking the main doors
| while leaving all the windows wide open.
| FigurativeVoid wrote:
| A second thought. It leads to lazy application development.
| Whenever you have production intervention that happens more
| than a few times, you should just make a feature that does it
| safely via application code.
| Tobani wrote:
| I've definitely worked in places where "Move fast and break
| things" tended to focus on breaking things. There would be
| bugs that we didn't fix because "We can just fix the
| database when it happens." It would take 2hours to fix a
| bug that would cause of 10's of hours of weekly support
| request, but the focus would always be on building new
| features, of which 10% got any real usage.
| TransAtlToonz wrote:
| The appropriate restrictions are relative to the size and
| momentum of the organization. It's easy to spend months
| setting up safeguards rather than working on product
| development that won't proportionally return.
|
| Of course, this involves being honest with yourself about
| risk and reward, and we all have implicit incentives to
| disregard the risk until we get burned and learn to factor
| that in.
| justin66 wrote:
| It's not just about the risk. It signifies that you're not
| dealing with an experienced database administration staff.
| (At a startup that might just mean one guy, but that's better
| than zero.
| JohnFen wrote:
| I agree. Good access controls and being prevented from
| accessing things that I don't need access to protect me as an
| employee just as much as the data itself.
| alsoforgotmypwd wrote:
| Meta completely restricted graph data access to requiring a
| specific business purpose and managerial approval tied an
| articulable, concrete task need.
| r00fus wrote:
| Ah, I remember a time 30 years ago when I logged accidentally
| into the PROD database (forgot to add the suffix "1" to the
| connection ID), thinking it was a Dev instance, and then issued
| a "truncate table CUSTOMERS"... the reaction came within 75
| seconds - and restore from backing took several hours.
| TrackerFF wrote:
| Never mind the direct risks, if you have "god mode" to
| basically any government thing, you instantly become the target
| of foreign intel/military operations. You can bet good money
| that there are entire teams, if not divisions, working around
| the clock to exploit this situation.
| netsharc wrote:
| I can imagine Chinese and Russian hackers laughing at the
| DOGE l33t hackers.
|
| And if I was advising the Ukranians I'd tell them to try to
| exploit it too, hey, if you're fighting 2 superpowers with
| another 1 quietly backing the fight against you, you need all
| the help you can get.
| simpaticoder wrote:
| I've worked with older governmental systems, and chances are
| they are running a wide variety of systems, some of which, the
| oldest and most critical, are probably written in COBOL running
| on IBM mainframe hardware. In those environments, there is no
| real distinction between "database" and "application". COBOL
| systems are very file- and batch-oriented, and are "monolithic"
| in the extremist sense. The technology itself makes it
| impossible to give read only access to such systems.
| kvakerok wrote:
| You can absolutely give read only access in COBOL systems.
| That's just lazy administration and IT security on a
| shoestring budget.
| jart wrote:
| That's why all this stuff is backed up to an iron mountain.
|
| What's with you people? The _government_ has been managing
| this database for decades. The gerontocracy. They don 't even
| know how to build a website that works. I imagine many of the
| people in charge don't even know how to use a website. Now
| for the first time, tech industry people have the opportunity
| to help run these computer systems, and you're afraid they're
| the ones who'll be incompetent and accidentally break
| everything?
|
| For decades the tech industry has been the beating heart of
| this country that's kept the American dream alive while
| everything else has been falling apart. Now they get to help
| solve one of the most important problems, which is fixing the
| government.
| discreteevent wrote:
| >They don't even know how to build a website that works.
|
| What percentage of people who know how to make a "website"
| do you think could make an automated tax system?
|
| >the tech industry has been the beating heart of this
| country
|
| Agriculture? Construction? The heart means something
| without which you can't function. How did people in the
| 1950s survive?
| reciprocity wrote:
| The USG does in fact know how to build a website and it is
| intellectually lazy (so very lazy) to suggest otherwise. A
| high profile illustration of this is login.gov, which is
| SSO used across USG agencies. It's not possible to take a
| comment like this seriously, at all.
|
| Elon Musk is also not an auditor. DOGE is not an auditing
| entity. You bring in accountants to audit. These are 20 y/o
| something programmers. How DOGE has been operating has been
| completely opaque and this lack of transparency just plays
| to the point that what someone says their goals are and
| what their actual goals are are not mutually exclusive, so
| no, Elon Musk shouldn't be allowed anywhere near these
| systems.
| rayiner wrote:
| > What's with you people
|
| Right?
| jghn wrote:
| You know that annoying thing where someone joins a new
| team, looks around, declares all their friction points to
| be easily solvable, dives in & starts making changes, and
| turns out to make a big giant mess?
|
| And the reason is they don't understand the specific domain
| & context well enough to know what the actual hard problems
| are. Instead they're just pattern matching to things they
| do know and extrapolating. And it usually doesn't go well.
|
| Dealing with a system that's replicating 50 years of
| regulatory rules is going to be that times infinity.
| mrtesthah wrote:
| DOGE literally took over the agency that competently
| modernized and integrated US gov technology (United States
| Digital Service), gutted it, and is now using that agency's
| pretense of needing access to data to now pilfer citizens'
| private information and grossly violate the constitutional
| separation of powers.
|
| This is the mechanism by which this administrative coup
| (declared here in https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-
| actions/2025/02/ensu...) is being enacted. None of this is
| legal or constitutional in any way.
|
| The rule of law is not a partisan issue nor a matter of
| "government efficiency". Those who aid this coup should be
| considered traitors.
| QuantumGood wrote:
| "fixing the government" in this case seems to mean "destroy
| the government" for somewhat hidden purposes.
| redeeman wrote:
| hidden? I think tearing down government is a pretty
| damned good fix, and so does many others
| lobf wrote:
| Why do you think this? Have you ever been to a country
| with a non-functioning government?
| nickisnoble wrote:
| ... and then what?
| averageRoyalty wrote:
| All I've seen about this DOGE stuff is negativity based on
| hypotheticals, this is the first optimistic hypothetical
| I've seen so far.
|
| It's an interesting point. As a thought exercise, tech is
| absolutely the core of modern America, #1 export (I assume)
| and a key market. Private sector influence probably can
| give huge amounts of low hanging fruit.
|
| I think peoples main concerns stem from not trusting Trump
| (which seems odd given he's a second term president, he is
| objectively wanted) and not trusting Musk (which is
| probably fair, he's publicly and openly an arsehole).
|
| Speed probably concerns people too, however "move fast and
| break things" is a pretty fundamental American tech mantra,
| so entirely unsurprising and usually effective.
| n4r9 wrote:
| Trump winning the election wasn't necessarily because he
| was "objectively wanted". It could be because he was less
| disliked than Biden at the time. Plus I wouldn't be
| surprised if a lot of people voted Trump but then his
| first couple of weeks made them go "hang on a sec...".
| Bluestrike2 wrote:
| > That's why all this stuff is backed up to an iron
| mountain.
|
| When one of your threat vectors is a massive ball of
| _nuclear fire_ right on top of the federal government in
| DC, your offsite backup policy is going to be absurd
| overkill by the standards of any other organization on this
| planet. That doesn 't mean it's flawed.
|
| > ...many of the people in charge don't even know how to
| use a website. Now for the first time, tech industry people
| have the opportunity to help run these computer systems,
| and you're afraid they're the ones who'll be incompetent
| and accidentally break everything?
|
| Are you honestly suggesting that the people who built these
| systems, maintained them, and updated them to reflect often
| significant changes in rules and regulations over the
| course of decades somehow don't know how those systems
| _work_? If they were so damned clueless, those COBOL
| systems would have sputtered out and died decades ago. The
| fact that they 've continued to run for all this time is
| practically prima facie evidence that the system works just
| fine by industry standards for that kind of legacy code.
|
| No doubt there's plenty of stuff buried in the codebase
| that bugs the hell out of the developers working on it, but
| you get that with _any_ complex legacy code. It 's the
| nature of the beast. Do you think there's nothing in
| Google's monorepo that some of their engineers don't quite
| like but doesn't rise to a big enough issue to warrant
| refactoring right now? Any other FAANG company? Or large
| tech company in general?
|
| You're writing as though a bunch of junior developers--and
| that describes pretty much all of the publicly known DOGE
| employees so far--are wizards who can just waltz right in
| and magic up a better solution just because they're from
| the "tech industry."
|
| Setting aside the unlikely chances that those juniors--no
| matter how skilled or talented--have any experience with
| COBOL, mainframes, or even just decades-old legacy code, is
| anyone going to suggest that something like the federal
| government's payment system _isn 't_ defined by an immense
| amount of complex business logic so as to comply with
| legislative requirements? It's not something you just start
| playing around with.
|
| I can't think of any tech company that would take a junior
| developer, toss them overboard in the middle of the
| freezing Atlantic, grant them sudo access, and tell them to
| do whatever the hell they want with critical systems before
| they drown and--somehow--take the ship with them. Worse
| yet, those juniors were chosen for ideology fervor and/or
| purity, so what happens when the normal review processes
| and experienced senior developers are pushed aside because
| they're in the way and part of the "deep state conspiracy"
| that doesn't want them to "[fix] the government" as you put
| it?
|
| Not only is that a recipe for disaster for the company
| itself, it's a damned good way to take an otherwise
| talented junior developer and permanently ruin them.
| Instead of mentoring them so they can work well as part of
| a team, you're basically creating a toxic working
| environment that's going to turn them all feral. By the
| time they crawl out the other side and the public hears all
| about what they've been up to, what company is going to be
| stupid enough to a developer with "DOGE" on their resume?
| Beyond that, you're conflating a whole bunch of different
| issues here with federal software contracts and IT, while
| putting the tech industry on a really peculiar pedestal.
|
| Besides, if the goal is to discover waste/fraud/abuse, the
| obvious answer is to hire a bunch of forensic accountants
| and let them dig into everything. Those are the people who
| actually find that kind of stuff, and they're _incredibly_
| skilled at their job. If it 's there, given the time,
| they'll find it. But it's a slow-going process, so we
| instead see a bunch of engineers focusing on random
| transactions so they can ask themselves (1) "do I like that
| one?" and (2) "do _I_ think it 's legitimate?" because it's
| faster.
|
| That's not exactly how you fix anything, least of all a
| country.
| seemaze wrote:
| If it ain't broke.. move fast and break things?
| skissane wrote:
| > The technology itself makes it impossible to give read only
| access to such systems.
|
| This isn't true. Mainframe COBOL systems commonly store data
| in VSAM files, or DB2, or IMS, or sometimes some more obscure
| non-IBM database (e.g. CA/Broadcom's Datacom/DB or IDMS, or
| Software AG's ADABAS). But whichever one they use, there are
| multiple ways of granting read-only access.
|
| For example, if it is VSAM, you can configure RACF (or
| TopSecret or ACF2) to allow an account read (but not write)
| permission to those VSAM datasets. Or, you can stick DB2 in
| front of VSAM (on DB2 for z/OS, CREATE TABLE can refer to a
| pre-existing VSAM file, and make it look like a database
| table), and then you can have a readonly account in DB2 to
| give you access to that database schema. Or, there's a lot of
| other ways to "skin this cat", depending on exactly how the
| legacy app is designed, and exactly how it stores data. But,
| probably this is already implemented - most of these apps
| have read-only access for export into BI systems or whatever
| - and if it happens for whatever reason not to be, setting it
| up should only be a modest amount of work, not some multiyear
| megaproject.
| simpaticoder wrote:
| _> Or, there's a lot of other ways to "skin this cat",
| depending on exactly how the legacy app is designed, and
| exactly how it stores data. But, probably this is already
| implemented_
|
| Given that neither of us knows the actual systems in
| question, what is more likely, that it's a well-designed
| system or one that has organically accreted over time? It
| seems like you tend to believe the former, and I the
| latter. I suppose my view is based on the fact that, like
| in statmech, you enumerate all possible systems that can do
| a particular job, the vast majority of those solutions will
| not have any organizing principle and will not be amenable
| to surgical analysis or change.
| skissane wrote:
| I think the difference is that I know that getting data
| out of mainframe COBOL systems is a long-known and long-
| solved problem, and I can list lots of different ways to
| do it (I mentioned a few, there's several more I didn't
| mention). Without knowing the details of the exact
| system, I'm not sure which one would be the best one to
| use, but the odds that you'd have a system for which
| _none_ of these existing solutions is suitable is rather
| low - and indeed, likely most of these systems are
| already using one or another - there are whole teams of
| sales people who have spent the last 20-30 years
| convincing government agencies (inter alia) to buy these
| solutions.
|
| Whereas, you don't seem to know anything about that
| topic, and are speculating based on parallels with
| completely different disciplines (such as statistical
| mechanics).
|
| We both are speculating due to lack of details about the
| specific systems under discussion, but wouldn't you
| expect the person whose speculations are based on greater
| relevant knowledge to be more likely to be correct?
| simpaticoder wrote:
| I'm sorry, but just because I didn't pepper my post with
| shibolleths like z/OS or VSAM or the vagaries of ACCEPT
| and DISPLAY keywords, doesn't mean I don't know what I'm
| talking about. I worked specifically on connecting COBOL
| system to a DB/2 database, and one thing was for certain:
| understanding the data format was the hardest part of the
| problem. Those definitions, in our system, were tightly
| coupled to the user interface code, AND the batch
| processing code.
|
| No, it's not my specialty and didn't work with this
| system for long, but my overall impression was that COBOL
| programmers get (understandably) low-level abstractions,
| and therefore had to build higher level abstractions
| themselves. This is not like modern software development
| where you have an embarrasment of riches from any level
| of abstraction you want, and a large system where every
| part of the stack is a custom solution is generally going
| to be more chaotic. To put some numbers on it, to add a
| column of data to the system I worked on required on
| average about 20k hours of coding work. No doubt some of
| this was sand-bagging, but I'd say 80% of it was
| legitimate.
| neoromantique wrote:
| This implies good faith actor, which is not the case.
| Zefiroj wrote:
| There's a good balance between preventing accidents and
| reducing friction.
|
| One person having "god-mode" access isn't usually that
| terrible.
| godelski wrote:
| > It is extremely dangerous and even experienced engineers can
| cause irreparable data loss or some other bad outcome
|
| It is literally why we never log in as root.
| HERE BE DRAGONS
|
| I don't know an admin who hasn't, on multiple occasions,
| unintentionally caused irreparable damage. It is easy to do
| even with the best of intentions and with extreme levels of
| care. Any one trying to rush through a dragon's den is only
| going to get burned. Considering how many dragons' dens they
| are running into, I do not question "if" damage has been done,
| but "what".
| manfre wrote:
| I've had a company give me full admin access to their cloud
| account. Thankfully, I learned the lesson earlier in my career
| and immediately created myself of more mundane user. Break
| glass access is important, but definitely not as the usual
| level of access.
|
| > I don't see why the DOGE team would need anything more than a
| read replica to query.
|
| They shouldn't need more than limited read access. The fact
| that they have more access, very likely demanded and not
| accidentally given, is due to their intent to do more than
| simply query data.
| erulabs wrote:
| Ultimately someone has root permissions. Re: federal agencies,
| in the United States, that someone is clearly,
| constitutionally, the President. Article II of the constitution
| vests all power of the executive in the person of the
| President. The President has authority to appoint agents. That
| same article _does also_ say the President has to "take Care
| that the Laws be faithfully executed", but the "Care" there is
| highly debated. But the idea that the President doesn't have
| the right to appoint Musk to get root access to federal
| agencies seems _legally_ incorrect.
|
| I'm not make a value judgement on this, it's just how it is. At
| a startup, the founder ultimately has root access to the
| database, no matter what the technical controls.
|
| Now, maybe it's _stupid_ , and maybe it _should be some other
| way_ , but to my mind the _other way_ is that Congress gets
| together and writes a law saying "the executive cannot get
| root access to X, Y, Z". In absence of that law, the executive
| can do whatever they want.
|
| Not to be THAT GUY, but "an append-only database which cannot
| be modified by anyone" is something HN has spent the past 10
| years saying is completely useless...
| netsharc wrote:
| And Trump can launch the nukes to blow up the world too...
| but building a system where he can just click a button to do
| so would be idiotic. Same idea with giving godmode to the guy
| who thinks carrying a sink and saying "Let that sink in" is
| hilariously clever.
| electrondood wrote:
| What is the point of all of this? Reducing federal income taxes?
| It seems to me that these people are pushing a rope if that's the
| goal.
|
| For example, USAID is 1% of federal spending, but buys the US a
| disproportionate amount of soft power and good will for that
| investment.
|
| Also, why 20-year olds? You'd think a person as resourced as Musk
| would have access to more capable people. When I was 20 years old
| I didn't know a thing about the Federal government or all the
| ways it benefits Americans.
|
| I don't see DOGE solving an actual problem, and even if it did,
| this is a horribly incompetent way to go about it.
| tech_ken wrote:
| > What is the point of all of this?
|
| Just my opinion, but the most obvious motives seem to be:
|
| * Breaking the back of the institutional opposition Trump
| experienced in his previous term
|
| * Flexing strength and creating a narrative of unitary
| executive power
| myheartisinohio wrote:
| We are adding 1 trillion dollars to the deficit every 100 days.
| bzmrgonz wrote:
| call me Naive and paint me a fool, but I do think this is going
| to go down as Musk's lifetime achievement. Think about it, he has
| money, he has arguably built great companies, and now, for his
| masterpiece, he can, and I honestly believe he will.....CURE
| DEMOCRACY. I want him to succeed, because the next logical giant
| is CAPITALISM, and that one, in the collective interest of
| humanity, and planetary survival, needs FIXING!! Almost every
| system created by man, eventually turns corrupt, because for some
| reason we interfere, we want to tip the balance, instead of give
| free will and life to the things we create. The ecology of a
| system should be self-regulating, that's how NATURE operates.
| notepad0x90 wrote:
| cure democracy? they just broke it. did you vote for musk? did
| anyone? are you thinking right? A fascist dictator just ruined
| america for good and this can't be fixed. Just the reputation
| of america alone is ruined for generations to come, and I bet
| you are not even thinking of what "reputation" means, it isn't
| "like me please" type of a reputation but "let's avoid wars and
| trade with each other" reputation. I honestly think people like
| you deserve the america these evil people are creating, too bad
| the rest of us are stuck with you. You just lost our country
| and you have no idea what a precious and wonderful thing we've
| lost. You put your trust in a greedy evil billionaire,
| foolishness for the history books.
| bzmrgonz wrote:
| It doesn't sound like you are in an emotional state to have
| this discussion, which is ok, but the findings are
| undeniable. I don't see anyone arguing, "they're making up
| the fraud". So from an objective point of view, an audit of
| this magnitude has been dreamt of by both parties for
| decades, heck probably going back a century. No one has been
| able to do it, lacking either collective will, or, more
| famously, bureaucratic pushback. My argument is, and you can
| ask any senior or experienced executive this(tho I think it's
| actually an accounting principle), anyways...when a top level
| professional arrives at a new job/department/unit/etc, the
| first order of business is "finding your salary", this is
| essentially your brain finding your salary among the waste or
| leaks in the space you were asked to manage. This is what
| DOGE is tasked with, no matter the cost, stopping the waste
| will pay for the cost, even if it cost trillions(which I
| highly doubt), you can amortize that and still get USA's
| bottom line in the black.
| imperial_march wrote:
| I agree. It's nice to hear someone grounded discuss it.
|
| A lot of people (particularly on Reddit) have been driven
| insane by psyops, they can't critically think outside what they
| are told to think anymore. It's amazing to watch, and also
| quite sad/scary
| buttocks wrote:
| Musk would have liked to be the US president but can't because
| he's South African.
|
| So he conned the stupidest but most powerful man alive into
| letting him be acting president.
| imperial_march wrote:
| You have to stop being your information from CNN and Reddit. It
| destroys your critical thinking skills and ultimately drives
| some people insane
| swat535 wrote:
| Setting politics aside for a moment, I find it fascinating that
| an audit of this scale is taking place within the government. Has
| there ever been a historical precedent where an external agency
| thoroughly reviewed all departments, published its findings for
| the public, and then based decisions on that analysis?
|
| Is it really possible to root out governmental fraud using this
| approach? Fraud and theft exist at every level of government, but
| if not through a drastic measure like this, what else can be
| done? Relying on the status quo, the courts, and current
| processes hasn't yielded substantial results--if it had,
| corruption wouldn't persist.
|
| Still, I can appreciate the creativity here. Sometimes it takes
| an outsider to think differently.
|
| That said, I'm not naive enough to assume this is done entirely
| in good faith. The prevailing opinion--both in this community and
| the media--seems largely negative; I've yet to see a single
| positive headline. Even so, I find it intriguing.
|
| So here's my question: if you were in charge of addressing this
| problem, how would you tackle it differently?
| tgv wrote:
| Idk about the US, but the 'government' fraud that I know of,
| does not show up in the tax office records or in the foreign
| aid accounts. The common thing is that civil servants/officials
| are bribed. At usually on the cheap too, so it'll take a lot of
| digging to find it, and worse, prove it. But, this kind of
| corruption is probably even more widespread among companies. If
| you want to exact justice, that's the place to look.
| yreg wrote:
| In private companies people probably consider the issue to be
| 'less wrong'.
|
| It's up to the owners and their management how they run it,
| right? So it's more about discrimination than government-
| style corruption.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| >The common thing is that civil servants/officials are
| bribed. At usually on the cheap too, so it'll take a lot of
| digging to find it, and worse, prove it.
|
| While no doubt that brazen bribery occurs at all levels and
| in a large range of dollar amounts, I do not think this is
| such a serious problem that it requires the nuclear option he
| is employing. There is a bribery-adjacent phenomenon that is
| far worse. I don't know what to call it. Favor-trading? But
| there is no quid pro quo sufficient to prosecute in most
| cases, and any attempt to do so would look like (and probably
| actually become) a witch hunt.
|
| If a civil servant is just being extra cozy to some private
| entity knowing (but without anything that would amount to
| evidence) that they'll be able to sail into some nice
| lobbyist gig in 3 years, where is the bribe? It was never
| promised. It's not guaranteed (circumstances could well
| change before that becomes possible). How much is that shit
| costing us? And while I'm sure that some would call that
| bribery too, it's juvenile to do so and counter-productive.
| masfuerte wrote:
| One of Trump's executive orders has shut down enforcement of
| the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. This government is
| absolutely not trying to root out corruption.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Corrupt_Practices_Act
| wpm wrote:
| >Is it really possible to root out governmental fraud using
| this approach?
|
| It's possible it will, but not without a lot of false positives
| and innocent bystanders.
|
| At the scale of the federal government, there are plenty of
| things that _appear_ to be fraud but actually have a reasonable
| justification.
|
| In the Dunning-Kruger world we unfortunately seem to live in
| now, I don't think having every single yokel personally
| analyzing every line item on a budget as large as the federal
| government's, especially when those yokels don't really
| understand any of it, is the best way to go about this.
|
| This admin isn't trustworthy either. They'll sit here an cry
| about 0.01% of the federal budget being "wasted" on a bunch of
| National Park probies, and meanwhile the self-appointed king is
| out golfing on the taxpayer dime.
| moogly wrote:
| "Governmental fraud." This is like when people are being
| (made) upset about vanishingly small benefits fraud when wage
| theft and tax evasion are several magnitudes of order worse.
| yreg wrote:
| I think it's certain that there will be positive and negative
| consequences and both of those will be on a large scale. I too
| am curious about the positives.
|
| I think the negatives could have been easily minimized to more-
| reasonable-level without affecting the positive ones, if it
| wasn't headed by hothead Elon.
| scottLobster wrote:
| This isn't an audit, it's a blindfolded hatchet job. They've
| already been caught either deliberately or accidentally
| misinterpreting data, to the tune of they called an 8 million
| dollar contract an 8 billion dollar contract, among many other
| glaring discrepancies.
| https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/02/19/doge...
|
| So if I was in charge, I would start by making sure I did the
| math right and didn't blindly trust my database scraping
| scripts as they appear to be doing (and that's the most
| generous interpretation). I would also make sure that before
| recommending that I fire any group, I at least have a high
| level understanding of what that groups works on. So I don't,
| say, fire the people who oversee the nuclear arsenal, or a
| group of researchers working on the current bird flu outbreak
| (both of these have been done). Rehiring takes money and time
| because upon firing their contact information is apparently
| deleted, and you aren't going to get a 100% return rate.
|
| I also have some experience working with giant bloated blobs of
| legacy code managing critical systems, where many variables are
| arcane acronyms because they were written in a time where
| compilers had character limits. Moving fast and breaking things
| in that environment is just a good way to break a lot of things
| and not even understand how you did it. Which is fine if it's
| twitter, and a little more important when you're managing
| aircraft, nuclear weapons, disease outbreaks, entitlement
| payments that people depend on, etc.
| jghn wrote:
| > This isn't an audit, it's a blindfolded hatchet job
|
| It's actually *worse* than blindfolded. It's extremely
| partisan [1]
|
| [1] https://bsky.app/profile/adambonica.bsky.social/post/3lil
| 7yl...
| bedane wrote:
| conveniently sweeping aside the fact that those who depend the
| most on the 'inefficient' programs/agencies that are being
| 'optimized' are the poorest and weakest members of society.
| those who can afford private everything will be fine.
| callc wrote:
| > So here's my question: if you were in charge of addressing
| this problem, how would you tackle it differently?
|
| For one, with responsibility and care for the public. Not with
| reckless abandon. Not with malice. Not with a child-like
| perversion towards breaking things because it's fun.
|
| Politics aside, this has been an extremely unsettling
| disruption in the faith we have in our institutions. Trust and
| stability are the backbones to societal and economic growth.
| The unseen costs Trump/Musk/doge have wrought are massive, are
| spread equally among all people (globally, in US, minus the
| wealthy class), and is hard to see on a spreadsheet
| russdill wrote:
| It's already been a thing for quite some time:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Inspector_General_(U...
|
| They are independent of the things they review, they find
| inefficiency, overspending, fraud, and embezzlement. They make
| their reports public and work with transparency. There are also
| other similar departments like CIGIE. There have been very
| substantial results.
|
| What DOGE is doing is not finding inefficiency. They are doing
| two basic things. 1) Completely eliminating programs they don't
| think the US should be spending money on. And 2) Reducing
| headcount. Both of these actions may reduce costs, but may end
| up costing the US more money in the long term.
| misiti3780 wrote:
| We are 35 trillion dollars in debt - we are broke. We have go
| cut costs if we want to avoid catastrophe in the medium term.
| pjmorris wrote:
| Government debt is a result of government spending into the
| real economy. It is where we get the taxpayer dollars that
| we spend, some of which go back to the government itself. A
| government without debt is also an economy without money.
|
| Governments with central banks can mismanage their
| currency, but they can't run out of it.
| seanw444 wrote:
| They won't run out of currency, but the people that use
| it will run out of faith.
| dontparticipate wrote:
| There's a body of government explicitly built to do exactly
| that and given exactly that power in the constitution. It's
| called Congress.
| cryptonector wrote:
| The Executive can also do this.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| If we are broke then why do people buy our debt? It's
| obviously more complex than you make it sound.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| They aren't auditing or thoroughly reviewing shit. They're
| stealing the data and then waving their hands about non-
| existent crimes and nickel and dime levels of misappropriated
| or weird spending.
| ganoushoreilly wrote:
| I understand you're frustrated because of who and what. Do
| you have any direct evidence they are stealing data? I see a
| lot of these responses that are emotional but at a factual
| basis it doesn't appear that way. Just as raw un restricted
| read/write access is constantly alleged, but we have in turn
| found out that isn't the case.
|
| I really think we're getting to a point where people are too
| hyper emotional and sensational about most topics which
| further limits real discussion and response.
|
| As for the idea of nickle and dimming, everything adds up and
| they're no where near done yet. Sunlight is the best
| disinfectant and we need a lot of it. Nearly every person
| that has run for president in modern years has stated they
| would go after excess spending and fraud, yet none follow
| through. This time someone is. If years of doing nothing gets
| us further down the debt rabbit hole, what harm is being
| done?
| arrosenberg wrote:
| I have common sense. They put the least serious people
| possible in charge of it, so of course I'm not going to
| take it seriously.
|
| > I really think we're getting to a point where people are
| too hyper emotional and sensational about most topics which
| further limits real discussion and response.
|
| Maybe, but this has nothing to do with emotion. I'm not a
| moron. An actual audit would be great, but would take more
| than the 30 days that Trump has been in office. They are
| lying, so I am left to speculate as to what.
|
| > This time someone is.
|
| Do you have any direct evidence they are doing something
| about it? I see several people supporting these actions
| that are based on emotion, but at a factual basis, it
| appears you are just regurgitating party propaganda.
| theultdev wrote:
| > I have common sense.
|
| So no you don't have any actual evidence.
|
| > An actual audit would be great, but would take more
| than the 30 days that Trump has been in office.
|
| Right, which is why it's still ongoing. They have a year
| to complete it.
|
| Everyone is all parroting democrat talking points about
| Elon, I'm just enjoying seeing all the billions in crap
| get cut.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| > Right, which is why it's still ongoing. They have a
| year to complete it.
|
| So maybe the President's special boy shouldn't be
| tweeting that 150 year olds are receiving Social Security
| payments because he doesn't understand cobol's datetime
| system. That only way I take these people seriously is
| the way I would take a toddler with a lit torch
| seriously.
| ganoushoreilly wrote:
| We don't have the data in front of us to actually prove
| your point one way or the other. Resulting to name
| calling and hyper emotional responses doesn't elicit the
| behavior of cooperation. Instead, engage on data and
| facts.
|
| If you said "He's making statements without any data to
| back up his claims" I'd respond, at this point you're
| correct, we do not have the data to verify. Collectively
| we could ask for more transparency. The result is we
| agree more data is needed.
| Aushin wrote:
| A few replies up, when presented with a clear example of
| the DOGE team having carte blanche access to sensitive
| government data, you handwaved it away. Don't accuse
| other people of being hyper-emotional when your own
| reasoning is so plainly motivated by political sentiment.
| ganoushoreilly wrote:
| I didn't. The report came out that it was an accident
| that was directly rectified. Show me where that's wrong
| and hand wavy.
| Aushin wrote:
| You're telling us to trust the word of people who were
| caught either lying or being staggeringly incompetent.
| It's irrational. You're letting your political sentiments
| cloud your judgement. You're having an emotionally-driven
| reaction.
| ganoushoreilly wrote:
| You're telling us to trust the word of people being
| caught either lying or being staggeringly incompetent.
| pests wrote:
| While I disagree with everything going on, the cobol date
| time thing is just some myth everyone came up with. Go
| find me a single source to that claim because I can't.
| aredox wrote:
| The claims from Musk are complete garbage and I have the
| receipts to show it.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43116844
| JohnMakin wrote:
| So, where is your evidence that fraud of such scale is
| happening in the federal budget that requires
| unprecedented (and likely extremely illegal) access by
| people who are not qualified to be running a gas station
| IT system, let alone the entire financial and IT backend
| of the federal government? This is such a dishonest
| discussion and I suspect you types know it.
| theultdev wrote:
| The audit will continue, sorry. Fraud has already been
| posted everywhere ($55b and counting) so if you haven't
| seen it, you aren't looking.
|
| Maybe Democrats won't lose every branch next time and you
| guys can have a say.
|
| The people want this audit, despite what HN is parroting.
|
| I bet you'll cash that $5k check you get from the
| savings.
| thr0w4w47 wrote:
| Frivolous spending != fraud.
|
| Please read commenting guidelines at
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| theultdev wrote:
| Is there a difference when it comes to the taxpayer?
|
| It's all waste. Fraud if there were kickbacks, we'll see
| about that.
| thr0w4w47 wrote:
| Maybe there is no difference, but I think honest framing
| matters.
|
| > "Fraud has already been posted everywhere ($55b and
| counting)"
|
| I'm looking for some evidence to support your $55 billion
| fraud claim, not just $55 billion in waste. If it's been
| "posted everywhere", please link to it!
| theultdev wrote:
| > _just $55 billion_ in waste
|
| "Just" lol. After a month.
|
| Replace the fraud w/ waste if that makes you feel better
| about the audit.
|
| I'm sure investigations will reveal fraud, it takes
| awhile to build a case.
|
| But even if there is zero fraud (fat chance), gotta love
| the savings from waste cuts!
| thr0w4w47 wrote:
| Dang, I was really excited to read about the $55 billion
| in fraud after you claimed that it has been "posted
| everywhere". :(
|
| Please let me know when you find the evidence!
|
| Also, I never said I dislike the audit. I do, however,
| dislike dishonest framing.
| theultdev wrote:
| Again, we'll just say it's "waste" until investigations
| complete.
|
| Glad I could frame it better for you so you can feel good
| about the savings.
|
| Also glad to hear you like or are at least content with
| the audit, since you don't "dislike" it.
| thr0w4w47 wrote:
| Yup. We'll see how it goes.
| hypothesis wrote:
| > Fraud has already been posted everywhere ($55b and
| counting) so if you haven't seen it, you aren't looking.
|
| Not too surprising to find another propaganda victim...
|
| Here, I did your research for you:
|
| > After correcting an apparent clerical error, it now
| shows $8.5 billion.
|
| https://www.npr.org/2025/02/19/nx-s1-5302705/doge-
| overstates...
| Aushin wrote:
| And NPR could only confirm 2 billion of those contracts
| were actually canceled. It's an endless fountain of
| bullshit.
| ganoushoreilly wrote:
| Cool, then why are you so upset?
| thr0w4w47 wrote:
| He doesn't seem upset to me.
|
| Why can't you follow comment guidelines?
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| ganoushoreilly wrote:
| Why do you keep posting this in every discussion?
| archagon wrote:
| Further proof that this is not an "audit," but a show
| trial.
| ganoushoreilly wrote:
| Who do you propose be put in charge? Why when the
| Democrats were in power weren't they put in charge
| before?
|
| As for an actual audit, those have been done left and
| right. Audits only validate where the money is going not
| why.
|
| Clearly they are doing something, budgeted spend is being
| cut and most notably if they weren't doing anything we
| wouldn't be having this discussion. We are also only a
| handful of weeks into the presidency. They're being very
| clear about what they are doing. Looking line by line at
| some of these cuts, I've yet to see anyone here actually
| debate the validity of all of the spend. Yes good
| programs will likely be impacted, things will be course
| corrected and brought back where appropriate.
|
| It's a painful process no mater who is executing it. The
| only way to reduce the budgetary spend of the country is
| to do just that, cut spend. You start small and work your
| way up.
| trts wrote:
| interesting to behold this inversion where the
| "conservative" side is taking dramatic and rapid action,
| changing things quickly, while the "progressive" side
| vociferously defends the status quo
| ganoushoreilly wrote:
| It is, the right appears to be playing the same hand the
| left has for years and the people are supporting it.
| Naturally this makes someone that has strong left leaning
| convictions frustrated as they come the realization that
| they aren't the majority and the numbers of people that
| support one narrative on the internet aren't a reflection
| of society as a whole. The bigger picture is this isn't
| localized, that's how you know it's a larger problem.
| Countries around the world are having the same discourse
| and results. People are done with it. Identity politics
| is over. Spending excess money to support these groups is
| over.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| That narrative is so boring and tired, and it's
| ultimately why Trumpism will be short lived and fade to
| the dustbin of history.
|
| I'm not a leftist, and I mostly don't care about the
| groups, the right can have them. I care about things like
| medical research, nuclear energy and the food supply,
| which are all at risk because the regime's only tactic
| seems to be to unplug everything and see what breaks, and
| then decide if they even want it to work. They're not
| trying to run the country efficiently, they're trying to
| punish federal employees.
|
| Most people are like me - they want real solutions for
| housing and health, not the impotence we get from the
| neoliberals or the kayfabe we get from Trumpism.
| ganoushoreilly wrote:
| That's the beauty of it all, we're all along for the ride
| and will see. We should all hope for the best.
| aredox wrote:
| "Identity politics is over" says the guy supporting
| hyper-identity focused mysoginists.
| ganoushoreilly wrote:
| I get it you're upset, but that's a you problem not a we
| problem. This is what was voted for. To bring it back to
| the main topic, the implied god mode access doesn't
| exist.
| aredox wrote:
| The conservative side is not taking action, it is
| regressing things to pre-1968 norms.
|
| Progressives weren't defending the status quo, they were
| trying to improve the lives of people who were at the
| bottom of social order for centuries.
| aredox wrote:
| For every complex problem there is an answer that is
| clear, simple, and wrong.
|
| You are embracing those clear, simple answers. You are
| going to pay dearly for it.
| ganoushoreilly wrote:
| We'll have to disagree. I believe the mindless waste of
| the past administration and their programs and narratives
| on things like biology were clear simple and wrong.
| aredox wrote:
| "There are only two sexes and genre doesn't exist" is
| simple and wrong. "Genre is a social construct and is a
| spectrum" isn't.
|
| Sorry you feel threatened by people not wanting to be
| pigeonholed into _your_ tiny tidy restrictive categories.
| jhp123 wrote:
| > Just as raw un restricted read/write access is constantly
| alleged, but we have in turn found out that isn't the case.
|
| Marko "normalize Indian hate" Elez did have read/write
| access, as DOGE lawyers admitted in court after first
| claiming that he did not[0].
|
| [0] https://thehill.com/business/5141149-former-doge-
| employee-ed...
| ganoushoreilly wrote:
| and they immediately course corrected as they should
| pixelpoet wrote:
| Sorry but this is very clearly moving the goalposts; you
| asked, got a very seriously problematic example, and then
| brushed it off with "yeah but..."
|
| Come on man, are we really at the level of just letting
| that slide and pretending this is a legit operation? That
| Musk has only the best intentions, as his track record
| clearly shows right?
|
| I can't believe what I'm seeing, the world has gone fully
| crazy.
| ganoushoreilly wrote:
| Yep it's legitimate and I see no issues with it. The
| track record of the last admin was crazy were you saying
| the same things then? The left screamed trust the science
| in one breath over covid, then said science is fluid in
| the other when it came to biology. The left went to far
| and 15 or so years of being propped up and supported has
| gone by the wayside. I get it, people are upset, but at
| the end of the day we're here because of the "crazy"
| spending on "crazy" ideas.
| TheLegace wrote:
| So explain to me how trillions in tax cuts are suppose to
| magically fix everything. Or how democratic presidents
| are the ones that have to get deficit and spending under
| control, when idiotic republican politicians start stupid
| wars and again cut taxes. Just because you don't actually
| understand how scientific consensus works because of your
| pure arrogance and ignorance the rest of us have to
| suffer. Either way Darwinism will take care of it when
| other countries that you know instead of demonizing
| science use it to technologically leap frog us.
| stouset wrote:
| By re-hiring him?
| ganoushoreilly wrote:
| Sure. They made a decision and stand by it as is their
| luxury. Yelling at the vacuum of the internet about it
| may score emotional points but it won't sole the core
| frustrations people have. The common argument is "yes we
| need to do it, but do it another way" to which I say, it
| hasn't been done another way and plenty have had time to
| do it. Pushing things off and procrastinating in general,
| combined with a President that is largely supported and
| on a 2nd term, with no need to pander means you get
| exactly what was voted for.
|
| The left had their turn to "fix things" they didn't. The
| right are trying now, and maybe their methods are wrong,
| but they're trying. What you're seeing is a power
| struggle playing out, the people who've been king of the
| hill are being throw to the side and don't like it.
| stouset wrote:
| It's been done another way. We literally have independent
| agencies within the government that perform this job
| openly, carefully, with actual transparency, and by teams
| of experienced personnel.
|
| It's not their fucking luxury. It's _our fucking
| government_ being dismantled before our eyes by a handful
| of complete amateurs.
|
| Mind you, my reply was to your statement that they
| "course corrected". They didn't course correct. They
| reaffirmed that that they're happy for the insane and
| wildly destructive course they're on to be piloted by
| open and avowed racists.
| ganoushoreilly wrote:
| No they aren't, hence why so many Americans are surprised
| about USAID and their crazy projects. We'll have to agree
| do disagree.
| jhp123 wrote:
| let me ask you a question. Richard Nixon had a special
| team under his direct control, they're popularly known as
| the white house plumbers. He asked this team to engage in
| activities not directly authorized by congress including
| various wiretaps and break-ins. Eventually these
| activities were discovered, it became a scandal and ended
| his Presidency.
|
| Do you think Nixon did something wrong by creating this
| team?
|
| If not, then we have an answer for why most people see
| this whole thing differently from you -- most people see
| the Nixon presidency as clear overreach and abuse of
| power.
|
| If so, what is the significant difference between Nixon's
| plumbers and the DOGE team, in your view?
| ModernMech wrote:
| Nixon had a 25% approval after he left office. I think
| there's a baseline of about 20-30% of people who are pro-
| authoritarian, and they don't really want to admit it
| yet, but they're fine with their team doing whatever they
| want, as long as they get their way.
| ganoushoreilly wrote:
| Were the "white house plumbers" operating in the clear?
| On a defined task that was campaigned on? Working with
| legal as well as existing employees within each
| organization (yes I get they were simply stealing info)?
|
| This was campaigned on, The election was won. In this
| instance the outcome is what the majority elected. You
| don't have to like it, some may change their mind, but
| this was made clear as a goal from day 1.
|
| I've also not been cagey in my support. I fully support
| what is going on. If you see overreach follow the
| processes in place and litigate. That's how the country
| works. There's two distinct issues people have here, the
| "WHO" and the "WHAT" no one questions the "WHY", because
| no one can stand here and say we don't need to have cuts
| across the board. Ignoring the "WHO", the "WHAT" so far
| has been pretty clear. It's things that socially are
| supported by one party and not the other. This is the
| outcome of an election and it's going to keep going until
| someone proves they are outside of their authorities and
| the courts agree.
|
| It sucks to have a narrative perspective for years and
| then see everything supported under that narrative cut
| back. I get the emotions, but ultimately none of that
| matters if we can't afford to keep the proverbial lights
| on.
| cryptonector wrote:
| Trump is not directing "wiretaps" or "break-ins" into
| entities outside the executive branch of the federal
| government.
| dazilcher wrote:
| He was mistakenly given write access _by the treasury
| department employees in charge of managing DOGE
| permissions_. He resigned a day later, likely before he
| even realized he had write access. In that short window,
| he accessed the system "exclusively under the
| supervision of Bureau database administrators", and the
| initial treasury department investigation did not find
| any misuse of said write permissions.
|
| I don't see how this can be blamed on DOGE. If anything
| it shows that DOGE employees are closely monitored, and
| their access is minimized and audited.
|
| https://www.zetter-zeroday.com/court-documents-shed-new-
| ligh...
| palata wrote:
| > if you were in charge of addressing this problem, how would
| you tackle it differently?
|
| I would start by not firing people doing jobs I don't
| understand. They do that a lot, even for very, _very_ important
| jobs.
| root_axis wrote:
| Before even debating the effectiveness of this audit, we have
| to address the fundamental problem: Elon Musk has no legal
| authority to be conducting this in the first place. The
| Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is not a real
| government agency and Musk has not been confirmed by the Senate
| or given formal oversight. It's illegal and unconstitutional.
|
| Beyond that, yes, large-scale government audits have been done
| before. In fact, we already have institutions designed to do
| exactly that. The GAO, the Office of the Inspector General, and
| even bipartisan commissions have uncovered fraud and
| inefficiencies without letting an extremely partisan private
| individual with massive conflicts of interest connected to his
| businesses arbitrarily rip apart government agencies.
|
| Your claim that the continued existence of fraud means the
| system does not work is also specious, it's obviously not
| possible to eliminate all fraud, statements like that make me
| doubt that your comment is made in good faith.
| ganoushoreilly wrote:
| The authority notion is repeated but bears no resemblance to
| fact. Trump is the one signing off on everything. Both DOGE
| and his appointment of Elon a a special employee, his team
| are mixed career govt and special employees. They put forth
| recommendations for the president. Trump ultimately makes all
| the decisions.
|
| There have been a couple attempts to sue and stop it and each
| have failed in the courts already. Notably the 14 states that
| sued in Fed court were denied by an Obama Appointed Judge.
| She expressed concerns over the terminations, but ultimately
| found "no evidence of imminent irreparable harm to the
| plaintiffs"
|
| So in good faith, i'd ask you, what is your solution to solve
| the fraud issue? One that almost every presidential candidate
| has run on for generations? I don't think fraud is under
| contention honestly, I think it's the methods. What would
| your proposal be to both Identify and fix the issues?
| root_axis wrote:
| As tends to be the case, the ruling is nuanced.
|
| https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-scores-win-suit-
| chall...
|
| FTA: In her decision, Chutkan wrote that the states
| "legitimately call into question what appears to be the
| unchecked authority of an unelected individual and an
| entity that was not created by Congress and over which it
| has no oversight." But the judge said the states had not
| shown why they were entitled to an immediate restraining
| order.
|
| That doesn't mean Elon was exonerated, it just means that
| an immediate restraining order won't be issued.
|
| > _So in good faith, i 'd ask you, what is your solution to
| solve the fraud issue?_
|
| The question cannot be asked in good faith because it
| frames the discussion in a manner that suggests the concern
| here is one of fraud, however what we've witnessed by DOGE
| instead is arbitrary and partisan firings, as well as
| brazen falsehoods and mischaracterizations about the nature
| of what is being cut and the total numbers of what is being
| saved (by several orders of magnitude in some cases).
|
| I don't feel the need to discuss an earnest plan about
| cutting fraud and waste because that is not what is on the
| table right now with DOGE. Further, I don't see any
| evidence presented to explain why the GAO and other
| bipartisan efforts to curtail fraud are regarded as
| ineffective. Simply stating "fraud still exists" is not an
| honest rebuttal, since fraud will always exist.
| ganoushoreilly wrote:
| Ok so ignore fraud, they're finding waste that doesn't
| align with the Presidents vision for America. It's as
| simple as that. The president isn't in alignment with
| Gender Ideology or "wokeness" as is often put. The large
| majority of these programs support those ideas. That's
| his right through EO and his cabinet picks to change. HHS
| has now defined what a woman is, anything counter to that
| is counter to their opinion and is going to be removed.
| You don't have to agree, or like it, but it is what it
| is.
|
| There is excess spending on what the admin sees as
| bullshit, they're going to remove it. Just as Biden
| pushed to forgive student loans and it played out in the
| courts, this will play out as well, though it seems to
| not be in favor of the "losing parties".
| root_axis wrote:
| > _they 're finding waste that doesn't align with the
| Presidents vision for America. It's as simple as that_
|
| In other words, it _is_ partisan but you, more or less,
| agree with it.
|
| > _The president isn 't in alignment with Gender Ideology
| or "wokeness" as is often put. The large majority of
| these programs support those ideas_
|
| The VA is woke? The FAA is woke? Cancer research is woke?
| Nuclear weapons security is woke? Bird flu researchers
| are woke?
|
| If it were just some DEI directors getting fired most
| people wouldn't care, but the haphazard blowing up of the
| government is not about "waste", it's an obvious
| political agenda.
| ganoushoreilly wrote:
| I'll bite since you mentioned VA. I 100% see bloat and
| waste that need to be purged every time I go in. The
| large portion of non DRs working there I interact with
| are lazy and barely work. It's been a jobs program that
| has created issue after issue. Clear the bloat and hire
| the right people. So again, yes I'm fine with it.
| invalidOrTaken wrote:
| DOGE is actually the USDS:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Digital_Service
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| It's shocking to me how many people think that auditing
| government agencies is some new thing being implemented by
| Trump/Musk.
|
| These agencies all have Inspector Generals, who are outside of
| the agency and responsible for auditing their particular
| agency. And they do, there are reports on this sort of thing.
|
| Most of the IGs, if not all, were fired by Trump first thing.
|
| > corruption wouldn't persist
|
| We still haven't seen any evidence of corruption, by the way.
| Yeah, I'm sure there's some gov employees here and there doing
| fraudulent stuff, skimming off the top or getting gov contracts
| to their buddies. But there has been zero evidence of any
| widespread or systemic corruption in a single agency. Nothing.
|
| The agency that did get axed the most -- USAID -- was because
| of "woke ideology" that they were supposedly pushing (though
| there wasn't any evidence of that being widespread either), not
| corruption/fraud (breaking the law).
|
| It's like the WMD excuse to invade Iraq.
| bjoli wrote:
| Considering how atrociously bad they have been at estimated
| money saved, I don't think they have any positive results at
| all.
|
| https://www.npr.org/2025/02/19/nx-s1-5302705/doge-overstates...
|
| Twitter guy is going to do so much damage to America.
| aristocracy wrote:
| DOGE is not necessarily about fraud. Their summary of cancelled
| projects for USAID for example is often vague. For example,
| "$14M for "social cohesion" in Mali." As a reader, I have no
| context for this program, its impact, or who ran it. I don't
| even have the ability to discern whether other things were
| lumped in. Can I guess this was aimed at preventing further in-
| roads of Al Qaeda? Who knows.
|
| An actual cherry-picked example of DOGE's potential fraud
| finding is at the SSA where Musk showed his query of "DEAD" =
| "FALSE" (I am paraphrasing a bit) yielded a huge number of
| folks over ages 115. Context is what is scarce. Are they
| receiving payments, are there other reasons for why the query
| returned those results, what other context do I have to
| interpret these results? Again, I have no idea.
|
| I think the safest way of couching what is going on, is a
| drastic curtailment of government programs and employees.
| Equivalents to this? Maybe Gorbachev. I am sure there are other
| historical parallels, but they are probably apples to peaches
| comparisons at a certain level.
|
| And to your last question, I am not sure if anyone really knows
| the problem/s that are being addressed right now other than
| debt and the capability to pass a tax cut.
| Zamaamiro wrote:
| I would not fire staff responsible for safeguarding nuclear
| material, and I wouldn't be trying to avoid transparency.
|
| [1]
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2025-02-14/elon-m...
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Lets assume for a minute that what's going on is a good faith
| comprehensive audit of these agencies. (It's not, but lets just
| say it is.)
|
| 1) How long do you think it takes to perform a comprehensive
| audit of an agency in order to accurately determine waste,
| corruption and fraud. If you've ever audited a large
| corporation, you know what that takes -- it is not something
| you whip up in a week or two.
|
| 2) Who do you think is qualified to audit government entities?
| Some "young Turk" DOGE engineers? We're not talking about
| determining whether computer systems are well architected or
| should be refactored (though that also takes time to do
| correctly). We're talking about financial transactions and
| whether they were legitimate and legal (because if not, that
| would be "corruption" or "fraud").
|
| Which Fortune500 company would hire a team of (relatively
| inexperienced) software engineers to audit its books?
| cryptonector wrote:
| Presumably Elon and hist staff were planning this and
| -maybe?- training for this for months, perhaps since before
| the election.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Planning without any access to or knowledge of all these
| difference agencies and their systems and processes (you do
| know there are many processes in place to prevent fraud and
| corruption, and Inspector Generals responsible for
| auditing)? Almost impossible. Again, these are not software
| problems.
| crooked-v wrote:
| The US has actual independent auditors at various agencies.
| They're called inspectors general. Trump is trying to fire all
| of them: https://apnews.com/article/trump-inspectors-general-
| fired-co...
| bink wrote:
| The Clinton administration conducted a thorough audit,
| eventually laying off 351k people [1]. But they did so using a
| six-month review of all agencies performed by experienced
| federal workers. They ensured there were no national security
| ramifications and provided severance.
|
| Reagan also had the Grace Commission [2].
|
| [1] https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/06/politics/doge-musk-gore-
| rego-...
|
| [2] https://www.history.com/news/ronald-reagan-grace-
| commission-...
| aredox wrote:
| Only because you didn't inform yourself properly. Did you know
| about the position of inspection general? Did you read any of
| their reports? Do you know Trump fired all of them? In a
| totally illegal move?
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43116844
|
| https://www.axios.com/2025/01/25/trump-fires-inspectors-gene...
| fumar wrote:
| Which cloud provider is DOGE using?
| muaytimbo wrote:
| giving DOGE sudo is a whole article?
| vezycash wrote:
| My two cents. God-mode privilege already existed before DOGE,
| someone else had (or still has) this privilege. Priority - How to
| limit power of such privilege in future.
| regularfry wrote:
| Often what you'll find is that the power was limited through
| separation of privileges. One person would not be able to do
| much beyond a limited boundary. Sounds like that's no longer
| true.
| vuln wrote:
| "Often" false. I'd bet 60-70% of the Fortune 500 doesn't
| fully adhere to these "best practices" maybe only the
| government when handling classified information comes close.
| Capricorn2481 wrote:
| They're not talking about Fortune 500 companies, they're
| talking about the literal government and the rules for
| sharing information between agencies.
| misiti3780 wrote:
| Yes, and the chances of that person being technically smarter
| than the DOGE is close to zero.
| whymeogod wrote:
| Well, yes, because 1 is pretty close to zero, on a scale of 0
| to infinity. However, if you look at their actual technical
| skilz:
|
| The incompetence at DOGE is staggering. Absolutely no
| security on their .gov webiste:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43045835
|
| can't even get mail merges to work, see some of their emails
| terminating people. Telling people to sign the doc and then
| not attaching the doc.
|
| The search for 'probationary' employees failing 3 times
| because they didn't check the definition of the term.
|
| No, technical competence really isn't DOGE's strong point.
| misiti3780 wrote:
| right ...
| MetaWhirledPeas wrote:
| This further emphasizes a need that is only growing: addressing
| the disparity between our government's reliance on technology
| and its members' understanding of it. Government and technology
| are inexorably linked at a fundamental level. Take data for
| example. Data is inherently untrustworthy if sufficient
| measures are not taken to ensure its integrity while being
| recorded, its integrity while being maintained, the integrity
| of its interpretation, and the integrity of its further
| utilization.
|
| We need political pressure to design these systems correctly to
| avoid "god mode" nonsense, and for that we need politicians who
| understand and embrace the technological need. If the system is
| designed correctly you don't need "god mode" access to conduct
| an audit or even to make lasting changes. Their changes should
| be non-destructive writes, with an audit trail.
|
| Also, I'm going to need more information than "god mode". God
| mode over which specific databases? And what specific access
| levels? And which admin granted the permissions? If DOGE is
| serious about transparency they will communicate this sort of
| thing.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| What _should_ happen, and nobody is talking about this, is the
| USA is severely downgraded in its overall credit rating due to an
| unhinged and ongoing "fire, aim, ready" self-audit.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_governme...
| mempko wrote:
| The deficit hawks don't understand how money works. Everything
| about DOGE and their mission has a fundamental deep
| misunderstanding of why governments with their own currency
| must have deficits. Literal accounting 101. Unfortunately Elon
| has an economics degree, which means he is completely
| uneducated in accounting.
| rchaud wrote:
| No need to infatilize their behavior by pointing to a lack of
| education. If he can head up several corporations, he can
| read a balance sheet. This is smash and grab politics, the
| things that happen in places like post-USSR when there's a
| power vaccuum, everything is up for grabs, the courts are
| powerless and territories start getting carved up by a
| coterie of connected technocrats. How long was it before
| Yeltsin's uneasy alliance with oligarchs crumbled, paving the
| way for a ruler who wasn't going to make the same mistakes?
| TeaBrain wrote:
| It doesn't appear that DOGE is handling the problem with the
| appropriate amount of care or analysis, but the US does have
| a deficit problem. The issue is not simply that the US has a
| deficit, nor have I heard anyone argue this point, but that
| the deficit to GDP ratio is around twice as large as the
| historical average, and is projected to continue to increase.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Everything about DOGE and their mission has a fundamental
| deep misunderstanding of why governments with their own
| currency must have deficits_
|
| DOGE has nothing to do with deficits, they're not even
| bothering to count it properly [1]. DOGE will remake the
| federal government for Musk's benefit. That's why he's using
| cannon-fodder DOGE bros instead of his best and brightest.
| That's why the collateral damage isn't of principal concern,
| and why they're moving quickly: they need to finish their
| work before checks and balances start swinging.
|
| [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/18/upshot/doge-contracts-
| mus...
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| What does he think will happen after four years? Trump is
| old and can escape accountability by dying but most of
| these toadies are middle-aged.
| matteoraso wrote:
| I was thinking the same thing. If this even slightly
| jeopardizes America's ability to pay off its debt, the entire
| world will suffer. Something that occurred to me from talking
| to Americans online is that most of them don't realize just how
| much soft power they have across the world. I really feel that
| China becoming the global superpower might end up becoming the
| least bad option if America keeps destabilizing.
| TeaBrain wrote:
| The last credit downgrade of the US by a major ratings agency
| was by Fitch in 2023. They cited projections for the US deficit
| to continue to rise, due to projected weaker revenues and
| increased spending.
|
| https://www.fitchratings.com/research/sovereigns/united-stat...
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| A huge problem with this is that from all accounts, these
| engineers going in don't seem to have any accountability. No one
| knows who is in charge and making the decisions (presumably Musk
| though official statements say he's not the DOGE administrator,
| but no one knows who is), they come into offices like an FBI raid
| demanding access but won't give reasons, say who is in charge,
| what they are doing, or even their names.[0] Its much worse than
| an FBI raid, and reminiscent of Gestapo tactics.
|
| So even if DOGE is benign (and I don't think they are, but lets
| assume for a moment), if something goes wrong, who is to blame?
| Where is the transparency they are expecting of government
| agencies?
|
| Would you trust an outside team like that, say some brash
| McKinsley team of "experts", to come in and do whatever they want
| with your systems? What company would allow that?
|
| Also turns out that they're making up shit. $8 billion "saved"
| was actually $8 million because they didn't do their homework.
|
| [0] https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/02/doge-
| mu...
| whymeogod wrote:
| > official statements say he's (Musk) not the DOGE
| administrator, but no one knows who is
|
| That's because they believe in maximum transparency.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| s/max/min/g
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Another very negative long-term effect of all of this is how is
| the government going to recruit talent in the future? How many
| people, who have good prospects elsewhere, are going to work for
| a government agency -- usually a lower pay -- to put up with shit
| like this that doesn't even happen in industry? Would you? Sure
| there are sometimes mass layoffs that are handled pretty badly in
| industry, but not these Gestapo-like purge tactics that are
| clearly designed that way to instill fear and loyalty.
| a_ba wrote:
| Why have a functional government if instead you and your
| buddies can you benefit from contracting out?
| derektank wrote:
| We've needed reforms to civil service and the general schedule
| pay scale specifically for a long time now. One can hope that a
| future Congress could write a bill that resets government
| hiring and compensation practices in the wake of this
| administration, but perhaps that's a fantasy at this point.
| Kapura wrote:
| it's cute you think congress is in control right now.
| tome wrote:
| Cheap snarky comments like this have no place on HN.
| nickserv wrote:
| If not intentional, then a happy side effect.
|
| The goal is to destroy the state apparatus from the inside, to
| be replaced by private industry.
| skizm wrote:
| I think that is part of the point. "As hire As. Bs hire Cs."
| A-tier folks want to work with the best, B-tier folks want to
| work with lackeys that will do their bidding. It's pretty clear
| there's no A-tier folks in charge at the moment.
| polski-g wrote:
| If you've ever worked on a government contract, you would
| know there are not and have never been A's on the government
| side.
| pas wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43094283
| acdha wrote:
| This is not and has never been true as a blanket statement.
| Contractors perform to expectations just like in every
| other sector of the economy, so variation is high, just
| like in every other sector of the economy.
|
| I've seen both high and low-performing teams in .com, .edu,
| and .gov and there's nothing magic about any sector: you
| get what senior management sets the incentives to get. The
| NSA gets really good hackers because they don't leave that
| to chance, just like how NASA or MIT hire really good
| scientists and engineers, and the places which just trust
| the big consulting companies usually get taken to the
| cleaners.
| cryptonector wrote:
| Yes, Elon hires Cs.
|
| _eyeroll_
| acdha wrote:
| When is FSD shipping again? Why is Tesla falling behind in
| the market they defined for a decade? When will Boring
| actually deliver on the hype? Why is X suing former
| customers trying to get the revenue they so desperately
| need to pay off debts best on wildly over-estimating the
| company's worth?
|
| He's been able to buy some good companies but nobody has a
| magic trick for being good at everything and the man is
| stretched really thin between all of his CEO positions and
| spending hours per day on politics.
| skizm wrote:
| It is pretty well known Elon companies pay shit and churn
| through young engineers willing to work long hours for no
| overtime fueled by "passion". It's why he is pushing for
| more H1B1s. He wants desperate people worried about being
| deported if they lose their job.
| aredox wrote:
| Has anybody more competent than Elon (which isn't a very
| high bar) survived contact with him in one of his firms? It
| is well know he doesn't tolerate any pushback and that e.g.
| SpaceX has a whole team dedicated to babysitting him away
| from operations.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Has anybody more competent than Elon (which isn 't a
| very high bar) survived contact with him in one of his
| firms?_
|
| Gwynne Shotwell.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| In government, yes, he's hiring Cs. I can speak to SpaceX--
| they're all As. But it's also the company he's most
| shielded from himself.
|
| Elon qua SpaceX and possibly xAI and Neuralink is an A.
| Elon qua Boring Company, X and DOGE is very, very clearly a
| B player. (Idk what's going on with Tesla, he seems to be
| treating it more like a piggy bank to be raided to get to
| Mars (A) and indulge his impulses (B).)
| guax wrote:
| This gets repeated a lot but in reality hiring is a skillset
| that good programmers sorely lack.
| thunky wrote:
| > How many people, who have good prospects elsewhere, are going
| to work for a government agency -- usually a lower pay -- to
| put up with shit like this that doesn't even happen in
| industry? Would you?
|
| You could remove the "to put up with shit like this" part and
| the answer would still be "nobody". You have to remove the "who
| have good prospects elsewhere" part for it to make sense.
| Kapura wrote:
| That is the entire point. They want a government that nobody
| wants to work for so that regulations on cars, rocket launches,
| and securities will stop bothering their profits.
| dehrmann wrote:
| > put up with shit like this that doesn't even happen in
| industry
|
| Musk did a trial run with it on Twitter.
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| And look how badly that worked out
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| He ended up in control and the woke employees are gone.
| Isn't that a win to his perspective?
| finnthehuman wrote:
| >to put up with shit like this that doesn't even happen in
| industry?
|
| The C-suite never bring in hatchetmen? What world do you work
| in?
|
| > Sure there are sometimes mass layoffs that are handled pretty
| badly in industry, but not these Gestapo-like purge tactics
| that are clearly designed that way to instill fear and loyalty.
|
| Isn't the difference here that in the private sector you have
| to do all that loyalty shit from day one, not just whenever the
| board restructures and you want to keep your job?
| jajko wrote:
| This is basic dictatorshipping, I think US folks need to
| refresh skills so common in rest of the world.
|
| You want obedient lackeys as #1 rule, it means reasonably
| little threat and no resistance to molding from above.
| Competences are sometimes even frowned upon. Look at how potus
| literally demands that others lick his boots to keep it polite.
|
| This is how russians run their dictatorships for example,
| including those they exported elsewhere under their iron hand /
| military bases. Talking from first hand experience.
|
| Of course that part of the system is very ineffective.
| Regardless of what you think about government and its
| bureaucracy, that fascist manchild aint gonna end up with
| success story here, he lacks (any genuine) emotional
| intelligence to understand underlying reasons. This isnt
| technical problem to solve where he sometimes excells.
| cryptonector wrote:
| First, DOGE proposes to reduce the size of the federal
| workforce, so the need to recruit talent may not be that great,
| second they might recruit from the pool of talent that supports
| all of this -- it might be a small pool, but if the workforce
| is small enough...
| giarc wrote:
| Putting aside the whole idea that Elon "bought" his way into this
| position, it's crazy this is the path that Trump is taking. He
| has a house and a senate that would likely happily cut all these
| programs, and it could be done legally and without all this mess.
| Why let Elon run roughshod over the government?
| WesleyJohnson wrote:
| It's in the Project 2025 playbook. They're trying to overwhelm
| everyone so you can't possible keep track of all they're doing.
| Store security could handle one shoplifter at a time; but when
| you have a riot and mass looting - you have fewer options and
| often just step aside and let them loot. Then deal with the
| mess later.
|
| Also - he's a narcissist and he wants all the credit.
|
| Also - he's a wannabe dictator, and on his way to making it a
| reality, so he's demonstrating that he does not need permission
| or help.
| theultdev wrote:
| Not related to Project 2025, and they have countless times
| said they aren't associated with that project.
|
| But yes, "Flood the Zone" is the strategy to combat
| Democrat's media and court strategies.
|
| It was started by Steve Bannon in 2018, but expanded
| massively under Stephen Miller.
|
| The rest of your post is just hysteria so I won't comment on
| that.
| ncr100 wrote:
| No. The current GOP administration, starting from before
| this election:
|
| - supported funding Project 2025's development by GOP
| members
|
| - talked about Project 2025 favorably
|
| - saw Project 2025 demonized by the media
|
| - THEN denied they support Project 2025
|
| - got elected using Project 2025 tactics
|
| - hired Project 2025 author INTO this new administration
|
| - are currently implementing Project 2025 policies.
|
| SO "THEY ARE ASSOCIATED WITH PROJECT 2025" seems closer to
| "true" and "fact" than unlikely.
| theultdev wrote:
| Please find me a clip where Trump supported Project 2025,
| I'll wait.
|
| In every instance, he has said he is not affiliated with
| it and doesn't support it as a whole.
|
| Now there are some agendas in Project 2025 that are fine,
| some that are pretty out there. So yeah there will be
| overlap in policies.
|
| Just wanted to point out you were wrong about their
| strategy. There's a name for it it's called "Flood the
| zone" and it's older than Project 2025.
| Andrew6rant wrote:
| > Please find me a clip where Trump supported Project
| 2025, I'll wait.
|
| Trump said parts of Project 2025 are "very good" in Dec
| 2024. Can't link a clip right now as I'm at lunch at
| work, but it should be easy to find
| theultdev wrote:
| Yes, and some parts are very good. He also said some
| parts are not very good in the same statement.
|
| That does not translate to supporting the entire agenda.
| thr0w4w47 wrote:
| > That does not translate to supporting the entire
| agenda.
|
| I don't think anyone in this thread has claimed that he
| supports the entire agenda.
| theultdev wrote:
| Okay. We're all good then.
| thr0w4w47 wrote:
| > Please find me a clip where Trump supported Project
| 2025, I'll wait.
|
| So someone can only be accused of supporting something if
| it is caught on video?
| theultdev wrote:
| Supporting evidence certainly helps when accusing
| someone.
| filoeleven wrote:
| https://www.project2025.observer/
|
| Trump is either in charge and actively supporting its
| goals, or he is not really in charge and is being duped
| into supporting its goals. "Some overlap" is an
| understatement, especially only this far into his
| presidency. They're doing exactly what they said they
| would.
| Blot2882 wrote:
| > they have countless times said they aren't associated
| with that project
|
| Right, but they are visibly are. Russ Vought (project 2025)
| is the Office of Management and Budget director. He drafted
| the executive orders months ago that would lead to exactly
| this. Part of Project 2025
|
| Other members in Trumps cabinet from Project 2025:
|
| - Tom Homan (Border Czar)
|
| - Brendan Carr (FCC)
|
| - John Ratcliffe (CIA Director)
|
| > The rest of your post is just hysteria so I won't comment
| on that.
|
| Maybe don't accuse others of hysteria while you spout that
| Democrats are the ones coordinating every independent
| attorney and judge to come after Trump.
|
| > In every instance, he has said he is not affiliated with
| it and doesn't support it
|
| You sound like you were born yesterday. If you can't
| imagine why a politician would say one thing and do the
| other, I really can't help you. You're maliciously
| ignorant.
| theultdev wrote:
| Having someone in your cabinet doesn't mean their views
| override yours.
|
| It's good to have a cabinet of diverse thought. You can
| pool all perspectives to make a final informed decision.
|
| That's why he has ex-democrats like RFK and Tulsi.
| Doesn't mean he will implement all of RFKs views though.
|
| And I didn't say they coordinated _every_ judge
| /attorney, you put those words there. I simply said court
| strategies.
|
| It's a well known strategy to shop around for judges to
| bring a court case. Republicans do it too. Though
| Democrats excel at it.
| tediousgraffit1 wrote:
| > Not related to Project 2025, and they have countless
| times said they aren't associated with that project.
|
| lmao the chief author is the head of the OMB my guy[1]
|
| [1]https://apnews.com/article/trump-russell-vought-
| confirmation...
| theultdev wrote:
| There's plenty of people in the cabinet and other
| positions with many political views and proposals,
| including ex-democrats.
|
| That doesn't mean all of their views will be implemented.
| Just a subset that Trump agrees with, or even some they
| disagree with that Trump tells them to.
| babycheetahbite wrote:
| I'm trying to sort out if there is a particular political
| bent to the HN crowd.
| akomtu wrote:
| DOGE = EGOD = EGO/GOD
| JohnMakin wrote:
| This reminds me of that scene in Don't Look Up where the planet
| puts all of their hopes in an eclectic oligarch's dumb plan to
| blow up the asteroid about to obliterate the planet, and it fails
| miserably. There is no chance any of this bodes well for many
| people not directly standing to profit directly from this
| pillaging of the federal government, and I'm not sure there is a
| way to recover from whatever is being done here. GG, I guess.
| hnthrowaway0315 wrote:
| I hope they at least open the original documents to the American
| public, instead of posting on X. IMHO the public should have the
| rights to review and grill the officials about the spending.
| ncr100 wrote:
| I hope they stop what they are doing. I hope they follow the
| law.
| hnthrowaway0315 wrote:
| Whenever I see "follow the law", my first reaction is always:
| Is the law fair and just? I'm merely posing the question. If
| you find the law to be fair and just, then for sure everyone
| should and probably will follow the law.
| y1426i wrote:
| The comments here seem mostly against DOGE, but I have seen the
| waste in these organizations firsthand, and we all pay for it.
| Musk hopes to cut spending by 10%, but that is only because he is
| limited in what he can do. A Twitter-style cleanup would at least
| reduce it by 50%, but it is not feasible. Know that those 10% or
| 50% directly map to a percentage of your income and lifestyle
| directly (higher taxes) or indirectly (higher inflation).
| misiti3780 wrote:
| This is great news for anyone paying taxes in the US. People
| really underestimate how incompetent the federal work force
| really is. Not everyone of course. But I contracted with the DOD
| for six years and you legit could have fired half the federal
| employees. They didnt do shit all day and it sounds like it's
| gotten way worse since COVID allowed these people to work from
| home.
|
| I seriously want a real, non-politically based argument on why we
| shouldnt be trying to 1. find fraud 2. fire 10-20% of these
| people immediately
|
| Imagine what we can do in 2025 by applying LLM search to all of
| the federal paperwork!
| andy_ppp wrote:
| If you think this data won't be used to disenfranchise and target
| democratic voters and give the GOP perpetual rule, I have a
| bridge to sell you.
|
| "Oh no! Big mistake we cancelled hundreds of thousands of people
| from voting just before the election! It just happens to be 99.9%
| Democrats in swing states who all happen to be marked as dead in
| all government systems!"
|
| It will be similar to Cambridge Analytica - with all the US
| Government's data on one side, this is a massive advantage for
| targeting even without direct cheating.
| imperial_march wrote:
| illegal aliens, and the NGOs who have been bringing them in and
| supporting them, that the democrats brought in as future voters
| so they would have complete control, Well, no more funding for
| them!
|
| At least, not from America! It's no secret that these NGOs are
| now trying to attach themselves to Brussels to continue ops in
| the US, leeches will be leeches
| the_optimist wrote:
| This should be very illegal. It's a huge security risk to let
| Federal government employees access Federal government systems.
| whymeogod wrote:
| You forgot to add "without proper security controls/clearances
| and data governance".
| the_optimist wrote:
| I didn't. It's just a giant security scam to let doge access
| systems. Didn't you read the article? The USAID people said
| they don't trust the doge people so we shouldn't either.
| gsibble wrote:
| Slanted political article. Flagged.
| imperial_march wrote:
| Yeah, they really aren't happy the corruption is being
| unearthed, this is above and beyond anything they were
| planning.
|
| Hell, there should have been massive riots by the left now,
| though the funding has now disappeared for the professional
| organisers and rent a crowd.
|
| Democrats are 20 mil in debt from the election, and now their
| money funnels have been closed down. They simply weren't
| expecting this.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Trump/Musk are using "corruption/fraud" as a lie to remake the
| government in their image (or Project2025's image), in the same
| way that Bush used WMDs as a lie to invade Iraq.
|
| Where's the evidence of widespread corruption? If there really
| was corruption and fraud, then we'd be hearing of people being
| investigated and/or charged with breaking the law, not randomly
| fired or fired for ideological/loyalty/retribution reasons.
| kra34 wrote:
| I think over half of this article is wildly speculative
| hyperbole. "Here is a list of things we can imagine that DOGE
| might do with this data: 1. Invent super solider zombies. 2.
| Blackmail you (you specifically are at risk here) 3. Sell all the
| data to China who will work with Israel and Mexico to conquer
| America
|
| You should be extremely worried! Run in Fear of what might come
| to pass!" because some guy filled out a request to have admin
| access to some government data stores. Ridiculous. Between
| United, BCBS, and existing Chinese infiltrations into OPM and
| telcos your data is already compromised by real / confirmed bad
| actors. This is disappointing click bait from the Atlantic and
| their editors should be ashamed of its publication.
| Zamaamiro wrote:
| People did not vote to give Elon Musk absolute, unaccountable
| access to the most sensitive machineries of government.
|
| They've fired and hobbled all of the inspectors general and
| parties that are supposed to monitor and hold them accountable.
| This is nothing short of a security nightmare and insider threat
| of the highest degree.
| buckle8017 wrote:
| They're only listed source is an employee of USAID.
|
| I have no reason to believe anything in this article.
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| Is this more access than 19-year-old summer interns in the
| various agencies get (to their given agency)?
|
| Because it's not a foregone conclusion that it is.
|
| At least not based on "according to an employee in senior
| leadership at USAID".
| astroid wrote:
| The last time this topic came up, I manually and then with AI
| analyzed 13 articles talking about 'read/write' access - and all
| of it was 2nd or 3rd party info from anonymous sources.
|
| Reading this article it appears on the surface to be a little
| more conclusive... but once you peel back ther layers, we are
| back to square one. There are many red flags still that make me
| question the reliability of this:
|
| the senior USAID source said. "What do you do with this
| information? I had to ask myself, Do I file my taxes this year or
| not? I had to sit and debate that."
|
| Ok this is kind of silly - assuming they are being fully honest
| and forthright, then their account information would already be
| 'compromised' unless they change banks yearly which seems..
| unlikely.
|
| So why wasn't their question "Should I close the account I used
| for tax refunds in the past? Should I try to create an insulated
| account instead" -- rather instead, they subtly implant the idea
| that maybe they should do something illegal in response to this
| supposed breach. (not file taxes, like them or not - not
| interested in sovereign citizen arguments btw).
|
| So this right out of the gate feels like FUD by virtue of that
| alone... and if you are cynical enough you could probably argue
| this is propaganda meant to cause well-meaning citizens to break
| the law out of fear, which is deplorable.
|
| "Over the past few days, we've talked with civil servants working
| for numerous agencies, all of whom requested anonymity because
| they fear what will happen if they lose their job--not just to
| themselves, but to the functioning of the federal government."
|
| Ok so it's all anonymous sources again - everyone is up in arms
| and there isn't even clarity in this article if the anonymous
| sources are first party, second party, third party, or what.
| Previous FUD campaigns at least made that clear, but I'll try to
| pick this one apart as well. Additionaly, they are implying that
| somehow not being anonymous may jeopardize the entire functioning
| of the federal govt... excuse me, what??
|
| I did the same AI analysis using CoPilot as I did on previous
| articles, and this is what it came up with breaking down the
| 'sources':
|
| Anonymous Source: Type: Anonymous Details: The article cites an
| anonymous source described as a "civil servants" who provides
| insights into the Doge God Mode Access incident.
|
| NOTE (from me not CoPilot): This is entirely irrelevant, they are
| presenting a 'nightmare' situation a security researcher and
| asking their opinion of it. This does not mean the scenario is
| happening, and does not support the thesis.
|
| Hypothetical Scenarios: Type: Hypothetical Details: The article
| includes hypothetical scenarios, such as the one about NASA's
| thermal-protection or encryption technologies, to illustrate
| potential risks and vulnerabilities.
|
| NOTE (from me not CoPilot): I think we can all agree
| hypotheticals are pointless if you haven't reliably established
| baseline 'facts' the support the hypothetical - so far there is a
| running trend, as it's all based on hypothetical fear mongering
|
| That's it - that's the meat of this article.
|
| The articles is also riddles with other clues that this is a
| slanted report like: "One experienced government information-
| security contractor offered a blunt response to the God-mode
| situation at USAID: "That sounds like our worst fears come
| true."" -- ok but he clearly has no knowledge, so describing a
| worst fear and then going 'omg that soudds bad' is pointless..
|
| People really need to step up their media literacy skills if they
| want to get through the next four years without having an
| aneurhysim -- and this to me just says that the work DOGE is
| doing is probably threatening the pocket books of many 'important
| people'.
|
| Hey speaking of important people, who funds The Atlantic
| anyway...
| astroid wrote:
| The Atlantic: https://www.influencewatch.org/for-profit/the-
| atlantic/
|
| "The Atlantic is a left-of-center literary, political, and
| ideas magazine that publishes ten issues per year. It was
| founded as The Atlantic Monthly in 1857 by several prominent
| American literary figures such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry
| Wadsworth Longfellow. 1 In 2017 the Emerson Collective, a left-
| of-center private grantmaking enterprise funded by Laurene
| Powell Jobs, the widow and heir of Apple Computer executive
| Steve Jobs, purchased majority ownership. 2 Jeffrey Goldberg,
| previously a prominent writer for the magazine, was named
| editor-in-chief in October 2016. 3
|
| In contrast to most of its editorial history, after 2016
| political criticism became a much larger priority for The
| Atlantic. From its founding in 1857 to 2016, the publication
| had endorsed only two presidential candidates, but then did so
| for two elections in a row in 2016 and 2020, declaring in 2020
| that President Donald Trump "poses a threat to our collective
| existence." After Trump's 2016 election, the magazine sharply
| increased the attention it dedicated to politicians and the
| presidency. From 2016 through 2019 (covering the 2016 election
| and first three years of the Trump administration), President
| Donald Trump was the subject of eight cover stories-all
| negative. This contrasts with President Barack Obama, who--
| following a cover story for his January 2009 inauguration--was
| not the subject of another cover story for the next two years.
| Similarly, from 2000 through 2003 (i.e.: the 2000 Presidential
| election and first three years of the George W. Bush
| administration) President George W. Bush was directly
| referenced in just one cover feature."
|
| I bet these guys are super duper impartial and we should all
| just trust that this journalists 'anonymous sources' who never
| are quoted in any manner which implies the god mode claims are
| true must be true. I couldn't conceive of a situation where
| they may lie about something this egregious through carefully
| worded articles which state nothing of the nature of the
| access, are all off record anonymous sources, and which clearly
| has an axe to grind with Trump in particular.
| astroid wrote:
| "Jeffrey Goldberg was named editor in chief of The Atlantic
| in October 2016 and held the position as of November 2020.
| Prior to being elevated to the top editorial spot, Goldberg
| had been a correspondent for the magazine since 2007 and had
| written numerous essays covering foreign policy in general
| and the Middle East in particular. 3
|
| Just days prior to Goldberg's promotion, the magazine
| endorsed Democrat Hillary Clinton for president, The
| Atlantic's first presidential endorsement since 1964 and only
| the third in its history. In October 2020, the Goldberg-led
| publication made its fourth presidential endorsement for
| Democratic nominee (and eventual winner) Joe Biden. The
| essays were respectively titled "Against Donald Trump" (2016)
| and "The Case Against Donald Trump" (2020). The 2020
| endorsement asserted Trump "poses a threat to our collective
| existence" and that "the choice voters face is spectacularly
| obvious.
|
| In July 2017, David G. Bradley, then the owner of The
| Atlantic, announced he was selling a majority stake in the
| magazine to the Emerson Collective, a left-of-center private
| grantmaking enterprise funded by Laurene Powell Jobs, the
| widow of Apple Computer executive Steve Jobs. The
| announcement stated the Emerson Collective would likely
| assume "full ownership" of the publication within five years,
| or by summer of 2022. The reported purchase price for Jobs'
| initial 70 percent stake was $100 million. "
|
| ....
|
| "It felt like the place was becoming a hot-take factory,"
| said one recently departed writer. "That can be profitable,
| of course, because hot takes don't cost much."
| astroid wrote:
| Now if you got this far and are still thinking "yeah but I
| trust the Atlantic, they are the pinnacle of news and they
| don't need to show their work!" I would urge you to read
| the full 'Controversies' section @
| https://www.influencewatch.org/for-profit/the-atlantic/
|
| Here are a few choice items though that just -might- impact
| their impartiality and should maybe cause you to second
| guess if 'anonymous, unquoted sources' are a great
| journalistic bar for 'the truth':
|
| "A September 2020 report authored by Jeffrey Goldberg,
| editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, cited "multiple sources"
| claiming President Donald Trump had disparaged the
| historical sacrifices made by American military personnel.
| The headline read "Trump: Americans Who Died in War Are
| 'Losers' and 'Suckers'" with a sub-headline sentence
| stating "The president has repeatedly disparaged the
| intelligence of service members, and asked that wounded
| veterans be kept out of military parades, multiple sources
| tell The Atlantic." 15
|
| Both the content and context of the allegation was disputed
| in whole or in part by the president, his staff, and even
| some of his critics, including left-wing journalists.
|
| The two opening paragraphs set the context and provided the
| sourcing for the allegation:
|
| When President Donald Trump canceled a visit to the Aisne-
| Marne American Cemetery near Paris in 2018, he blamed rain
| for the last-minute decision, saying that "the helicopter
| couldn't fly" and that the Secret Service wouldn't drive
| him there. Neither claim was true.
|
| Trump rejected the idea of the visit because he feared his
| hair would become disheveled in the rain, and because he
| did not believe it important to honor American war dead,
| according to four people with firsthand knowledge of the
| discussion that day. In a conversation with senior staff
| members on the morning of the scheduled visit, Trump said,
| "Why should I go to that cemetery? It's filled with
| losers." In a separate conversation on the same trip, Trump
| referred to the more than 1,800 marines who lost their
| lives at Belleau Wood as "suckers" for getting killed. 15
|
| John Bolton, the President's former National Security
| Advisor turned Trump critic, was on the 2018 trip and
| involved in the discussion regarding the motive for the
| helicopter grounding and cancelling of the motorcade
| alternative. Despite having become a severe Trump critic
| who had by September 2020 stated that President Trump was
| not fit for office, Bolton gave the New York Times an
| eyewitness account of the incident that differed sharply
| from that presented by The Atlantic
|
| Mr. Bolton said he was in the room at the ambassador's
| residence when Mr. Trump arrived and Mr. [White House Chief
| of Staff John] Kelly told him that the helicopter trip had
| to be canceled. A two-hour motorcade would have put him too
| far away from Air Force One and the most capable
| communications array a president needs in case of an
| emergency, per usual protocol, Mr. Bolton said. "It was a
| straight weather call," he said." .... "Former White House
| press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders stated: "I was
| actually there and one of the people part of the discussion
| -- this never happened." And Jordan Karem, the former
| personal assistant to the president during period in
| question, replied to the story with a Twitter statement:
| "This is not even close to being factually accurate. Plain
| and simple, it just never happened.""
|
| So they literally have just 'made up' stuff about Trumpt to
| make him look vein and stupid, and people who basically
| hate him even called them on this charade. And I know for
| sure I remember this making the rounds -- so their lies get
| around due tot their perceived authority.
|
| This was the rationale:
|
| Goldberg replied: "They don't want to be inundated with
| angry tweets and all the rest ... In this case I decided
| that I felt I knew this information well enough, from high
| enough sources, and multiple sources, that I thought we
| should put it out."
|
| I'll stop here - but if you go on to read the rest, Glenn
| Greenwald (an actually good investigative journalist with
| integrity) rips The Atlantic to shreds, they have multiple
| other controversies, they have dubious financial ties...
| and so on
|
| _If you believe this 'God Mode' article it is strictly an
| act of faith in the party you have pronounced your
| allegiance to._
| Dowwie wrote:
| The goal is to reduce government spending by $2 Trillion in 4
| years. If you want to see how this is going:
| https://polymarket.com/doge
| nmz wrote:
| That's not the goal at all. And that's not how its going.
|
| https://www.npr.org/2025/02/19/nx-s1-5302705/doge-overstates...
| hector126 wrote:
| > Of the DOGE list's initial claim of $16 billion in savings,
| half came from an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)
| listing that was entered into the Federal Procurement Data
| System (FPDS) in 2022 with a whopping $8 billion maximum
| possible value.
|
| > According to a DOGE post on X, that number was a typo that
| was corrected in the contract database to $8 million on Jan.
| 22 of this year before being terminated a week later, and
| DOGE "has always used the correct $8M in its calculations."
|
| Jeez, that's pretty damning.
| fermentation wrote:
| This linked website has an incentive to portray this "savings"
| as larger than it actually is.
| isthisfoss wrote:
| Why is this a bad thing if their job is to audit budget and
| spending? The article also does not go into technical details on
| what this supposed god mode actually is.
| jb3689 wrote:
| That's the issue right? No one knows what access they have, so
| you should assume the worst. They've already been claiming that
| they are making writes, so full write privilege isn't off the
| table.
|
| It's not even the access that's the issue though, it's the lack
| of oversight. If I login to a Prod database, my commands are
| logged which allow the team to go back and figure out what
| happened if something didn't go as expected. We have backups
| and response processes to deal with "oops" situations. I
| strongly doubt the DOGE team has any fallback plan, and it
| would be irresponsible to simply assume they've thought
| fallback through.
|
| This is more troubling with the systems being tricky legacy
| systems. You might have the best intentions, but it is really
| easy to make mistakes in brittle systems even if you are
| careful. We've already seen evidence that the team may have no
| idea how to interpret the data they're seeing. It'd be reckless
| to start making edits while only having a partial understanding
| of the system.
|
| The story from DOGE is "look at all this fraud we've found,
| we're going to fix it now". It's not "here's a bunch of things
| we want to investigate further". It's not "here's how we're
| going to test whether this is actually fraud". It's not "here's
| what we're going to try and how we're going to revert if we are
| wrong".
| anon25783 wrote:
| The DOGE is mainly staffed by former employees of Elon Musk's
| companies, many of them being in their early twenties and one
| being 19 years old [1]. The presence of so many Musk associates
| is a conflict of interest: supposing "god mode" means that DOGE
| has unfiltered access to the private data of US citizens,
| there's not much stopping Elon Musk from exploiting that data
| for personal gain. And besides, would you want your private
| data to be in the hands of so many very young people who have
| little prior experience in anything?
|
| [1] - https://www.newsweek.com/doge-list-staff-revealed-2029965
| bongodongobob wrote:
| This isn't an audit.
| jsutton wrote:
| They aren't auditing anything. Programmers/engineers don't
| audit budget and spending. If they were doing an audit, they
| would have accountants on their team, which they don't. If you
| bring coders/engineers into a system, it's for
| accessing/manipulating data/code/infrastructure. This is an
| enormous and unprecedented overreach.
| imperial_march wrote:
| They're data scientists amongst other things, you need to tie
| different data tables and sources together to get hotspot
| reports.
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| It will all land in Moscow. Or Beijing. Have fun.
| imperial_march wrote:
| China already had full access (and extracted) all treasury
| information in a recent cyber attack. Look it up
| tintor wrote:
| DOGE administrator is ... Grok.
| tiffanyh wrote:
| > 'GOD MODE' ACCESS TO GOVERNMENT DATA
|
| Isn't this title clickbait?
|
| There's an implication this is access to _all_ government data -
| but the article doesn 't explicitly state that but would lead you
| to believe that.
|
| Given that I highly doubt all government data is in a single data
| store ... this is probably more like - GOGE has access to all GSA
| contracts (just one department) ... which is way less
| sensationalized (and appropriate for a government agency looking
| review contracts for efficiency)
|
| Note: I'm not taking a political stance on this.
| crooked-v wrote:
| They have full admin access to all USAID systems (which, let's
| be real, also includes some US intelligence service cover
| material, since USAID has long been used for that), and are
| actively seeking full admin access to the systems for every
| other federal department.
| cryptonector wrote:
| They do, however, have the clearance for that level of
| access, and the delegated authority. In that sense this is
| much ado about nothing, or just a complaint about the
| politics, which, ok, sure, HN loves to do right now.
| nmz wrote:
| Access != Modification
| zackmorris wrote:
| The difference between DOGE and previous overreaches of power
| like the Department of Homeland Security is the attack on the
| truth.
|
| What do I mean by that? Well, during the previous political era
| (loosely 9/11 through the COVID-19 pandemic), when intellectuals
| spoke truth to power, power listened.
|
| So people like us could voice our opinions on constitutionality,
| historical precedent, etc, and eventually our points made their
| way up through the news cycle and someone in a position of power
| would validate our concerns.
|
| Whereas today, people like Elon Musk belittle academic arguments
| as nonconstructive because they haven't made us money and we
| aren't rich. So obviously we're wrong.
|
| This wasn't always the case. Some billionaires could be very
| stubborn, but at their core, they still held themselves to a
| higher standard, a geek ethos. It mattered what academics
| thought.
|
| I can't believe I'm saying this, but I side with Bill Gates on
| this.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/27/bill-gates-e...
| cryptonector wrote:
| > "We're operating believing our systems are completely bugged,"
| one person told us.
|
| Doesn't everyone at work, any $WORK, do this? I do! I even type
| my thoughts "aloud" so to speak in order to help anyone viewing
| my sessions on replay.
| ConspiracyFact wrote:
| > No good reason or case can be made for one person or entity to
| have this scope of access to this many government agencies
| containing this much sensitive information.
|
| The president should obviously have this level of access.
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