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DOGE accessed millions of Americans' data with no stated reason [1]

['Ellsworth Toohey']

Date: 2026-02-23  

DOGE staffers showed up to federal agencies carrying what a whistleblower described as "backpacks full of laptops," each pre-loaded with access to databases holding the Social Security numbers, tax returns, biometric data, and background checks of millions of Americans.

Rep. Lori Trahan (D-Massachusetts) wants to make sure it can't happen again. On February 17, her office put out a 68-page blueprint for overhauling the Privacy Act of 1974, the Watergate-era law that was supposed to prevent exactly this kind of thing, Nextgov reports. At least 12 lawsuits allege DOGE violated the act by vacuuming up personal data across a dozen agencies — Treasury, OPM, the Social Security Administration, Education, Labor, and more. Judge Ellen Lipton Hollander found the government "never identified or articulated even a single reason" for giving DOGE unlimited access. A whistleblower told Congress that DOGE engineers tried to build what Connolly's letter called "specialized computers" with simultaneous access to networks across multiple agencies, and that Social Security data wound up on a vulnerable cloud server, according to Brookings.

As for DOGE's stated fraud-prevention mission: when they ran anti-fraud checks at the SSA, only 2 out of 110,000 claims were flagged as probably fraudulent — and the system slowed processing by 25%, NPR reported.

Trahan's proposed fixes include eliminating the "routine use" exception that lets agencies share data without consent, creating a new oversight body, and recognizing non-monetary privacy harms in court.

Previously:

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