{"id":338938,"date":"2025-08-12T16:57:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-12T16:57:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/338938\/"},"modified":"2025-08-12T16:57:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-12T16:57:10","slug":"us-court-says-trumps-doge-team-can-access-social-security-numbers-and-other-sensitive-data-trump-administration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/338938\/","title":{"rendered":"US court says Trump\u2019s Doge team can access social security numbers and other sensitive data | Trump administration"},"content":{"rendered":"

A US appeals court on Tuesday rejected a bid by a group of unions to block the Trump administration<\/a> government downsizing team known as the \u201cdepartment of government efficiency\u201d (Doge) from accessing sensitive data on Americans.<\/p>\n

The Virginia-based fourth US circuit court of appeals in a 2-1 decision said the unions were unlikely to prevail on claims that Doge would violate federal privacy laws by accessing data at the US Department of Education, treasury department, and office of personnel management.<\/p>\n

The court refused to block Doge\u2019s access to the agencies\u2019 computer systems and data such as social security numbers and individuals\u2019 citizenship status pending the outcome of the case.<\/p>\n

The decision reverses a temporary injunction issued by a federal judge in Maryland, which had been paused by the appeals court in April.<\/p>\n

The agencies involved in the case and the unions that sued, which include the American Federation of Teachers and the National Federation of Federal Employees, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n

Donald Trump<\/a> after taking office in January launched Doge, then headed by the billionaire Elon Musk<\/a>, to dramatically shrink government bureaucracy and federal spending.<\/p>\n

Doge, which is not a formal government agency, has overseen job and spending cuts at nearly every federal agency and has been the focus of numerous lawsuits. Musk stepped down from Doge in May after publicly falling out with Trump.<\/p>\n

The fourth circuit on Tuesday said the unions that sued along with a group of military veterans had not shown how they would be injured by Doge accessing agencies\u2019 computer systems. They also probably lacked legal standing to sue because that access is not a \u201cfinal agency action\u201d that can form the basis of a lawsuit, the court said.<\/p>\n

A dissenting judge said it was prudent to temporarily block access to the data while the case plays out, and that the standard his colleagues had imposed on the plaintiffs was too high.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A US appeals court on Tuesday rejected a bid by a group of unions to block the Trump…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":338939,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5311],"tags":[49,978,659],"class_list":{"0":"post-338938","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-united-states","9":"tag-us","10":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115016855915599564","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338938","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=338938"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338938\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/338939"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=338938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=338938"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=338938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}