{"id":178349,"date":"2025-08-27T00:19:12","date_gmt":"2025-08-27T00:19:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/178349\/"},"modified":"2025-08-27T00:19:12","modified_gmt":"2025-08-27T00:19:12","slug":"trumps-doge-put-millions-social-security-data-at-risk-whistleblower-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/178349\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump’s DOGE put millions’ Social Security data at risk, whistleblower says"},"content":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 More than 300 million Americans\u2019 Social Security<\/a> data was put at risk after Department of Government Efficiency officials uploaded sensitive information to a cloud account not subject to oversight, according to a whistleblower disclosure<\/a> submitted to the special counsel\u2019s office Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Whistleblower Charles Borges, who worked as the chief data officer at the Social Security Administration<\/a> since January, said the potential sensitive information that risks being released includes health diagnoses, income, banking information, familial relationships and personal biographic data.<\/p>\n

\u201cShould bad actors gain access to this cloud environment, Americans may be susceptible to widespread identity theft, may lose vital healthcare and food benefits, and the government may be responsible for re-issuing every American a new Social Security Number at great cost,\u201d said the complaint.<\/p>\n

The complaint was submitted by the Government Accountability Project and addressed to House and Senate oversight lawmakers. It requests that authorities \u201ctake appropriate oversight action.\u201d<\/p>\n

The whistleblower report is just the latest complaint against President Donald Trump\u2019s DOGE and the unprecedented access it was given by the Republican administration to the vast troves of personal data across the government under the mandate of eliminating waste, fraud and abuse. Labor and retiree groups sued<\/a> SSA earlier this year for allowing DOGE to access Americans\u2019 sensitive agency data, though a divided appeals panel decided this month that DOGE could access the information.<\/p>\n

SSA said in a statement that it takes whistleblower complaints seriously but seemed to downplay Borges\u2019 accusations.<\/p>\n

\u201cSSA stores all personal data in secure environments that have robust safeguards in place to protect vital information. The data referenced in the complaint is stored in a long-standing environment used by SSA and walled off from the internet. High-level career SSA officials have administrative access to this system with oversight by SSA\u2019s Information Security team. We are not aware of any compromise to this environment and remain dedicated to protecting sensitive personal data,\u201d the agency wrote.<\/p>\n

Borges\u2019 complaint says he disclosed to his superiors that he believed the upload was an abuse of authority and poses a substantial threat to public health and safety, and potentially violates the law. <\/p>\n

Andrea Meza, a lawyer representing Borges, said her client released the information \u201cout of a sense of urgency and duty to the American public.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 More than 300 million Americans\u2019 Social Security data was put at risk after Department of…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":178350,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3],"tags":[100994,64,100993,17420,69,57,2055,330,346,50,80,61,60295,67,132,68,93],"class_list":{"0":"post-178349","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"category-us","9":"tag-andrea-meza","10":"tag-business","11":"tag-charles-borges","12":"tag-department-of-government-efficiency","13":"tag-donald-trump","14":"tag-general-news","15":"tag-government-and-politics","16":"tag-government-programs","17":"tag-information-security","18":"tag-news","19":"tag-politics","20":"tag-u-s-news","21":"tag-u-s-social-security-administration","22":"tag-united-states","23":"tag-unitedstates","24":"tag-us","25":"tag-washington-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115097866280323973","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178349"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178349\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/178350"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}