Comment by alt227
3 days ago
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.
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.
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”.
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.
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"...
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> 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?
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Doge isn’t private. They are government employees. Also USAID was unelected. Nobody working at the IRS was elected either.
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?
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.
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...
"The ruling does not end the case"
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> 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.
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...
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Doge doesn’t need a congressional mandate. There’s Article II.
> 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.
> 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.
Are Nazis for big government or for small government?
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> 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."
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.
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These are also staff of the government.. Or contracted by the government. The government contracts out all the time.
> 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.