Huh?
This seems to be a pissing match with a Federal Judge who has barred the Musk consultants from going into sensitive Social Securty data files and the Trump Commerce Sec. Howard Lutnick….
This is NOT a place to be threatening to ‘Shut Down’…..
And it wasn’t ….
Hollander wrote that DOGE “essentially engaged in a fishing expedition at SSA, in search of a fraud epidemic, based on little more than suspicion,” and “never identified or articulated even a single reason for which the DOGE Team needs unlimited access to SSA’s entire record system…
But in an interview Friday with The Washington Post, Dudek argued that the judge’s ruling was overly broad and that a reference to “DOGE affiliates” could apply to all employees who access personally identifiable information, or PII, because they are obligated to cooperate with DOGE.
Dudek said the agency plans to file an affidavit as soon as Friday asking Hollander to clarify language in her ruling that he criticized as “ambiguous,” “overly broad” and “weirdly written.”
“Everything in this agency is PII,” Dudek said. “Unless I get clarification, I’ll just start to shut it down. I don’t have much of a choice here.”
Dudek first made his threat to close down the agency during a Bloomberg News interview Thursday night….
…
Hollander’s 137-page order was the latest court ruling preventing DOGE, which stands for the Department of Government Efficiency, from sifting through databases of federal agencies because of privacy concerns. Other federal judges have ruled that the Treasury and Education Departments cannot share sensitive data with Musk’s team…
…
As Dudek contemplated whether to halt agency operations, many headquarters offices in Woodlawn, Maryland, were thrown into chaos. The DOGE team of about a dozen software engineers were denied access to the building and to their government laptop computers on Dudek’s order, leaving their status on Microsoft Teams “Unknown,” as if they had quit or retired, said one employee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
The judge, concluding that DOGE’s access to so much personal information poses major risks, ordered team “members and affiliates” to delete non-anonymized Social Security data in their possession. The order blocked Dudek, Chief Information Officer Michael Russo and others from granting DOGE entry to their systems….
…
Trump’s nominee to run the agency permanently, Frank Bisignano, is slated to appear at his Senate confirmation hearing next week.
Dudek said he moved quickly after the ruling to terminate access for the DOGE team. But he said he is “trying to get some sliver of access back” for them “because they give good advice.”….
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.