DOGE wants access to very personal information of Americans

Elon Musk’s team within the Trump administration has sought sweeping access to databases that store personal information on millions and millions of Americans.

The data collected and maintained by the government isn’t just your name, home address, and Social Security number.

And now, Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, has accessed heavily safeguarded databases that store such personal information, raising deep alarm among federal workers and privacy advocates.

Musk says he is targeting waste and fraud. The executive order establishing DOGE says its purpose is “modernizing Federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity” and it instructs agency heads to ensure DOGE “has full and prompt access to all unclassified agency records, software systems, and IT systems.”

But Erie Meyer — who resigned last month from her post as chief technologist at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau after the change in administration — doesn’t trust DOGE.

“Part of what is unnerving and is scary both to companies whose data is involved and also Americans whose most sensitive financial information is at risk, is that we don’t know what they’re doing,” she says.

Normally, according to Meyer, federal employees handling sensitive data must pass extensive background checks. But it’s not clear what sort of vetting or background checks Musk’s staff has undergone.

Musk says his staffers need to have the same security clearances as other employees. “Anyone from DOGE has to go through the same vetting process that those federal employees went through,” Musk said recently on The Joe Rogan Experience.

Some agency heads have pushed back on the notion that DOGE is accessing too much data, saying that DOGE has “read-only” access, and cannot make changes in their systems.

At least a dozen lawsuits have been filed over DOGE’s access to data. Unions and groups like the Center for Taxpayer Rights are filing lawsuits — both to stop DOGE from accessing any more data, and to discover what kind of information the team has already collected.

Deep privacy concerns

There are several laws, including the Privacy Act of 1974, that govern how the government collects and stores personal data. Strict rules limit when government agencies can share that data with each other.

Those limits are by design. “Everyone thinks the government already has this data” in a connected way, says one former federal worker who did not want to be named to preserve future job prospects. “But they really don’t, because it’s firewalled.”

Some current and former government workers fear that Musk’s plan is to bring huge amounts of government data together, to create deeply personal profiles on individual Americans.

One of them is Jonathan Kamens, who was overseeing cybersecurity for VA.gov until he was terminated last month alongside some 40 of his colleagues at the U.S. Digital Service, a little known government unit that Trump turned into DOGE. He points to authoritarian regimes that create dossiers used to control individuals.

“That’s what I want people to be scared of,” says Kamens. “That this data that the government has on them, which in some cases can be used to damage them, will be used to damage them.”

Here’s an overview of a few federal agencies that hold data on large swaths of Americans – and where things stand with the DOGE team’s access.

Internal Revenue Service (IRS)

But with new leadership coming to the IRS, there’s concern that DOGE’s access could be expanded in the future, according to a current employee who did not wish to be identified for fear of retaliation.

Social Security Administration (SSA)

Leland Dudek, SSA’s acting commissioner, said in an earlier statement that DOGE personnel have read-only access and cannot make changes to systems, benefit payments, or information.

“Others could take pictures of the data, transfer it to other locations, and even feed it into AI programs,” she said. “In such a chaotic environment, the risk of data leaking into the wrong hands is significant.”

Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS)

A data breach could mean the sharing of Americans’ sensitive health data – and a company could use health data and financial data together to charge people more for health services.

Veterans Affairs (VA)

In a statement, a VA spokesperson says “DOGE does not have and has not had access to Veterans’ or VA beneficiaries’ data.”

VA Secretary Doug Collins has sought to calm concerns about DOGE’s access. “There’s also this rumor out there that DOGE is … going to take personal information,” Collins said in a recent video. “We got DOGE representatives here that are doing what they’re supposed to be doing,” like looking at contracts for efficiencies.

Someone with access to all that information could use it to discredit the veteran in the public eye, Kamens posits.

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB)

Amid litigation, the government has agreed for now to not delete or remove data held by CFPB, following a declaration by Meyer that Trump appointees planned to delete databases holding CFPB data.

The bureau also has large amounts of data on companies, including market research, financial records and business plans. One concern, voiced by Senate Democrats among others, is that Musk could use the data that the bureau has collected on payment apps Zelle and Cash App to get an inside edge for the digital payment platform he’s planning.