The first national freakout over Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and its access to sensitive information unfolded at the Department of the Treasury. The billionaire megadonor and his surrogates had their eyes on an obscure office called the Bureau of the Fiscal Service, which oversees a system that effectively serves as the nation’s checkbook, overseeing trillions of dollars in federal expenditures.
At issue is a system that covers everything from Social Security and Medicare benefits to payments to government contractors to IRS refunds. Access has long been limited to a small number of career officials — until Donald Trump was elected and DOGE folks demanded and received access to the highly sensitive Treasury system for reasons that have yet been explained.
The ensuing controversy is the subject of multiple lawsuits, but while the matter is adjudicated, what might not be immediately obvious is the scope of the broader problem.
For example, Musk and his surrogates have also reportedly gained access to multiple sensitive internal systems at the Department of Education, giving them access to financial information on those who’ve received student loans. They’ve also reportedly sought access to sensitive data at the Department of Labor.
The same thing has reportedly happened at the Office of Personnel Management (often known as OPM), which houses sensitive information about millions of federal employees. The Washington Post spoke to a leading cybersecurity expert who said, “It’s highly likely they’re improperly accessing, transferring and storing highly sensitive data outside of the environments it was intended to be contained within. If I were a nation like China, Russia or Iran, I’d be having a field day with a bunch of college kids running around with sensitive federal government data on unencrypted hard drives.”
But if these weren’t quite unsettling enough, consider a CNN report on yet another Cabinet agency facing similar scrutiny.
A representative from Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, was granted access to the Energy Department’s IT system on Wednesday by Energy Secretary Chris Wright, two people with knowledge of the situation told CNN. Wright granted access to DOGE representative Luke Farritor — a 23-year-old former SpaceX intern — even over objections from members of the department’s general counsel and chief information offices, the people told CNN.
CNN’s report, which has not been independently verified by MSNBC or NBC News, quoted a source who said members of the department’s general counsel and chief information offices “said this is a bad idea” because Farritor hadn’t had a standard background investigation needed to access the department’s system.
“He’s not cleared to be in DOE, on our systems,” one of the sources explained. “None of those things have been done.”
Politico’s E&E News, which focuses on developments related to the energy sector, published a related report, noting that Farritor, the 23-year-old member of Musk’s DOGE operation, is now listed in the Department of Energy’s staff directory.
It’s not uncommon for people, even on Capitol Hill, to be confused about what the Department of Energy does, so let’s clarify matters: The agency, among other thing, oversees the United States’ nuclear weapons program and nuclear security policies.
It’s against this backdrop that several congressional Democrats are proposing new legislation that would block the Department of Government Efficiency from accessing sensitive data. There’s no reason that such a bill should be seen as a partisan or ideological endeavor, though I have a hunch Republicans won’t be overly eager to support the proposal. Watch this space.
