A federal employee union has alleged in a new court filing that a member of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency team improperly shared Social Security Administration data on an unapproved third-party server, raising concerns about potential violations of a federal court order and data security rules.
The filing, submitted by the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, the AFL-CIO, and others, details an internal SSA review that identified instances in which members of the former SSA DOGE team accessed or handled personally identifiable information outside agency policy and, in some cases, after a temporary restraining order was issued by a federal court in March 2025.
According to the filing, SSA determined that one DOGE team member ran searches containing personally identifiable information early on March 24, 2025, hours before DOGE access was fully revoked, despite earlier representations to the court that access had been terminated.
The Social Security Administration said DOGE team access to all systems containing sensitive data was shut down later that day.
The agency also disclosed that on March 3, 2025, before the restraining order, a DOGE team member emailed an encrypted, password-protected file believed to contain names and addresses of roughly 1,000 people to a senior DOGE adviser and a DOGE-affiliated Department of Labor employee.
The SSA said it has been unable to determine whether the file was accessed.
The filing further states that DOGE team members used the third-party server Cloudflare to share data between March 7 and March 17, 2025. Cloudflare is not approved for storing SSA data, and the agency said it cannot determine what information was uploaded or whether it remains accessible.
In addition, the SSA disclosed that at least one DOGE team member signed a voter data agreement with a political advocacy group seeking to analyze state voter rolls to challenge election results.
The agreement was not reviewed or approved through standard SSA procedures, and the agency said it was unaware of the activity until late 2025. Two Hatch Act referrals related to the conduct were later sent to the Office of Special Counsel.
The SSA and the Department of Justice said they disclosed the findings to ensure full candor with the court and noted that their review of DOGE team activities continues.
James Morley III ✉
James Morley III is a writer with more than two decades of experience in entertainment, travel, technology, and science and nature.
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