Personnel at the Department of Government Efficiency uploaded a copy of the Social Security database to a vulnerable cloud server, The New York Times reported, citing a whistleblower complaint.
The whistleblower, Charles Borges, said this put hundreds of millions of Americans at risk of being leaked or hacked. The database included individuals' full names, addresses and birth dates, among other details that could be used to steal their identities, Borges charged.
Borges did not say if the database had been breached or used inappropriately, the Times reported.
"Should bad actors gain access to this cloud environment, Americans may be susceptible to widespread identity theft, may lose vital healthcare and food benefits, and the government may be responsible for reissuing every American a new Social Security number at great cost," Borges' complaint, filed with the Government Accountability Project, said.
Borges claims DOGE was warned they would be exposing Americans' personal information, but the agency felt it would improve how they exchanged data with other parts of government, the Times reported.
A DOGE employee called a career agency employee in June to discuss uploading Numident, a database that contains the personal information of everyone who has ever held a Social Security number, living or dead, to a virtual cloud server, the Times said. The request came after the Supreme Court allowed members of DOGE to have access to the agency's data.
Despite being warned of the risk, the request was approved, Borges alleges. Borges said his superiors did not address his concerns, and they were told not to respond to his questions.
"Mr. Borges spent weeks pressing for fixes inside" Andrea Meza, a lawyer with the Government Accountability Project, said in a statement. "When nothing changed, he used the protected channels federal whistleblower law provides."
The whistleblower's complaint comes after a U.S. appeals court rejected a bid by a group of unions to block DOGE from accessing sensitive data on Americans.
The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the unions were unlikely to prevail on claims that DOGE would violate federal privacy laws by accessing data at the U.S. Department of Education, Treasury Department, and Office of Personnel Management.
Information from Reuters was used in this report.
Sam Barron ✉
Sam Barron has almost two decades of experience covering a wide range of topics including politics, crime and business.
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