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I'd probably have to agree, something along those lines... However, I can't say "Govt by good ole boy network" seems proper - and its really hard to figure out

I'd probably have to agree, something along those lines... However, I can't say "Govt by good ole boy network" seems proper - and its really hard to figure out what power/limits/check and balances for all this is... Musk basically took over the IT arm of the executive branch ("U.S. Digital Service") - not sure how that allows him and other people without clearances access to secure data, or to make spending decisions for other groups..

rayiner 2y ago
There’s no “check and balances” issue here. This is entirely within the executive branch. Congress forked over a bunch of money to the executive to give out as grants. People with delegated authority from the elected president and his senate confirmed department head are stopping payment on some grants. That delegated authority is the only authority any executive branch employee has. Now, it’s fair to say that Trump and Musk are exploiting the fact that Congress abdicated its “power of the purse” to a great extent by giving the executive a bunch of slush funds instead of making specific appropriations. But that’s Congress’s problem. Also, Musk has a top secret security clearance. But I assume SSNs aren’t even classified and there’s tons of line employees with access to the databases.
- ggm 2y ago
  > Also, Musk has a top secret security clearance. But I assume SSNs aren’t even classified and there’s tons of line employees with access to the databases. Useful info. I had forgotten he had that. Considering his 420 romps, it's surprising he retains it because more lowly worms lose theirs on less cause. But, your assumptions about line employees belies what I think is pretty well established ICT practice in government. If you can read it, your reading is logged. if you can alter it, you're in a small set and it's constrained by training/induction and also very strongly inculcated into "properly" Just randomly dumping the entire dataset to some disk you have brought in, and telling your wizzkid to look at it bigly, would not fall into usual practices.
- mech422 2y ago
  It appears Musk's employees don't have clearance - which is apparently why they were denied access by the USAID _security_ officials. Its sorta their jobs. Given a lot of us work in Tech, I doubt most of our security officers would accept "tons of line employess" have access as an excuse :-P Not to mention plugging in hard drives (how are federal system even allowing usb devices to be accessed?? My stupid work laptop locks that down ??) Also, there may not be 'check and balances' but there is certainly procedure - which seems to be why lawsuits were filed. Specifically it appears around: "whether DOGE is a presidential advisory commission obeying federal transparency rules about certain practices, such as disclosure and hiring" and "alleged violation of the Federal Advisory Committee Act, which requires that "the advisory committee have a fair balance in viewpoints represented, that they do not meet in secret, and that their records and work product be made available for public inspection." Anyway - guess we'll see how it plays out - but I wish there were some more clear cut explanations about
  - rayiner 2y ago
    The advisory commission lawsuit likely will fail. It’s based on the structure of DOGE disclosed prior to the inauguration, where it was to be an advisory committee outside the government. Apparently some smart lawyer looked at things again, and instead decided to create DOGE within the shell of USDS, in the executive office of the president.
  - derangedHorse 2y ago
    I’m not sure where this whole “usb stick” story came about but I couldn’t find any news stories that said he was just plugging in usb sticks. I imagine this was a narrative developed to make DOGE’s access seem less official.
    - mech422 2y ago
      I believe it was actually 'connecting hard drives'... but letting random's (apparently without clearances at the time, though I think they've been granted now...) open up your machines and physically install NVME/Spinners would be even worse then USB, IMHO
- Tadpole9181 2y ago
  Elon Musk does not have security clearance. He was explicitly advised not to even seek it while operating SpaceX because of his well-known drug use and his connections to foreign powers.
  - rayiner 2y ago
    He’s got a top secret clearance: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/dec/16/elon-musk-government-security-clearance https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/dec/16/elon-musk...
    - Tadpole9181 2y ago
      I stand corrected! So he is lacking a higher level of clearance, duly noted.
      - cromwellian 2y ago
        Usually drug use, financial debt to foreigners, or any criminal violations can get you rejected for clearance, especially top secret, so the only way he has this clearance is because the executive branch overrode it.
        rayiner 2y ago
        He’s had a top secret security clearance since 2018.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
- cromwellian 2y ago
  The issue isn't just Musk's clearances, it's the clearances of the employees he's giving access to. With stuff like Salt Typhoon out there, and reports of Musk's college age hackers hooking arbitrary hard disks up to government computers, can you imagine the potential for potential Russian or Chinese infiltration given how careless Musk has shown his management to have been in the past? Remember how Israel destroyed Iranian centrifuges with a worm on a USB stick that they just waited for someone to be dumb enough to plug into a government connected intranet? C'mon man, the people defending Musk's brazen behavior here really need to think long and hard about what they're justifying because the like the guy's cars or rockets, or MAGA politics. This is CRAZY.
  - derangedHorse 2y ago
    If you can find one, I’d like to see a news story showing that the people accessing the data don’t have the proper security clearances to. It seems most people are getting swept up in media narratives rather than the reported facts.
    - cromwellian 2y ago
      What do you consider a proper security clearance? One emergency approved by the President on a whim, or one that is the result of careful vetting over a 6 month process which seems to be the standard for renewals or new clearances? One of them is 19 years old, the other 5 are 24 and younger. You want 6 kids in charge of a 6 trillion dollar system, and one of them with hedge fund connections? Yeah, nothing that could go wrong there. And what was so urgent about axing USAID that required this weird process of bypassing all of the normal ways people audit a six trillion dollar payment system? Seriously, what was the hurry? You don’t think they’re being sloppy and reckless? We literally have critical websites going off line, we have airports like San Carlos losing all their ATCs, we have republicans in Congress confused whe their own constituents lose access to services because of misworded EOs, this is not normal. We couldn’t have had a report prepared over six months, have Musk go to Congress and testify and show all the waste, and a plan to prioritize the cuts, have an orderly wind down, etc? The US government isn’t X where you fly in in the middle of the night and are so incompetent you start randomly unplugging servers and have to be frantically rescued by heroic sysadmins. This is the people’s property, not his. We have three branches of government, due process, checks and balances, we don’t have a dictatorship and frankly everyday this is looking more and more like a soft coup.

rayiner 2y ago

There’s no “check and balances” issue here. This is entirely within the executive branch. Congress forked over a bunch of money to the executive to give out as grants. People with delegated authority from the elected president and his senate confirmed department head are stopping payment on some grants. That delegated authority is the only authority any executive branch employee has. Now, it’s fair to say that Trump and Musk are exploiting the fact that Congress abdicated its “power of the purse” to a great extent by giving the executive a bunch of slush funds instead of making specific appropriations. But that’s Congress’s problem. Also, Musk has a top secret security clearance. But I assume SSNs aren’t even classified and there’s tons of line employees with access to the databases.

ggm 2y ago
> Also, Musk has a top secret security clearance. But I assume SSNs aren’t even classified and there’s tons of line employees with access to the databases. Useful info. I had forgotten he had that. Considering his 420 romps, it's surprising he retains it because more lowly worms lose theirs on less cause. But, your assumptions about line employees belies what I think is pretty well established ICT practice in government. If you can read it, your reading is logged. if you can alter it, you're in a small set and it's constrained by training/induction and also very strongly inculcated into "properly" Just randomly dumping the entire dataset to some disk you have brought in, and telling your wizzkid to look at it bigly, would not fall into usual practices.
mech422 2y ago
It appears Musk's employees don't have clearance - which is apparently why they were denied access by the USAID _security_ officials. Its sorta their jobs. Given a lot of us work in Tech, I doubt most of our security officers would accept "tons of line employess" have access as an excuse :-P Not to mention plugging in hard drives (how are federal system even allowing usb devices to be accessed?? My stupid work laptop locks that down ??) Also, there may not be 'check and balances' but there is certainly procedure - which seems to be why lawsuits were filed. Specifically it appears around: "whether DOGE is a presidential advisory commission obeying federal transparency rules about certain practices, such as disclosure and hiring" and "alleged violation of the Federal Advisory Committee Act, which requires that "the advisory committee have a fair balance in viewpoints represented, that they do not meet in secret, and that their records and work product be made available for public inspection." Anyway - guess we'll see how it plays out - but I wish there were some more clear cut explanations about
- rayiner 2y ago
  The advisory commission lawsuit likely will fail. It’s based on the structure of DOGE disclosed prior to the inauguration, where it was to be an advisory committee outside the government. Apparently some smart lawyer looked at things again, and instead decided to create DOGE within the shell of USDS, in the executive office of the president.
- derangedHorse 2y ago
  I’m not sure where this whole “usb stick” story came about but I couldn’t find any news stories that said he was just plugging in usb sticks. I imagine this was a narrative developed to make DOGE’s access seem less official.
  - mech422 2y ago
    I believe it was actually 'connecting hard drives'... but letting random's (apparently without clearances at the time, though I think they've been granted now...) open up your machines and physically install NVME/Spinners would be even worse then USB, IMHO
Tadpole9181 2y ago
Elon Musk does not have security clearance. He was explicitly advised not to even seek it while operating SpaceX because of his well-known drug use and his connections to foreign powers.
- rayiner 2y ago
  He’s got a top secret clearance: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/dec/16/elon-musk-government-security-clearance https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/dec/16/elon-musk...
  - Tadpole9181 2y ago
    I stand corrected! So he is lacking a higher level of clearance, duly noted.
    - cromwellian 2y ago
      Usually drug use, financial debt to foreigners, or any criminal violations can get you rejected for clearance, especially top secret, so the only way he has this clearance is because the executive branch overrode it.
      - rayiner 2y ago
        He’s had a top secret security clearance since 2018.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
cromwellian 2y ago
The issue isn't just Musk's clearances, it's the clearances of the employees he's giving access to. With stuff like Salt Typhoon out there, and reports of Musk's college age hackers hooking arbitrary hard disks up to government computers, can you imagine the potential for potential Russian or Chinese infiltration given how careless Musk has shown his management to have been in the past? Remember how Israel destroyed Iranian centrifuges with a worm on a USB stick that they just waited for someone to be dumb enough to plug into a government connected intranet? C'mon man, the people defending Musk's brazen behavior here really need to think long and hard about what they're justifying because the like the guy's cars or rockets, or MAGA politics. This is CRAZY.
- derangedHorse 2y ago
  If you can find one, I’d like to see a news story showing that the people accessing the data don’t have the proper security clearances to. It seems most people are getting swept up in media narratives rather than the reported facts.
  - cromwellian 2y ago
    What do you consider a proper security clearance? One emergency approved by the President on a whim, or one that is the result of careful vetting over a 6 month process which seems to be the standard for renewals or new clearances? One of them is 19 years old, the other 5 are 24 and younger. You want 6 kids in charge of a 6 trillion dollar system, and one of them with hedge fund connections? Yeah, nothing that could go wrong there. And what was so urgent about axing USAID that required this weird process of bypassing all of the normal ways people audit a six trillion dollar payment system? Seriously, what was the hurry? You don’t think they’re being sloppy and reckless? We literally have critical websites going off line, we have airports like San Carlos losing all their ATCs, we have republicans in Congress confused whe their own constituents lose access to services because of misworded EOs, this is not normal. We couldn’t have had a report prepared over six months, have Musk go to Congress and testify and show all the waste, and a plan to prioritize the cuts, have an orderly wind down, etc? The US government isn’t X where you fly in in the middle of the night and are so incompetent you start randomly unplugging servers and have to be frantically rescued by heroic sysadmins. This is the people’s property, not his. We have three branches of government, due process, checks and balances, we don’t have a dictatorship and frankly everyday this is looking more and more like a soft coup.