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Payments crisis of 2025: Not “read only” access anymore
- paulsutter 2y ago[flagged]
- taylodl 2y agoThis isn't a payments crisis; this is an auditing crisis. There's no way to ensure proper accounting procedures are being followed. At this point, Congress' continued inaction is bordering on criminal.
- toomuchtodo 2y agohttps://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.277055/gov.uscourts.dcd.277055.1.0.pdf https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.277...
- weard_beard 2y agoAt this point the US government would not pass a SOX audit.
- liontwist 2y agoSOX is for public corporations.
- hyperbrainer 2y agoYes, but that standard should probably be met and exceeded by the government of the largest economy in the world, don't you think?
- liontwist 2y agoIt sounds like you think SOX auditing means “super secure and careful accounting”. SOX is a specific law with the motivation of giving markets more confidence in public stocks (for example must hire external auditors, certain board member rules, how certain assets must be valued, etc). The SOX audit is to make sure that law is followed. One criticism of SOX is that encouraged many startups and other businesses to remain private. So long story short, no. Our government does not resemble a public stock corporation and these things don’t have an analog.
- epistasis 2y ago> One criticism of SOX is that it partially nationalizes control of the organization, If that is a criticism of SOX for private companies, then it would mean that it should be a baseline for national accounting, no?
- liontwist 2y ago> it should be a baseline for national accounting What does this mean? Let me repeat. SOX is not a method of accounting, its rules about roles and reporting for public corporations > It sounds like you think SOX auditing means “super secure and careful accounting”.
- epistasis 2y agoYes, rules and roles for reporting, ie accounting. I don't know what you think you are implying with the "super secure and careful" comment, we are looking for the roles that ensure the accountability of SOX. Your complaint is that SOX "nationalizes" companies because apparently it becomes so transparent, or something? If that's what you mean by "nationalize" shouldn't that be used for our nation's accounting?
- weard_beard 2y agoI specifically meant the parts of SOX related to access controls, infrastructure, and codebase management to ensure a baseline level of security for processing payments and PII to ensure this does not represent a risk to the valuation of the enterprise. These measures are universal to running any payment platform, not a public/private issue. *No, I'm not thinking of PCI, but that is also a valid measure here. There are recent updates to SOX in the past few years covering these aspects of payment operations. Some old-school SOX experts may not be familiar and the strictness on these aspects of the audit varies by auditor in my experience. I recently helped a client navigate these developing and responding to a very strict audit process covering their entire IT landscape including process flows, deployment planning and user/role management.
- Bloating 2y agoSame could be said about health & retirement benefits
- cdme 2y agoI’m not sure 19 year olds using gmail addresses are concerned with SOX.
- liontwist 2y agoI’m not sure you know what SOX is.
- hyperbrainer 2y agoTo be fair, no 19 year old in the world concerns himself with audits or proper regulatory procedure, including law students. There is a reason proper structure exists
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- fastball 2y agoThe DoD has already been failing audits[1] for a while now. [1] https://breakingdefense.com/2024/11/pentagon-fails-7th-audit-in-a-row-eyes-passing-grade-by-2028/ https://breakingdefense.com/2024/11/pentagon-fails-7th-audit...
- cdme 2y agoElon and his inexperienced cronies are the last people who should be trusted with any government access. They don’t even have clearance.
- fastball 2y agoI don't think you need clearance for this, so not sure how that is relevant.
- Glyptodon 2y agoI've read in multiple articles that people were placed on leave for trying to require proper clearances from him and his team as obligated to by law, and this article also references how clearances impact the fact that nobody knows what they're actually doing.
- toomuchtodo 2y agoAs someone who has had to clear an SF86 for a USDS hiring cycle (IRS and DHS systems), I would be shocked if you can get this access without a clearance.
- mathw 2y agoIf they don't have clearance aren't they committing a number of offences under various acts of national security and computer misuse and thus liable for arrest?
- liontwist 2y agoAre they making new accounting records?
- cdme 2y agoOf course not. They’re wreaking having based on Elon’s whims. Much like when he drove Twitter into the ground.
- mc32 2y ago[flagged]
- malfist 2y agoWhy do you think the spending of the government isn't already publicly available? Because it is.
- headsman771 2y agoThe only thing thats public is highly abstracted and euphamistic descriptions of where the money is going. Any FOIAs seeking more granular information would be politely asked to stop asking. After all if this information is classified and relating to national security why would it be handed out?
- queuebert 2y agoNot in a practically accessible way for the majority of people.
- macNchz 2y agoIs this not practically accessible? https://www.usaspending.gov/ https://www.usaspending.gov/
- woooooo 2y agoNot sure if you realize, but the federal budget is already public and anybody can FOIA additional details..
- mc32 2y agoSo why can’t they pass an audit?
- fzeroracer 2y agoWhy would you trust the man who's been heavily subsidized by the government to do an audit? A significant chunk of Elon Musk's money came from government contracts his companies had with the US government.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- solumunus 2y agoIt’s a straight up coup.
- zikduruqe 2y agoFrom "They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45", an interview with a German about what it was like living during the rise of the Nazis: Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don’t want to act, or even talk alone; you don’t want to “go out of your way to make trouble.” Why not?—Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty. Uncertainty is a very important factor, and, instead of decreasing as time goes on, it grows. Outside, in the streets, in the general community, “everyone” is happy. One hears no protest, and certainly sees none. You speak privately to your colleagues, some of whom certainly feel as you do; but what do they say? They say, “It’s not so bad” or “You’re seeing things” or “You’re an alarmist.” And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this, and you can’t prove it. These are the beginnings, yes; but how do you know for sure when you don’t know the end, and how do you know, or even surmise, the end? On the one hand, your enemies, the law, the regime, the Party, intimidate you. On the other, your colleagues pooh-pooh you as pessimistic or even neurotic. You are left with your close friends, who are, naturally, people who have always thought as you have. But your friends are fewer now. Some have drifted off somewhere or submerged themselves in their work. You no longer see as many as you did at meetings or gatherings. Now, in small gatherings of your oldest friends, you feel that you are talking to yourselves, that you are isolated from the reality of things. This weakens your confidence still further and serves as a further deterrent to—to what? It is clearer all the time that, if you are going to do anything, you must make an occasion to do it, and then are obviously a troublemaker. So you wait, and you wait. But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds of thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions, would have been sufficiently shocked—if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the “German Firm” stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all of the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D. And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying “Jewish swine,” collapses it all at once, and you see that everything has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in—your nation, your people—is not the world you were born in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way. Suddenly it all comes down, all at once. You see what you are, what you have done, or, more accurately, what you haven’t done (for that was all that was required of most of us: that we do nothing). You remember those early morning meetings of your department when, if one had stood, others would have stood, perhaps, but no one stood. A small matter, a matter of hiring this man or that, and you hired this one rather than that. You remember everything now, and your heart breaks. Too late. You are compromised beyond repair. https://press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/511928.html https://press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/511928.html
- duped 2y agoI think Elon Musk and his lackeys' action is literally criminal, but law enforcement work for the same team. And Congress is controlled by the same team.
- queuebert 2y agoThat is literally the power of the Executive, to choose which laws to enforce and which to not. Congress makes the laws, and the Courts adjudicate. That is the whole basis of the federal government.
- duped 2y agoI mean that's what they teach 8th graders but it's reductive. Congress makes plenty of laws that restrict how the executive performs its functions (including how they allow people within the executive to do so), and it's an open question over how much power the executive has to create departments and appoint people to run them. At the moment though, what they're doing is very much illegal. They just have a bunch of collaborators in the DOJ who won't bring charges or arrest anyone, because they're co-conspirators.
- queuebert 2y agoThe 8th-grader understanding is that each branch does what it's supposed to do with virtuous motives. The adult understanding is that they exercise as much power as they can until forced to stop.
- XorNot 2y agoI mean if that was true then the current situation wouldn't be happening. The story of the US Congress over the last two decades (probably longer) is they have ceded an enormous amount of power to the Executive via inaction, and continue to do so. The problem with simplistic narratives where you give stuff names is it masks what's actually happening: the Executive is near enough to a dictatorship - power and authority is deliberate vested in one person. This makes it very different to Congress, which only wields power by the collective decision making of hundreds via majority or even super-majority vote. So "Congress" doesn't really exist as an entity: because there is no guiding consciousness or collective in it which is deliberately trying to seize more power, and the story of its power is the exact opposite: it keeps giving it away (because the individual members of Congress can only retain that position and it's local benefits by staying in Congress, best accomplished by deliberately avoiding responsibility of any kind). If you've ever tried to get 4 people to decide what to get for dinner, the guy who simply says "Let's get tacos" usually gets his way because everyone else keeps deferring.
- nessbot 2y agoand it's looking like a legit CONSTITUTIONAL crisis.
- queuebert 2y agoHow so?
- nessbot 2y agoThe executive branch can't decided what to spend, only congress can. Its in the first article of the constitution.
- queuebert 2y agoIt's not that simple. Congress can't specify every pen and pencil expense, so they allocate large buckets. The executive can decide how each bucket is spent. Like when your mom gives you $20 to go to the movies. She doesn't care what movie you see, but she'd be mad if you skipped the movies and spent it on weed.
- nessbot 2y agoAnd what they are doing now is "skipping the movies and spending it on weed." Shutting down USAID, even if eventually Rubio came in and rolled that back is what you just described. That was an office created by congress.
- b112 2y agoNo, what they're doing is skipping the movie, saving up money, hiring a lawyer, so mom loses the right to say "don't spend it on weed".
- abracadaniel 2y agoA better analogy might be that mom bought groceries for the starving family down the road with a check and you cancelled the check, stole the checkbook, and changed the bank account password.
- netbioserror 2y ago[flagged]
- neutrinobro 2y ago[flagged]
- Volundr 2y agoAuditors don't need write access to the system. And audits absolutely do include a careful accounting of who has access and what is being accessed.
- tlb 2y agoIt's shocking how many billions of spending are completely unaudited. Official gov't auditors have tried for years, but the target agencies stall and stall. You have to assume there is some malfeasance there. Doing an audit starting with the treasury department seems like the right first step. Every outflow of money ultimately has to start there. It's the root node of the Sankey diagram. Then you follow the money outwards from there.
- mikeodds 2y ago1 billion sent to the fluffer
- cdme 2y agoI wouldn’t trust a 19 year old to do my taxes let alone audit all of federal spending.
- reustle 2y agoThose are a couple of people within a much larger team.
- cdme 2y agoRanging from 19-24.
- ubercore 2y agoMuch larger? How much larger? I thought it was a pretty small group.
- krainboltgreene 2y agoI wouldn't trust my teenager with a "large" team of people in control of the federal payments system.
- liontwist 2y ago[flagged]
- belter 2y agoIf you were panicked when a developer at GitLab accidentally deleted the production database, just wait until some coder merges a half-tested patch into the Treasury’s production environment. The Musk bros might lose the US ability to reassure the global bond market... Hopefully Spacex has policies with this Dutch Insurance company...:https://youtu.be/3r7mIDycJsE https://youtu.be/3r7mIDycJsE
- basementcat 2y agoCongress was elected by the people and in a representative democracy, the voters decide (through their elected representatives) what is a crime.
- thrance 2y agoThe voters don't directly decide what is a crime. At best, they elect congress that can change the laws and constitution that in turn rules out what is or isn't illegal. None of this was done, none of this is democratic. This is nothing else than a coup perpetrated by the richest man on Earth.
- basementcat 2y agoI’m sure the current Supreme Court (which was selected by elected Presidents and Senators) will have no trouble explaining how recent events have been "reasonable" and 100% followed constitutional procedures.
- lazyasciiart 2y agoNah, this kind of thing is fun for judges who know what decision they want to make. It’s like a logic puzzle.
- johnnyanmac 2y ago>the voters decide (through their elected representatives) what is a crime In the long term yes, in the short term, no. That's the check and balance of the Judicial branch. In theory they should be insulated from the politics of the world and properly interpret laws based on various cases. So you can't just, say, repeal the first amendment just because all your voters suddenly became anti-1A. They need to work to make a represenative base that can eventually vote in that new amendment. And that all takes time (in terms of culture and the bill proposal).
- normalaccess 2y agoAs far as I can tell Elon has had security clearance since 2019 because Space X was (and still is) contracted to do work for the DOD. However I don't know what kind of clearance it was at that time. Please correct me If I'm wrong.
- cozzyd 2y agoI thought he famously couldn't get the top level of clearance and has to sit out of certain spacex activity
- nosioptar 2y agoCozzyd is right: > The Wall Street Journal reported citing people familiar with the matter that SpaceX lawyers recommended that the company's leadership not pursue a higher security clearance for Musk because he would have been asked about contacts with foreign officials as well as his prior drug use. https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/why-elon-musk-doesnt-have-access-all-spacexs-top-secret-work-report https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/why-elon-musk-doesnt-ha... (Didn't link WSJ article due to paywall.)
- Izkata 2y agoYour link confirms GP is correct: > Musk holds a "top secret" clearance that gives him access to some of SpaceX's sensitive programs.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- tmaly 2y agoI think he should open the data and methods minus any PII data and let the open community decide if his methods are sound.
- skepticATX 2y agoNot a lawyer, but it would seem that Elon and Doge employees are exposing themselves up to significant legal liability here. Maybe Trump pardons Elon (if they don't fall out before then), but is he going to pardon everyone who has a hand in this? And it seems likely that state crimes are being committed as well. The president may have broad immunity, but Elon does not.
- jordanpg 2y agoAlso, pardons are for criminal liability. They do not absolve you of civil liability (i.e., they can still be sued).
- freeone3000 2y agoHe does if the President says he does! That’s the beauty of a pardon. There’s not a limit, as many people can be pardoned as Mr. Trump wants. And you can’t arrest the president because he’s immune from prosecution for official acts: pardoning is an enumerated constitutional power! So what’s left is impeachment for the president and congress does not want to do this. And none of that will fall on Musk or DOGE. The government has made itself unable to prevent this.
- thesuperbigfrog 2y agoSo is there a legal way to stop what is happening? If the current legal framework were software, I would say that this is an exploit chain that gives root access to the government / country. If there is not legal way to stop it, what is the alternative?
- freeone3000 2y agoIdeally, not electing a person who would abuse those powers. Secondarily, the “immune from prosecution” was a supreme court decision as a result of the events of January 6th, so the 2024 election was a pretty important one. The current legal method available now is an impeachment process, iterated until we have a president who values societal norms and stable government. (Depending on how you feel about JD Vance not also pulling this shit.) Currently 28 of the 51 republicans in the Senate are up for re-election in November of 2026; this is a possibility for a makeup change, but a remote one. It appears a large enough percentage of americans want this that there’s no real possibility of changing course at this point; even the assassination attempts have failed. Understand that over 40% of americans do want what is happening now, as backed up by current polling. Never comply in advance, do not follow illegal orders, and make good friends with your neighbours.
- malfist 2y agoIs anyone not concerned by this? Paying the bills due is not a political issue, making payroll is not a political issue. Elected or unelected, politicians with an agenda should not be in charge here.
- affinepplan 2y agoA lot of people are very concerned about it. but what am I supposed to do about it? I voted, canvassed, and donated as hard as I could already. and I lost.
- kjkjadksj 2y agoWe wait for the order for the general strike, and then we do our part.
- EForEndeavour 2y agoI'm not being facetious but genuinely curious: who would issue such an order with enough authority for you to follow it?
- ceejayoz 2y agoNot OP, but someone with a significant national platform and an explicit call (dates, details, support from other prominent folks), not a generic "we should do something!" hint. I'd find calls from, say, AOC or Taylor Swift more interesting than rando red rose LARPers.
- bbor 2y agoWhere were you when the empire fell? I was at my computer, trying not to cry...
- esafak 2y agoThe empire comes after the republic.
- rsynnott 2y agoOr, if one happens to be France, after, before, after, and before (they had two 'empires', interleaved between republics and a monarchy or two).
- bbor 2y agoEh -- IMO "empire" is used to highlight an expansionary, hierarchical regime, not just the literal old-school meaning of a single sovereign. Thus "anti-imperial" as it's used today, frequently targeting both post-monarchy Britain and the always-republican USA. In other words, empires in the day of monarchy were expansive monarchies, and empires in the day of republicanism are expansive republics. I love how I'm still freaking out but will jump at the chance to argue about pedantics online. It's nice to feel normal, I guess!
- GeoAtreides 2y agoI was in my bed, reading Worm fanfiction
- liontwist 2y ago[flagged]
- kiba 2y agoDo you pay federal taxes? Do you get federal service? Does your government gets federal grant money to fund projects and services? Do you rely on social security payments? Maybe your parents does. What about medicaid and medicare?
- bbqfog 2y agoMusk already gained access to everyone's private Twitter data. He also gathers data from Tesla sensors. Now he has access to private citizen's federal data. Very dangerous for any private, unaccountable individual to have this level of access and especially someone as malicious as Musk.
- _blk 2y ago[flagged]
- nicce 2y agoCompletely different, at least for DeepSeek. Most people know what data they put there and do that willingly. They also know the risks.
- Bloating 2y agoall deponds on if you use Android or a FruitPhone
- bbqfog 2y agoI would be very concerned about any of the first three having government data access as well!
- gammarator 2y agoSerious question: is there anything other than their own scruples keeping these guys from siphoning off a few billion dollars for themselves?
- fastball 2y agoCriminal prosecution?
- wtfwhateven 2y agoWhy would they be prosecuted? The FBI has been gutted and they'd just be pardoned
- fastball 2y agoSeems like a good wake-up call that all of these responsibilities shouldn't be the unilateral purview of the executive branch then.
- apothegm 2y agoWake-up call? It’s a little late to close the barn doors.
- lesuorac 2y agoWho else would they be? The government has to appoint somebody to actually carry out law. There must always be an executive branch to execute the law. The people running these agencies are all appointed by congress. If congress didn't want DOGE to have access to these systems then they wouldn't've confirmed the appointment of people who would give them access. Or conversely, they would impeach the appointees if the didn't like it. This is the strength and weakness of a single-party system (grant US has multiple parties but one party is actually in control currently). The party does what the party wants and if it's not what you want then it's tough.
- dredmorbius 2y ago
- LorenDB 2y agoIt's spelled "federal", not "fedaral".
- shinryuu 2y agoFixed :)
- _blk 2y ago[flagged]
- paulproteus 2y agoTrillions of debt is a congress issue. Maybe this congress can pass some bills to resolve it. Not sure how that's relevant to 25 year olds since there are no current 25 year old congress members.
- Bloating 2y agoDepends on which tribe is in charge
- paulproteus 2y agoI don't see how that relates to my comment. Can you elaborate?
- kurthr 2y agoSo Trump presided over close to $9T in debt. That's about 1/4 of the total debt in 4 years. https://www.crfb.org/papers/trump-and-biden-national-debt https://www.crfb.org/papers/trump-and-biden-national-debt My guess is that this time a solid $T goes straight into his family/friends pockets.
- drawkward 2y ago[flagged]
- DonHopkins 2y ago[flagged]
- kjkjadksj 2y agoThe thread is still early yet. Check back in 4 hours when this story has already been flagged off the front page.
- shinryuu 2y agoDisappointed that this got flagged.
- selimthegrim 2y agoThat was a generous estimation.
- Bloating 2y ago[flagged]
- code_for_monkey 2y agolol why are you calling them north korean?
- DonHopkins 2y ago[flagged]
- DinoDad13 2y ago[flagged]
- indoordin0saur 2y agoThis is what Trump campaigned on and he won. "It's a democracy when I like it and a coup when I don't!"
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y agoBlue no matter who. 2024, 2026, 2028. This was preventable
- Etheryte 2y agoI'm not from the US, so I don't really have a direct horse in this race. Don't you think that polarization like this is exactly what led to the current situation? Culture begets counter culture and demonizing the other side turns into a rallying call in turn.
- tdb7893 2y agoThere's also a lot more nuance here and I definitely wouldn't say demonization of Democrats as a party is what lead to the current situation, that's seems a very oversimplified take. I would say more demonization of LGBT people, immigrants, scientists, government workers, media, etc. and demonization of those people is very different than demonizing the partisan apparatuses. I'm honestly on board with hating the Democrat political apparatus. You should be allowed to hate on a political party, it's weird to think that's inherently an issue (especially in the current climate). I think a big part of the problem is in the US we're only allowed 2 parties so if one doesn't stuff you find unacceptable you sorta just need to support the other. Gotta love the "land of the free".
- Etheryte 2y agoThat's all fair, but you do understand that a large part of your point boils down to saying the problem isn't us demonizing them, the problem is them demonizing us, right?
- tdb7893 2y agoI'm saying demonizing political organizations isn't a problem, demonizing broad classes of people is. For example: there's a difference between saying immigrants are "poisoning the blood of our country" (direct Trump quote) and "I would never vote for a Republican". The latter is generally fine and expected in any democracy. People have party preferences. Edit: there's also context and matters of degree that matter here but this is an HN comment and I'm not gonna write an essay.
- resters 2y agoEveryone from Elon to Luigi want to just "burn it down". They see no benefit in following democratic processes to achieve the desired ends. I used to respect Elon for risking a lot of his own capital on new ventures. But now he's turned into a socially conservative internet troll.
- Bloating 2y agoUnless its your party-tribe is lighting the fires
- ceejayoz 2y ago"Conservatives" are, in theory, interested in stability and status quo. The correct term, IMO, is regressive.
- orwin 2y agoReactionary?
- pseudalopex 2y agoI think reactionary would be more likely to catch on. Some of them embrace it.
- queuebert 2y ago> following democratic processes to achieve the desired ends That has been failing for a while now. Congressional approval is in the 20% range, much lower than even Trump's. An odd fact never mentioned in the media. The U.S. is toast if it can't reverse Citizen's United.
- tdb7893 2y agoPolitical pundits for major outlets (538, New York Times, Washington Post) reference this constantly. It's mentioned all the time in media to the point where when people talk about congressional approval I turn my brain off because I know they'll say some version of "congressional approval is low but people generally approve of their congressman".
- Fin_Code 2y ago[flagged]
- roland35 2y agomaybe instead of having a vindictive billionaire who answers to no one secretly breaking into server rooms with his cronies to to attack "savings" which are all only a tiny % of the budget we should... I don't know... maybe have serious conversations about the actual big ticket items like defense, medicare, and social security??
- ceejayoz 2y agoI owe more on my mortgage than I make in a year. I'm not insolvent. The single largest four-year increase (about a quarter of all of it!) in the debt happened under the current President.
- queuebert 2y agoI think the idea is the interest on the debt will approach our ability to pay soon. That would be like your mortgage payment being toward interest only, and you were barely able to make it.
- ceejayoz 2y agoWe pay something like 3% interest: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_debt_of_the_United_States#/media/File:Average_Interest_Rate_on_U.S._Federal_Debt.webp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_debt_of_the_United_St... Mostly to ourselves: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_debt_of_the_United_States#/media/File:Federal_Government_debt_holders.webp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_debt_of_the_United_St... ... and we're paying less in interest on a percentage-of-revenue standpoint (blue line) than almost any other point in history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_debt_of_the_United_States#/media/File:Federal_interest_payments.webp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_debt_of_the_United_St... ... and if it's truly a concern, picking the guy who ran the worst deficits in history is a... choice. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_debt_of_the_United_States#/media/File:Federal_Government_deficits.webp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_debt_of_the_United_St...
- code_for_monkey 2y agototal financial control by 5 20 years who've never written anything but Python, this should be great who tf downvoted this show yourself groyper
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- drawkward 2y agothey won't, because "groyper" and "coward" are synonyms
- code_for_monkey 2y agojust find it hard to believe you could be on hacker news and be like "this is good" unless you yourself was a 20 internet troll you know?
- drawkward 2y agoturns out, a lot of tech took a hard right turn in the last decade or two. I think it is explained by the idea that, when tech overtook finance as the best shot at accumulating supra-human wealth and power, the young sociopaths started going into tech instead of finance.
- olelele 2y agoThis here rings true to me.
- desumeku 2y ago20 year old internet troll here. This is good.
- invalidOrTaken 2y ago40-yr-old internet troll here. This is fantastic.
- 2y ago
- nemo44x 2y ago[flagged]
- 9283409232 2y agoI wish I could be as naive as you to think the people doing this are not corrupt and aren't further rigging the system for their benefit.
- fzeroracer 2y ago> It's about time we got these things ripped out where tax payer money is funneled into layers of NGO's "doing the work" and ultimately back to the party that built this apparatus. So yes, it is a crisis if you were part of that corrupt system. You mean like how much tax money we funneled into Elon Musk's bullshit ventures? Strange though, I get the feeling that he's not going to audit himself.
- flaminHotSpeedo 2y agoThis coming from the same people who shut OPM employees out of an HR database, citing (legitimate) security and oversight concerns, because they had broad un-auditable access. How can this department turn around and do this and still maintain they're doing the right thing? By their own admission they know this a bad idea
- archagon 2y ago> Overnight Wired reported that contrary to published reports that DOGE operatives at the Treasury Department are limited to ‘read only’ access to department payment systems, this is not true. A 25 year old DOGE operative named Marko Elez in fact has admin privileges on these critical systems which directly control and pay out roughly 95% of payments made by the US government including Social Security checks, tax refunds and virtually all contract payments. I can independently confirm these details based on going back to the weekend. I can further report that Elez not only has full access to these systems and has already made extensive changes to the code base for this critical payment system. > Josh, are you a little crestfallen they beat you to it? Well, sure but this is a business is an ocean of ‘arrgghhs’ and honestly the information being out is the big thing. Here are the additional details. > I’m told that Elez and possibly other DOGE operatives received full admin level access on Friday January 31st. The claim of ‘read only’ access was either false from the start or later fell through. The DOGE team, which appears to be mainly or only Elez for the purposes of this project, has already made extensive changes to the code base for the payment system. They have not locked out the existing programmer/engineering staff but have rather leaned on them for assistance which they appear to have painedly provided hoping to prevent as much damage as possible – ‘damage’ in the sense not of preventing the intended changes but avoiding crashes or a system-wide breakdown caused by rapidly pushing new code into production with a limited knowledge of the system and its dependencies across the federal government. > Phrases like “freaking out” are, not surprisingly, used to describe the reaction of the engineers who were responsible for maintaining the code base until a week ago. The changes that have been made all seem to relate to creating new paths to block payments and possibly leave less visibility into what has been blocked. I want to emphasize that the described changed are not being tested in a dev environment (i.e., not live) but have already been pushed into production. This is code that appears to be mainly the work of Elez who was first introduced to the system probably roughly a week ago and certainly not before the second Trump inauguration. The most recent information I have is that no payments have as yet been blocked and that the incumbent engineering team was able to convince Marko to push the code live to impact only a subset of the universe of payments the system controls. I have also heard no specific information about this access being used to drill down into the private financial or proprietary information of payment recipients, though it appears that the incumbent staff has only limited visibility into what Elez is doing with the access. They have however looked into extensively into the categories and identity of payees to see how certain payments can be blocked. https://www.democraticunderground.com/100219987126 https://www.democraticunderground.com/100219987126
- cratermoon 2y agoI sure hope none of the systems the DOGE boys are recklessly accessing end up having some dangerous malware like StuxNet on them that ends up disabling or destroying the DOGE systems.
- hamburga 2y agoWhy was this flagged?
- drawkward 2y ago[flagged]
- hamburga 2y agoWTF. Do they usually give a reason for flagging?
- epakai 2y agoFlagging is mostly done by users (who have enough karma). It is just toggle (no reason entry form), and I believe it is the same for the moderator version. The reasoning generally should be non-adherence to https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html but that's not particularly enforceable. This is balanced by the vouching system, as well as moderator unflagging. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html#flag https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html#flag
- throw16180339 2y agoMost stories about Musk are flagged regardless of the topic. He might be using bots, he's certainly petty enough to do so.
- rsynnott 2y agoMusk stuff tends to be; his horde of weird sycophants is alive and well.
- indoordin0saur 2y agoPurely political posts are against the guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- yodsanklai 2y ago
- polotics 2y agoJust asking for a friend. Are CIA and NSA salaries being paid by the systems that are being fraudited right now? Does this extend to payments to intermediaries inclusive of foreign intermediaries / banks?
- ElevenLathe 2y agoI think the nasty parts of the TLAs will be fine with just the money they make off drugs, human trafficking and so on. I assume there are a significant number of "straight" employees that would be fucked by the whole system blowing up, but maybe they'd just pay them with cash too. AFAIK it's still legal to pay people that way as long as they get a proper pay slip with the cash envelope. Alternatively they might move them to contractor positions in regime-friendly firms. But not realistically it seems like the goal is to be more targeted: pay your shooters, cut off your enemies'.
- blurbleblurble 2y agoMaybe hasty de-dollarization is the plan of this organization literally named after a cryptocurrency?
- belter 2y agoThis a list of the data these SpaceX bros might now have on their drives, for every single US citizen: - Tax Return Info: Name, SSN, address, income, deductions, payments/refunds. - Enforcement Records: Audit trails, payment plans, liens/levies. - Federal payments (e.g., tax refunds, Social Security), direct deposit info, delinquent debt details. - Accounts for U.S. Treasury securities (personal data, account activity). - Sanctions Enforcement: Basic identifiers (name, address), transaction details for compliance checks. - Financial Crime Data: Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs), Currency Transaction Reports (CTRs), limited personal/transaction info tied to money laundering or terrorist financing investigations. - Investigative files related to Treasury programs (potentially includes personal data).
- black_puppydog 2y agoThanks for the summary! The article is clearly written by someone who knows all of this, but didn't bother to spell it out like this.
- rsynnott 2y agoHe seems to be an economist who writes a lot about central banks etc, so likely suffering from XKCD 2501: https://xkcd.com/2501/ https://xkcd.com/2501/
- offmycloud 2y ago> Tax Return Info: Name, SSN, address, income, deductions, payments/refunds Can you please provide a source for the claim of release of IRS taxpayer confidential data?
- anigbrowl 2y agothe data these SpaceX bros might now have on their drives
- noodles42 2y ago[dead]
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- mandeepj 2y agoMusk got himself into this hole, so if a democrat president comes in 2029, there's a high chance now, he'd be deported. Can happen sooner as well, depending on midterms.
- NotYourLawyer 2y agoYou don’t deport citizens though…
- mmastrac 2y agoWell that might be changing soon: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0jn5291p52o https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0jn5291p52o
- saturn8601 2y agoIf they could prove he was in the country illegally and breaking laws maybe they could revoke his citizenship? [1]: https://youtu.be/CgV2KzyWKx0?t=794 https://youtu.be/CgV2KzyWKx0?t=794 He often talks about the most ironic outcome being the most likely so this could fit lol.
- throw16180339 2y agoHe's worth billions, so that's not going to happen. We're stuck with him unless an assassin gets lucky.
- saturn8601 2y agoYeah thats a good point. You never know, the pendulum might swing far to the left and his billions might not save him. I do concede thats its really unlikely.
- throw16180339 2y agoIn order for him to be prosecuted, several highly unlikely things have to occur. Trump doesn't pardon him. I can't really see this happening. If they have a falling out, then Elon will just pay him off. It's not like Trump will turn down a bribe. A democrat is elected president in 2028. After that, demographics substantially reduce their chances of being elected (https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/democrats-future-crisis-the-biggest-states-that-back-them-are-shrinking https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/democrats-future-crisi...). They would have to either abandon progressive views and move right or offer an incredibly compelling candidate. Both of these seem unlikely to me. After that, people in red states will determine the future of this country.
- erentz 2y agoSo I just found this a few pages down at rank 129, where its ended up in only 3 hours, despite garnering 250 points in that time. That's abnormal for such a popular post. What gives?
- EasyMark 2y agoProbably marked as "political" and demoted
- shinryuu 2y agoPeople flagged it. Seems like it got moderated and is now unflagged.
- prawn 2y agoI don't think HN wants to be the place for these sorts of stories, however important they might ultimately feel.
- mrguyorama 2y agoFrankly because a lot of people here on HN buy the new regime's claims fully, and refuse to take a skeptical look at what is happening. They don't want political news on here because they have chosen to get political news only from a few select/deified "truth" channels and anything else is a lie. They don't want their carefully curated filter bubble to be threatened. I was here when HN tried "no politics" and clearly demonstrated how stupid and foolish that is even as a concept. You don't get to play "I just want to talk tech and be apolitical" when those titans of "tech" are swearing fealty to the regime and choosing to lose slam dunk cases as a means of bribing the president.
- astroid 2y agoIt's probably because absolutely no one is using real sources in these articles. I won't muddy the comments repeating myself - but I have been fascinated by how quickly people latched on to this, have been absolutely incapable of finding any first party sourcing, and asked CoPilot to analyze each of these stories (13 so far!) and every single one is 'trust me bro, I heard it in a convo'. I really really hope this isn't true for all the same reasons as people are freaking out... but at this point it has as much merit as saying "the sky is always green, I heard a guy say it the other week who I won't name but it's true" Ctrl-F 'astroid' or click my last post in this thread for the complete breakdown of every source referenced, and ask yourself if there is enough info to warrant entertaining this fantasy. Honestly I am shocked at how little critical thinking is being applied here. I know this website hates these guys, but there is usually a facade of critical thinking at the least.
- hello_computer 2y ago[flagged]
- ineedaj0b 2y ago[flagged]
- yalogin 2y agoWeird that the first instinct of his is to eliminate all aid local and international. No mention of looking at the military spending. I guess cutting elsewhere will help funnel that into spacex and whatever ai insanity musk comes up with to "serve the government"
- Havoc 2y agoTrump is talking up a new missile Defence thing that is space based. No doubt will require many rockets. So no military spending will not be cut
- yalogin 2y agoHa of course.. they never cut the cash cows. Make shit up and create new means of warfare even though there is no need. Just a cash grab and cash funnel. There has to be space involved now because elon.
- HumblyTossed 2y agoThere's a logical fallacy in believing simply because Elon has had some success in business, he can have success here.
- edanm 2y agoI'd hardly call that a logical fallacy. I'm fairly sure there's some correlation between success in business and success in other domains.
- lm28469 2y agoThe problem is that a company has nothing to do with a country, the goal isn't to have a positive balance at the end of the excel spreadsheet
- edanm 2y agoI agree. Still, it's not a logical fallacy to think "someone very successful at X is more likely to be successful at Y", in many cases. Do you think that there is literally zero correlation between massive business success and success at whatever-it-is Musk is trying to do now? (I agree it's a fallacy if you think is' assured he will succeed, as opposed to this just being a correlation in your mind. I just bumped on the use of "logical fallacy" to describe something that is not a fallacy at all!)
- thecosas 2y agoI think you may have captured the point best in the way you phrased this: "whatever-it-is Musk is trying to do now" That it's not entirely clear makes it impossible to know if it might be something he could have success in.
- tayo42 2y agoHe's had more failures then successes Fired from PayPal, Twitter, neurolink, the tunnel thing He bought his way into Tesla, and SpaceX, though suppsedly he's not actually the one running it (believable I think there's not enough time)
- unyttigfjelltol 2y agoSo let me get this straight-- there is a box in a Treasury building that, if the janitor accidentally unplugs it-- immediate financial apocalypse and a fifth of the US economy "stops." Why isn't the very existence of this box the problem?
- thesuperbigfrog 2y ago>> So let me get this straight-- there is a box in a Treasury building that, if the janitor accidentally unplugs it-- immediate financial apocalypse and a fifth of the US economy "stops." It is mission-critical finance system. Guaranteed it's multiple redundant boxes in an highly access-controlled data center. No one should have access without serious vetting. >> Why isn't the very existence of this box the problem? The money doesn't move around on magic and rainbows. What were you expecting?
- lm28469 2y agoI mean if you simplify things to that extent Trump has a suit case with a red button that can end the world. Real life is a bit more complicated
- unyttigfjelltol 2y agoIf Trump's suitcase were broken, the result would not be Armageddon. Also, apparently there are redundant "red buttons" mirroring the succession plan.[1] So a more appropriate analogy would be a dead-man trigger in a bureaucrat's hand, programmed in obsolete technology, that if handled other than by expert hands at all times would result in immediate "Armageddon." [1] https://apnews.com/article/nuclear-football-presidential-satchel-war-df3c1e65cfd21f137fd2fc7e7d62ffab https://apnews.com/article/nuclear-football-presidential-sat...
- Havoc 2y agoThat’s the nature of centralized finance, no?
- 1970-01-01 2y ago>include the ability not just to read but to write code on two of the most sensitive systems in the US government. ... >All that is known is that Marko can “access and query” SPS and that there was someone who gave Marko a “tour” of the facilities. We do not know where they are in operationalizing any control. One senior IT source can see Mark retrieving “close to a thousand rows of data” but they can’t see the content because the system is “top secret” even to them. No source I have has knowledge of what DOGE is doing with the data they are retrieving. So the (d)evil remains hidden in every one of their details! What does 'write code' actually mean? A DB query? What exactly are these 'most sensitive' systems in the US government? A COBOL DB?? Compare the backups. You DO have them off-site?
- AnthonyMouse 2y agoThe most likely explanation is that the system either doesn't have the capacity to provide full read access without write access, or they were ordered to be provided "full access" and then the part of the bureaucracy implementing that directive interpreted it as including write access. This is obviously not ideal, but the real question is, are they actually modifying anything (and if so , what?), or it is just a permissions level they're not actually using for anything? We also can't rule out media hysteria yet, e.g. "write code" could plausibly be something like "write SQL queries" which doesn't inherently imply any modification to the database tables.
- samsk 2y agoOh, can't wait for the article on Medium on how they rewrote that old COBOL thing in React Native and NodeJS in 3 days and saved bilions (by not delivering them).
- liontwist 2y agoMany reasonable and civil comments I and others made earlier today are being flagged. Whats going on?
- frangfarang 2y ago[dead]
- throw16180339 2y agoOthers disagree that you were reasonable and civil.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- liontwist 2y agoOne of my flagged comments is “At what age would you support them?”
- buttercraft 2y agoIt appears to be a question asked in bad faith. Then you crossed into personal attack.
- liontwist 2y agoInteresting. If that’s the interpretation I think i need to contribute elsewhere. I can’t trust that I’m not seeing other important perspectives here.
- spacemanspiff01 2y agoSo to me this seems like an issue, set aside the constitutional/legal issues. It sounds like, from the reporting, one person is modifying a large complex system that handles trillions of dollars and pushing directly to production. Also he is not familiar with the system, having first encountered it a week ago. Also the people who do normally have access to this system do not know what he is exactly doing, because normally, it is illegal for them to even access the system in the same way.
- giorgioz 2y agoIt seems read-only access has been given to audit expenses. So there is no modification. In fact it's the read-only access that will allow to become familiar with the system and make informed decisions.
- mgillett54 2y agoFTA > Wired beat me to the punch of reporting that a top DOGE employee, 25 year old former SpaceX employee Marko Elez, has not only read but write access to BFS servers.
- giorgioz 2y agoClearly if someone grant them write privilegies it means someone else had admin privilegies as well to that system. How many people have normally access to it? Why is it particularly weird that someone working in the government have access to a system about payments? It seems to me that generic fear is being mentioned rather than very tangible and clear dangers. It makes me feel like the people wanting to create panic have a hidden agenda and they just want to avoid someone from the opposition to audit the budgets. How can DOGE find out if there are expenses that should be cut if it doesn't even have access to what is actually being paid? I think everyone is generically afraid that their department is gonna get the cut and just doesn't want the audit to happen.
- astroid 2y agoOkay this is the third article I have seen posted on HN about this - and once again, it is just a circular mish-mash of anonymous second hand sources. These articles are all so circular I have resorted to asking CoPilot to analyze them and tell me what each source is, if they are 1st 2nd or 3rd party, and whether or not they are anonymous. In this article, the analysis came out with: Let's break down the claims and sources in this article: Crises Notes: Reports that the Trump-Musk Treasury payments crisis of 2025 involves the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) gaining access to the Treasury Department's payment system. The article mentions concerns about the potential for irreversible damage to the systems and the exposure of sensitive personal and financial information1. The sources are unnamed, and there is no direct evidence provided. CBS News: Reports that DOGE has access to the Bureau of the Fiscal Service, which disburses trillions in payments each year, including Social Security checks and federal salaries. The article mentions concerns from consumer advocates and Democratic lawmakers about the potential risks of this access2. The sources are unnamed, and there is no direct evidence provided. Truthout: Reports that labor unions and an advocacy group have sued the U.S. Treasury Department to halt DOGE's access to the critical government payment system. The article mentions concerns about the scale of the intrusion into individuals' privacy and the potential for unauthorized access to sensitive information3. The sources are unnamed, and there is no direct evidence provided. In summary, all the sources cited in the article are anonymous, and there are no first-party sources or direct evidence provided. This makes it difficult to verify the claims independently. The lack of named sources and concrete evidence raises questions about the credibility of the claims. Also, I will go ahead and paste my previous output from the other articles below (I'm going to post them as child comments so this isn't just a huge wall of text):
- astroid 2y agoThe below is in reference to this article (also posted in HN) https://newrepublic.com/post/191117/elon-musk-25-year-old-aide-doge-treasury-department-code https://newrepublic.com/post/191117/elon-musk-25-year-old-ai... I did the same manual analysis I did on the OP one, and could not find a first party source or non-anonymous claim. I asked CoPilot to analyze the sources and identify the individual claims, and their proximity to a 'first party source'. Once again, there is 0 evidence this is actually happening -- there are however a lot of news organizations ready to throw their reputations away over a few 'anonymous sources' that aren't even primary. Here is the analysis of your source, AND the linked sources in that article: Wired: Reports that Marko Elez, a 25-year-old engineer linked to Elon Musk, has direct access to Treasury Department systems responsible for nearly all payments made by the U.S. government. The sources are unnamed, and they claim Elez has administrator-level privileges, including the ability to write code on the Payment Automation Manager and Secure Payment System1. Talking Points Memo: Confirms Wired's reporting, adding that Elez has already made extensive changes to the code base for the payment systems. Again, the sources are unnamed1. The New Republic: Details that Elez has complete access to critical payment systems at the Department of the Treasury, despite being only 25 years old. The sources are unnamed, and the article mentions that senior government officials have been locked out of employee databases1. Raw Story: Reports that Elez has been given full control over the computer code that directs Social Security payments, tax returns, and other payments owed to Americans. The sources are unnamed, and the article mentions that federal IT workers are concerned about the potential for irreversible damage to the systems2. In summary, all the sources cited in the article are anonymous, and there are no first-party sources or direct evidence provided. This makes it difficult to verify the claims independently. The lack of named sources and concrete evidence raises questions about the credibility of the claims.
- mikewarot 2y agoI worry/wonder how strong the public hunger for blood in the streets would become if they accidentally delay or otherwise modify more than a handful of Social Security payments. This is as close to juggling chainsaws as anyone can get. Elon doesn't have a strong track record of getting things right the first time.
- nosioptar 2y agoI don't think it would take multiple payments. A delayed SSDI payment means going without food and meds for many.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- treebeard901 2y agoWhat if he's planning to replace the current systems with something that has a blockchain to more easily track payments? ...DogeCoin??
- TrackerFF 2y agoThis should scare everyone in the US. The strategy here is: 1) Trump issues some unconstitutional EO to abolish a federal department 2) Musk and DOGE go to work 3) Some federal judge blocks the EO 4) Some acting lackey of Trump ignores the court order. DOGE continues to dismantle the department from within 5) Even if the judge orders an arrests, no-one will enforce it 6) Congress does nothing By the time anyone actually gets held accountable, the departments will have been pillaged and dismantled. DOJ and the AG will not go after anyone involved, Trump orders pre-emptive pardons for all involved in federal crimes.