8 ms·

European here, giving my two cents on how this looks from the other side of the Atlantic. Heh In my country there are laws stopping agencies doing a simple SQL

by maCDzP 2y ago

European here, giving my two cents on how this looks from the other side of the Atlantic. Heh In my country there are laws stopping agencies doing a simple SQL join between two databases, even within the same government agency. There is a separate agency that handles the requests when agencies want to join information. I am not an expert in the matter. But my gut is telling me that our experiences with east Germany and Stasi left a scar. It can quickly turn into a real nightmare, and there for there are check and balances to make it slow. It’s deliberate inefficiency.

scarab92 2y ago
[flagged]
- alt227 2y ago
  Except that they, an unelected private group, have already attempted to get all private and confidential citizen data from the US treasury, and have been blocked by the courts as it is illegal. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/feb/08/judge-temporarily-blocks-musks-doge-team-from-accessing-treasury-records https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/feb/08/judge-tem... They have tried to get data of all payments to US citizens including pensions, 401k, benefits and allowances etc. All foreign aid and diplomacy payments are included, and they have been charged with trying to find ways to illegaly stop these payments. Be very careful in supporting what Musk and DOGE do. They are unelected, and have been given unprecedented access to government data. Scary times are ahead.
  - scarab92 2y ago
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    - MourYother 2y ago
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      - scarab92 2y ago
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        MourYother 2y ago
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        lenkite 2y ago
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        MourYother 2y ago
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        alt227 2y ago
        Whatever you say, Donald Trump has been convicted of a felony.
      - dudeinjapan 2y ago
        [dead]
    - scott_w 2y ago
      > False. It was a temporary injuction until the judge has time to review it. It was in fact multiple injunctions because people at DOGE kept trying to work around it in increasingly stupid ways. > So are 2.5 million other employees and advisors in government. Those employees are employed by a government agency established, funded and given their mission by Congress. The heads of these agencies are approved by the US Senate. None of these statements above apply to Elon Musk or "DOGE."
      - whatever1 2y ago
        I agree with all of the above, but to be blunt, even if they were to go through the congress, they would be approved since Republicans have majority everywhere and they seem to have given a blank check to the President. We did this to ourselves.
        scott_w 2y ago
        That's definitely possible. Ultimately, it was up to the public of the USA to be the backstop against this and they chose not to. I think it's worth pointing out that it's not a given Congress would have approved it all. For a start, it would take longer to legally setup the instruments that Musk wanted. Also, the current situation allows Republicans to conveniently wash their hands of any negative consequences. Which is likely a big reason they're not pushing on this at all, as demanding a vote would require them to take a clear side on DOGE.
        xnx 2y ago
        They're doing it by executive order because they don't have the votes to do it in congress with their slim majority.
        ZeroGravitas 2y ago
        Musk has publicly threatened to fund a primary challenger for any Congressman who gets in his way so, in some very real sense he's the one doing it, rather than the voters who voted for their congressman, perhaps not expecting them to be threatened into compliance by the richest man in the world.
    - john_the_writer 2y ago
      These are also staff of the government.. Or contracted by the government. The government contracts out all the time.
    - sympil 2y ago
      > They are unelected, So are 2.5 million other employees and advisors in government. The 2.5 million you speak of operate within agencies whose mandates have been given by Congress and their actions are subject to judicial reciew. There is no Comgressional mandate for DOGE. They are the rogue agency people like you spent years worrying about.
      - zpeti 2y ago
        > There is no Comgressional mandate for DOGE. There is. It was given during Obama. You might not like it, but it looks like DOGE is likely to be completely legal and working within the frameworks of the government.
      - refurb 2y ago
        DOGE is an agency, it took over the digital services agency that existed before.[1]. Obama had created the original agency, not Congress, so Trump had the ability to change it. "The United States Digital Service is hereby publicly renamed as the United States DOGE Service (USDS) and shall be established in the Executive Office of the President." And I’m not sure why you think a “congressional mandate” is required for the executive to do things, it’s not. Especially for an agency that a former President created on his own. As for data access, my understanding is the digital services agency already had data access to other agencies through pre-existing agreements (it goes back to the original mandate to fix the Obamacare website which required pulling data from numerous databases). [1]https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/establishing-and-implementing-the-presidents-department-of-government-efficiency/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/esta...
        toyg 2y ago
        The mandate and personnel of the Digital Service are completely different from DOGE, so they are effectively different things. Renaming an existing one was just an administrative shortcut taken by an executive that clearly does not care for the spirit or the letter of any law (as stated by the president himself in his infamous tweet).
    - Timwi 2y ago
      > or are just inherently anti-Musk The dude made a Nazi salute in public in broad daylight. So yes, I'm inherently anti-Musk because I'm inherently anti-Nazi because Nazis are inherently anti human rights and anti basic freedoms.
      - brigandish 2y ago
        Are Nazis for big government or for small government?
        throwawayqqq11 2y ago
        Big on authoritarianism and small on everything else. Can you tell me a cost reduction plan involving police or military or do i have to label it law-and-order with a sharp salute for you to understand what i am talking about? Communication is so messy man, two sides, same iterpretation ... just tell me when i can lower my arm of friendship, that absolutely noone could misunderstand.
        brigandish 2y ago
        > Big on authoritarianism and small on everything else. Historically, that has not been the case, hence the question. > Can you tell me a cost reduction plan involving police or military or do i have to label it law-and-order with a sharp salute for you to understand what i am talking about? Just yesterday this[0] was a headline: "Hegseth wants Pentagon to cut 8% from defense budget for each of the next 5 years" [0] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hegseth-pentagon-8-percent-cuts-for-next-5-years/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hegseth-pentagon-8-percent-cuts...
  - john_the_writer 2y ago
    Just on the un-elected private group bit. This would apply to every one of the staff members of these departments. How many elected software developers worked on the original software? How many private contractors were elected? Are there a pile of elected software developers working as cobol and java devs? It's not the stupidest argument, but it applies to every last staff member of the us treasury.
    - roenxi 2y ago
      I wouldn't dismiss the concerns; which seem reasonable. But the argument is pretty stupid. None of the bureaucrats are elected, and this data has been gathered by the government to perform its functions. Insofar as Elon's team are pretty much just a couple of new bureaucrats bought in by Trump; they can use this data to streamline government. The office of president is pretty powerful; odds are he can appoint people to do work for him. It'd be crazy if he can't. The problem is the government shouldn't be storing a whole bunch of sensitive data. It is like being shocked that someone in the NSA is actually looking at all the data they collect - there is a big problem there, but it is that they're collecting and storing the data. Obviously once they have it people will look at it. That is why it is being gathered and stored. It should be criminal to store on the grounds of privacy; but it isn't.
      - xnx 2y ago
        > The problem is the government shouldn't be storing a whole bunch of sensitive data Like tax returns? What legitimate need does management consultant have to see the individual tax returns of any person without any accountable transparency?
        roenxi 2y ago
        There is a pretty reasonable case for tax returns being public by default - I'd certainly like to know how much of the financial burden my fellow citizens are upholding. I bet I could spot a bunch of tax evaders right quick. Rather than asking why someone should be able to see them; I'd prefer to ask why I can't. It gets back to this basic issue of what this data is that I don't want anyone to know but the government needs to have a permanent record of. The overlap of those two things should be tiny. If it is so terrible that Musk & team can't look at it, why is it OK to be recorded? It isn't like the security of these departments is expected to be that great; data leaks. All the data that a large organisation holds is likely to become public sooner or later even if that happens because it is sold on the darknet. And the employees that looks it it regularly are who-knows-who doing who-knows-what on a good day.
  - Amezarak 2y ago
    > Except that they, an unelected private group, have already attempted to get all private and confidential citizen data from the US treasury, and have been blocked by the courts as it is illegal. It is not illegal. You can bookmark this comment for when it finally winds its way through the courts. Whether you love or hate the idea, this is a clearly legitimate exercise of executive authority and this judge is going to get smacked down hard, and the foolish abuse of TROs is going to wind up getting their use by lower-court judges severely curtailed. Read the legal justification in the orders yourself. Unfortunately a lot of people have lost their minds over this, and are burning through their credibility - some judges and journalists included. I don't know why, other than Musk is a moron and a polarizing figure. The Alantic breathlessly quoting government employees terrified to file their taxes because they're afraid Elon Musk will have their bank account number and routing info had my eyes rolling into the back of my head. This is fearmongering, not journalism. I don't understand why we can't oppose this without reporting on it honestly. The problem on matters like this seems to be getting much worse over time. > They are unelected, and have been given unprecedented access to government data. So is everyone else in the Treasury Department.
  - briandear 2y ago
    Doge isn’t private. They are government employees. Also USAID was unelected. Nobody working at the IRS was elected either.
    - goku12 2y ago
      Do you mean to say that the lack of expertise, conflicts of interest and lack of adequate security clearances are not considered as disqualifying factors for a US government employment?
  - lenkite 2y ago
    The motion to block DOGE has also been dismissed by courts https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/doge/judge-denies-states-bid-curtail-doges-powers-rcna192708 https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/doge/judge-denies-states-bi... Nobody complained about "unelected" Obama or Biden appointees accessing the treasury or SSN, but now that Trump is exposing corruption en-masse and stopping the gravy train, many folks are suddenly very concerned. The FUD is unfortunately not working. All this will probably go to the Supreme Court. And just like Biden ignored the Supreme Court ruling on student loans and even boasted about it proudly on twitter - saying they cannot block the executive, the precedent was also setup for Trump to do the same.
    - MourYother 2y ago
      The dogs working at DOGE haven't the idea on what are they looking at and are lying to cover it. I wouldn't count on them exposing anything but their asses. https://imgur.com/gallery/doge-math-wow-very-bad-much-corrupt-atRMd77 https://imgur.com/gallery/doge-math-wow-very-bad-much-corrup...
    - alt227 2y ago
      "The ruling does not end the case"
- basejumping 2y ago
  Maybe it's temporary, not 'once you build it they will use it'. Time will tell, if in the end a dictatorship proves itself to run things more efficiently and make everyone richer, then other countries will follow the US and adopt the same model.
  - amarcheschi 2y ago
    Ahem, tell me this again once you get punished for what you are as an individual, for your striking, for not joining the political party (...) I can't believe I'm reading such comments
    - basejumping 2y ago
      He doesn't need to follow that recipe for dictatorship. He just needs to do whatever he wants, being a bully without consequences both internally and externally, transforming the image of the US into an aggressive nation. At this moment Americans are as guilty as Russians for allowing this to happen.
- lazyasciiart 2y ago
  Who has been tasked? Under what authority? Not Elon Musk, according to Donald Trump. More seriously, if it was true it would be a stupid task, with stupidly inappropriate people selected to do it. What is actually happening is idiot destruction. Whether that was the intent or simply the obvious outcome of stupidity is irrelevant to the damage being done.
- ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7 2y ago
  Do you have an alert setup to tell you when people are bashing the DoGE?
  - MortyWaves 2y ago
    Including the copy pasta that the department created by an elected official is "unelected".
  - shrikant 2y ago
    Wouldn't be a DOGE thread without scarab92 carrying water for this nonsense.
    - kennysoona 2y ago
      This is the type of indoctrination we need to fight against (not your comment but what it references), and it's an open question as to how.
- 3D30497420 2y ago
  What are their guardrails? Do they have accountability? Does "parallelise" mean compiling data on people from different systems? Dossiers? Are they even following the law? > They have simply... Oh yes, because this is all very simple. What is "waste"? How is it defined? Who decides what is waste and what isn't?
  - exe34 2y ago
    if it's not funding tax cuts and corporate handouts for Elon's companies, it's waste.
  - goku12 2y ago
    Serious question to those who are cheering for the 'elimination of waste'. What do you expect to happen to the money thus saved? In what ways do you expect those savings to benefit you or the broader citizenry?
    - xnx 2y ago
      I expect the "saved" money to be given (no air quotes) to the richest 0.1% via additional permanent tax cuts.
- intended 2y ago
  ”Simply been tasked with X” We’re on a community that discusses, amongst other things, the running of firms and startups. Just because someone is simply tasked with X, doesn’t mean we all agree to ignore the big picture. The big picture of 1) Complex projects 2) Security 3) High functioning teams 4) Ethics This is fundamentally unethical, and irresponsible. I 100% think you agree with me on the irresponsible part. You may sincerely stand on the reduction of waste, which frankly no one is going to argue. But a team this small, for a project this vital? This fast? What was that saying? Good, Fast, Cheap? Pick 2? Why the flippty flip, is anyone here OK with fast and cheap? Hell, What precisely are these people doing? What are the project milestones? Where can we see what’s going on? And if the transparency of their actions is a cybersecurity risk - then which independent body is checking them? Edit: Forget their elected, unelected status. Why should we turn around and trust them? What are they planning to do. I don’t want more outrage - you could find the whole thing was running on alien souls. What is the replacement method, and what is the gain we can expect from the changes? If they’ve taken charge - then they should do the work, and do it well. And if it’s tech related or s/w related stuff, then talk about it, and explain.
- viraptor 2y ago
  That's actually not what they've been tasked with: > This Executive Order establishes the Department of Government Efficiency to implement the President’s DOGE Agenda, by modernizing Federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity. There's nothing about government spending programs or staffing in there. Also the EO includes this funny sentence: "USDS shall adhere to rigorous data protection standards."
  - randomcarbloke 2y ago
    that that moron has been tasked with finding inefficiency is so concerning, he is a man so convinced of his own intellectual superiority that he has zero respect for complexity. We see every day how technically inept and incompetent he is, I just wonder when the other shoe is going to drop for the average observer. It is the emperor's new clothes writ large, and why I find Bezos's comment about taking him at face value so funny, is he slyly telling us he thinks the guy a fool, a troll, and nothing more?
ReptileMan 2y ago
Very few countries have as strong executive branch as the USA.
- lazyasciiart 2y ago
  We call those ones “monarchies” or “dictatorships”.
  - lacy_tinpot 2y ago
    You call the first and one of the most successful democracies in the world a monarchy/dictatorship? The American Executive branch is given broad powers since the very beginning and considering the success there might be something to it. In contrast the Europeans have descended into petty mass wars and dictatorial regimes multiple times, and each time America has come to save Europe through that very Executive branch. A bit thankless don't you think?
    - lupusreal 2y ago
      Europe has more or less managed to avoid descending into a mass war for almost a century now, if we assume the one brewing now is just a mirage, so basically they've got it all figured out and their smugness is totally justified. This is what democracy looks like, Americans should learn from Germany's example: > According to the court document, the public prosecutor stated “public interest” in pressing criminal charges as the retweet was “punishable as an insult against people of political life”. It potentially constituted “incitement of the people”. > Publicly insulting a politician has been a criminal offence in Germany since 2021 when a set of laws “against hate and hate speech” were passed under then-chancellor Angela Merkel. https://brusselssignal.eu/2024/11/german-police-raid-mans-home-over-tweet-mocking-greens-politician/ https://brusselssignal.eu/2024/11/german-police-raid-mans-ho...
      - lacy_tinpot 2y ago
        I can't tell if you're being ironic or not, because those examples are basically definitionally Orwellian. Also how about never descending into dictatorships and authoritarian regimes?
nonrandomstring 2y ago
> It’s deliberate inefficiency. Inefficiency is a useful property of many systems [0,1]. Current cultural obsessions around the word are a burden and mistake, and the word "efficiency" now feels rather overload with right-wing connotations. [0] https://cybershow.uk/blog/posts/efficiency/ https://cybershow.uk/blog/posts/efficiency/ [1] https://cybershow.uk/blog/posts/cash2/ https://cybershow.uk/blog/posts/cash2/
- a-saleh 2y ago
  I have strong feeling that in the past 50 or so years, we often have traded resiliency for efficiency. I think we might have gone too far. That doesn't mean that being deliberately inefficient will improve resiliency. Also, some of the deliberate inefficiency (i.e. looking at weird thing us healthcae/health-insurance system has going on) is more ... extractive? That sounds like the word I am looking for.
kioleanu 2y ago
Which law are referring to? I work in such an agency and I’ve never heard of such a thing
- sam_lowry_ 2y ago
  Dunno about Germany but in Belgium there is Crossroads Bank for Social Security which effectively controls the flow of information between various social security and public health organizations: https://www.ksz-bcss.fgov.be/ https://www.ksz-bcss.fgov.be/ In its current form, it's a set of SOAP or REST APIs that your organization gets access to after completing paperwork about your needs. It was established by a 1990 law [1]. There is also a similar legal and technical setup for information on companies [2] where most information is public, and the register of residents [3] which is even more guarded. [1] https://www.ksz-bcss.fgov.be/fr/page/loi-du-15-janvier-1990-organique-de-la-banque-carrefour-de-la-securite-sociale https://www.ksz-bcss.fgov.be/fr/page/loi-du-15-janvier-1990-... [2] https://economie.fgov.be/en/themes/enterprises/crossroads-bank-enterprises/cbe-services-everyone https://economie.fgov.be/en/themes/enterprises/crossroads-ba... [3] https://www.ibz.rrn.fgov.be/fr/registre-national/ https://www.ibz.rrn.fgov.be/fr/registre-national/
  - kioleanu 2y ago
    Yes, that makes sense, we don’t allow people to connect to our databases directly either, and in any case the systems should be built so they are separated, it’s good architecture. I was very much more intrigued about the statement that data can’t be easily/legally shared within the same agency
    - sam_lowry_ 2y ago
      This is also true, to some extent. You have to have valid reason to access PII (Personally Identifiable Information). All access is logged and the DPO (The Data Privacy Office, one of the good things GDPR formalized) monitors access on a regular basis. And since the current understanding is that even the combination of an IP address and a timestamp is personally identifiable... many organizations are actively not collecting usage stats. Which leads to the abuse of public funds, but this is a different story.
amelius 2y ago
That's putting it mildly. What it really looks like is a fast descent into madness.
- tossandthrow 2y ago
  It is to avoid totalitarianism.
  - FirmwareBurner 2y ago
    Having a slow and archaic birocratic system doesn't stop governments going totalitarian on their citizens. Case in point In Germany the Polizei will SWAT and arrest you if you post a meme on social media that angers someone's dignity. That's not a joke that actually happens. This typical German "our government is not slow and inefficient, it's just protection against totalitarianism" is pure cope. Edit: @helloplanets Source: https://youtu.be/-bMzFDpfDwc?si=eIUkEuDBx3iX_TEx https://youtu.be/-bMzFDpfDwc?si=eIUkEuDBx3iX_TEx
    - helloplanets 2y ago
      > Case in point In Germany the Polizei will swat and arrest you if you post a meme on social media that angers someone's dignity. That's not a joke that actually happens. Source?
      - tossandthrow 2y ago
        There is no source. The commenter is merely subject to online propaganda.
    - literalAardvark 2y ago
      That's because slander isn't protected speech and is directly illegal. It's not totalitarianism, just encoded politeness. You can still say anything, with a modicum of decency.
      - 2y ago
jongjong 2y ago
[flagged]
- amarcheschi 2y ago
  I do not see how checks and balances that are there to limit data access via previously unauthorized organizations negatively affect Europe/Europeans. It is true Europe if facing a hard time, but saying that it's caused by the checks and balances we have on privacy feels misguided to me
fooker 2y ago
Which country and what law are you referring to? Laws rarely include technical language like SQL joins.
- viraptor 2y ago
  They obviously didn't mean the laws prevent sql joins directly. Those prevent data aggregation, which in practice prevent various technical implementations of that.
  - fooker 2y ago
    It was not that obvious to me.
cinntaile 2y ago
I think the advantages of this in a digital age are vastly overblown. If an extremist government comes to power they won't care and they can just do the SQL join. Let it go to court, the extremist government will decide anyway so the outcome is already predetermined. Compare this to a physical storage of paper documents that need to be SQL joined, the effort required is several magnitudes more. What it is good for is data breaches, it effectively limits the data that can be leaked at once.
- pintxo 2y ago
  I would not count on those separate databases using a common key. Joining could be quite a pain.
  - cinntaile 2y ago
    Regardless of the actual implementation, do you agree that it's likely much easier to match data when you have it in an organized digital form than an organized physical form?
    - pintxo 2y ago
      Sure it is. One of the reasons, Germany has been shy to introduce a single primary key across all systems.
cmurf 2y ago
[flagged]
- briandear 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - HighGoldstein 2y ago
    > $50,000 to Sri Lanka for “climate change” isn’t a “popular program.” Is that $50,000 annual? Because if so that's less than a rounding error for the budget of almost any country, much less the US. The costs associated with ending this program (organizational, employee time) may even be higher than just continuing to pay it. > Paying dead people social security isn’t popular. Is there any public statistical data on this? As far as I know US social security does periodically verify if recipients are still alive. Of course some cases will slip through the cracks, but unless DOGE plans to individually track down every recipient and see them in person I don't see how they can solve this problem. This inevitably happens with pretty much any social security system, anywhere. > Sending money to the Taliban isn’t popular. Is there a source for this? > When you say Trump doesn’t care about waste, that isn’t supported by the facts. The deficit isn’t about waste, fraud or abuse, it’s about overspending. They aren’t the same thing. He could start by reducing overspending on the US' titanic corporate subsidies, but something tells me he won't.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
briandear 2y ago
When it comes to government spending though, shouldn’t the public have a right to know precisely, with dollar-level accuracy what they are being asked to pay? As far as the experiences of the Stasi and previous German governments, it must not have too much of a scar: Germany still asks people to register their religion — ostensibly for tax purposes, but if I recall correctly, Germany had a problem in the past with having a list of all people in a specific religion.
- throwawayqqq11 2y ago
  Some insights or decisions cannot or should not be placed on the public, thats why you elect representatives in the firt place. Insight can be granular, like an oversight commitee publishing a redacted report, but i agree on full transparency about anything regarding our representatives.
- fifticon 2y ago
  a lot of countries already have this, and without handing e.g. Elon Musk the keys to the kingdom. America for example has this: https://www.foia.gov/ https://www.foia.gov/
- tzs 2y ago
  > When it comes to government spending though, shouldn’t the public have a right to know precisely, with dollar-level accuracy what they are being asked to pay? Doing that does not require anywhere remotely near the level of data access DOGE has been given.
flanked-evergl 2y ago
European here. Governments in Europe, even ones that have GDPR on their books, literally act as oppressively as they want to act: U.K. orders Apple to let it spy on users' encrypted accounts [1] [1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/02/07/apple-encryption-backdoor-uk/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/02/07/apple-e...
- Gud 2y ago
  European here. There are vast differences between how the different governments operate.
  - lupusreal 2y ago
    It's a classic Motte and Bailey. "Europe acts in this way, so much better than America. [...] No no, not THAT Europe, I of course was only talking about this other part of Europe!" How is the most populous state in the EU doing? > The German parliament amended two laws on June 10th granting enhanced surveillance powers to segments of the federal police and intelligence services. They allow the use of spyware to hack into phones and computers circumventing encryption used by messaging applications such as WhatsApp and Signal, raising concerns about the right to privacy. > The new federal police law allows interception of communications of “persons against whom no suspicion of a crime has yet been established and therefore no criminal procedure measure can yet be ordered”. This fails to ensure the necessary protection against unjustified and arbitrary interference in people’s privacy, required under international law. Human Rights Watch and the United Nations have pointed out the importance of encryption and anonymity for data protection and the right to privacy. > The government argues that new legislation is needed to keep up with technological developments and claims the new powers are to help federal police stifle human trafficking and undocumented migration. https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/06/24/germanys-new-surveillance-laws-raise-privacy-concerns https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/06/24/germanys-new-surveillanc... ...oh
    - Gud 2y ago
      Exactly. Most European countries have turned into surveillance states. I think only Switzerland is holding their banner high.
dandanua 2y ago
It's not inefficiency. You don't drive 200km/h on city streets, although you can. Limits exist for the safety of others and you.
pjc50 2y ago
This sort of thing already exists in America for cases where Americans actually care about privacy: the gun tracing system is forced to be on paper. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/s-just-insanity-atf-now-needs-2-weeks-perform-routine-gun-trace-rcna39606 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/s-just-insanity-atf-now-needs-2... Guns are constitutionally protected in a way that humans aren't.
- theodric 2y ago
  While I agree in principle, that's not an entirely intellectually honest evaluation. The government is prohibited from creating an electronic registry of guns, not because of the guns themselves, but ultimately because of the judicial understanding of the Second Amendment confirming (not granting) an inherent right of citizens to possess them. The restriction is in service to the gun owners by protecting them from government overreach. The guns are merely a layer of abstraction on that.
hunvreus 2y ago
What you're describing is very similar to what most large enterprise companies do: layers upon layers of red tape and convoluted regulations for the sake of "security." This is a big reason they can’t get anything done or retain talent. Government is no different. European democracies have been dying from the same sclerosis their legacy multinationals have. The US is going through actual change. The outrage over things not being done as they always have is nonsensical.
- blharr 2y ago
  This is almost exactly how those people who made the failed Titanic submarines talked
- scarab92 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - moron4hire 2y ago
    This is either woefully naive or active disinformation. Edit: OP dramatically edited their post. It originally made all kinds of claims of process and propriety that just aren't happening. This was the original that I was replying to: ”Most of the animosity comes from misunderstanding. Trump tasked "DOGE" with reviewing government spending across it's 400+ agencies, and coming up with recommendations on how to reduce wasteful spending. They have 1 year to complete this task. To make sensible recommendations, DOGE needs data about the major programs within each agency. They can't tackle each agency consecutively, since there are more agencies than days until the deadline, so they are parallelising the work. The access is read only, and they are not linking personal data between agencies, but rather doing a bunch of separate audits in parallel. Trump has prohibited Musk from being involved in with the review in agencies where he was a material conflict (FAA for example).”
    - rideontime 2y ago
      Thank you for preserving the record.
  - 2y ago
javcasas 2y ago
Do you know why in Portugal they have 4 different ID numbers? It is like that to prevent the state from persecuting people on the base that it is hard for a branch of the government to figure out who is someone based on a number from a different branch. Do you know why they want to prevent the government from persecuting people? Because it has already happened, and the portuguese don't want it to happen again.
- scarab92 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - ethbr1 2y ago
    And where can one find technical and transparent details about what data DOGE is looking at, why, and what safeguards they're taking?
    - scarab92 2y ago
      [flagged]
      - rollcat 2y ago
        Move fast and kill things?
      - ethbr1 2y ago
        So an organization is massively accessing sensitive government data on citizens without transparency or safeguards? Hence why people are reacting negatively.
        scarab92 2y ago
        [flagged]
        actionfromafar 2y ago
arunharidas 2y ago
still, Germany arrests citizens for calling a politician an idiot.
api 2y ago
> check and balances to make it slow. It’s deliberate inefficiency. It’s an important thing about free countries that is seldom appreciated: aspects of their governments are designed to be tar pits, on purpose. It’s a way of restraining government. I have a personal saying that touches on something adjacent. “I like my politicians boring. Interesting government was a major cause of death in the twentieth century.” When I think of governments that are both interesting and streamlined I think of the Nazis, the Khmer Rouge, Stalin era USSR, Maoist purges, etc.
- XorNot 2y ago
  It's worth noting all those regimes were really only streamlined at getting people killed one way or the other. Their internal history is always a story of wild incompetence and corner-cutting. The Nazis in particular got a lot of undue credit for effectiveness.

by maCDzP 2y ago

scarab92 2y ago

[flagged]

alt227 2y ago
Except that they, an unelected private group, have already attempted to get all private and confidential citizen data from the US treasury, and have been blocked by the courts as it is illegal. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/feb/08/judge-temporarily-blocks-musks-doge-team-from-accessing-treasury-records https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/feb/08/judge-tem... They have tried to get data of all payments to US citizens including pensions, 401k, benefits and allowances etc. All foreign aid and diplomacy payments are included, and they have been charged with trying to find ways to illegaly stop these payments. Be very careful in supporting what Musk and DOGE do. They are unelected, and have been given unprecedented access to government data. Scary times are ahead.
- scarab92 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - MourYother 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - scarab92 2y ago
      [flagged]
      - MourYother 2y ago
        [flagged]
        lenkite 2y ago
        [flagged]
        MourYother 2y ago
        [flagged]
        alt227 2y ago
        Whatever you say, Donald Trump has been convicted of a felony.
    - dudeinjapan 2y ago
      [dead]
  - scott_w 2y ago
    > False. It was a temporary injuction until the judge has time to review it. It was in fact multiple injunctions because people at DOGE kept trying to work around it in increasingly stupid ways. > So are 2.5 million other employees and advisors in government. Those employees are employed by a government agency established, funded and given their mission by Congress. The heads of these agencies are approved by the US Senate. None of these statements above apply to Elon Musk or "DOGE."
    - whatever1 2y ago
      I agree with all of the above, but to be blunt, even if they were to go through the congress, they would be approved since Republicans have majority everywhere and they seem to have given a blank check to the President. We did this to ourselves.
      - scott_w 2y ago
        That's definitely possible. Ultimately, it was up to the public of the USA to be the backstop against this and they chose not to. I think it's worth pointing out that it's not a given Congress would have approved it all. For a start, it would take longer to legally setup the instruments that Musk wanted. Also, the current situation allows Republicans to conveniently wash their hands of any negative consequences. Which is likely a big reason they're not pushing on this at all, as demanding a vote would require them to take a clear side on DOGE.
      - xnx 2y ago
        They're doing it by executive order because they don't have the votes to do it in congress with their slim majority.
      - ZeroGravitas 2y ago
        Musk has publicly threatened to fund a primary challenger for any Congressman who gets in his way so, in some very real sense he's the one doing it, rather than the voters who voted for their congressman, perhaps not expecting them to be threatened into compliance by the richest man in the world.
  - john_the_writer 2y ago
    These are also staff of the government.. Or contracted by the government. The government contracts out all the time.
  - sympil 2y ago
    > They are unelected, So are 2.5 million other employees and advisors in government. The 2.5 million you speak of operate within agencies whose mandates have been given by Congress and their actions are subject to judicial reciew. There is no Comgressional mandate for DOGE. They are the rogue agency people like you spent years worrying about.
    - zpeti 2y ago
      > There is no Comgressional mandate for DOGE. There is. It was given during Obama. You might not like it, but it looks like DOGE is likely to be completely legal and working within the frameworks of the government.
    - refurb 2y ago
      DOGE is an agency, it took over the digital services agency that existed before.[1]. Obama had created the original agency, not Congress, so Trump had the ability to change it. "The United States Digital Service is hereby publicly renamed as the United States DOGE Service (USDS) and shall be established in the Executive Office of the President." And I’m not sure why you think a “congressional mandate” is required for the executive to do things, it’s not. Especially for an agency that a former President created on his own. As for data access, my understanding is the digital services agency already had data access to other agencies through pre-existing agreements (it goes back to the original mandate to fix the Obamacare website which required pulling data from numerous databases). [1]https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/establishing-and-implementing-the-presidents-department-of-government-efficiency/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/esta...
      - toyg 2y ago
        The mandate and personnel of the Digital Service are completely different from DOGE, so they are effectively different things. Renaming an existing one was just an administrative shortcut taken by an executive that clearly does not care for the spirit or the letter of any law (as stated by the president himself in his infamous tweet).
  - Timwi 2y ago
    > or are just inherently anti-Musk The dude made a Nazi salute in public in broad daylight. So yes, I'm inherently anti-Musk because I'm inherently anti-Nazi because Nazis are inherently anti human rights and anti basic freedoms.
    - brigandish 2y ago
      Are Nazis for big government or for small government?
      - throwawayqqq11 2y ago
        Big on authoritarianism and small on everything else. Can you tell me a cost reduction plan involving police or military or do i have to label it law-and-order with a sharp salute for you to understand what i am talking about? Communication is so messy man, two sides, same iterpretation ... just tell me when i can lower my arm of friendship, that absolutely noone could misunderstand.
        brigandish 2y ago
        > Big on authoritarianism and small on everything else. Historically, that has not been the case, hence the question. > Can you tell me a cost reduction plan involving police or military or do i have to label it law-and-order with a sharp salute for you to understand what i am talking about? Just yesterday this[0] was a headline: "Hegseth wants Pentagon to cut 8% from defense budget for each of the next 5 years" [0] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hegseth-pentagon-8-percent-cuts-for-next-5-years/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hegseth-pentagon-8-percent-cuts...
- john_the_writer 2y ago
  Just on the un-elected private group bit. This would apply to every one of the staff members of these departments. How many elected software developers worked on the original software? How many private contractors were elected? Are there a pile of elected software developers working as cobol and java devs? It's not the stupidest argument, but it applies to every last staff member of the us treasury.
  - roenxi 2y ago
    I wouldn't dismiss the concerns; which seem reasonable. But the argument is pretty stupid. None of the bureaucrats are elected, and this data has been gathered by the government to perform its functions. Insofar as Elon's team are pretty much just a couple of new bureaucrats bought in by Trump; they can use this data to streamline government. The office of president is pretty powerful; odds are he can appoint people to do work for him. It'd be crazy if he can't. The problem is the government shouldn't be storing a whole bunch of sensitive data. It is like being shocked that someone in the NSA is actually looking at all the data they collect - there is a big problem there, but it is that they're collecting and storing the data. Obviously once they have it people will look at it. That is why it is being gathered and stored. It should be criminal to store on the grounds of privacy; but it isn't.
    - xnx 2y ago
      > The problem is the government shouldn't be storing a whole bunch of sensitive data Like tax returns? What legitimate need does management consultant have to see the individual tax returns of any person without any accountable transparency?
      - roenxi 2y ago
        There is a pretty reasonable case for tax returns being public by default - I'd certainly like to know how much of the financial burden my fellow citizens are upholding. I bet I could spot a bunch of tax evaders right quick. Rather than asking why someone should be able to see them; I'd prefer to ask why I can't. It gets back to this basic issue of what this data is that I don't want anyone to know but the government needs to have a permanent record of. The overlap of those two things should be tiny. If it is so terrible that Musk & team can't look at it, why is it OK to be recorded? It isn't like the security of these departments is expected to be that great; data leaks. All the data that a large organisation holds is likely to become public sooner or later even if that happens because it is sold on the darknet. And the employees that looks it it regularly are who-knows-who doing who-knows-what on a good day.
- Amezarak 2y ago
  > Except that they, an unelected private group, have already attempted to get all private and confidential citizen data from the US treasury, and have been blocked by the courts as it is illegal. It is not illegal. You can bookmark this comment for when it finally winds its way through the courts. Whether you love or hate the idea, this is a clearly legitimate exercise of executive authority and this judge is going to get smacked down hard, and the foolish abuse of TROs is going to wind up getting their use by lower-court judges severely curtailed. Read the legal justification in the orders yourself. Unfortunately a lot of people have lost their minds over this, and are burning through their credibility - some judges and journalists included. I don't know why, other than Musk is a moron and a polarizing figure. The Alantic breathlessly quoting government employees terrified to file their taxes because they're afraid Elon Musk will have their bank account number and routing info had my eyes rolling into the back of my head. This is fearmongering, not journalism. I don't understand why we can't oppose this without reporting on it honestly. The problem on matters like this seems to be getting much worse over time. > They are unelected, and have been given unprecedented access to government data. So is everyone else in the Treasury Department.
- briandear 2y ago
  Doge isn’t private. They are government employees. Also USAID was unelected. Nobody working at the IRS was elected either.
  - goku12 2y ago
    Do you mean to say that the lack of expertise, conflicts of interest and lack of adequate security clearances are not considered as disqualifying factors for a US government employment?
- lenkite 2y ago
  The motion to block DOGE has also been dismissed by courts https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/doge/judge-denies-states-bid-curtail-doges-powers-rcna192708 https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/doge/judge-denies-states-bi... Nobody complained about "unelected" Obama or Biden appointees accessing the treasury or SSN, but now that Trump is exposing corruption en-masse and stopping the gravy train, many folks are suddenly very concerned. The FUD is unfortunately not working. All this will probably go to the Supreme Court. And just like Biden ignored the Supreme Court ruling on student loans and even boasted about it proudly on twitter - saying they cannot block the executive, the precedent was also setup for Trump to do the same.
  - MourYother 2y ago
    The dogs working at DOGE haven't the idea on what are they looking at and are lying to cover it. I wouldn't count on them exposing anything but their asses. https://imgur.com/gallery/doge-math-wow-very-bad-much-corrupt-atRMd77 https://imgur.com/gallery/doge-math-wow-very-bad-much-corrup...
  - alt227 2y ago
    "The ruling does not end the case"
basejumping 2y ago
Maybe it's temporary, not 'once you build it they will use it'. Time will tell, if in the end a dictatorship proves itself to run things more efficiently and make everyone richer, then other countries will follow the US and adopt the same model.
- amarcheschi 2y ago
  Ahem, tell me this again once you get punished for what you are as an individual, for your striking, for not joining the political party (...) I can't believe I'm reading such comments
  - basejumping 2y ago
    He doesn't need to follow that recipe for dictatorship. He just needs to do whatever he wants, being a bully without consequences both internally and externally, transforming the image of the US into an aggressive nation. At this moment Americans are as guilty as Russians for allowing this to happen.
lazyasciiart 2y ago
Who has been tasked? Under what authority? Not Elon Musk, according to Donald Trump. More seriously, if it was true it would be a stupid task, with stupidly inappropriate people selected to do it. What is actually happening is idiot destruction. Whether that was the intent or simply the obvious outcome of stupidity is irrelevant to the damage being done.
ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7 2y ago
Do you have an alert setup to tell you when people are bashing the DoGE?
- MortyWaves 2y ago
  Including the copy pasta that the department created by an elected official is "unelected".
- shrikant 2y ago
  Wouldn't be a DOGE thread without scarab92 carrying water for this nonsense.
  - kennysoona 2y ago
    This is the type of indoctrination we need to fight against (not your comment but what it references), and it's an open question as to how.
3D30497420 2y ago
What are their guardrails? Do they have accountability? Does "parallelise" mean compiling data on people from different systems? Dossiers? Are they even following the law? > They have simply... Oh yes, because this is all very simple. What is "waste"? How is it defined? Who decides what is waste and what isn't?
- exe34 2y ago
  if it's not funding tax cuts and corporate handouts for Elon's companies, it's waste.
- goku12 2y ago
  Serious question to those who are cheering for the 'elimination of waste'. What do you expect to happen to the money thus saved? In what ways do you expect those savings to benefit you or the broader citizenry?
  - xnx 2y ago
    I expect the "saved" money to be given (no air quotes) to the richest 0.1% via additional permanent tax cuts.
intended 2y ago
”Simply been tasked with X” We’re on a community that discusses, amongst other things, the running of firms and startups. Just because someone is simply tasked with X, doesn’t mean we all agree to ignore the big picture. The big picture of 1) Complex projects 2) Security 3) High functioning teams 4) Ethics This is fundamentally unethical, and irresponsible. I 100% think you agree with me on the irresponsible part. You may sincerely stand on the reduction of waste, which frankly no one is going to argue. But a team this small, for a project this vital? This fast? What was that saying? Good, Fast, Cheap? Pick 2? Why the flippty flip, is anyone here OK with fast and cheap? Hell, What precisely are these people doing? What are the project milestones? Where can we see what’s going on? And if the transparency of their actions is a cybersecurity risk - then which independent body is checking them? Edit: Forget their elected, unelected status. Why should we turn around and trust them? What are they planning to do. I don’t want more outrage - you could find the whole thing was running on alien souls. What is the replacement method, and what is the gain we can expect from the changes? If they’ve taken charge - then they should do the work, and do it well. And if it’s tech related or s/w related stuff, then talk about it, and explain.
viraptor 2y ago
That's actually not what they've been tasked with: > This Executive Order establishes the Department of Government Efficiency to implement the President’s DOGE Agenda, by modernizing Federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity. There's nothing about government spending programs or staffing in there. Also the EO includes this funny sentence: "USDS shall adhere to rigorous data protection standards."
- randomcarbloke 2y ago
  that that moron has been tasked with finding inefficiency is so concerning, he is a man so convinced of his own intellectual superiority that he has zero respect for complexity. We see every day how technically inept and incompetent he is, I just wonder when the other shoe is going to drop for the average observer. It is the emperor's new clothes writ large, and why I find Bezos's comment about taking him at face value so funny, is he slyly telling us he thinks the guy a fool, a troll, and nothing more?

ReptileMan 2y ago

Very few countries have as strong executive branch as the USA.

lazyasciiart 2y ago
We call those ones “monarchies” or “dictatorships”.
- lacy_tinpot 2y ago
  You call the first and one of the most successful democracies in the world a monarchy/dictatorship? The American Executive branch is given broad powers since the very beginning and considering the success there might be something to it. In contrast the Europeans have descended into petty mass wars and dictatorial regimes multiple times, and each time America has come to save Europe through that very Executive branch. A bit thankless don't you think?
  - lupusreal 2y ago
    Europe has more or less managed to avoid descending into a mass war for almost a century now, if we assume the one brewing now is just a mirage, so basically they've got it all figured out and their smugness is totally justified. This is what democracy looks like, Americans should learn from Germany's example: > According to the court document, the public prosecutor stated “public interest” in pressing criminal charges as the retweet was “punishable as an insult against people of political life”. It potentially constituted “incitement of the people”. > Publicly insulting a politician has been a criminal offence in Germany since 2021 when a set of laws “against hate and hate speech” were passed under then-chancellor Angela Merkel. https://brusselssignal.eu/2024/11/german-police-raid-mans-home-over-tweet-mocking-greens-politician/ https://brusselssignal.eu/2024/11/german-police-raid-mans-ho...
    - lacy_tinpot 2y ago
      I can't tell if you're being ironic or not, because those examples are basically definitionally Orwellian. Also how about never descending into dictatorships and authoritarian regimes?

nonrandomstring 2y ago

> It’s deliberate inefficiency. Inefficiency is a useful property of many systems [0,1]. Current cultural obsessions around the word are a burden and mistake, and the word "efficiency" now feels rather overload with right-wing connotations. [0] https://cybershow.uk/blog/posts/efficiency/ https://cybershow.uk/blog/posts/efficiency/ [1] https://cybershow.uk/blog/posts/cash2/ https://cybershow.uk/blog/posts/cash2/

a-saleh 2y ago
I have strong feeling that in the past 50 or so years, we often have traded resiliency for efficiency. I think we might have gone too far. That doesn't mean that being deliberately inefficient will improve resiliency. Also, some of the deliberate inefficiency (i.e. looking at weird thing us healthcae/health-insurance system has going on) is more ... extractive? That sounds like the word I am looking for.

kioleanu 2y ago

Which law are referring to? I work in such an agency and I’ve never heard of such a thing

sam_lowry_ 2y ago
Dunno about Germany but in Belgium there is Crossroads Bank for Social Security which effectively controls the flow of information between various social security and public health organizations: https://www.ksz-bcss.fgov.be/ https://www.ksz-bcss.fgov.be/ In its current form, it's a set of SOAP or REST APIs that your organization gets access to after completing paperwork about your needs. It was established by a 1990 law [1]. There is also a similar legal and technical setup for information on companies [2] where most information is public, and the register of residents [3] which is even more guarded. [1] https://www.ksz-bcss.fgov.be/fr/page/loi-du-15-janvier-1990-organique-de-la-banque-carrefour-de-la-securite-sociale https://www.ksz-bcss.fgov.be/fr/page/loi-du-15-janvier-1990-... [2] https://economie.fgov.be/en/themes/enterprises/crossroads-bank-enterprises/cbe-services-everyone https://economie.fgov.be/en/themes/enterprises/crossroads-ba... [3] https://www.ibz.rrn.fgov.be/fr/registre-national/ https://www.ibz.rrn.fgov.be/fr/registre-national/
- kioleanu 2y ago
  Yes, that makes sense, we don’t allow people to connect to our databases directly either, and in any case the systems should be built so they are separated, it’s good architecture. I was very much more intrigued about the statement that data can’t be easily/legally shared within the same agency
  - sam_lowry_ 2y ago
    This is also true, to some extent. You have to have valid reason to access PII (Personally Identifiable Information). All access is logged and the DPO (The Data Privacy Office, one of the good things GDPR formalized) monitors access on a regular basis. And since the current understanding is that even the combination of an IP address and a timestamp is personally identifiable... many organizations are actively not collecting usage stats. Which leads to the abuse of public funds, but this is a different story.

amelius 2y ago

That's putting it mildly. What it really looks like is a fast descent into madness.

tossandthrow 2y ago
It is to avoid totalitarianism.
- FirmwareBurner 2y ago
  Having a slow and archaic birocratic system doesn't stop governments going totalitarian on their citizens. Case in point In Germany the Polizei will SWAT and arrest you if you post a meme on social media that angers someone's dignity. That's not a joke that actually happens. This typical German "our government is not slow and inefficient, it's just protection against totalitarianism" is pure cope. Edit: @helloplanets Source: https://youtu.be/-bMzFDpfDwc?si=eIUkEuDBx3iX_TEx https://youtu.be/-bMzFDpfDwc?si=eIUkEuDBx3iX_TEx
  - helloplanets 2y ago
    > Case in point In Germany the Polizei will swat and arrest you if you post a meme on social media that angers someone's dignity. That's not a joke that actually happens. Source?
    - tossandthrow 2y ago
      There is no source. The commenter is merely subject to online propaganda.
  - literalAardvark 2y ago
    That's because slander isn't protected speech and is directly illegal. It's not totalitarianism, just encoded politeness. You can still say anything, with a modicum of decency.
    - 2y ago

jongjong 2y ago

[flagged]

amarcheschi 2y ago
I do not see how checks and balances that are there to limit data access via previously unauthorized organizations negatively affect Europe/Europeans. It is true Europe if facing a hard time, but saying that it's caused by the checks and balances we have on privacy feels misguided to me

fooker 2y ago

Which country and what law are you referring to? Laws rarely include technical language like SQL joins.

viraptor 2y ago
They obviously didn't mean the laws prevent sql joins directly. Those prevent data aggregation, which in practice prevent various technical implementations of that.
- fooker 2y ago
  It was not that obvious to me.

cinntaile 2y ago

I think the advantages of this in a digital age are vastly overblown. If an extremist government comes to power they won't care and they can just do the SQL join. Let it go to court, the extremist government will decide anyway so the outcome is already predetermined. Compare this to a physical storage of paper documents that need to be SQL joined, the effort required is several magnitudes more. What it is good for is data breaches, it effectively limits the data that can be leaked at once.

pintxo 2y ago
I would not count on those separate databases using a common key. Joining could be quite a pain.
- cinntaile 2y ago
  Regardless of the actual implementation, do you agree that it's likely much easier to match data when you have it in an organized digital form than an organized physical form?
  - pintxo 2y ago
    Sure it is. One of the reasons, Germany has been shy to introduce a single primary key across all systems.

cmurf 2y ago

[flagged]

briandear 2y ago
[flagged]
- HighGoldstein 2y ago
  > $50,000 to Sri Lanka for “climate change” isn’t a “popular program.” Is that $50,000 annual? Because if so that's less than a rounding error for the budget of almost any country, much less the US. The costs associated with ending this program (organizational, employee time) may even be higher than just continuing to pay it. > Paying dead people social security isn’t popular. Is there any public statistical data on this? As far as I know US social security does periodically verify if recipients are still alive. Of course some cases will slip through the cracks, but unless DOGE plans to individually track down every recipient and see them in person I don't see how they can solve this problem. This inevitably happens with pretty much any social security system, anywhere. > Sending money to the Taliban isn’t popular. Is there a source for this? > When you say Trump doesn’t care about waste, that isn’t supported by the facts. The deficit isn’t about waste, fraud or abuse, it’s about overspending. They aren’t the same thing. He could start by reducing overspending on the US' titanic corporate subsidies, but something tells me he won't.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]

briandear 2y ago

When it comes to government spending though, shouldn’t the public have a right to know precisely, with dollar-level accuracy what they are being asked to pay? As far as the experiences of the Stasi and previous German governments, it must not have too much of a scar: Germany still asks people to register their religion — ostensibly for tax purposes, but if I recall correctly, Germany had a problem in the past with having a list of all people in a specific religion.

throwawayqqq11 2y ago
Some insights or decisions cannot or should not be placed on the public, thats why you elect representatives in the firt place. Insight can be granular, like an oversight commitee publishing a redacted report, but i agree on full transparency about anything regarding our representatives.
fifticon 2y ago
a lot of countries already have this, and without handing e.g. Elon Musk the keys to the kingdom. America for example has this: https://www.foia.gov/ https://www.foia.gov/
tzs 2y ago
> When it comes to government spending though, shouldn’t the public have a right to know precisely, with dollar-level accuracy what they are being asked to pay? Doing that does not require anywhere remotely near the level of data access DOGE has been given.

flanked-evergl 2y ago

European here. Governments in Europe, even ones that have GDPR on their books, literally act as oppressively as they want to act: U.K. orders Apple to let it spy on users' encrypted accounts [1] [1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/02/07/apple-encryption-backdoor-uk/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/02/07/apple-e...

Gud 2y ago
European here. There are vast differences between how the different governments operate.
- lupusreal 2y ago
  It's a classic Motte and Bailey. "Europe acts in this way, so much better than America. [...] No no, not THAT Europe, I of course was only talking about this other part of Europe!" How is the most populous state in the EU doing? > The German parliament amended two laws on June 10th granting enhanced surveillance powers to segments of the federal police and intelligence services. They allow the use of spyware to hack into phones and computers circumventing encryption used by messaging applications such as WhatsApp and Signal, raising concerns about the right to privacy. > The new federal police law allows interception of communications of “persons against whom no suspicion of a crime has yet been established and therefore no criminal procedure measure can yet be ordered”. This fails to ensure the necessary protection against unjustified and arbitrary interference in people’s privacy, required under international law. Human Rights Watch and the United Nations have pointed out the importance of encryption and anonymity for data protection and the right to privacy. > The government argues that new legislation is needed to keep up with technological developments and claims the new powers are to help federal police stifle human trafficking and undocumented migration. https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/06/24/germanys-new-surveillance-laws-raise-privacy-concerns https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/06/24/germanys-new-surveillanc... ...oh
  - Gud 2y ago
    Exactly. Most European countries have turned into surveillance states. I think only Switzerland is holding their banner high.

dandanua 2y ago

It's not inefficiency. You don't drive 200km/h on city streets, although you can. Limits exist for the safety of others and you.

pjc50 2y ago

This sort of thing already exists in America for cases where Americans actually care about privacy: the gun tracing system is forced to be on paper. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/s-just-insanity-atf-now-needs-2-weeks-perform-routine-gun-trace-rcna39606 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/s-just-insanity-atf-now-needs-2... Guns are constitutionally protected in a way that humans aren't.

theodric 2y ago
While I agree in principle, that's not an entirely intellectually honest evaluation. The government is prohibited from creating an electronic registry of guns, not because of the guns themselves, but ultimately because of the judicial understanding of the Second Amendment confirming (not granting) an inherent right of citizens to possess them. The restriction is in service to the gun owners by protecting them from government overreach. The guns are merely a layer of abstraction on that.

hunvreus 2y ago

What you're describing is very similar to what most large enterprise companies do: layers upon layers of red tape and convoluted regulations for the sake of "security." This is a big reason they can’t get anything done or retain talent. Government is no different. European democracies have been dying from the same sclerosis their legacy multinationals have. The US is going through actual change. The outrage over things not being done as they always have is nonsensical.

blharr 2y ago
This is almost exactly how those people who made the failed Titanic submarines talked
scarab92 2y ago
[flagged]
- moron4hire 2y ago
  This is either woefully naive or active disinformation. Edit: OP dramatically edited their post. It originally made all kinds of claims of process and propriety that just aren't happening. This was the original that I was replying to: ”Most of the animosity comes from misunderstanding. Trump tasked "DOGE" with reviewing government spending across it's 400+ agencies, and coming up with recommendations on how to reduce wasteful spending. They have 1 year to complete this task. To make sensible recommendations, DOGE needs data about the major programs within each agency. They can't tackle each agency consecutively, since there are more agencies than days until the deadline, so they are parallelising the work. The access is read only, and they are not linking personal data between agencies, but rather doing a bunch of separate audits in parallel. Trump has prohibited Musk from being involved in with the review in agencies where he was a material conflict (FAA for example).”
  - rideontime 2y ago
    Thank you for preserving the record.
- 2y ago

javcasas 2y ago

Do you know why in Portugal they have 4 different ID numbers? It is like that to prevent the state from persecuting people on the base that it is hard for a branch of the government to figure out who is someone based on a number from a different branch. Do you know why they want to prevent the government from persecuting people? Because it has already happened, and the portuguese don't want it to happen again.

scarab92 2y ago
[flagged]
- ethbr1 2y ago
  And where can one find technical and transparent details about what data DOGE is looking at, why, and what safeguards they're taking?
  - scarab92 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - rollcat 2y ago
      Move fast and kill things?
    - ethbr1 2y ago
      So an organization is massively accessing sensitive government data on citizens without transparency or safeguards? Hence why people are reacting negatively.
      - scarab92 2y ago
        [flagged]
        actionfromafar 2y ago

arunharidas 2y ago

still, Germany arrests citizens for calling a politician an idiot.

api 2y ago

> check and balances to make it slow. It’s deliberate inefficiency. It’s an important thing about free countries that is seldom appreciated: aspects of their governments are designed to be tar pits, on purpose. It’s a way of restraining government. I have a personal saying that touches on something adjacent. “I like my politicians boring. Interesting government was a major cause of death in the twentieth century.” When I think of governments that are both interesting and streamlined I think of the Nazis, the Khmer Rouge, Stalin era USSR, Maoist purges, etc.

XorNot 2y ago
It's worth noting all those regimes were really only streamlined at getting people killed one way or the other. Their internal history is always a story of wild incompetence and corner-cutting. The Nazis in particular got a lot of undue credit for effectiveness.