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Supreme Court allows DOGE to access social security data

165 points by anigbrowl 1y ago

JKCalhoun 1y ago
> The conservative-majority court, with its three liberal justices objecting, granted an emergency application filed by the Trump administration asking the justices to lift an injunction issued by a federal judge in Maryland. Wild. I remember when it was presumed that Conservative meant protector of individual freedoms, rights.
- kibwen 1y ago
  Were these the same conservatives trying to argue that chattel slavery should be legal, at the discretion of the state? Republicans, not conservatives, might rightfully have been the party of protecting individual rights and freedoms. Back in the 1850s.
- bpodgursky 1y ago
  It's really a stretch to say that "individual freedoms" means protecting my data held by one federal agency from access by another federal agency. It's fine if you want to call it a bad idea... but stopping this access really doesn't give me the freedom to do anything.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - FireBeyond 1y ago
    I mean DOGE is ... not a federal agency. At least that's what the administration says when they want to argue that it's not subject to FOIA.
- krapp 1y ago
  >I remember when it was presumed that Conservative meant protector of individual freedoms, rights. Presumed by whom? I've always understood Conservatism to be explicitly Christian in its ideology, opposed to womens' rights, "non-traditional" sexual orientation and gender identity, abortion, multiculturalism, pornography, modern art, rock music, drug use and a litany of other things. The freedom to think and act outside of the box of "traditional American values and culture" has rather more often been championed by progressives and leftists. Conservatives do support the individual freedom to own a gun, though. For individuals of a certain phenotype.
  - JCattheATM 1y ago
    > Conservatives do support the individual freedom to own a gun, though. For individuals of a certain phenotype. Which is funny, right? Their whole justification was to fight back if the government becomes authoritarian, when it turns out they love an authoritarian government that enforces their values.
    - lapcat 1y ago
      There're more than one justification given. Gun rights supporters, like the Republican party itself (and the Democratic party too, of course), are a coaltion of different interests, and not all self-described convervatives would consider gun rights to be an important issue. Some people support gun rights for self-defense, others for hunting. Really it's only the wingnut conspiracy theorists who are silly enough to believe that they could successfully fight back against the modern militarized state. Hunting is very much a cultural issue, passed down the generations by family tradition, so you'd be hard pressed to change minds on that.
      - watwut 1y ago
        That does not pass the smell test. If the issue was hunting, they would be fine with restrictions on non hunting guns, background checks etc. Hunting is a sound good excuse.
        lapcat 1y ago
        Keep in mind that politicians receive funding from the military-industrial complex and other lobbying groups, so they don't necessarily represent the interests of their constituents.
        watwut 1y ago
        Except those constituents punish politicians and opposite party when those go against guns lobby. This is not a case of politicians going against what their constituents want.
- BLKNSLVR 1y ago
  And also letting the States do most of the governing. Except California, they're fucking wrong! ;)
- cryptonector 1y ago
  What does DOGE auditing the Treasury have to do with 'individual freedoms, rights'? Set aside partisanship and explain please.
- eviks 1y ago
  That was never the case, but like it didn't stop the presumption from appearing then, nothing stops from keeping the same presumtion now
- watwut 1y ago
  That was always a lie. Conservatives were always about own right to abuse others and never cared about rights of anyone else.
- refurb 1y ago
  The arguments are getting so silly I can’t even follow them now. What does this have to do with protecting individual rights? The government already has your data. Whether another part of the government has access versus another seems like splitting hairs? DOGE is the US government. Whether Jane in the SSA can look up your medical records or whether Big Balls in DOGE can see it is two shades of the same color.
  - anigbrowl 1y ago
    This is not how things normally work. Personal information within government is generally siloed to protect citizens' privacy, someone in the agricultural department who is annoyed about your your complaint letters on one topic cannot take a stroll through your tax return to look for something to threaten you with, by law.
    - refurb 1y ago
      I get that, but if an agencies remit is to root out fraud and abuse, it would seem their function demands access to certain data?
      - anigbrowl 1y ago
        DOGE isn't an agency, a fact which has been extensively publicly discussed. They don't have a Congressional mandate or any of the institutional infrastructure (inspectors general, well-defined rules and procedures etc.) that qould qualify them as an agency. 'Waste fraud and abuse' is a collection of emotionally activating buzzwords with which to score rhetorical points, not an objective standard of the sort employed in auditing. I am sure you can think of situations where arbitrary and capricious decisions are made and sold to the public or staff at a business in the name of 'security' or 'economic necessity' or whatever, and that these terms are designed to limit discussion and establishment of consensus by creating a false sense of urgency. We should be cautious about letting unknown persons inspect our wallets just because they insist its urgent without clearly specifying how or why. Here's an example (from the last century) of such rhetorical techniques being proposed specifically for their effectiveness in swaying opinion rather than developing policy: https://users.wfu.edu/zulick/454/gopac.html https://users.wfu.edu/zulick/454/gopac.html
- saghm 1y ago
  The conservative justices have been pretty obvious in their support for the so-called "unitary executive" for a while now, so this isn't anything new
readthenotes1 1y ago
[flagged]
JCattheATM 1y ago
The DOGE team included several convicted teenage hackers, one known as 'big balls', messing around in government systems and copying data to random laptops. Fantastic. I'll be interested to browse this sensitive data at some point when it inevitably becomes public in the next few years as a result of this kakistocracy.
- Alupis 1y ago
  > The DOGE team included the teenage hackers It's amusing to me how so many people want to believe technical workers within the government are apparently all crusty, old, 50-something's instead of young "kids" in their twenties and thirties. NSA, every branch of the military, and more are bursting at the seams with twenty-somethings that have access to some of the most sensitive information on the planet... yet nobody bats an eye. Then we can consider the technical staff at places such as Experian, Capital One, and more... they're all fairly young too. This has turned into quite the political narrative... "twenty-somethings have access to your data - be afraid, very afraid!"
  - yencabulator 1y ago
    There's a big difference in consequences. Military, copy wrong data to random laptop -> court martial.
    - Alupis 1y ago
      Are you suggesting there are no consequences for government employees who willfully steal and/or leak confidential data? The Espionage Act of 1917, Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, and Economic Espionage Act, among others, beg to differ.
      - gtirloni 1y ago
        with this administration, nobody is suggesting that at all. there is no doubt there are no consequences if you're taking orders directly from the supreme leader or his immediate staff. that's a certainty.
oysterville 1y ago
Dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44204767 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44204767
smitty1e 1y ago
If a fraction of the lurid tales of corruption prove valid, then this is not a bad thing. The SSA was never anything other than a Tenth Amendment violation to begin with, as shown by FDR's court packing threat[1], so a bit of external review seems in order. Some sort of sane transition plan off of these socialized programs would be of great interest to a super-majority of voters, one expects. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judicial_Procedures_Reform_Bill_of_1937 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judicial_Procedures_Reform_B...
- BLKNSLVR 1y ago
  What are these "lurid tales of corruption"? There was the proven false claim that 40% of phone calls to SSA were fraudulent. I think it was DOGE fraud checking systems that proved that claim false, quite soon after Musk proclaimed it. https://www.nextgov.com/digital-government/2025/05/doge-went-looking-phone-fraud-ssa-and-found-almost-none/405346/ https://www.nextgov.com/digital-government/2025/05/doge-went... Personally, it feels like the tiny nibbles that DOGE has managed to save from the massive banquet of spending that US government does is proof that there really isn't a lot of waste based on corruption. The spending is systemic and has built up over decades of various policy changes throughout many administrations of both colours. Off topic, it feels as if this administration has also very effectively disproved any theory about the presence of a deep state controlling things from the background. Interestingly, Trump appears to be trying to show that it's possible, except for the fact that he's putting ridiculously unqualified and incompetent boobs into positions of influence. It'd be laughable except for the fact that this is not a TV show, this is real life.
  - smitty1e 1y ago
    Not laughable: the ridiculous deficit/debt. > The spending is systemic and has built up over decades of various policy changes throughout many administrations of both colours. Strong concur. Time for reform.
    - watwut 1y ago
      Except that the administration is about to create biggest deficit ever. And they were unabke to find waste. It is funny ... employment by goverment was actually going down for years. America has low taxes so it could pay its debt, but it is choosing to lower them for richests and put more debt in.
cryptonector 1y ago
I really dislike the billing of "injunction lifted" as "court decides that [...]". Finality matters more. And before you say that DOGE getting into Treasury is a problem blah blah blah they've already been there and the Secretary can do the things that DOGE wants independently of DOGE anyways.
- saghm 1y ago
  I mean, they "decided" that it was an emergency that they needed to let it happen instead of waiting to actually decide if it's legal or not. They literally are saying that it would take too long for the case to finish for them to be able to do the work they want, which means that they only will "decide" in the sense you're describing after it's too late to do anything about. So in this case, yes, they've effectively "decided" it's allowed for this administration, and maybe we'll find out if it's legal or not in time for the next one.
vaxman 1y ago
It seems likely that the Pentagon will force SpaceX to merge with another company, which should be good for Tesla and Boring, but sad for his Mars dream. As for DOGE, Trump has a couple options. He can shut it down and blame Musk, or he can let it keep running against the advice of his team. After DOGE is gone, they will be able to get a warrant and start looking for copies of the data. The first place to look is X.
Muslims4Porky 1y ago
[flagged]
vaxman 1y ago
DOGE is over, they will blame Musk for its wind down. Trump would have to go against his advisors to keep it operating but DOGE has only ever delivered small savings and tremendous liability, so our genius president is unlikely to do that.
- mizzao 1y ago
  Not so fast: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/07/us/politics/trump-musk-doge-interior-epa.html?unlocked_article_code=1.NE8.RmKR.7ew-F1dHNF2E https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/07/us/politics/trump-musk-do... (gift article link)
  - vaxman 1y ago
    Interesting article. DOGE staffers are widely reported to be financially independent, genius technologists from Elon Musk's inner circle with a profound lack of ethics and very narrow world perspective that come from their extreme youth. Those guys aren't going to hang around for long and take the heat; if they do, they'll eventually hear Trump's two favorite words anyway. The name DOGE is also now politically toxic and remains associated with Elon Musk. NYT (and the liberal media they feed) will likely try to keep the DOGE name in the headlines as long as they can, since it is a tremendous embarrassment for Trump. I do hope that after DOGE goes away, Trump goes back to supporting his base with respect to maintaining VA staffing and restricting H1B visas, especially after the R&D tax credit debacle cost so many tech jobs and the true potential for LLMs are being realized to increase productivity at all levels (as opposed to the halving the workforce at the bottom).

165 points by anigbrowl 1y ago

> The conservative-majority court, with its three liberal justices objecting, granted an emergency application filed by the Trump administration asking the justices to lift an injunction issued by a federal judge in Maryland. Wild. I remember when it was presumed that Conservative meant protector of individual freedoms, rights.

kibwen 1y ago
Were these the same conservatives trying to argue that chattel slavery should be legal, at the discretion of the state? Republicans, not conservatives, might rightfully have been the party of protecting individual rights and freedoms. Back in the 1850s.
bpodgursky 1y ago
It's really a stretch to say that "individual freedoms" means protecting my data held by one federal agency from access by another federal agency. It's fine if you want to call it a bad idea... but stopping this access really doesn't give me the freedom to do anything.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- FireBeyond 1y ago
  I mean DOGE is ... not a federal agency. At least that's what the administration says when they want to argue that it's not subject to FOIA.
krapp 1y ago
>I remember when it was presumed that Conservative meant protector of individual freedoms, rights. Presumed by whom? I've always understood Conservatism to be explicitly Christian in its ideology, opposed to womens' rights, "non-traditional" sexual orientation and gender identity, abortion, multiculturalism, pornography, modern art, rock music, drug use and a litany of other things. The freedom to think and act outside of the box of "traditional American values and culture" has rather more often been championed by progressives and leftists. Conservatives do support the individual freedom to own a gun, though. For individuals of a certain phenotype.
- JCattheATM 1y ago
  > Conservatives do support the individual freedom to own a gun, though. For individuals of a certain phenotype. Which is funny, right? Their whole justification was to fight back if the government becomes authoritarian, when it turns out they love an authoritarian government that enforces their values.
  - lapcat 1y ago
    There're more than one justification given. Gun rights supporters, like the Republican party itself (and the Democratic party too, of course), are a coaltion of different interests, and not all self-described convervatives would consider gun rights to be an important issue. Some people support gun rights for self-defense, others for hunting. Really it's only the wingnut conspiracy theorists who are silly enough to believe that they could successfully fight back against the modern militarized state. Hunting is very much a cultural issue, passed down the generations by family tradition, so you'd be hard pressed to change minds on that.
    - watwut 1y ago
      That does not pass the smell test. If the issue was hunting, they would be fine with restrictions on non hunting guns, background checks etc. Hunting is a sound good excuse.
      - lapcat 1y ago
        Keep in mind that politicians receive funding from the military-industrial complex and other lobbying groups, so they don't necessarily represent the interests of their constituents.
        watwut 1y ago
        Except those constituents punish politicians and opposite party when those go against guns lobby. This is not a case of politicians going against what their constituents want.
BLKNSLVR 1y ago
And also letting the States do most of the governing. Except California, they're fucking wrong! ;)
cryptonector 1y ago
What does DOGE auditing the Treasury have to do with 'individual freedoms, rights'? Set aside partisanship and explain please.
eviks 1y ago
That was never the case, but like it didn't stop the presumption from appearing then, nothing stops from keeping the same presumtion now
watwut 1y ago
That was always a lie. Conservatives were always about own right to abuse others and never cared about rights of anyone else.
refurb 1y ago
The arguments are getting so silly I can’t even follow them now. What does this have to do with protecting individual rights? The government already has your data. Whether another part of the government has access versus another seems like splitting hairs? DOGE is the US government. Whether Jane in the SSA can look up your medical records or whether Big Balls in DOGE can see it is two shades of the same color.
- anigbrowl 1y ago
  This is not how things normally work. Personal information within government is generally siloed to protect citizens' privacy, someone in the agricultural department who is annoyed about your your complaint letters on one topic cannot take a stroll through your tax return to look for something to threaten you with, by law.
  - refurb 1y ago
    I get that, but if an agencies remit is to root out fraud and abuse, it would seem their function demands access to certain data?
    - anigbrowl 1y ago
      DOGE isn't an agency, a fact which has been extensively publicly discussed. They don't have a Congressional mandate or any of the institutional infrastructure (inspectors general, well-defined rules and procedures etc.) that qould qualify them as an agency. 'Waste fraud and abuse' is a collection of emotionally activating buzzwords with which to score rhetorical points, not an objective standard of the sort employed in auditing. I am sure you can think of situations where arbitrary and capricious decisions are made and sold to the public or staff at a business in the name of 'security' or 'economic necessity' or whatever, and that these terms are designed to limit discussion and establishment of consensus by creating a false sense of urgency. We should be cautious about letting unknown persons inspect our wallets just because they insist its urgent without clearly specifying how or why. Here's an example (from the last century) of such rhetorical techniques being proposed specifically for their effectiveness in swaying opinion rather than developing policy: https://users.wfu.edu/zulick/454/gopac.html https://users.wfu.edu/zulick/454/gopac.html
saghm 1y ago
The conservative justices have been pretty obvious in their support for the so-called "unitary executive" for a while now, so this isn't anything new

readthenotes1 1y ago

[flagged]

JCattheATM 1y ago

The DOGE team included several convicted teenage hackers, one known as 'big balls', messing around in government systems and copying data to random laptops. Fantastic. I'll be interested to browse this sensitive data at some point when it inevitably becomes public in the next few years as a result of this kakistocracy.

Alupis 1y ago
> The DOGE team included the teenage hackers It's amusing to me how so many people want to believe technical workers within the government are apparently all crusty, old, 50-something's instead of young "kids" in their twenties and thirties. NSA, every branch of the military, and more are bursting at the seams with twenty-somethings that have access to some of the most sensitive information on the planet... yet nobody bats an eye. Then we can consider the technical staff at places such as Experian, Capital One, and more... they're all fairly young too. This has turned into quite the political narrative... "twenty-somethings have access to your data - be afraid, very afraid!"
- yencabulator 1y ago
  There's a big difference in consequences. Military, copy wrong data to random laptop -> court martial.
  - Alupis 1y ago
    Are you suggesting there are no consequences for government employees who willfully steal and/or leak confidential data? The Espionage Act of 1917, Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, and Economic Espionage Act, among others, beg to differ.
    - gtirloni 1y ago
      with this administration, nobody is suggesting that at all. there is no doubt there are no consequences if you're taking orders directly from the supreme leader or his immediate staff. that's a certainty.

oysterville 1y ago

Dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44204767 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44204767

smitty1e 1y ago

If a fraction of the lurid tales of corruption prove valid, then this is not a bad thing. The SSA was never anything other than a Tenth Amendment violation to begin with, as shown by FDR's court packing threat[1], so a bit of external review seems in order. Some sort of sane transition plan off of these socialized programs would be of great interest to a super-majority of voters, one expects. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judicial_Procedures_Reform_Bill_of_1937 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judicial_Procedures_Reform_B...

BLKNSLVR 1y ago
What are these "lurid tales of corruption"? There was the proven false claim that 40% of phone calls to SSA were fraudulent. I think it was DOGE fraud checking systems that proved that claim false, quite soon after Musk proclaimed it. https://www.nextgov.com/digital-government/2025/05/doge-went-looking-phone-fraud-ssa-and-found-almost-none/405346/ https://www.nextgov.com/digital-government/2025/05/doge-went... Personally, it feels like the tiny nibbles that DOGE has managed to save from the massive banquet of spending that US government does is proof that there really isn't a lot of waste based on corruption. The spending is systemic and has built up over decades of various policy changes throughout many administrations of both colours. Off topic, it feels as if this administration has also very effectively disproved any theory about the presence of a deep state controlling things from the background. Interestingly, Trump appears to be trying to show that it's possible, except for the fact that he's putting ridiculously unqualified and incompetent boobs into positions of influence. It'd be laughable except for the fact that this is not a TV show, this is real life.
- smitty1e 1y ago
  Not laughable: the ridiculous deficit/debt. > The spending is systemic and has built up over decades of various policy changes throughout many administrations of both colours. Strong concur. Time for reform.
  - watwut 1y ago
    Except that the administration is about to create biggest deficit ever. And they were unabke to find waste. It is funny ... employment by goverment was actually going down for years. America has low taxes so it could pay its debt, but it is choosing to lower them for richests and put more debt in.

cryptonector 1y ago

I really dislike the billing of "injunction lifted" as "court decides that [...]". Finality matters more. And before you say that DOGE getting into Treasury is a problem blah blah blah they've already been there and the Secretary can do the things that DOGE wants independently of DOGE anyways.

saghm 1y ago
I mean, they "decided" that it was an emergency that they needed to let it happen instead of waiting to actually decide if it's legal or not. They literally are saying that it would take too long for the case to finish for them to be able to do the work they want, which means that they only will "decide" in the sense you're describing after it's too late to do anything about. So in this case, yes, they've effectively "decided" it's allowed for this administration, and maybe we'll find out if it's legal or not in time for the next one.

vaxman 1y ago

It seems likely that the Pentagon will force SpaceX to merge with another company, which should be good for Tesla and Boring, but sad for his Mars dream. As for DOGE, Trump has a couple options. He can shut it down and blame Musk, or he can let it keep running against the advice of his team. After DOGE is gone, they will be able to get a warrant and start looking for copies of the data. The first place to look is X.

Muslims4Porky 1y ago

[flagged]

vaxman 1y ago

DOGE is over, they will blame Musk for its wind down. Trump would have to go against his advisors to keep it operating but DOGE has only ever delivered small savings and tremendous liability, so our genius president is unlikely to do that.

mizzao 1y ago
Not so fast: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/07/us/politics/trump-musk-doge-interior-epa.html?unlocked_article_code=1.NE8.RmKR.7ew-F1dHNF2E https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/07/us/politics/trump-musk-do... (gift article link)
- vaxman 1y ago
  Interesting article. DOGE staffers are widely reported to be financially independent, genius technologists from Elon Musk's inner circle with a profound lack of ethics and very narrow world perspective that come from their extreme youth. Those guys aren't going to hang around for long and take the heat; if they do, they'll eventually hear Trump's two favorite words anyway. The name DOGE is also now politically toxic and remains associated with Elon Musk. NYT (and the liberal media they feed) will likely try to keep the DOGE name in the headlines as long as they can, since it is a tremendous embarrassment for Trump. I do hope that after DOGE goes away, Trump goes back to supporting his base with respect to maintaining VA staffing and restricting H1B visas, especially after the R&D tax credit debacle cost so many tech jobs and the true potential for LLMs are being realized to increase productivity at all levels (as opposed to the halving the workforce at the bottom).