Quotes
Why are there 20 million people who are definitely dead marked as alive in the Social Security database? Why were hundreds of hundreds of millions of dollars of Small Business Administration loans given out to people aged 11 and under, according to the Social Security data
he questioned during a recent Fox Business interview
The unrestricted access to PII that SSA provided to the DOGE Team, without specified need, and/or without adequate training, detail agreements, and/or background investigations of all DOGE Team members,
she wrote, using abbreviations for personally identifiable information and the Social Security Administration,
The expectation of privacy shared by plaintiffs’ members is objectively reasonable. It is almost self-evident that, in our society, PII, such as SSNs, medical information, and certain financial records, are regarded as private, sensitive, and confidential information.”
She addedDefendants have not submitted declarations from the hired experts on the DOGE Team explaining why such unrestricted and unfettered access is necessary,
she wrote
The overall goal” of the DOGE team inside Social Security “is to detect fraud, waste and abuse,
according to a sworn statement from the agency’s chief technology officer Michael Russo
The defense does not appear to share a privacy concern for the millions of Americans whose [Social Security] records were made available to the DOGE affiliates, without their consent, and which contain sensitive, confidential, and personally identifiable information,
she wroteIndeed, the government has not even attempted to explain why a more tailored, measured, titrated approach is not suitable to the task,
she said
In granting the DOGE Team access to records in the manner alleged, SSA veered far from principles that have been the mainstay of the Agency, ... They have not provided a particularized explanation of how or why virtually the entire database of SSA is needed to conduct the investigation, or why redacted or anonymized records, at least initially, would be inadequate. The silence on this issue is deafening.”
Hollander wrote, adding
But, that does not mean that the government can flout the law to do so,
Hollander wroteIronically, the identity of these DOGE affiliates has been concealed because defendants are concerned that the disclosure of even their names would expose them to harassment and thus invade their privacy,
the judge wroteThe DOGE Team is essentially engaged in a fishing expedition at SSA, in search of a fraud epidemic, based on little more than suspicion. It has launched a search for the proverbial needle in the haystack, without any concrete knowledge that the needle is actually in the haystack,
Hollander said