A legal document discloses that DOGE employees had greater access to Social Security data than was previously revealed.
A legal document discloses that DOGE employees had greater access to Social Security data than was previously revealed.
Employees of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) at the Social Security Administration (SSA) violated protocols, had enhanced access to sensitive American data than previously acknowledged, and communicated with a political advocacy group searching for election fraud, which the Trump administration confessed in a recent court document.
Officials from the Justice Department informed a federal court in Maryland that the SSA had not completely adhered to the court’s previous order, and had made claims to the court that were later discovered to be inaccurate. This acknowledgment arose in a document, earlier reported by Politico, rectifying the record in a case initiated by unions representing government employees.
In a recent audit, the SSA discovered that two members of the DOGE team at the agency were approached in March 2025 by a political advocacy group “requesting to examine state voter registrations that the advocacy group had obtained.” The group’s “declared goal was to uncover instances of voter fraud and to reverse election results in specific States,” according to the document. One of those DOGE members entered into a “Voter Data Agreement” with the group that was not processed through the appropriate channels for SSA data exchanges. The agency first learned of this agreement in November, during an inquiry that was distinct from the lawsuit in question. Subsequently, the SSA made two referrals under the Hatch Act — which prohibits government employees from participating in political activities while acting in their official capacity – in late December. The SSA and White House have not provided immediate responses to requests for comment.
The SSA’s recent audit also uncovered that some prior statements made to the court by its then-chief information officer were not entirely accurate. The document states the agency believed its assertions to be true at the time, and that they remain mostly correct in various aspects, although new information indicated some discrepancies. For instance, the government holds onto its previous assertion that the US Digital Service, which was absorbed by DOGE, “never had access to SSA systems of record.” However, it was later revealed that a member of the SSA DOGE team sent an encrypted, password-protected file, which the SSA suspects contained personal data on approximately 1,000 individuals, to a then-senior advisor at DOGE. It is still “unclear” whether this DOGE advisor received the password, according to the document.
Also, DOGE employees briefly had access to systems containing Americans’ personal data after the court issued a temporary restraining order; however, the government asserts that the staffers did not actually access personal information during that time. It was also noted that a DOGE employee conducted personal information searches within SSA systems the morning prior to the agency submitting a declaration to the court, indicating that DOGE employees’ access to those systems had been revoked.
DOGE employees at the SSA also transmitted data using the third-party Cloudflare server, which had not been authorized for such data sharing, the document states. The SSA still does not know “precisely what data were shared with Cloudflare or if the data remain on the server.”
