DOGE shared Social Security data to unauthorized server, according to court filing

Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images via CNN Newsource

(CNN) — A Department of Government Efficiency employee shared Social Security data without agency officials’ knowledge and in violation of security protocols, the Justice Department said in a court filing Tuesday.

The Social Security Administration is still unable to determine what information was shared through a third-party server that’s not approved to store agency records or whether that data still exists on the server, according to the filing.

The filing is the Trump administration’s first acknowledgement that DOGE employees inappropriately handled highly sensitive Social Security data – a charge that a top agency official levied last summer. DOGE had argued that it needed access to Americans’ records to root out fraud, including updating the agency’s information to stop improper payments and fraud that could be related to deceased individuals.

Charles Borges, who had served as Social Security’s chief data officer between late January and late August, warned in a whistleblower complaint that DOGE employees put the records of more than 300 million Americans at risk by creating a copy of the data in a vulnerable cloud computing server.

The copy of the agency’s database – which contains people’s names, Social Security numbers, dates of birth, addresses, citizenship status, parents’ names and other personal information – “apparently lacks any security oversight from SSA or tracking to determine who is accessing or has accessed the copy of this data,” according to the whistleblower disclosure.

The agency denied the claim, and Borges was forced to “involuntarily resign” shortly afterwards.

Tuesday’s court filing also revealed that a DOGE employee agreed to help a “political advocacy group” review voter rolls in search of voter fraud as part of an effort to “overturn election results in certain States.”

The group that sought to partner with the DOGE employee was not identified by name in the court filing, nor did the filing specify which elections the proposal was targeting.

“Email communications reviewed by SSA suggest that DOGE Team members could have been asked to assist the advocacy group by accessing SSA data to match to the voter rolls, but SSA has not yet seen evidence that SSA data were shared with the advocacy group,” the filing said.

Referrals under the Hatch Act, which bars federal employees from using their government roles to engage in election-related activity, were made to the government ethics office that investigates such allegations, the Justice Department said.

The anecdote was one of several examples highlighted by the Justice Department of DOGE employees handling sensitive of data in ways that went undisclosed to a judge who was scrutinizing whether DOGE’s access to that data was lawful, and in some cases, may have even run afoul of the judge’s orders limiting that access.

The existence of a “Voter Data Agreement” that the unnamed DOGE employee signed and sent to the group in March appears to undermine assertions the administration made about DOGE’s reasons for accessing the data last spring, when Judge Ellen Hollander was considering whether to limit that access. The case was brought by Democracy Forward — a legal group challenging several Trump administration policies — on behalf of unions.

The Social Security Administration only became aware of the agreement in November, when it was doing a review of internal records unrelated to the case before Hollander.

Hollander initially blocked DOGE team members from accessing Social Security’s records, but the Supreme Court later restored DOGE’s access.

The Social Security Administration did not respond to a request for comment.

Two House Democrats called for a criminal investigation into DOGE’s activities and prosecution of the team members who participated in them.

“We have been warning about privacy violations at Social Security and calling out Elon Musk’s ‘DOGE’ for months,” Rep. John Larson, ranking member of the House Social Security Subcommittee, and Rep. Richard Neal, ranking member of the House Ways and Means Committee, said in a joint statement.

“The ‘DOGE’ appointees engaged in this scheme – who were never brought before Congress for approval or even publicly identified – must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law for these abhorrent violations of the public trust,” they said.

This story has been updated with additional details.

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