46 Comments

  1. Mikethebest78 on

    Whenever I think of these people I remember all of those parody movies where the bad guys walk around with a folder that just says “Evil Plan” on it. Only its for real.

  2. cpod_the_elder on

    The culture of lawlessness at work. No Republicans can make a law and order argument when their leader flaunts laws and the very Constitution.

  3. Ok-Cattle-5775 on

    the party of “small government” just efficiently downloaded everyone’s social security numbers onto a random thumb drive. you literally can’t make this level of corruption up tbh.

  4. AssociationOver9137 on

    The fact that this dude casually stole 500 million records and fully expected a presidential pardon just shows exactly how these people view the law. “government efficiency” was really just a cover for the biggest unchecked data heist in american history ngl.

  5. FantasticBicycle37 on

    There was a damn starlink terminal on top of the building. That thumb drive is just one of the leaks

  6. So he walked out, clearly got caught and still has no need for a pardon? Jesus, this is some insane reality we’re in right now.

  7. Th3FinalStarman on

    Foreign born Elon Musk orchestrated the largest cyberattack against American Citizens’ Personally Protected Information in known history.

  8. Stunning_Mast2001 on

    One of the many reasons you don’t elect a literal felon for president— he will just encourage all his people to do crime to prop up his agenda 

  9. I’m not joking when I say this should be a life sentence. The possible damage is catastrophic.

  10. PropagandaSucks on

    What people should be asking is WHY he expected a pardon. Not that you auto assume he’s an idiot but to expect a pardon means he was probably told something. And he wouldn’t be the only one who was.

  11. ars_inveniendi on

    The Death Master will allow the election conspiracy folks to “find” dead people voting, because it doesn’t always contain the exact date of death

  12. Adorable_Ad6045 on

    500 million? Did that include the deceased, since that’s more than America’s living populace?

  13. Big-Yak-8928 on

    If we ever get a normal government again, a major reform should be the pardoning power. Like a Supreme Court vote to confirm a pardon or a house vote. Anything to show some level of gate keeping so that pardons aren’t just candy to be thrown out on a whim to excuse any and all illegal actions.

  14. 0Hyena_Pancakes0 on

    And Americans won’t care one single bit

    I mean, some definitely will, but we are too shackled by the systems in place to do much besides complain about it on reddit. Its going to take something extremely catastrophic for anything in this country to change at this point. Its so depressing.

  15. 500 *million*?

    That’s literally everyone, plus a bunch of dead people and/or expats

    And that’s a casual pardon?

  16. hansuluthegrey on

    Honestly the death penalty is the only thing at this point for certain people

  17. RoutineCowMan on

    Guys, there’s no point in obeying the law anymore. It’s a fucking joke. Do whatever you want to whoever you want. That’s it.

  18. No-Profession3573 on

    I will never wrap my head around Dodge. Wildest most lawless public free for all that we all just sat and watched. Just went in with keys and stole your entire country’s data and no one even batted an eye.

  19. Honestly it’s insane that there aren’t ridiculous amounts of safeguards that would make it impossible to just dump that kind of data on a thumb drive. 

  20. Jazzlike_Company_987 on

    Aren’t there only 340M people in the US? Did they take deceased info too? Not snarky, just trying to understand

  21. brain_overclocked on

    >The Washington Post has a stunning whistleblower report alleging that a former DOGE software engineer, who had been embedded at the Social Security Administration, walked out with databases containing records on more than 500 million living and dead Americans—on a thumb drive—and then allegedly tried to get colleagues at his new private sector job to help him upload the data to company systems.

    >>According to the disclosure, the former DOGE software engineer, who worked at the Social Security Administration last year before starting a job at a government contractor in October, allegedly told several co-workers that he possessed two tightly restricted databases of U.S. citizens’ information, and had at least one on a thumb drive. The databases, called “Numident” and the “Master Death File,” include records for more than 500 million living and dead Americans, including Social Security numbers, places and dates of birth, citizenship, race and ethnicity, and parents’ names. The complaint does not include specific dates of when he is said to have told colleagues this information, but at least one of the alleged events unfolded around early January, according to the complaint. While working at DOGE, the engineer had approved access to Social Security data.

    >…

    >And here’s the detail that really tells you everything about the culture DOGE created inside these agencies:

    >>He told another colleague, who refused to help him upload the data because of legal concerns, that he expected to receive a presidential pardon if his actions were deemed to be illegal, according to the complaint.

    >According to this complaint, this person allegedly understood that what he was doing might be illegal, did it anyway, and had already calculated that the political environment would protect him from consequences. The Elon Musk DOGE bros clearly believed they ran the show and that anyone associated with DOGE was entirely above the law on anything they did.

    >Perhaps just as troubling, the complaint also alleges that after leaving government employment, the DOGE bro claimed he still had his agency computer and credentials, which he described as carrying “God-level” security access to Social Security’s systems.

    >>The complaint alleges that after leaving government employment, the former DOGE member told colleagues he had a thumb drive with Social Security data and had kept his agency computer and credentials, which he allegedly said carried largely unrestricted “God-level” security access to the agency’s systems — a level of access no other company employee had been granted in its work with SSA.

    >The Social Security Administration says he had turned in his laptop and lost his credential privileges when he departed. His lawyer denies all alleged wrongdoing, and both the agency and the company said they investigated the claims and didn’t find evidence to confirm them. The company said it conducted a “thorough” two-day internal investigation.

    >Two whole days! Investigating themselves. On an issue where ignoring it benefits them.

    >But the SSA’s inspector general is investigating, and has alerted Congress and the Government Accountability Office, which has its own audit of DOGE’s data access underway.

    >And this whistleblower complaint, filed back in January, surfaces alongside a separate complaint from the SSA’s former chief data officer, Charles Borges, which alleges that DOGE members improperly uploaded copies of Americans’ Social Security data to a digital cloud.

    >>A separate complaint, made in August by the agency’s former chief data officer, Charles Borges, alleges members of DOGE improperly uploaded copies of Americans’ Social Security data to a digital cloud, putting individuals’ private information at risk. In January, the Trump administration acknowledged DOGE staffers were responsible for separate data breaches at the agency, including sharing data through an unapproved third-party service and that one of the DOGE staffers signed an agreement to share data with an unnamed political group aiming to overturn election results in several states.

    >We wrote about that other leak at the time, of a DOGE bro sharing data with an election denier group.

    >All of this just confirms what many people expected and none of this should surprise anyone who was paying attention: Donald Trump allowed Elon Musk and his crew of over-confident know-nothings to view federal government computer systems as their personal playthings, where they could access and exfiltrate any data they wanted for whatever ideological reason they wanted.