Comment by maCDzP

> they are parallelising the work

That's an interesting rephrasing for "sidestepping all security to get access".

> The access is read only, and they are not linking personal data between agencies

Yup, that's exacly what someone who wants to change the beneficiaries of a few contracts and payments, as well as fire some of the people overseeing my companies would say.

No, the animosity is coming from the belligerent way DOGE is going about its work, and the lack of security clearance or any oversight of these people, some of whom are very inexperienced and some of whom have clear conflicts of interest, and the enormous power they are accumulating.

And where can one find technical and transparent details about what data DOGE is looking at, why, and what safeguards they're taking?

Since you seem to know what you are talking about:

I am a bit confused by your stressing the access is read-only. Isn't that obviously given (apologies for the redundant words, but I really don't know how to convey my confusion). For what purpose they could ever be given a write access to the hundreds of federal databases they are supposed to analyze?

Also, if they don't have the manpower to go over the data one by one then they don't have the power to go over them in parallel. When you say "parallelising the work" what exactly does that mean? What is it specifically that they are "parallelising"? Is there an engineer/analyst looking at multiple screens simultaneously and arriving conclusions for multiple agencies at the same time?

All of these assertions are provably false.

The ends do not justify the means.

These means can easily lead to a nightmare. We've been through that a century ago. Look up Dehomag. Never Again.

> they are not linking personal data between agencies

> Trump has prohibited Musk from being involved in with the review in agencies where he was a material conflict

I'm not saying these are or aren't happening, but it seems like a lot of "good faith" assumptions here. If you assume Musk is an unethical actor, these seem mostly meaningless.

DOGE is literally making up that people had bad work reviews to justify firing them. They are liars 100% down.

They are literally firing people first and then calling them back? How is that efficiency?

I cannot believe we are talking about these people seriously with all the BS "We saved $* Billion dollars to stop Mind Control News" on the DOGE "website".

Musk is not in a position to identify waste and fraud.

What does he know of the genesis and status of these payments? Congress directs spending and oversees the administration, not the other way around.

Why does he have to finish in an arbitrary time frame?

This is all justification after the fact for those who support Musk/Trump unconditionally.

It's all fun and games until your Medicare/Social Security/Tax Refund or other legitimate payment gets cancelled arbitrarily, illegally and unconstitutionally.

Trump has prohibited Musk from being involved in any reviews where he was a material conflict (FAA for example).

You keep saying things that are blatantly untrue, people give you massive evidence they aren't true, then you keep saying them. Why is that?

Elon Musk’s Companies Were Under Investigation by Five Inspectors General When the Trump Administration Fired Them and Made Musk the Investigator

https://wallstreetonparade.com/2025/02/elon-musks-companies-...

https://www.levernews.com/trump-purges-inspectors-general-in...

Agency sent a memo to all agency staff notifying them that “all election security activities” would be paused pending the results of an internal investigation. The memo also stated that the administration was cutting off all funds to the Election Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center—a Department of Homeland Security–funded organization that helps state and local officials monitor, analyze, and respond to cyberattacks targeting the nation’s election hardware and software.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2025/02/trump-doge-layof...

FDA staff were reviewing Elon Musk’s brain implant company. DOGE just fired them.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/02/17/fda-...

https://gizmodo.com/doge-reportedly-cuts-fda-employees-inves...

Having a slow and archaic birocratic system doesn't stop governments going totalitarian on their citizens.

Case in point In Germany the Polizei will SWAT and arrest you if you post a meme on social media that angers someone's dignity. That's not a joke that actually happens.

This typical German "our government is not slow and inefficient, it's just protection against totalitarianism" is pure cope.

Edit: @helloplanets Source: https://youtu.be/-bMzFDpfDwc?si=eIUkEuDBx3iX_TEx

Yes, that makes sense, we don’t allow people to connect to our databases directly either, and in any case the systems should be built so they are separated, it’s good architecture.

I was very much more intrigued about the statement that data can’t be easily/legally shared within the same agency

Culture is more important on whether or not a country can slide into a dictatorship.

Americans are ultimately conditioned to accept leadership. Belgians have never and never will agree on anything.

You call the first and one of the most successful democracies in the world a monarchy/dictatorship? The American Executive branch is given broad powers since the very beginning and considering the success there might be something to it.

In contrast the Europeans have descended into petty mass wars and dictatorial regimes multiple times, and each time America has come to save Europe through that very Executive branch.

A bit thankless don't you think?

The person you respond to explicitly said the US wasn't the only one (and didn't suggest they were the worst either). Seems likely that they would agree that Russia and China are amongst these "very few" indeed. Don't be so aggressive please.

How many countries are they?

>The CCP through the NPC enacts unified leadership, which requires that all state organs, from the Supreme People's Court to the president of China, are elected by, answerable to, and have no separate powers than those granted to them by the NPC

This is the situation in China. In theory NPC is their governing body.

[insert random ad hominem attack here]

> $50,000 to Sri Lanka for “climate change” isn’t a “popular program.”

Is that $50,000 annual? Because if so that's less than a rounding error for the budget of almost any country, much less the US. The costs associated with ending this program (organizational, employee time) may even be higher than just continuing to pay it.

> Paying dead people social security isn’t popular.

Is there any public statistical data on this? As far as I know US social security does periodically verify if recipients are still alive. Of course some cases will slip through the cracks, but unless DOGE plans to individually track down every recipient and see them in person I don't see how they can solve this problem. This inevitably happens with pretty much any social security system, anywhere.

> Sending money to the Taliban isn’t popular.

Is there a source for this?

> When you say Trump doesn’t care about waste, that isn’t supported by the facts. The deficit isn’t about waste, fraud or abuse, it’s about overspending. They aren’t the same thing.

He could start by reducing overspending on the US' titanic corporate subsidies, but something tells me he won't.

It's a classic Motte and Bailey. "Europe acts in this way, so much better than America. [...] No no, not THAT Europe, I of course was only talking about this other part of Europe!"

How is the most populous state in the EU doing?

> The German parliament amended two laws on June 10th granting enhanced surveillance powers to segments of the federal police and intelligence services. They allow the use of spyware to hack into phones and computers circumventing encryption used by messaging applications such as WhatsApp and Signal, raising concerns about the right to privacy.

> The new federal police law allows interception of communications of “persons against whom no suspicion of a crime has yet been established and therefore no criminal procedure measure can yet be ordered”. This fails to ensure the necessary protection against unjustified and arbitrary interference in people’s privacy, required under international law. Human Rights Watch and the United Nations have pointed out the importance of encryption and anonymity for data protection and the right to privacy.

> The government argues that new legislation is needed to keep up with technological developments and claims the new powers are to help federal police stifle human trafficking and undocumented migration.

https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/06/24/germanys-new-surveillanc...

...oh

Just on the un-elected private group bit. This would apply to every one of the staff members of these departments. How many elected software developers worked on the original software? How many private contractors were elected? Are there a pile of elected software developers working as cobol and java devs?

It's not the stupidest argument, but it applies to every last staff member of the us treasury.

Doge isn’t private. They are government employees. Also USAID was unelected. Nobody working at the IRS was elected either.

The motion to block DOGE has also been dismissed by courts

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/doge/judge-denies-states-bi...

Nobody complained about "unelected" Obama or Biden appointees accessing the treasury or SSN, but now that Trump is exposing corruption en-masse and stopping the gravy train, many folks are suddenly very concerned. The FUD is unfortunately not working.

All this will probably go to the Supreme Court. And just like Biden ignored the Supreme Court ruling on student loans and even boasted about it proudly on twitter - saying they cannot block the executive, the precedent was also setup for Trump to do the same.

[flagged]

> Except that they, an unelected private group, have already attempted to get all private and confidential citizen data from the US treasury, and have been blocked by the courts as it is illegal.

It is not illegal. You can bookmark this comment for when it finally winds its way through the courts. Whether you love or hate the idea, this is a clearly legitimate exercise of executive authority and this judge is going to get smacked down hard, and the foolish abuse of TROs is going to wind up getting their use by lower-court judges severely curtailed. Read the legal justification in the orders yourself.

Unfortunately a lot of people have lost their minds over this, and are burning through their credibility - some judges and journalists included. I don't know why, other than Musk is a moron and a polarizing figure. The Alantic breathlessly quoting government employees terrified to file their taxes because they're afraid Elon Musk will have their bank account number and routing info had my eyes rolling into the back of my head. This is fearmongering, not journalism.

I don't understand why we can't oppose this without reporting on it honestly. The problem on matters like this seems to be getting much worse over time.

> They are unelected, and have been given unprecedented access to government data.

So is everyone else in the Treasury Department.

Serious question to those who are cheering for the 'elimination of waste'. What do you expect to happen to the money thus saved? In what ways do you expect those savings to benefit you or the broader citizenry?

if it's not funding tax cuts and corporate handouts for Elon's companies, it's waste.

that that moron has been tasked with finding inefficiency is so concerning, he is a man so convinced of his own intellectual superiority that he has zero respect for complexity.

We see every day how technically inept and incompetent he is, I just wonder when the other shoe is going to drop for the average observer.

It is the emperor's new clothes writ large, and why I find Bezos's comment about taking him at face value so funny, is he slyly telling us he thinks the guy a fool, a troll, and nothing more?

Wouldn't be a DOGE thread without scarab92 carrying water for this nonsense.

Including the copy pasta that the department created by an elected official is "unelected".

Ahem, tell me this again once you get punished for what you are as an individual, for your striking, for not joining the political party (...)

I can't believe I'm reading such comments

It was not that obvious to me.

Regardless of the actual implementation, do you agree that it's likely much easier to match data when you have it in an organized digital form than an organized physical form?

> Trump tasked "DOGE" with reviewing government spending across it's 400+ agencies, and coming up with recommendations on how to reduce wasteful spending.

"Make recommendations" ?

Firing the folks that maintain nuclear weapons sounds like an action, not a recommendation:

* https://apnews.com/article/nuclear-doge-firings-trump-federa...

Firing the folks dealing with bird flu sounds like an action, not a recommendation:

* https://apnews.com/article/usda-firings-doge-bird-flu-trump-...

Then there's the folks making a list of all the agents who were pulled off other tasks and told to investigate Jan 6:

* https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-administration-compili...

Also firing a whole bunch of folks at the FAA even though it's already short staffed:

* https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cly9y1e1kpjo

Seems to be it's less about finding savings and more about blindly purging people with no regard to how useful or inefficient things actually are.

This is either woefully naive or active disinformation.

Edit: OP dramatically edited their post. It originally made all kinds of claims of process and propriety that just aren't happening. This was the original that I was replying to:

”Most of the animosity comes from misunderstanding. Trump tasked "DOGE" with reviewing government spending across it's 400+ agencies, and coming up with recommendations on how to reduce wasteful spending. They have 1 year to complete this task. To make sensible recommendations, DOGE needs data about the major programs within each agency. They can't tackle each agency consecutively, since there are more agencies than days until the deadline, so they are parallelising the work.

The access is read only, and they are not linking personal data between agencies, but rather doing a bunch of separate audits in parallel.

Trump has prohibited Musk from being involved in with the review in agencies where he was a material conflict (FAA for example).”