Comment by scarab92
Comment by scarab92 3 days ago
[flagged]
Comment by scarab92 3 days ago
[flagged]
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.
True. The actual difference between this troupe of clowns and employees who can be trusted is the hiring process and background check required before getting access to all this data. And of course, all regular employees report up to an official who was confirmed by congress, as required in the constitution. Just small things known as “checks and balances”.
I wouldn't dismiss the concerns; which seem reasonable. But the argument is pretty stupid.
None of the bureaucrats are elected, and this data has been gathered by the government to perform its functions. Insofar as Elon's team are pretty much just a couple of new bureaucrats bought in by Trump; they can use this data to streamline government. The office of president is pretty powerful; odds are he can appoint people to do work for him. It'd be crazy if he can't.
The problem is the government shouldn't be storing a whole bunch of sensitive data. It is like being shocked that someone in the NSA is actually looking at all the data they collect - there is a big problem there, but it is that they're collecting and storing the data. Obviously once they have it people will look at it. That is why it is being gathered and stored. It should be criminal to store on the grounds of privacy; but it isn't.
I'm not sure how it would be possible to run a functioning government without some departments storing some sensitive data.
"On the grounds of privacy it should be criminal for the agency authorised to fund medical treatments to store people's sensitive medical records related to treatments they pay for" sounds like a much less defensible proposition than "on the grounds of privacy it should be criminal for what is nominally the government's IT advice body to hire a bunch of script kiddies without proper vetting or any genuine auditing credentials to download said sensitive medical records, store them as insecurely as they like, cross reference them with whatever other sensitive data they find on the grounds that they might be able to use them to tweet dubious claims about waste"...
There is a pretty reasonable case for tax returns being public by default - I'd certainly like to know how much of the financial burden my fellow citizens are upholding. I bet I could spot a bunch of tax evaders right quick. Rather than asking why someone should be able to see them; I'd prefer to ask why I can't.
It gets back to this basic issue of what this data is that I don't want anyone to know but the government needs to have a permanent record of. The overlap of those two things should be tiny. If it is so terrible that Musk & team can't look at it, why is it OK to be recorded? It isn't like the security of these departments is expected to be that great; data leaks. All the data that a large organisation holds is likely to become public sooner or later even if that happens because it is sold on the darknet. And the employees that looks it it regularly are who-knows-who doing who-knows-what on a good day.
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.
The dogs working at DOGE haven't the idea on what are they looking at and are lying to cover it. I wouldn't count on them exposing anything but their asses.
https://imgur.com/gallery/doge-math-wow-very-bad-much-corrup...
> They are unelected, So are 2.5 million other employees and advisors in government.
The 2.5 million you speak of operate within agencies whose mandates have been given by Congress and their actions are subject to judicial reciew. There is no Comgressional mandate for DOGE. They are the rogue agency people like you spent years worrying about.
DOGE is an agency, it took over the digital services agency that existed before.[1]. Obama had created the original agency, not Congress, so Trump had the ability to change it.
"The United States Digital Service is hereby publicly renamed as the United States DOGE Service (USDS) and shall be established in the Executive Office of the President."
And I’m not sure why you think a “congressional mandate” is required for the executive to do things, it’s not. Especially for an agency that a former President created on his own.
As for data access, my understanding is the digital services agency already had data access to other agencies through pre-existing agreements (it goes back to the original mandate to fix the Obamacare website which required pulling data from numerous databases).
[1]https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/esta...
> False. It was a temporary injuction until the judge has time to review it.
It was in fact multiple injunctions because people at DOGE kept trying to work around it in increasingly stupid ways.
> So are 2.5 million other employees and advisors in government.
Those employees are employed by a government agency established, funded and given their mission by Congress. The heads of these agencies are approved by the US Senate.
None of these statements above apply to Elon Musk or "DOGE."
These are also staff of the government.. Or contracted by the government. The government contracts out all the time.
> 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.
What are their guardrails? Do they have accountability? Does "parallelise" mean compiling data on people from different systems? Dossiers? Are they even following the law?
> They have simply...
Oh yes, because this is all very simple. What is "waste"? How is it defined? Who decides what is waste and what isn't?
That's actually not what they've been tasked with:
> This Executive Order establishes the Department of Government Efficiency to implement the President’s DOGE Agenda, by modernizing Federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity.
There's nothing about government spending programs or staffing in there. Also the EO includes this funny sentence: "USDS shall adhere to rigorous data protection standards."
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?
Do you have an alert setup to tell you when people are bashing the DoGE?
This is the type of indoctrination we need to fight against (not your comment but what it references), and it's an open question as to how.
Including the copy pasta that the department created by an elected official is "unelected".
”Simply been tasked with X”
We’re on a community that discusses, amongst other things, the running of firms and startups.
Just because someone is simply tasked with X, doesn’t mean we all agree to ignore the big picture. The big picture of
1) Complex projects
2) Security
3) High functioning teams
4) Ethics
This is fundamentally unethical, and irresponsible. I 100% think you agree with me on the irresponsible part.
You may sincerely stand on the reduction of waste, which frankly no one is going to argue. But a team this small, for a project this vital? This fast?
What was that saying? Good, Fast, Cheap? Pick 2? Why the flippty flip, is anyone here OK with fast and cheap?
Hell, What precisely are these people doing? What are the project milestones? Where can we see what’s going on?
And if the transparency of their actions is a cybersecurity risk - then which independent body is checking them?
Edit: Forget their elected, unelected status. Why should we turn around and trust them? What are they planning to do. I don’t want more outrage - you could find the whole thing was running on alien souls. What is the replacement method, and what is the gain we can expect from the changes?
If they’ve taken charge - then they should do the work, and do it well. And if it’s tech related or s/w related stuff, then talk about it, and explain.
Who has been tasked? Under what authority? Not Elon Musk, according to Donald Trump.
More seriously, if it was true it would be a stupid task, with stupidly inappropriate people selected to do it. What is actually happening is idiot destruction. Whether that was the intent or simply the obvious outcome of stupidity is irrelevant to the damage being done.
Maybe it's temporary, not 'once you build it they will use it'. Time will tell, if in the end a dictatorship proves itself to run things more efficiently and make everyone richer, then other countries will follow the US and adopt the same model.
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
He doesn't need to follow that recipe for dictatorship. He just needs to do whatever he wants, being a bully without consequences both internally and externally, transforming the image of the US into an aggressive nation. At this moment Americans are as guilty as Russians for allowing this to happen.
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.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/feb/08/judge-tem...
They have tried to get data of all payments to US citizens including pensions, 401k, benefits and allowances etc. All foreign aid and diplomacy payments are included, and they have been charged with trying to find ways to illegaly stop these payments.
Be very careful in supporting what Musk and DOGE do. They are unelected, and have been given unprecedented access to government data. Scary times are ahead.