It began on Jan. 31, when somebody named Mike Russo confirmed up on the Social Safety Administration workplaces exterior Baltimore and began introducing himself as a consultant of DOGE, the federal budget-cutting service headed by Elon Musk.
Over subsequent days, he urged seniorSocial Safety Administration officers to take the deferred resignation provide that had been despatched out by DOGE underneath the heading “Fork within the Highway.” The so-called Division of Authorities Effectivity arrange its personal inner group on the company to ferret out data from its information. Social Safety officers provided to temporary the DOGE group about how the company operates to make sure that funds are made precisely; they didn’t appear .
These particulars and others are drawn from , who rose throughout her 30 years with the company to grow to be performing chief of employees to performing Commissioner Michelle King. Flick retired shortly after King was changed as performing commissioner by Leland Dudek, previously a mid-level company worker, on Feb. 16.
Flick’s declaration contains an express warning that DOGE’s rampage by means of the Social Safety Administration “might lead to advantages funds not being paid out or delays in funds.”
Make no mistake: This is able to be catastrophic to thousands and thousands of People and a politically poisonous improvement.
The undermining of Social Safety by the Trump administration has already begun. In a current look on Joe Rogan’s webcast, Musk referred to as this system “the largest Ponzi scheme of all time”; , that demonstrated that he is aware of nothing about Social Safety, and nothing about Ponzi schemes.
Trump has said that he’s “not touching” Social Safety, however in his March 4 deal with to Congress he claimed that Musk had uncovered huge fraud on the company, although he didn’t again up that declare.
Trump officers have taken steps to chop Social Safety workers by greater than 10%, which might undermine the company’s already overstretched means to supply customer support to claimants and beneficiaries.
Most not too long ago, the administration briefly canceled the best of Maine residents to , requiring them as a substitute to convey their infants to a Social Safety area workplace to finish the required paperwork.
Following an uproar, that motion was reversed inside a day, however it raised suspicions that it was undertaken to punish Mainers for his or her Democratic governor’s public upbraiding of Trump at a Washington assembly.
Social Safety has made funds earned by American staff, their survivors and dependents for 85 years, with out a break. That document is prime to this system’s overwhelming recognition, the arrogance it enjoys amongst its roughly 70 million present beneficiaries and its stature as the best security web program in American historical past, conserving greater than 22 million People out of poverty.
Flick’s declaration was filed as a part of and different plaintiffs searching for to dam DOGE’s entry to the Social Safety Administration and its knowledge. I requested the Social Safety Administration for touch upon Flick’s assertions, however haven’t obtained a reply.
The declaration makes sickening studying. She describes how her company was invaded by know-nothing DOGE workers who ran roughshod over company guidelines and procedures designed to guard the confidentiality of personal private details about beneficiaries and their relations, as required by regulation.
Social Safety grasp information that DOGE demanded and will have obtained entry to incorporate “details about anybody with a Social Safety quantity, together with names, names of spouses and dependents, work historical past, monetary and banking data, immigration or citizenship standing, and marital standing,” Flick states.
The DOGE representatives had been secretive about what they had been doing on the company, she writes. They gave the impression to be centered on “the final delusion of supposed widespread Social Safety fraud, quite than info.” Their issues fell into three classes: “unfaithful allegations relating to profit funds to deceased individuals of superior age;…single Social Safety numbers receiving a number of advantages…; [and] funds made to individuals with out a Social Safety quantity.”
Every of these issues, Flick writes, was “invalid” and “based mostly on an inaccurate understanding of SSA’s knowledge and applications.”
The assertion that funds are being made to individuals as outdated as 150 years, as resulted from DOGE’s misunderstanding of the company’s software program; nonetheless it was bandied about by Musk at a White Home press briefing and repeated in exaggerated kind by Trump in his March 4 speech.
As for a number of advantages being paid on single Social Safety numbers, that’s regular: “DOGE appeared to misconceive the truth that advantages funds to spouses and dependents shall be based mostly on the Social Safety variety of a single employee,” Flick explains.
And she or he states that SSA officers have by no means seen proof that advantages are inappropriately being paid to individuals with out a Social Safety quantity. DOGE didn’t give company officers “sufficient data to know the supply of the priority.”
Officers who tried to dam them had been sidelined. As Flick describes the incursion, Dudek knowledgeable her on Jan. 30 that Russo and one other DOGE consultant would shortly be arriving on the company.
As a result of Dudek was a mid-level worker, Flick requested why he was in touch with anybody at DOGE. She instructed him to stop any such contact, and knowledgeable him that every one additional contact with DOGE could be dealt with by the workplace of performing Commissioner King.
Over the subsequent week or two, King’s workplace was peppered with calls for from DOGE {that a} software program engineer, Akash Bobba, be given entry to SSA knowledge.
“That request was unprecedented,” Flick says, not solely in its nature however its haste. In the end, Bobba was given “read-only” entry to restricted SSA knowledge. Flick quickly decided that Bobba was not working in a safe location, as was required underneath company guidelines, however off-site on the Workplace of Personnel Administration, a separate govt department company.
She says it appeared that different, non-SSA individuals had been working with him and will have had entry to the protected private data. Of better concern, though Bobba had “read-only” entry to the info, that means that he couldn’t change it, he had the flexibility to “copy and paste, export, and screenshot that knowledge.”
In any case, Russo demanded that Bobba have entry to “every little thing, together with supply code,” Flick declares. “Usually, we’d not present full entry [to] all knowledge methods even to our most expert and extremely educated consultants.” The request to offer Bobba unfettered entry to the info “with out justifying the ‘must know’ this data was opposite to SSA’s long-standing privateness safety insurance policies and rules,” however nobody would clarify why its entry was wanted.
Dudek was positioned on administrative depart on Feb. 14 and an investigation was opened into whether or not he had inappropriate contact with DOGE. Two days later, President Trump named Dudek performing commissioner.
