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DOGE has 'god mode' access to government data

theatlantic.com

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Re: DOGE has 'god mode' access to government data

#121

Post by Aeolun »

mola wrote: post #74
snickerbockers wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

In most rule of law democracies the law is above the president. The civil servants are beholden to the law as passed by the representatives of the people, the chief executive can only give orders as allowed by the law. Granted there will be times of murkiness that require interpretation. But "fuck it I'm the president and everything I say is legal" is not a valid interpretation in any democracy I know of.

Generally when you reach that point it ceases to be a democracy.

Re: DOGE has 'god mode' access to government data

#122

Post by tored »

mola wrote: post #74
snickerbockers wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

In most rule of law democracies the law is above the president. The civil servants are beholden to the law as passed by the representatives of the people, the chief executive can only give orders as allowed by the law. Granted there will be times of murkiness that require interpretation. But "fuck it I'm the president and everything I say is legal" is not a valid interpretation in any democracy I know of.

Important to note that USA is a republic, typically in Europe parliamentarianism.

Re: DOGE has 'god mode' access to government data

#123

Post by Cthulhu_ »

cm2187 wrote: post #116
scarab92 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Musk isn't a do-things-by-half kind of guy.

But also when you make cuts, you go hard, fast, and recover from there. Any effort of small trimming over a long period achieves no saving while producing the same negative publicity. I doubt such cutting effort will happen for another 30y. There is a french say I like. If you need to cut a dog’s tail, don’t cut an inch every day, chop the whole thing quick

This isn't just cuts though, this is dismantling checks and balances, international relationships, and many people will die from this.

Re: DOGE has 'god mode' access to government data

#124

Post by alt227 »

scarab92 wrote: post #115
maCDzP wrote: post #110

European here, giving my two cents on how this looks from the other side of the Atlantic. Heh In my country there are laws stopping agencies doing a simple SQL join between two databases, even within the same government agency. There is a separate agency that handles the requests when agencies want to join information. I am not an expert in the matter. But my gut is telling me that our experiences with east Germany a…

[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.

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.

Re: DOGE has 'god mode' access to government data

#125

Post by rsynnott »

ksynwa wrote: post #3

What's Elon's beef with USAID? I would think he would go after something like food stamps first owing to his libertarian ethos. Maybe he sees USAID as a completely benevolent handout and a waste of money? I cannot begin to understand why.

‘Libertarian ethos’. The guy who’s hoovering up personal data on behalf of a guy who just claimed to be king, that one? Like, how are we defining ‘libertarian’ here?

Re: DOGE has 'god mode' access to government data

#126

Post by basejumping »

scarab92 wrote: post #115
maCDzP wrote: post #110

European here, giving my two cents on how this looks from the other side of the Atlantic. Heh In my country there are laws stopping agencies doing a simple SQL join between two databases, even within the same government agency. There is a separate agency that handles the requests when agencies want to join information. I am not an expert in the matter. But my gut is telling me that our experiences with east Germany a…

[flagged]

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.

Re: DOGE has 'god mode' access to government data

#128

Post by junon »

scarab92 wrote: post #104
drowsspa wrote: post #18

I find it wild that apparently there is no law onto which government workers can cling to refuse these requests. Is it all just based on conventions, goodwill and culture?

[dupe]

This is a straw man argument.

I don't like Musk. That's true. The reasoning is irrelevant.

Let's take someone I do like. Linus Torvalds. If Trump (or Harris or ...) appointed Linus, unilaterally, to do what Musk is doing, I'd still have a problem with it.

Now the two responses you might have are:

- I don't believe you.

- Linus wouldn't be bad either.

Both of which completely miss the point. Nobody should have singular, unilateral, unsupervised access to governmental systems like this.

Re: DOGE has 'god mode' access to government data

#129

Post by scarab92 »

noja wrote: post #117
scarab92 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

The organisations were designed to be separate, and the systems design follows that.

Not really, agencies are merged and split and have their remit changed all the time.

If there were a way to efficiently manage 2.5 million staff in a single department, then we'd likely do that, but it's more efficient to specialise, so we do that instead.

Firewalling data between departments is rarely a design consideration, except in obvious cases (military), and it hardly matters in this scenario anyway, because it's not like Musk is walking into all 400 agencies with a laptop. DOGE is hiring an army of advisors and dividing them up between agencies.

Re: DOGE has 'god mode' access to government data

#130

Post by scarab92 »

alt227 wrote: post #124
scarab92 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[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. 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 inclu…

[flagged]
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