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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

#141
post #45

If you want accountability someone needs to have root access. If you don't want accountability, you are a politician getting kickbacks through obfuscation.

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That's an empty argument. I think people hate musk, if they do, for the things he does and has done. It's not the other way around. Judging people for their actions is a fair way to look at it.

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

#142
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]

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?

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

#143

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]

Advisors with unlimited power and endless conflicts of interests with zero obligation for transparency? Whether I like Musk or not has very little to do with it.

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

#144
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…

> It’s deliberate inefficiency.

Inefficiency is a useful property of many systems [0,1]. Current cultural obsessions around the word are a burden and mistake, and the word "efficiency" now feels rather overload with right-wing connotations.

[0] https://cybershow.uk/blog/posts/efficiency/

[1] https://cybershow.uk/blog/posts/cash2/

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

#145
post #31

They will have had to impose this too. The systems were built as separate systems to avoid (in a systems designers most fevered nightmares) a scenario like this.

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In clearance there is the concept of classification by compilation, which means that the clearance required for a piece of information can be higher than the one required by any single component that makes up that information. Being able to combine data across agencies makes it much more dangerous than keeping it separate and compartmentalized. Parallelism is a gigantic risk from a security perspective and ripe for abuse, especially given that DOGE itself has flaunted court orders trying to hold it accountable.

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

#147
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…

Which law are referring to? I work in such an agency and I’ve never heard of such a thing

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

#148
post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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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…

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.

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

#149
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]

”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.

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

#150

Honestly when DOGE was first announced, I thought it will be a tiny department that does almost nothing and produces recommendations and PDFs that nobody reads. I didn't expect this.

There were signs but people thought it implausibly stupid: > Vice-president JD Vance has cited Yarvin as an influence, saying in 2021, "So there's this guy Curtis Yarvin who has written about these things," which included "Retire All Government Employees," or RAGE, written in 2012. Vance said that if Trump became president again, "I think what Trump should do, if I was giving him one piece of advice: Fire every singl…

hm, maybe it's better if Trump stays president for 4 years (instead of Vance coming up). The devil you know...
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