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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DOGE has 'god mode' access to government data
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Re: DOGE has 'god mode' access to government data
#142European 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…
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> 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
#143I 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?
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Re: DOGE has 'god mode' access to government data
#144European 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…
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.
Re: DOGE has 'god mode' access to government data
#145They 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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Re: DOGE has 'god mode' access to government data
#146[flagged]
Re: DOGE has 'god mode' access to government data
#147European 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…
Re: DOGE has 'god mode' access to government data
#148Earlier 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…
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
#149European 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…
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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
#150Honestly 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…