Perhaps the whole situation will finally convince the "I don't mind, I have nothing to hide" crowd about the need to scrutinize & limit as much as reasonably possible the personal data collection and retention by government and other entities. What good are rules, statutes, checks & balances, passwords and ACLs, if at some point someone you don't like or trust can just come in "as a root" and circumvent everything?
DOGE has 'god mode' access to government data
451–460 of 1001 posts
Re: DOGE has 'god mode' access to government data
#452IMHO it's a bit of a shame that the productivity and efficiency gains that computing and cybernetics can bring to complex systems -- including government -- are always tainted and currently championed by anti-social elites that use them to break apart these collective machines. Bureaucracies are a common good, and it should be in everyone's interest to apply state-of-the-art system engineering to make them as valuabl…
The government's system should mainly be secure, relibale and durable. State-of-the-art is seldom all three of them.
> all three of them
or even one
Re: DOGE has 'god mode' access to government data
#453Well, it is a government agency tasked with audits. Why shouldn't it have root access?
Is it an actual government agency? From what I've (casually) read, it's an ad-hoc thing that isn't actually genuinely legitimate, from that standpoint?
>> Is it an actual government agency?
Yes. In 2014, after the disastrous rollout of the Healthcare.gov site, President Obama created the "United States Digital Service" (USDS). Its stated mission was to modernize technology and improve efficiency across all US departments and agencies.
President Trump renamed the USDS to the "United States DOGE Service" (USDS) and created a temporary "Department of Government Efficiency" (DOGE) organization within the USDS that will operate until July 4, 2026.
Every US government agency is required to establish a DOGE team within that agency to work with the USDS to "improve the quality and efficiency of government-wide software, network infrastructure, and information technology (IT) systems".
Re: DOGE has 'god mode' access to government data
#454Related to a comment on a now-flagged subthread: can anyone who believes that DOGE is uncovering fraud please post a reliable reference that gives a specific example of fraud uncovered by DOGE? To be clear, this should be a third-party analysis of some credibility, not DOGE's or Musk's twitter feed or "receipts" website which shows cancelled contracts with no clear link to fraudulent activity.
It’s marketed as “fraud, waste and abuse.” The top-line summaries are definitely consistent with “waste.” Probably some of them have more nuance when you dig deeper, but does anyone disagree that there is not waste in the government? Fraud and abuse are less clear. But it’s also difficult to ascertain the legitimacy of payments when they’re leaving treasury on checks with no memo or reference, and they’re compared to…
> 1. The people voted for smaller government, and if the executive doesn’t have the power to reduce the size of its own bureaucracy, then there is no check on ever-expanding government.
Congress specifies the size of most government bodies through its Article 1 power of Appropriation. The Executive's job is to administer what the People's delegates have decided to do. Deciding how much to spend is not the President job, and never has been.
The Republican Congress that was also presumably just elected to reduce government can at any time send legislation to the Republican President that will reduce the size of government; in fact, they are working on a budget bill right now. They are free to restructure government as much as they want, because Congress has been explicitly vested with that power.
A lot of people don't like this, but the Constitution is very clear on this point. It's also quite readable; you can read it yourself and verify that I am not making this up!
Re: DOGE has 'god mode' access to government data
#455So how is this any different from all the random employees who might have access to this data as part of their jobs? I would understand if there was this sort of scrutiny over every federal employee but as it stands I never know who has access to my data and if they can be trusted.
Yeah I more concerned “God Mode” is a thing that exists. One would hope that these systems are heavily locked down but my experience maintaining legacy systems makes me think “God mode” is a thing you get because you have to run a quarterly report and it is too much of a hassle setting up the correct permissions.
Re: DOGE has 'god mode' access to government data
#456I 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?
There are laws, but you will get fired if you try to follow them, and lawsuits to remedy that take time. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/usaid-sec...
Easy for me to say, but I would like to think I would say, "Fire me, assholes." And have a good story for the grand children.
Re: DOGE has 'god mode' access to government data
#457The President is the head of the executive branch. If _anyone_ in the executive branch has access to information, it feels like the presidents office should too. Why is this hard to accept?
> If _anyone_ in the executive branch has access to information, it feels like the presidents office should too. Are you an idiot? Can you point to the last time some foreigner was given access to American's personal data without any oversight?
Elon Musk has Canadian, US, and South-African citizenship
Re: DOGE has 'god mode' access to government data
#458IMHO it's a bit of a shame that the productivity and efficiency gains that computing and cybernetics can bring to complex systems -- including government -- are always tainted and currently championed by anti-social elites that use them to break apart these collective machines. Bureaucracies are a common good, and it should be in everyone's interest to apply state-of-the-art system engineering to make them as valuabl…
Bureaucracies are a “common good” because of their human element: the ability to exercise discretion, recognize unique circumstances, and be held accountable to the public they serve. The challenge is harnessing technology while strengthening these essential human capacities. Anything otherwise erodes public trust and sows division.
I don't think unelected bureaucrats should have more power than the elected leaders of the Executive.
Try the "shoe on the other foot" principle: Imagine if Trump put lifetime leaders in those agencies and they fought against the next Progressive president.
Re: DOGE has 'god mode' access to government data
#459Here is my prediction...I know nobody asked for it :-) But they are only fun if you make them before the events...A massive, unpriced risk looms over financial markets... Its scale defies prediction. The current administration’s safeguards are faltering, running like a government still in FSD beta. With U.S. debt dismissed as “just debt,” inflationary tariffs in play, and an emergency Fed rate hike imminent, shockwav…
> Trump says US may have less debt than thought because of fraud - Trump says some Treasury payments might 'not count' Ugh, is that different words for "we ain't paying this because we say it's fraud"?
A lot of Government contracts that are on the surface multi-million, even billion dollars, aren't payed out immediately in full. Thus, at first glance it may look like they've spent more than has left their pockets
Re: DOGE has 'god mode' access to government data
#460So how is this any different from all the random employees who might have access to this data as part of their jobs? I would understand if there was this sort of scrutiny over every federal employee but as it stands I never know who has access to my data and if they can be trusted.
Except in exceptionally poorly run or small organisations, random employees do not have access to everything; generally they need a reason to look at stuff, and there’s a paper trail indicating that they looked at it.
Oh sweet summer child