Why is this a bad thing if their job is to audit budget and spending?
The article also does not go into technical details on what this supposed god mode actually is.
DOGE has 'god mode' access to government data
781–790 of 1001 posts
Re: DOGE has 'god mode' access to government data
#782Because there are bigger fish to fry, I think people don’t appreciate the sheer cost of the system rebuild that will be required for security reasons later. There’s absolutely no telling what additional software has been installed alongside existing, or which systems have been modified that would require audit. Purging this will be an absolute fucking nightmare to the American taxpayer. This may turn into one of the…
This is a very dramatic take on something you (and many others) are making extremely broad presumptions upon. It’s clear that DOGE is reviewing payment data and has the same access to various components of the US Govt that Obama’s US Digital Services, created to rebuild the ACA website but also provisioned for a number of other digital services. DOGE has the same access to services that USDS had. USDS was praised for its “speed and cutting through red tape”
Re: DOGE has 'god mode' access to government data
#783What'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.
Eliminating foreign aid seems to be a common cause of neo-conservative movements. Boris Johnson shut down the British equivalent(Department for International Development) and scrapped the commitment to spend 0.7% of GDP on aid. It's simplistic, drastic and brings no specific domestic effect which could be a rallying point for unrest. It's also very easy to come up with rage bait stories of corruption and waste as jus…
Lol you clearly have no idea what a 'neo-conservative' is or their history.
Neo-Conservatives were a branch of Democrat wark-hawks who wanted to police the world, that were upset about the pacifist attitude of the Democrats at the time - they emerged in the 60's and managed to largely take control of the Republican party moving forward, peaking under George W Bush.
Their founding principal was "Peace Through Strength" and have a strong belief in worldwide interventionism.
If you think the 'MAGA' / 'Trump' party is neo-conservative you literally just are ignoring the entire history, the power struggle (which Trump won) to retake the party from the Neo-Cons, and the fact that the trump admin is largely isolationist and opposed to being the world police.
Don't get me wrong there are still some neo-cons in office and with roles in his admin, but the republican infighting can be summarized as neocon vs MAGA.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoconservatism https://www.britannica.com/topic/neoconservatism
Words mean things. The MAGE/America First party is focused on non-interventionism, advocate against regime change abroad, with a focus on America and it's interest rather than the endless wars.
You can debate the success or merit of that approach I guess, but the Neo-Cons are very happy to provide foreign aid as it is core to their ideology. They tend to do it via NED while the left uses USAID more (although both use both, but they each have lean in one direction).
Just for fun, I just tried this little experiment you can try to: " CoPilot: Can you rationally describe Trump as a neocon?
CoPilot: No, it would not be accurate to rationally state that Donald Trump is a neoconservative (neocon). Here are some key differences:
Foreign Policy: Neocons: Advocate for interventionist foreign policies, promoting democracy and regime change abroad. Trump: Emphasizes “America First” policies, focusing on non-interventionism, reducing military engagements abroad, and prioritizing domestic issues.
Military Engagement: Neocons: Support maintaining strong international alliances and a significant military presence globally.
Trump: Criticized NATO, praised authoritarian leaders like Vladimir Putin, and negotiated troop withdrawals from conflict zones like Afghanistan.
Economic Policies: Neocons: Generally support free trade and globalization.
Trump: Advocates for economic nationalism, including tariffs and renegotiating trade deals to favor American interests.
These differences highlight that Trump’s policies and ideology do not align with neoconservative principles. If you have any more questions or need further details, feel free to ask! "
Re: DOGE has 'god mode' access to government data
#784The goal is to reduce government spending by $2 Trillion in 4 years. If you want to see how this is going: https://polymarket.com/doge
That's not the goal at all. And that's not how its going. https://www.npr.org/2025/02/19/nx-s1-5302705/doge-overstates...
> Of the DOGE list's initial claim of $16 billion in savings, half came from an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) listing that was entered into the Federal Procurement Data System (FPDS) in 2022 with a whopping $8 billion maximum possible value.
> According to a DOGE post on X, that number was a typo that was corrected in the contract database to $8 million on Jan. 22 of this year before being terminated a week later, and DOGE "has always used the correct $8M in its calculations."
Jeez, that's pretty damning.
Re: DOGE has 'god mode' access to government data
#785Earlier quoted context omitted.
The "I don't mind, I have nothing to hide" people are cheering this on. They don't know or care about any of the things you just said.
They will care when they personally get badly screwed.
They will not know that theyre screwed because media will tell them theyre doing great
Re: DOGE has 'god mode' access to government data
#786Because there are bigger fish to fry, I think people don’t appreciate the sheer cost of the system rebuild that will be required for security reasons later. There’s absolutely no telling what additional software has been installed alongside existing, or which systems have been modified that would require audit. Purging this will be an absolute fucking nightmare to the American taxpayer. This may turn into one of the…
This is a very dramatic take on something you (and many others) are making extremely broad presumptions upon. It’s clear that DOGE is reviewing payment data and has the same access to various components of the US Govt that Obama’s US Digital Services, created to rebuild the ACA website but also provisioned for a number of other digital services. DOGE has the same access to services that USDS had. USDS was praised for…
The question isn't what's being accessed, it's who is accessing it.
There's at least some belief that the people looking at the data haven't been vetted or instructed as they should be when handling data of this nature.
It doesn't help that the guy who is running the show is basically doing it as a friend of the president and has some conflicts of interest.
Re: DOGE has 'god mode' access to government data
#787Why is this a bad thing if their job is to audit budget and spending? The article also does not go into technical details on what this supposed god mode actually is.
That's the issue right? No one knows what access they have, so you should assume the worst. They've already been claiming that they are making writes, so full write privilege isn't off the table.
It's not even the access that's the issue though, it's the lack of oversight. If I login to a Prod database, my commands are logged which allow the team to go back and figure out what happened if something didn't go as expected. We have backups and response processes to deal with "oops" situations. I strongly doubt the DOGE team has any fallback plan, and it would be irresponsible to simply assume they've thought fallback through.
This is more troubling with the systems being tricky legacy systems. You might have the best intentions, but it is really easy to make mistakes in brittle systems even if you are careful. We've already seen evidence that the team may have no idea how to interpret the data they're seeing. It'd be reckless to start making edits while only having a partial understanding of the system.
The story from DOGE is "look at all this fraud we've found, we're going to fix it now". It's not "here's a bunch of things we want to investigate further". It's not "here's how we're going to test whether this is actually fraud". It's not "here's what we're going to try and how we're going to revert if we are wrong".
Re: DOGE has 'god mode' access to government data
#788Because there are bigger fish to fry, I think people don’t appreciate the sheer cost of the system rebuild that will be required for security reasons later. There’s absolutely no telling what additional software has been installed alongside existing, or which systems have been modified that would require audit. Purging this will be an absolute fucking nightmare to the American taxpayer. This may turn into one of the…
This is a very dramatic take on something you (and many others) are making extremely broad presumptions upon. It’s clear that DOGE is reviewing payment data and has the same access to various components of the US Govt that Obama’s US Digital Services, created to rebuild the ACA website but also provisioned for a number of other digital services. DOGE has the same access to services that USDS had. USDS was praised for…
It is not dramatic at all. Because of the very fact it's contentious, a rebuild will be undertaken by the next government to not trust it. It's an absolute guarantee regardless of how any one side feels about it.
I and many people would argue to rebuild it based on the lack of transparency we have seen. There are enough people that feel that way that a rebuild is inevitable, regardless if you end up right. The position is that we really don't know, so the only way to be safe is a do-over. Or at the very least, a completely transparent audit, which is also insanely expensive and very hard to scope.
Re: DOGE has 'god mode' access to government data
#789The goal is to reduce government spending by $2 Trillion in 4 years. If you want to see how this is going: https://polymarket.com/doge
This linked website has an incentive to portray this "savings" as larger than it actually is.
Re: DOGE has 'god mode' access to government data
#790Earlier quoted context omitted.
I loathe working places where they just give you all the permissions because it's "easier". One risk is if something does happen, and they don't have exceptional tracing and logging, (and let's be honest, at an organization sloppy enough to hand out privileges like candy, what's the chance of that?) it's difficult or impossible to pin down the source to any individual. As a result, both responsibility and suspicion i…
I have so many horror stories from there. When they did decide to lock down the database, the DB admin only locked in down in the sql server client most people used. If you used some other client, you still had access. _sigh_
My favorite security anti-pattern!
Locking the main doors while leaving all the windows wide open.