DOGE has 'god mode' access to government data • Hacker News Board

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

#821

Post by insane_dreamer » Thu, Feb 20, 2025, 7:21 PM UTC

axus wrote: post #517

Government should have access to its own data. Justice and Congress should have the same access for oversight. The only problem I see is personal data about non-government people is being exposed to the entire planet. They should have developed good security practices first and maybe spent more than a week reviewing a plan, and not having a double standard about their own activities.

> Government should have access to its own data.

You think it didn't already have access to its own data? Please explain how it did not.

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

#822

Post by manfre » Thu, Feb 20, 2025, 7:21 PM UTC

FigurativeVoid wrote: post #537

At my first gig, I had "god" level access to our production database. All I learned is that nobody should have this level of access unless it is some sort of temporary break glass situation. It is extremely dangerous and even experienced engineers can cause irreparable data loss or some other bad outcome. In our case, some engineer accidentally sent around 10,000 invoices to customers that shouldn't have gotten them.…

I've had a company give me full admin access to their cloud account. Thankfully, I learned the lesson earlier in my career and immediately created myself of more mundane user. Break glass access is important, but definitely not as the usual level of access.

> I don't see why the DOGE team would need anything more than a read replica to query.

They shouldn't need more than limited read access. The fact that they have more access, very likely demanded and not accidentally given, is due to their intent to do more than simply query data.

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

#823

Post by phreeza » Thu, Feb 20, 2025, 7:23 PM UTC

nerdponx wrote: post #499

gattr wrote: post #451

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?

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.

I'm not so sure there is complete overlap, there were plenty of pro national security democrats.

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

#824

Post by unsupp0rted » Thu, Feb 20, 2025, 7:23 PM UTC

dehrmann wrote: post #752

insane_dreamer wrote: post #638

Another very negative long-term effect of all of this is how is the government going to recruit talent in the future? How many people, who have good prospects elsewhere, are going to work for a government agency -- usually a lower pay -- to put up with shit like this that doesn't even happen in industry? Would you? Sure there are sometimes mass layoffs that are handled pretty badly in industry, but not these Gestapo-…

> put up with shit like this that doesn't even happen in industry Musk did a trial run with it on Twitter.

And look how badly that worked out

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

#825

Post by insane_dreamer » Thu, Feb 20, 2025, 7:23 PM UTC

tabakd wrote: post #35

Is there any reason this data shouldn't be public for everyone to read?

Lets start with Trump and Musk.

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

#826

Post by kvakerok » Thu, Feb 20, 2025, 7:24 PM UTC

simpaticoder wrote: post #811

FigurativeVoid wrote: post #537

At my first gig, I had "god" level access to our production database. All I learned is that nobody should have this level of access unless it is some sort of temporary break glass situation. It is extremely dangerous and even experienced engineers can cause irreparable data loss or some other bad outcome. In our case, some engineer accidentally sent around 10,000 invoices to customers that shouldn't have gotten them.…

I've worked with older governmental systems, and chances are they are running a wide variety of systems, some of which, the oldest and most critical, are probably written in COBOL running on IBM mainframe hardware. In those environments, there is no real distinction between "database" and "application". COBOL systems are very file- and batch-oriented, and are "monolithic" in the extremist sense. The technology itself…

You can absolutely give read only access in COBOL systems. That's just lazy administration and IT security on a shoestring budget.

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

#827

Post by crooked-v » Thu, Feb 20, 2025, 7:25 PM UTC

tiffanyh wrote: post #806

> ‘GOD MODE’ ACCESS TO GOVERNMENT DATA Isn't this title clickbait? There's an implication this is access to all government data - but the article doesn't explicitly state that but would lead you to believe that. Given that I highly doubt all government data is in a single data store ... this is probably more like - GOGE has access to all GSA contracts (just one department) ... which is way less sensationalized (and a…

They have full admin access to all USAID systems (which, let's be real, also includes some US intelligence service cover material, since USAID has long been used for that), and are actively seeking full admin access to the systems for every other federal department.

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

#828

Post by mempko » Thu, Feb 20, 2025, 7:26 PM UTC

eecc wrote: post #201

IMHO 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…

You do realize one of the first users of private computers was the IRS. You miss the other side of the coin when it comes to efficiency. An efficient bureaucracy is a large bureaucracy. There is no possible way the IRS could do it's work today without computers. The rules are too complex, and computers made it possible to have such complex rules.

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

#829

Post by insane_dreamer » Thu, Feb 20, 2025, 7:26 PM UTC

borgster wrote: post #216

The 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?

So are you saying that the President's office could not get this information, or any information it needed, from government agencies before? Of course it could. doge going in and getting unfettered access to computer systems is not at all the same thing.

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

#830

Post by crooked-v » Thu, Feb 20, 2025, 7:27 PM UTC

swat535 wrote: post #587

Setting politics aside for a moment, I find it fascinating that an audit of this scale is taking place within the government. Has there ever been a historical precedent where an external agency thoroughly reviewed all departments, published its findings for the public, and then based decisions on that analysis? Is it really possible to root out governmental fraud using this approach? Fraud and theft exist at every le…

The US has actual independent auditors at various agencies. They're called inspectors general. Trump is trying to fire all of them: https://apnews.com/article/trump-inspectors-general-fired-co...