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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

#161

Post by DonHopkins »

scarab92 wrote: post #87
stuaxo wrote: 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.

[flagged]

So cooking the books and defrauding the citizens of the United States by exaggerating your progress by x1000 is crucial, you mean.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/18/upshot/doge-contracts-mus...

DOGE Claimed It Saved $8 Billion in One Contract. It Was Actually $8 Million.

The biggest single line item on the website of Elon Musk’s cost-cutting team included a big error.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/musk-s-doge-accuse...

Musk's DOGE Accused of 'Cooking the Books' After $8 Billion Savings Is Immediately Debunked

Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) falsely claimed an $8 billion cost savings from a canceled government contract, which was later revealed to be worth only $8 million.

https://x.com/electricfutures/status/1891898336208105676

Momentum Chaser @electricfutures

After several delays, @DOGE has finally posted its purported savings. Why did it take so long to create a simple webpage with a 1000-row table? Who knows! Let's dig in.

Headline number: $55B saved. They list the savings per nixed contract. This should be easy to verify then. [...]

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

#163

Post by exe34 »

3D30497420 wrote: post #142
scarab92 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[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?

if it's not funding tax cuts and corporate handouts for Elon's companies, it's waste.

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

#165

Post by sam_lowry_ »

kioleanu wrote: post #147
maCDzP wrote: 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

Dunno about Germany but in Belgium there is Crossroads Bank for Social Security which effectively controls the flow of information between various social security and public health organizations: https://www.ksz-bcss.fgov.be/

In its current form, it's a set of SOAP or REST APIs that your organization gets access to after completing paperwork about your needs.

It was established by a 1990 law [1].

There is also a similar legal and technical setup for information on companies [2] where most information is public, and the register of residents [3] which is even more guarded.

[1] https://www.ksz-bcss.fgov.be/fr/page/loi-du-15-janvier-1990-...

[2] https://economie.fgov.be/en/themes/enterprises/crossroads-ba...

[3] https://www.ibz.rrn.fgov.be/fr/registre-national/

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

#167

Post by intended »

scarab92 wrote: post #80
wodenokoto wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Usually you don’t have access to “everything”. It might even be illegal to cross reference certain data, e.g., the same person or department might not even be allowed to have access to two databases. I don’t know if the cross reference is true for the US, but it is for other countries.

[flagged]

Course theres something wrong with it. When the frik did Americans, and American techies - get so blasé about personal information security! America fought against the idea of biometric ID cards. People on HN have railed against giving more information to the government forever.

What the hell? Like this shit didn’t happen back home in INDIA, and that’s a nation which is comfortable with a stronger state.

It’s NOT OK, and you can very well acknowledge that fact because you can just imagine what eviscerating a legacy code base without a replacement looks like. It looks like the disaster you wish on your worst enemy while you quit the firm and look for a new job.

This isn’t beyond the project execution and technical ability of most people here to grasp.

ask yourself how many consecutive miracles would it take for this to go off without a hitch. Then ask yourself if you are that lucky.

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

#170

Post by ZeroGravitas »

Tarsul wrote: post #150
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Vance is just a figurehead for Theil, Musk, Sacks etc.

It's obvious from recent video of Musk and Trump that Trump is also a figurehead at this point.

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