Honestly 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.
Why?
DOGE has 'god mode' access to government data
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Re: DOGE has 'god mode' access to government data
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
Musk isn't a do-things-by-half kind of guy.
But also when you make cuts, you go hard, fast, and recover from there. Any effort of small trimming over a long period achieves no saving while producing the same negative publicity. I doubt such cutting effort will happen for another 30y. There is a french say I like. If you need to cut a dog’s tail, don’t cut an inch every day, chop the whole thing quick
Same thing for butchery. Cut the carcass and sell the parts.
Re: DOGE has 'god mode' access to government data
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Re: DOGE has 'god mode' access to government data
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They claimed to discover .. yes, but they're essentially too young, dumb, and inexperienced to understand the oddities in the data .. the 100+ year old peole are a result of COBOL NULL entries for people with no birth record dates (which is a real thing in 300+ million people), etc.
Also:
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 appears to include an error.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/18/upshot/doge-contracts-mus...
DOGE is not a trustworthy reporter, they are incentivised to make big, bold, bullshit claims.
Re: DOGE has 'god mode' access to government data
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Re: DOGE has 'god mode' access to government data
#177European 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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Re: DOGE has 'god mode' access to government data
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Re: DOGE has 'god mode' access to government data
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 simi…
Yes, that makes sense, we don’t allow people to connect to our databases directly either, and in any case the systems should be built so they are separated, it’s good architecture.
I was very much more intrigued about the statement that data can’t be easily/legally shared within the same agency
Re: DOGE has 'god mode' access to government data
#180The moment they had physical access to the system, it was necessary to assume this. It's called an 'evil maid' attack, and of all communities this one should have been blowing the whistle. Loudly, repeatedly, and in open defiance of people who argue that this is a storm in a teacup, a non issue, just another MOT, etc. Especially when you look at the background of the Doge team - 'ex' hackers, 'security specialists',…
I think this community stopped caring about actual hacking some time ago. Remember when we cared about privacy?
I didn’t get something until it was pointed out very recently.
The issue isn’t what we think. The issue is what we think OTHERS think.
This is what social media truly fucks up. We can’t see the people nodding in disagreement. We can only see their silence, and we must respond to the person who IS talking and holding our attention.
Practically - I care about privacy, and I expect that damn near most people here care about it.
People can have their “well actually” arguments, but when push comes to shove, techies on HN should vocalize their annoyance with the way this is being done. Even if you support their politics, this ISNT how you execute secure projects.
Wrong from the start. The Emperor isn’t wearing any clothes territory. We dont have to agree on other things.