I 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?
[dupe]
Then why did Trump illegally fire all inspector generals?
DOGE has 'god mode' access to government data
261–270 of 1001 posts
Re: DOGE has 'god mode' access to government data
#262"In the coming weeks, the team is expected to enter IT systems at the CDC and Federal Aviation Administration, and it already has done so at NASA"
If this isn't a glaring conflict of interest and corruption, I don't know what is.
Re: DOGE has 'god mode' access to government data
#263Earlier quoted context omitted.
What you're describing is very similar to what most large enterprise companies do: layers upon layers of red tape and convoluted regulations for the sake of "security." This is a big reason they can’t get anything done or retain talent. Government is no different. European democracies have been dying from the same sclerosis their legacy multinationals have. The US is going through actual change. The outrage over thin…
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This is either woefully naive or active disinformation.
Edit: OP dramatically edited their post. It originally made all kinds of claims of process and propriety that just aren't happening. This was the original that I was replying to:
”Most of the animosity comes from misunderstanding. Trump tasked "DOGE" with reviewing government spending across it's 400+ agencies, and coming up with recommendations on how to reduce wasteful spending. They have 1 year to complete this task. To make sensible recommendations, DOGE needs data about the major programs within each agency. They can't tackle each agency consecutively, since there are more agencies than days until the deadline, so they are parallelising the work.
The access is read only, and they are not linking personal data between agencies, but rather doing a bunch of separate audits in parallel.
Trump has prohibited Musk from being involved in with the review in agencies where he was a material conflict (FAA for example).”
Re: DOGE has 'god mode' access to government data
#264European 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…
What you're describing is very similar to what most large enterprise companies do: layers upon layers of red tape and convoluted regulations for the sake of "security." This is a big reason they can’t get anything done or retain talent. Government is no different. European democracies have been dying from the same sclerosis their legacy multinationals have. The US is going through actual change. The outrage over thin…
Apart from government being very different from private business indeed; I wouldn't want to eat food, drive a vehicle, or use software made by a company made with that mindset. "Safety first" is also a hard rule in all sorts of sports where people move faster than non-expert spectators can fully comprehend. If you need to cut corners to "gain efficiency" it just means you're bad.
Re: DOGE has 'god mode' access to government data
#265European 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…
still, Germany arrests citizens for calling a politician an idiot.
Re: DOGE has 'god mode' access to government data
#266Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's putting it mildly. What it really looks like is a fast descent into madness.
It is to avoid totalitarianism.
Having a slow and archaic birocratic system doesn't stop governments going totalitarian on their citizens.
Case in point In Germany the Polizei will SWAT and arrest you if you post a meme on social media that angers someone's dignity. That's not a joke that actually happens.
This typical German "our government is not slow and inefficient, it's just protection against totalitarianism" is pure cope.
Edit: @helloplanets Source: https://youtu.be/-bMzFDpfDwc?si=eIUkEuDBx3iX_TEx
Re: DOGE has 'god mode' access to government data
#267Earlier quoted context omitted.
What you're describing is very similar to what most large enterprise companies do: layers upon layers of red tape and convoluted regulations for the sake of "security." This is a big reason they can’t get anything done or retain talent. Government is no different. European democracies have been dying from the same sclerosis their legacy multinationals have. The US is going through actual change. The outrage over thin…
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> Trump tasked "DOGE" with reviewing government spending across it's 400+ agencies, and coming up with recommendations on how to reduce wasteful spending.
"Make recommendations" ?
Firing the folks that maintain nuclear weapons sounds like an action, not a recommendation:
* https://apnews.com/article/nuclear-doge-firings-trump-federa...
Firing the folks dealing with bird flu sounds like an action, not a recommendation:
* https://apnews.com/article/usda-firings-doge-bird-flu-trump-...
Then there's the folks making a list of all the agents who were pulled off other tasks and told to investigate Jan 6:
* https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-administration-compili...
Also firing a whole bunch of folks at the FAA even though it's already short staffed:
* https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cly9y1e1kpjo
Seems to be it's less about finding savings and more about blindly purging people with no regard to how useful or inefficient things actually are.
Re: DOGE has 'god mode' access to government data
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Re: DOGE has 'god mode' access to government data
#269Earlier 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
The French, famous for their budget cuts and government efficiency.
Re: DOGE has 'god mode' access to government data
#270Earlier quoted context omitted.
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> $50,000 to Sri Lanka for “climate change” isn’t a “popular program.”
Is that $50,000 annual? Because if so that's less than a rounding error for the budget of almost any country, much less the US. The costs associated with ending this program (organizational, employee time) may even be higher than just continuing to pay it.
> Paying dead people social security isn’t popular.
Is there any public statistical data on this? As far as I know US social security does periodically verify if recipients are still alive. Of course some cases will slip through the cracks, but unless DOGE plans to individually track down every recipient and see them in person I don't see how they can solve this problem. This inevitably happens with pretty much any social security system, anywhere.
> Sending money to the Taliban isn’t popular.
Is there a source for this?
> When you say Trump doesn’t care about waste, that isn’t supported by the facts. The deficit isn’t about waste, fraud or abuse, it’s about overspending. They aren’t the same thing.
He could start by reducing overspending on the US' titanic corporate subsidies, but something tells me he won't.