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Whistleblower says DOGE officials copied Social Security numbers

npr.org

31–40 of 65 posts

Re: Whistleblower says DOGE officials copied Social Security numbers

#31
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a realistic concern. I can't understand why peopleare downvoting it.

There are at least two reasons: First is Hanlon’s Razor; “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity”. It appears to be especially applicable here. Second is that this kind of information (with far richer data) is already accessible to and used by corporations at scale; think credit bureaus, background checkers, etc.

I agree with Hanlon’s Razor to some extent but it does fail to provide accountability, “they aren’t cruel, just incompetent so the behavior is okay.”

Re: Whistleblower says DOGE officials copied Social Security numbers

#32
post #5

My deep suspicion, given some of the players involved in DOGE, is that most of this information is being exfiltrated for the purposes of training AI models. They'll likely be used for social and political manipulation of groups and possibly even individuals. There's a big market for "pre-crime" solutions which will also rely heavily on this type of data and are already being deployed by various state-level law enforc…

Is there talk about DOGE working to combine various government databases as a new data project for the government?

Re: Whistleblower says DOGE officials copied Social Security numbers

#34
post #10

Copied from one secure S3 bucket to another secure S3 bucket, both inaccessible from the internet, both on SSA infrastructure. What exactly is the problem?

It's about as secure as you can get and there are still complaints about it.

All from the same people that said we had the most secure election in history in 2020 while ignoring the voting machine hacks at Defcon for the last decade.

Re: Whistleblower says DOGE officials copied Social Security numbers

#35
post #5

My deep suspicion, given some of the players involved in DOGE, is that most of this information is being exfiltrated for the purposes of training AI models. They'll likely be used for social and political manipulation of groups and possibly even individuals. There's a big market for "pre-crime" solutions which will also rely heavily on this type of data and are already being deployed by various state-level law enforc…

Is there talk about DOGE working to combine various government databases as a new data project for the government?

[flagged]

Re: Whistleblower says DOGE officials copied Social Security numbers

#36
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They should be considered unique (public) usernames

My understanding is that they're not even guaranteed to be unique.

Yup. They get reused, and people can get new ones or sometimes multiple at the same time...

Re: Whistleblower says DOGE officials copied Social Security numbers

#37

[flagged]

The US top government is anarchy right now, descending into totalitarianism. Silver lining, this shit has highlighted how fragile the US democracy is and how easily the checks and balances fail if they're being ignored and there's no consequences for ignoring them. In a functioning democracy, none of this would have happened and the people that tried it removed from office and jailed. All previous administrations hav…

We really do need a third founding, the failure here is so dramatic. We've had congress and the court acquiesce to near unlimited lawlessness from the president as he takes direct and total command of the government apparatus. We have a president saying "I have the right to do anything I want. I'm the president." We have a president saying that that he even has the right to force state governments to do what he wants, as the states are mere agents of the federal government.

There is no way out of this other than a dramatic restructuring of the relationships between the three branches and the relationship between the president and the executive branch. The system that we all claimed was a check against tyranny has utterly folded in mere months.

What I wouldn't give for dems actually saying what they will do if they ever recover power again. Because the Biden strategy of "just hope Trump and ascendant fascism fades away and we never have to talk about it again" has been a clear failure.

Re: Whistleblower says DOGE officials copied Social Security numbers

#38
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a realistic concern. I can't understand why peopleare downvoting it.

There are at least two reasons: First is Hanlon’s Razor; “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity”. It appears to be especially applicable here. Second is that this kind of information (with far richer data) is already accessible to and used by corporations at scale; think credit bureaus, background checkers, etc.

>First is Hanlon’s Razor

Those "razors" (Occam's, Hanlon's, etc) are just heuristics, not axioms. At what point you're supposed to stop assuming root cause is just stupidity? given the priors one can perfectly asume malice right away.

Re: Whistleblower says DOGE officials copied Social Security numbers

#39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US top government is anarchy right now, descending into totalitarianism. Silver lining, this shit has highlighted how fragile the US democracy is and how easily the checks and balances fail if they're being ignored and there's no consequences for ignoring them. In a functioning democracy, none of this would have happened and the people that tried it removed from office and jailed. All previous administrations hav…

We really do need a third founding, the failure here is so dramatic. We've had congress and the court acquiesce to near unlimited lawlessness from the president as he takes direct and total command of the government apparatus. We have a president saying "I have the right to do anything I want. I'm the president." We have a president saying that that he even has the right to force state governments to do what he wants…

What if the ones who are currently in control all of branches of government, that are transforming the US into a totalitarian state, don't want any restructuring that would limit such a transformation? What then?

Re: Whistleblower says DOGE officials copied Social Security numbers

#40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there talk about DOGE working to combine various government databases as a new data project for the government?

[flagged]

i understand that he did the nazi salute, but it seems disingenuous and unnecessarily provocative to call elon musk a nazi

musk is a kleptocrat/plutocrat who did the nazi salute for the purposes of generating controversy. it seems obvious to me that he's more interested in securing the success of his ventures than anything resembling 20th century fascism.

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