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DOGE has 'god mode' access to government data

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

#981

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The presidency is not a monarchy! The president might be commander-in-chief but it can’t just order random people killed just because he is “in charge” of the military. There are laws and layers of control saying who can do what. These laws are on the books and are being completely ignored! Most of this power is vested in congress whom is abdicating their power.

In a sense, I agree. The president should not be able to declare war without an act of Congress. The constitution grants the power to make law to congress, but then congress has enacted many laws which create agencies under the executive branch, which in turns empowers the executive branch. So I agree that Congress should make/repeal laws that reduce the size of the executive branch so that only necessary powers are…

> So I agree that Congress should make/repeal laws that reduce the size of the executive branch so that only necessary powers are entrusted to the executive branch.

This is essentially what the courts are doing through the interrogation of the limits of the offices power. If that’s what you are looking for it’s already WAI.

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

#982

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and the chances of that person being technically smarter than the DOGE is close to zero.

Well, yes, because 1 is pretty close to zero, on a scale of 0 to infinity. However, if you look at their actual technical skilz: The incompetence at DOGE is staggering. Absolutely no security on their .gov webiste: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43045835 can't even get mail merges to work, see some of their emails terminating people. Telling people to sign the doc and then not attaching the doc. The search for…

Truly incredible how so many people can attribute “whiz kids” to a group of people who can’t even do the most basic due-diligence.

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

#983
post #488

Imagine: if you dunk on Elon on Twitter now he could get mad and post your tax return in the replies

What’s beyond a man who would lie about being a gamer (for credz), be so lazy in his lie he is instantly caught, double-down on his lie despite the obviousness of his inability to even use basic mechanics of said games and then beef with Internet personalities while leaking their private convos? I would wager this man has absolutely no ethic and is purely concerned with his own short-sighted greed and vanity.

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

#984
post #153

[flagged]

America is and will be fine.

That’s a bold statement. US is a young country. Empires that lasted longer by 5x have been consigned to the dust bin of history with nary but an oral tradition to remember them. If looking at americas military capability is any indication it is already in steep decline especially with regards to its seeming inability to not crash or destroy million/billon dollar hardware purely based on incompetence and short staffing. Its inability to prosecute an illegal war in the ME (occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan) is also a great example of the lack of exceptionalism exhibited by americas armed forces and their inept leadership.

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

#985

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[dupe]

We don't when said President illegally fires the inspectors general responsible for independent oversight. [1] https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/fired-inspecto...

This administration's legal theory is that executive power is concentrated entirely in the person of the president, which, to be fair, is because the Constitution says that it is.

That's not conducive to good government and is not the current precedent set by the Supreme Court, but it's been the conservative legal view since the 1980s and to be fair again, is again what the Constitution actually says. It will pretty much certainly be the prevailing view after this returns to the Supreme Court.

If that legal theory is true then Congress cannot create independent executive power and so it is not illegal for the President to fire anyone in the executive branch for any reason, including inspectors general, the chairman of the Fed, etc., regardless of any law to the contrary. Again, to be clear a third time, the effects of this will be bad, but the constitutional language isn't really ambiguous.

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

#986
post #644
post #543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or maybe it'll accelerate the much needed improvements.

Yeah, all of every American's banking information being permanently exposed is a totally OK cost for "improvements".

Permanently exposed where?

Are we talking about something that happened, or just conjecture?

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

#988

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.…

Why should they even have read access? They're not a legal government institution, and they're being led by a private citizen that's not been elected or appointed by Congress to access our data in agencies that were made by Congress under particular rules to keep these kinds of snoops out.

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

#989

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…

These old systems need to be upgraded but Congress never approves the financing or execution of it because they're too divided and won't increase taxes on anyone especially the rich and giant corporations to do it.

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

#990
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?

I actually thought the government had all this control already over all this.
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