The guy nobody trusts with a full security clearance now has access to all your private data.

Minimal QUICK CALL script for ALL legislators: I’m calling from [zip code]. [I already sent an email detailing my concerns, but] I want to know what [legislator’s name] is doing right now to stop Elon Musk, a national security risk who was neither elected nor confirmed, from continuing his lawless rampage through our private records, our country’s payment system and our national security platforms.

Minimal QUICK CALL script for ALL legislators: I’m calling from [zip code]. [I already sent an email detailing my concerns, but] I want to know what [legislator’s name] is doing to remove Elon and his band of minions from government property and prosecuting them for any crimes they have already committed. Then we want [legislator’s name] to stop playing nice, like this is just a momentary crises and start slow walking the processes of authoritarianism down. They know how. Mitch McConnell taught them the techniques while he was fighting Obama’s nominees and stacking the Supreme Court with extremists. Senate Democrats must vote NO on every nominee. Every Democrat must weaponize quorum calls. Block unanimous consent. Force votes. Force debates. Use every procedural weapon. No business as usual. No cooperation with extremists. No easy path for Trump’s agenda.

Minimal email script for ALL legislators: I’m writing to demand a full examination on how Elon Musk, a man denied high-level security clearance due to his entanglements with Russia and China, was given access to our government’s computer systems, including the U.S. Treasure Department’s payment systems. This must include a full accounting of background checks, conflicts of interest, security clearances or other vetting of Musk and all who work with him at DOGE, including non-government employees, and whether the DOGE is operating in compliance with the Federal Advisory Committee Act, the Privacy Act of 1974, and the Federal Records Act.

This report should include security measures that must now be taken to ensure that access by Musk and his minions does not result in the illegal and partisan withholding of payments, shuttering of lawfully created agencies, the blockading of government offices, criminal access with inadequate security clearances and unapproved devices, the corruption of government contract disbursement, illicit and treasonous use of information by Trump, Musk or others in the billion-dollar donor group, or hackers and foreign spies breaching or otherwise gaining access to Americans’ private data, including the Fiscal Service’s payment systems. We want this unelected and unconfirmed oligarch out of our systems, and a civil servant who has sworn an oath to the Constitution, not a Schedule F political lackey, must be reinstalled to oversee the process of repairing them.

(Commondreams) “Groundwork Collaborative executive director Lindsay Owens wrote: “Musk has infiltrated the system to stop payments. It’s a coup.”

In an op-ed published by MSNBC on Saturday, Owens went into greater detail about her concerns, outlining three reasons why Musk might want access to the Treasury payment system. 

1. He could use it to stop payments to certain programs in order to work around the courts’ block on the administration’s spending freeze. 
2. He could access the list of blacklisted federal contractors in order to boost his own or his friend’s companies and harm his competitors. (One of the DOGE allies granted access to the payment system, Tom Krause, is also a Big Tech CEO who leads Cloud Software Group, according to The New York Times.)
3. He could use it to reduce Social Security or Medicare payments as part of DOGE’s goal of cutting $2 trillion in federal spending. 

Owens noted hat Musk wasn’t “chasing these cuts for their own sake. He’s helping congressional Republicans attempt to pay for a new round of tax breaks for corporations and the ultrawealthy—including Musk himself.”

(wired) “There also appears to be an effort to use IT credentials from the Executive Office of the President to access GSA laptops and internal GSA infrastructure. Typically, access to agency systems requires workers to be employed at such agencies, sources say. While Musk’s team could be trying to obtain better laptops and equipment from GSA, sources fear that the mandate laid out in the DOGE executive order would grant the body broad access to GSA systems and data. That includes sensitive procurement data, data internal to all the systems and services GSA offers, and internal monitoring software to surveil GSA employees as part of normal auditing and security processes.

The access could give Musk’s proxies the ability to remote into laptops, listen in on meetings, read emails, among many other things, a former Biden official told WIRED on Friday.

“Granting DOGE staff, many of whom aren’t government employees, unfettered access to internal government systems and sensitive data poses a huge security risk to the federal government and to the American public,” the Biden official said. “Not only will DOGE be able to review procurement-sensitive information about major government contracts, it’ll also be able to actively surveil government employees.”

(wired) “Over the last few days, workers at the Technology Transformation Services (TTS), which is housed within the General Services Administration (GSA), have been summoned into what one source called “sneak attack” meetings to discuss their code and projects with total strangers—some quite young—who lacked official government email addresses and have been reticent to identify themselves. TTS workers have also received confusing transition guidance and a sudden DC office visit from Musk...

At least two of these individuals appeared to be “college students with disturbingly high A-suite clearance,” one TTS source told WIRED. (A-suite clearances tie employees to the GSA administrator’s office.)”

(Wired) “Employees at GSA tell WIRED that [high school graduate Edward] Coristine has appeared on calls where workers were made to go over code they had written and justify their jobs. WIRED previously reported that Coristine was added to a call with GSA staff members using a nongovernment Gmail address. Employees were not given an explanation as to who he was or why he was on the calls.”

(Wired) “WIRED has identified six young men—all apparently between the ages of 19 and 24, according to public databases, their online presences, and other records—who have little to no government experience and are now playing critical roles in Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) project, tasked by executive order with “modernizing Federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity.” The engineers all hold nebulous job titles within DOGE, and at least one appears to be working as a volunteer.

The engineers are Akash Bobba, Edward Coristine, Luke Farritor, Gautier Cole Killian, Gavin Kliger, and Ethan Shaotran. None have responded to requests for comment from WIRED. Representatives from OPM, GSA, and DOGE did not respond to requests for comment…

“To the extent these individuals are exercising what would otherwise be relatively significant managerial control over two very large agencies that deal with very complex topics,” says Nick Bednar, a professor at University of Minnesota’s school of law, “it is very unlikely they have the expertise to understand either the law or the administrative needs that surround these agencies.”

Here’s a parting thought for these young men…they may be violating the Privacy Act of 1974.

This law was passed by Congress because they were was “concerned with curbing the illegal surveillance and investigation of individuals by federal agencies that had been exposed during the Watergate scandal; it was also concerned with potential abuses presented by the government’s increasing use of computers to store and retrieve personal data by means of a universal identifier — such as an individual’s social security number.” Dept. of Justice, Overview of the Privacy Act of 1974, 2010 Edition.”

(CBS) “DOGE, which isn’t an official government agency, was tasked by Trump to produce recommendations on trimming federal outlays, with billionaires Musk and Ramaswamy saying they aimed to cut about $500 billion in annual expenditures. The lawsuit claims that DOGE so far appears to have largely appointed three types of people to work on its efforts: tech industry executives, people affiliated with the Trump campaign and his prior administration as well as associates of Musk or Ramaswamy’s. 

The lawsuit alleges that, as a result, DOGE is in violation of FACA because “not a single member of DOGE is a federal employee or represents the perspective of federal employees, despite the evidence that DOGE intends to provide recommendations regarding federal employment practices and ways to reduce the size of the federal workforce.

“Nobody disputes that there is a huge amount of wasteful spending in the federal government,” Kel McClanahan, the executive director of National Security Counselors, said in an email to CBS MoneyWatch. “Our only concern is that DOGE, as it is currently constituted, lacks the expertise to understand how its recommendations will backfire if it pushes federal workers out without understanding why they are there in the first place. 

He added, “Government work is not corporate work, and any recommendations made without that perspective are doomed to fail.”

The robber-bros take over…

(Fortune) “The fresh blood at OPM have more in common than just their new place of work; some also count themselves as former employees of Musk’s numerous tech companies. Scales reportedly recently worked for xAI, Musk’s AI firm that developed the chatbox Grok for X. The recent high school graduate {Edward Coristine] working under Scales had a summer gig at Musk’s neurotechnology company Neuralink—in addition to work as a bike mechanic and camp counselor—according to an online resume and high school student-published magazine, Wired reported. The 21-year-old senior advisor did not previously work for a Musk-owned company, but reportedly listed on his resume a job at data analytics firm Palantir, co-founded by Peter Thiel, a member of the PayPal Mafia alongside Musk.

Overlaps between Musk’s former employees and up-and-coming government personage extend beyond OPM. Steve Davis, Musk’s chief cost-cutter at X, might now be an advisor to Musk on cuts made through his DOGE Service, Fortune reported earlier this month.”

Hedge fund manager and now U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessant can say whatever he wants, but without the transparency of a real agency, Musk and his minions can do as they like.

(Wall Street Journal) “It couldn’t be determined what DOGE representives intended to do with their access to the payment system. Musk and his team think the payment system should be overseen by political appointees selected by President Trump, the people said. 

A person familiar with the arrangement said DOGE representatives won’t have direct authority to stop individual payments or make other changes, describing their access as “read only.” Bessent approved the arrangement on the condition that the DOGE representatives’ activity be documented and monitored. DOGE representatives intend to review the overall efficiency of the payment system, the person said. Tom Krause, a Musk ally and the chief executive at Cloud Software Group, led the discussions with Treasury over the arrangement, the person said. Krause, who is working with DOGE, is among those expected to gain access to the system.”

(Popular Information) “The civil servants who oversee the OPM’s information technology services were then instructed to provide access to Musk’s associates, according to the OPM staffers who spoke to Musk Watch. One of the OPM staffers received an email from the agency’s new leadership instructing them to give Musk’s team “access [to] the system as an admin user” and “code read and write permissions.”

“They have access to the code itself, which means they can make updates to anything that they want,” the staffer explained.”

“Read only?” Seriously, they’ll do whatever they want…

(Wired) “Sources tell WIRED that Bobba, Coristine, Farritor, and Shaotran all currently have working GSA emails and A-suite level clearance at the GSA, which means that they work out of the agency’s top floor and have access to all physical spaces and IT systems, according a source with knowledge of the GSA’s clearance protocols. The source, who spoke to WIRED on the condition of anonymity because they fear retaliation, says they worry that the new teams could bypass the regular security clearance protocols to access the agency’s sensitive compartmented information facility, as the Trump administration has already granted temporary security clearances to unvetted people…

…“This is consistent with the pattern of a lot of tech executives who have taken certain roles of the administration,” says Bednar. “This raises concerns about regulatory capture and whether these individuals may have preferences that don’t serve the American public or the federal government.”

(threads) (altnationalparkservice) “Elon Musk’s staff has been caught red-handed installing hard drives inside key federal agencies, including the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), the Treasury Department, and the General Services Administration (GSA). Their goal? Unchecked access to critical government data and financial systems.

Things came to a head when Musk’s team demanded access to Treasury systems that control over $6 trillion annually in funding for Social Security and Medicare. Treasury officials pushed back, but the situation took a darker turn when Musk’s aides were discovered inside OPM, accessing highly sensitive personnel records. This includes the Enterprise Human Resources Integration (EHRI) database, which houses federal employees’ Social Security numbers, pay grades, home addresses, and performance records. In response to employees speaking out, Musk’s aides locked civil servants out of computer systems and offices, with reports of personal items being searched.” (Update: He’s in.)

Why stop there? Update!

(Wired) “Already, Musk’s lackeys have taken control of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and General Services Administration (GSA), and have gained access to the Treasury Department’s payment system, potentially allowing him access to a vast range of sensitive information about tens of millions of citizens, businesses, and more. On Sunday, CNN reported that DOGE personnel attempted to improperly access classified information and security systems at the US Agency for International Development and that top USAID security officials who thwarted the attempt were subsequently put on leave. The Associated Press reported that DOGE personnel had indeed accessed classified material…

“What we’re seeing is unprecedented in that you have these actors who are not really public officials gaining access to the most sensitive data in government,” says Don Moynihan, a professor of public policy at the University of Michigan. “We really have very little eyes on what’s going on. Congress has no ability to really intervene and monitor what’s happening because these aren’t really accountable public officials. So this feels like a hostile takeover of the machinery of governments by the richest man in the world.”…

(Popular Information) “Other databases Musk’s team has access to include USA Staffing, an onboarding system; USA Performance, a job performance review site; and HI, which the government uses to manage employee health care. “The health insurance one scares me because it’s HIPAA [protected] information, but they have access to all this stuff,” the OPM staffer noted.”

So, about system precautions under Muck..(checks notes) there are apparently none.

(Popular Information)“China and Russia are literally trying to hack us every day and we just gave all this data over to somebody that’s not been properly vetted,” one of the OPM staffers said. “It’s not just Amanda Scales, it’s all the [political appointees] in that office right now. So it’s multiple vulnerability points.” Outside actors have already gained access to some of the massive email lists that OPM created as part of Musk’s effort to convince federal employees to resign.

A new server being used to control these databases has been placed in a conference room that Musk’s team is using as their command center, according to an OPM staffer. The staffer described the server as a piece of commercial hardware they believed was not obtained through the proper federal procurement process.

There is a legal requirement that the installation of a new server undergo a Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA), a formal process to ensure the change would not create any security vulnerabilities. But in this instance, the staff believes there was no PIA. “So this application and corresponding hardware are illegally operating,” they added.”

Note: This situation is escalating quickly. Keep up with the Alt National Park Service crew here.

(CNN) “Two top security officials at the US Agency for International Development were put on administrative leave Saturday night after attempting to refuse officials from Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency access systems at the agency, even after DOGE personnel threatened to call law enforcement, multiple sources familiar told CNN.

According to sources, personnel from the Musk-created office physically tried to access the USAID headquarters in Washington, DC, and were stopped. The DOGE personnel demanded to be let in and threatened to call US Marshals to be allowed access, two of the sources said.

The DOGE personnel wanted to gain access to USAID security systems and personnel files, three sources said. Two of those sources also said the DOGE personnel wanted access to classified information, which only those with security clearances and a specific need to know are able to access.”

(Heather Cox Richardson) “USAID receives foreign policy guidance from the State Department. Intelligence agencies must now assume U.S. intelligence systems are insecure.

Musk’s response was to post: “USAID is a criminal organization. Time for it to die.” Also last night, according to Sam Stein of The Bulwark, “the majority of staff in the legislative and public affairs bureau lost access to their emails, implying they’ve been put on admin leave although this was never communicated to them.”

Congress established USAID in 1961 to bring together the many different programs that were administering foreign aid. Focusing on long-term socioeconomic development, USAID has a budget of more than $50 billion, less than 1% of the U.S. annual budget. It is one of the largest aid agencies in the world.”

“The systems include a vast database called Enterprise Human Resources Integration, which contains dates of birth, Social Security numbers, appraisals, home addresses, pay grades and length of service of government workers, the officials said.

“We have no visibility into what they are doing with the computer and data systems,” one of the officials said. “That is creating great concern. There is no oversight. It creates real cybersecurity and hacking implications. Officials affected by the move can still log on and access functions such as email but can no longer see the massive datasets that cover every facet of the federal workforce.”
Those helping Musk: individuals linked to xAI, Neuralink, the Boring Company, and Palantir

(federalnewsnetwork) The lawsuit from two anonymous federal employees in the executive branch alleges OPM violated the 2002 E-Government Act by not releasing details of how the communication system will manage federal employees’ personal information stored in the system.

Kel McClanahan, executive director of the National Security Counselors law firm, filed the pro bono lawsuit on behalf of the plaintiffs, alleging that the email system poses security risks for federal employees’ personal information.

“A one-stop shop for information about every government employee in the federal executive branch is just a treasure trove for hackers, or even just curiosity seekers,” McClanahan said in an interview.

(newrepublic) The Trump administration’s changes to its email settings has federal employees getting endlessly spammed with vulgar content.

When Trump took office, he changed the email system so that every single federal worker could be contacted with one email. People are taking advantage of that. According to online reports, all 13,000 employees of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, were flooded with spam emails on Thursday…

(Wall Street Journal) “In the past, Republicans have argued that Treasury’s payment system should be set up so that officials can give priority to which payments are issued by the department and potentially suspend those they don’t want made. 

For example, if there is a debt-ceiling crisis later this year that results in a government shutdown, some Republicans have said they want to ensure that debtholders receive payments, but that certain other government functions should be halted. That way, they argue, the government doesn’t default on its debt even if it doesn’t have enough cash to pay all of its bills.

What DOGE is apparently doing is different, and Hammond said he is particularly concerned about the risks of giving access to people who aren’t federal employees—partly because of their ability to access or change the payments system and partly because of sensitive national-security payments made through it. 

“This is nothing like any transition,” Hammond said. “They’re putting themselves and putting Treasury in a place where it truly doesn’t have legal authority.”

(Politico) “Musk suggested on Saturday that his government efficiency group’s effort to gain greater control over Treasury’s payments to Americans was about rooting out fraud or illicit payments… Musk did not offer any evidence for his claim that Treasury instructed employees to approve payments to known fraudulent or terrorist groups.

The Bureau of Fiscal Service, which operates Treasury’s payment system, has a payments integrity office tasked with identifying, preventing and recovering fraud and improper payments. According to Treasury, those efforts have prevented improper payments totaling nearly $155 million and have aided in the recovery of nearly $350 million.

“BFS is studiously apolitical,” said Lily Batchelder, who served as a Treasury secretary for tax policy during the Biden administration. “It is deeply concerning that political appointees in the White House would be attempting to interfere with people’s Social Security benefits and tax refunds.”