President-elect Donald Trump listens to Elon Musk as he arrives to watch SpaceX’s mega-rocket Starship lift off for a test flight from Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas, Nov. 19, 2024 (Brandon Bell/Pool via AP, File).
A federal judge in Maryland issued a temporary restraining order on Thursday blocking the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) from accessing citizens’ personal data at the Social Security Administration (SSA), saying the Elon Musk-led organization was essentially on a “fishing expedition” to make good on the baseless claims of widespread fraud coming from the Trump administration.
“The American public may well applaud and support the Trump Administration’s mission to root out fraud, waste, and bloat from federal agencies, including SSA, to the extent it exists. But, by what means and methods?” U.S. District Judge Ellen Hollander wrote in a scathing 137-page opinion. “The DOGE Team is essentially engaged in a fishing expedition at SSA, in search of a fraud epidemic, based on little more than suspicion. It has launched a search for the proverbial needle in the haystack, without any concrete knowledge that the needle is actually in the haystack.”
Musk himself has repeatedly alleged that Social Security is rife with fraud, though he’s yet to produce any concrete evidence to back up that claim. Over the last few weeks he has referred to Social Security as “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time” as well as “one big pyramid scheme.”
Hollander’s order will allow DOGE to continue systems training and permit its employees to access data from the SSA systems, provided the DOGE employees have “received all training that is typically required of individuals granted access to SSA data systems” and the data is anonymized
In addition to blocking DOGE, Hollander ordered the organization and those affiliated with it to immediately “disgorge and delete” any personally identifying data in their possession and remove any software or code it may have installed or altered on the SSA computer systems.
The order emphasized that Justice Department attorneys “offered no meaningful explanation” as to why DOGE employees had a “need” for “unprecedented, unfettered access” to “virtually SSA’s entire data systems” when it was ostensibly tasked with modernizing technology and maximizing efficiency.
“Besides cursory, circular statements about members of the DOGE Team in need of all SSA data because of their work to identify fraudulent or improper payments, counsel provided no explanation as to why or how the particular records correlated to the performance of job duties,” the judge wrote. “Defendants have not submitted declarations from the hired experts on the DOGE Team explaining why such unrestricted and unfettered access is necessary. They have not provided a particularized explanation of how or why virtually the entire data base of SSA is needed to conduct the investigation, or why redacted or anonymized records, at least initially, would be inadequate. The silence on this issue is deafening.”
The lawsuit, one of a flurry against DOGE since Trump created the organization, was filed last month by a coalition of national labor organizations along with a grassroots advocacy group. The complaint alleged that the Trump administration and DOGE employees, in particular, were being granted unfettered access to the Social Security computer systems in breach of privacy laws.
“We are once again faced with Executive Branch overreach, threatening to review and expose the personal data of millions of Americans, without any express authority, and in violation of the many protections Congress and the Executive Branch have erected to protect against such data mining and misuse,” the suit stated. “Never before has a group of unelected, unappointed, and unvetted individuals — misleadingly and conflictingly described as White House employees, employees of agencies (multiple and many), and undefined ‘advisors’— sought or gained access to such sensitive information from agencies across the Executive Branch.”
Hollander similarly emphasized the seemingly paradoxical nature of the identities of DOGE employees being shrouded in secrecy while simultaneously seeking access to Americans’ most private information.
“Ironically, the identity of these DOGE affiliates has been concealed because defendants are concerned that the disclosure of even their names would expose them to harassment and thus invade their privacy,” she wrote. “The defense does not appear to share a privacy concern for the millions of Americans whose SSA records were made available to the DOGE affiliates, without their consent, and which contain sensitive, confidential, and personally identifiable information.”
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