“The opaque office\u2019s early moves have violated the Privacy Act and cybersecurity laws, according to legal experts, and triggered a lawsuit challenging the Trump administration\u2019s assault on government bureaucracy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Legal and security experts are particularly exercised by Musk\u2019s move to shutter the U.S. Agency for International Development and take control of the Treasury Department\u2019s central payments database. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe scale here is unprecedented in terms of the risk to sensitive personal and financial information,\u201d said Alan Butler of the Electronic Privacy Information Center. \u201cIt\u2019s an absolute nightmare.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Musk-led effort to gain entry into Treasury\u2019s huge payment database<\/a> drew a lawsuit Monday from two major federal employee unions<\/a> and left some lawyers who specialize in regulation of such data nearly apoplectic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mary Ellen Callahan, former Chief Privacy Officer at the Department of Homeland Security, called DOGE\u2019s access \u201ca data breach of exponential proportions.\u201d \u201cIf we lose control of that data, we\u2019ve lost control forever,\u201d she said.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n …<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Other lawyers said DOGE\u2019s access could also violate cybersecurity-related laws, like the Federal Information Security Modernization Act of 2002.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Reports that career employees at the Office of Personnel Management were locked out of key databases by DOGE personnel also triggered deep concern Monday among legal and security experts. A key OPM database was breached by hackers in 2013, prompting widespread outrage from lawmakers and federal workers. The U.S. government blamed the hack on China and said the data could be used to target or enlist federal employees in espionage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThey\u2019re not following the law, they\u2019re not following any semblance of best practice, they\u2019re just hacking and slashing government IT systems in a way that threatens national security and puts everyone at risk,\u201d Butler said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Claims by Musk that he is shutting down USAID were met with widespread skepticism as well. USAID was created through an executive order issued by President John F. Kennedy in 1961. But it was formally established as a federal government agency by Congress in 1998, creating doubts about Trump\u2019s authority to simply abolish it or, as Secretary of State Marco Rubio has suggested, fold it into the State Department.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI think it\u2019s the most clearly unconstitutional act that he\u2019s doing,\u201d said Alex Joel, an adjunct professor of law at American University. \u201cHe can\u2019t just destroy the whole agency.\u201d”<\/p>\n\n\n\n