DOGE employee stole Social Security data and put it on a thumb drive, report says
Source: TechCrunch
A former employee of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) reportedly stole Americans’ personal data from the U.S. Social Security Administration (SSA) and stored it on a thumb drive, according to a whistleblower complaint reported by The Washington Post.
The former DOGE software engineer told co‑workers at his new job that he “possessed two tightly restricted databases of U.S. citizens’ information” and was planning to use the information at his new company. The SSA’s inspector general is investigating the whistleblower complaint.
The SSA did not immediately respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment.
The former DOGE employee, who was not named by The Washington Post, worked at the SSA last year. In October he left to join a government contractor, where he told colleagues that he had obtained two databases—Numident and the Master Death File—that could contain records for “more than 500 million living and dead Americans, including Social Security numbers, places and dates of birth, citizenship, race and ethnicity, and parents’ names.” He also claimed to have previously had unrestricted “God‑level” access to the SSA’s systems.
Prior Incidents Involving DOGE
- January 2026: Two DOGE members were suspected of accessing and sharing Social Security numbers that were off‑limits, allegedly to aid an advocacy group seeking to “overturn election results in certain States”【https://techcrunch.com/2026/01/20/trump-administration-admits-doge-may-have-misused-americans-social-security-data/】.
- 2025: A whistleblower within the agency said DOGE members put Americans at risk by uploading hundreds of millions of Social Security records to a vulnerable cloud server【http://techcrunch.com/2025/08/26/doge-uploaded-live-copy-of-social-security-database-to-vulnerable-cloud-server-says-whistleblower/】.
- March 2025: A federal judge blocked DOGE from accessing SSA systems, accusing the Musk‑led agency of conducting a “fishing expedition” in search of fraud【http://techcrunch.com/2025/03/20/federal-judge-blocks-doges-access-to-social-security-administrations-banks-of-personal-information/】.
- 2025: Several DOGE members were installed at the SSA after the Trump administration took office, with at least a dozen DOGE employees—mostly technical staff or engineers—working at the agency, though their roles and activities were not communicated to the rest of the staff【https://techcrunch.com/2025/05/20/the-people-in-elon-musk-doge-universe/】.