Social Security faces 80-year crisis after Trump employee steals data

According to a whistleblower, a former DOGE employee with access to highly sensitive Social Security databases planned on sharing data with his private employer. As a result, reports the Washington Post, the Social Security Administration (SSA) is investigating what would be among the biggest security breaches in the agency’s 80-year history.

In letters from the agency’s acting inspector general, Congress and the Government Accountability Office were notified of the disclosure and investigation, and the latter has launched its own audit of DOGE’s data access. Per the whistleblower, an ex-DOGE software engineer bragged to coworkers that he not only possessed two highly restricted databases containing information for some 500 million Americans both dead and alive, but that he had one database on a thumb drive that he planned on using to provide data to a private company. Whether or not he was successful was not included in the complaint and has not been reported.

In the past, tighter restrictions around data access were maintained to prevent such leaks, but in summer of 2025, the Supreme Court gave DOGE employees “unfettered” access to Social Security data. As a result, the ex-DOGE member in question claimed to have been given “God-level” security access. After leaving the agency, he allegedly kept not only the thumb drive, but his agency computer and credentials.

Before the investigation was even launched, SSA spokesman Barton Mackey claimed that the whistleblower’s allegations were “found to be false based on evidence and investigations by all involved.” But in August 2025, former SSA chief data officer Charles Borges claimed that such data mishandling was common, and then in January of this year, the Department of Justice admitted that other DOGE employees had shared sensitive data, with the Trump Administration revealing that at least one planned on providing Social Security data to a political advocacy group that intended to use the information to overturn election results in key states.

The latest incident is one of many that have prompted criticisms of the Administration’s lax approach to data security.

“Not only has an ex-DOGE bro been accused of running around with the Social Security information of every American on a flash drive, he also may have the ability to edit and manipulate data at the Social Security Administration at will,” declared Congressman Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. “This is dangerous and outrageous, and Oversight Committee Democrats will fight for transparency and accountability.”

While Republicans have largely sought to downplay the situation, as Leland Dudek, former acting commissioner of the SSA under Trump, admitted, if information was leaked, it “violates the law.”

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