Action 124 – What the DOGE Knows
Background: We alluded to the ongoing data heist in Action 114. The following text is lifted verbatim from a May 16 article by Jacob Knutson on the Democracy Docket website (1)
“Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is going from federal agency to federal agency attempting to collect and centralize vast amounts of personal information on millions of people in the U.S., including social security numbers, medical and banking records and more.
DOGE taking personal data from federal agencies has been challenged in dozens of lawsuits as a violation of the Privacy Act of 1974, which regulates how federal agencies can use, and how they must handle, individually identifiable information.
Experts have cautioned that DOGE’s access to such data heightens the risk of personal information being exposed to hackers and foreign adversaries. And privacy advocates have warned that its effort could result in a sprawling domestic surveillance system in the U.S.
Under the Privacy Act, citizens have the right to request to know what personal information may be held by federal agencies. And since the Trump administration is funding DOGE as if it were a federal agency, people should be able to make Privacy Act requests to it, too.
Congressional Democrats have set up resources to help people do just that. For example, the offices of Reps. Jamie Raskin (Md.) and Maggie Goodlander (N.H.) have made a Privacy Act request form that people can print and fill out and mail to DOGE requesting that it provide an accounting of personal information it currently possesses.
The ACLU also created a letter template that people can use to urge their representatives in Congress to conduct oversight into DOGE’s actions.”
Action (1) Request your data using the above-mentioned form. You can do this if you are curious and/or want to create some red-tape (2) for DOGE to process (probably with no efficiency whatsoever). If you do decide to go through with it, keep a record of the response you get, if any, and whether you found it necessary or even possible to correct any errors in the record. The expectation is that they will come up with absolutely nothing – whether or not they have any info, they will probably just stonewall the request, or pretend they have so many pages to copy that they will need a large payment, which of course you won’t be making.
Action (2) Follow the suggestions in ACLU’s letter template, but send your request directly to our Congresspeople in your own words through their websites. Don’t let the only Reps working on this issue be from Md and NH! OUR Congress critters need to understand that we deserve data privacy.
Urgency: not urgent, but could be interesting, especially in light of the “big ugly bill” negotiations.
Extra Credit:
(1) https://www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/how-to-find-out-what-doge-knows-about-you/
(3) The “big ugly budget bill” contains language codifying some of DOGE’s actions, which could protect them from legal challenge. https://www.morningstar.com/news/marketwatch/20250307279/heres-the-republican-plan-to-make-doge-cuts-permanent