A group of labor unions is seeking an emergency order from a federal court to prevent Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) from accessing sensitive Social Security data on millions of Americans.
Legal services group Democracy Forward filed an emergency relief application late Friday in federal court in Maryland against the Social Security Administration (SSA) and its acting administrator, Leland Dudek. The unions want the court to block the Department of Government Effectiveness from accessing the vast trove of personal data held by the agency.
The filing included an affidavit from Tiffany Flick, a former senior official at the agency, saying career civil servants were trying to protect the data from Government Efficiency.
"Today, disregard for our carefully established systems and processes to protect privacy is threatening the security of the data on millions of Americans stored by the Social Security Administration," Flick wrote in the court filing.
Karianne Jones, an attorney representing the union that filed the lawsuit and a retiree group, said it's not entirely clear how the Department of Government Effectiveness might have obtained taxpayers' personal data. But she said the apparent scope of this access to data and the lack of understanding of exactly what data Government Effectiveness was looking for meant the potential impact was "huge".
"Basically the Department of Government Efficiency swooped in and forcibly obtained the private data of millions of Americans," she said. "They couldn't explain why they wanted the data. They couldn't tell you exactly what data they wanted. They just wanted to get all the data."
The Social Security Administration did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit, which was originally filed last month.
In similar cases against the Department of Government Efficiency, judges have not always found the risk imminent enough to prevent it from accessing government systems.