From the New York Times (emphasis added):
A judicial nominee slated for a key Senate committee vote on Thursday helped devise an illegal Education Department effort to use private Social Security data to deny debt relief to thousands of students cheated by their for-profit colleges, according to a memo obtained by The New York Times.
The plan, outlined by Steven J. Menashi when he was acting general counsel under Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, was ruled by a federal judge to violate federal privacy laws. She ordered the department to stop the practice.
In the memo, President Trump’s appeals court nominee, who left the Education Department to join the White House legal team, outlined the department’s plan to use earnings data from the Social Security Administration to forgive only a small percentage of debts shouldered by 30,000 borrowers who attended Corinthian Colleges, a for-profit chain that the Obama administration found misled thousands of students. Corinthian’s collapse left its students and graduates with worthless degrees and mountains of debt. ...The department halted use of the data after Judge Kim’s ruling. It had obtained the data from the Social Security Administration to implement another Obama-era regulation intended to force for-profit colleges to show that their degrees would lead to gainful employment.
Menashi's nomination cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday by a vote of 12-10.In his memo, Mr. Menashi wrote that data obtained to hold for-profit colleges accountable could be repurposed to scrutinize their students. ...
Data exchange agreements, even ones required by law, have controls and limitations about approved use. I wonder if this was reported to SSA's OIG if they would look into it? Or, given it was wage data which the IRS considers theirs, reporting it to TIGTA? (Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration) Because if this was an approved use, one could ask why and if it was unapproved, there are literal consequences in law. But while one might think they'd see this and look into it on their own, might need someone to actually make a complaint.
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