What It’s Supposed To Be Like

      A letter to the Bozeman Daily Chronicle:

This is a shoutout to the staff at Bozeman’s Social Security office, who recently helped me apply for retirement benefits in a professional and incredibly helpful manner.

My case was perhaps a bit more complicated than most in that I’d worked both in the U.S. and overseas, so there were several application details to figure out. I’d gotten a letter from the Denver-based Social Security office saying that my application process had stalled because they needed more information from me.

So I drove over to the local office, thinking, “More information? What more information?,” not knowing what to expect when I arrived (application delays? Denial?).

SSA Wants Kiosks

      From a contracting notice posted by Social Security:

This is a Request for Information. The agency wants to deploy secure, accessible self-service kiosks nationwide to further modernize service delivery and improve customer experience. These kiosks will empower customers to complete routine transactions independently, reduce lobby congestion, and offer flexible service options. The Self-Service Kiosks will supplement existing check-in systems and integrate with SSA’s network and infrastructure, with robust accessibility features. This initiative enhances, not replaces, in-person service.

     My recollection is that this was tried before and made little progress. 

Bisignano Testimony Panned By GOP Congressman

      From Politico:

A Republican tax writer ripped IRS CEO Frank Bisignano on Wednesday, blasting him as unprepared for his appearance before the House Ways and Means Committee.

“This is unacceptable,” Rep. Max Miller (R-Ohio) told Bisignano, who frequently offered vague answers to lawmakers’ questions about tax-filing season, Republicans’ signature tax cuts and other issues.

“You really need to come in here and answer the questions that these members ask you directly, and saying ‘I’ll come see you in your office,’ even to me, on very basic questions that I’m asking you, is really upsetting,” Miller said. “I am very embarrassed right now for my side.” …

Miller was frustrated by Bisignano’s answers to his inquiries about the agency’s plans for taxing digital assets, an admittedly arcane topic. But Bisignano’s responses to lawmakers’ questions on a range of issues were often vague and repetitive. And he appeared to be unfamiliar with some aspects of President Donald Trump’s signature tax breaks. …

Miller said he blamed Bisignano’s advisers who accompanied him to the hearing.

“You need to do a better job of educating the IRS commissioner about the questions that he’s coming here to answer,” Miller told them. “If I was working for a principal, I would never let them walk into a hearing like this.”

Who’s Running The Show?

 

    Frank Bisignano is simultaneously trying to be Commissioner of Social Security and “CEO” of the IRS, a position that doesn’t really exist. When he was nominated to be Commissioner he openly admitted that he knew little about the agency he was supposed to run. Even if he’s a quick learner there’s no way that I can see that he can run Social Security on a day to day basis without subjecting himself to a ton of briefings so that he can understand the issues he’s deciding on. How can he possibly have time for that when he’s also trying to run the IRS, especially if he’s interacting with others at Social Security mainly through video?

      My question is whether insiders think Bisignano is actually running things at the agency on a daily basis. If he isn’t, who is? I suppose one possibility is that Bisignano is making the decisions but without bothering to understand the issues. If you regard Social Security as fundamentally unimportant and don’t expect to be around long, why bother with trying to understand arcane issues? If Trump didn’t bother with understanding the issues presented by embarking with war on Iran, why should Bisignano bother with understanding the issues at Social Security? How important can Social Security be? It pays its Commissioner far less than a million a year, peanuts in Bisignano’s world.

Bisignano Declines To Answer Questions

      From the Los Angeles Times:

The head of the IRS largely declined to answer questions about recent unlawful disclosures of taxpayer data when he was questioned by lawmakers at a congressional hearing on Wednesday, saying they happened before his tenure began.  …

“Was anyone fired? Was anyone disciplined? Was anyone held accountable? Was anyone held to account?” Rep. Mike Thompson (D-Calif.) asked Bisignano.

Bisignano cited ongoing litigation and declined to answer questions about the disclosures, adding, “I don’t want to debate the numbers.” …

     A Democratic chairman of the Committee would not allow Bisignano to decide which questions he wouldn’t  answer which is why Bisignano will quickly decide to spend more time with his family and his fortune if Democrats seize control of either the Senate or House in November.

Congressional Hearing Today

      Here’s a reminder that a full Ways and Means Committee hearing with Commissioner Bisignano is coming up at 10:00 today. It’s supposed to be about Bisignano’s role at the IRS but I imagine that Social Security will come up. You can watch online.

A Lot Worse

 

    The Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund (DREDF) has produced a report on customer service at Social Security since DOGE entered the picture. Not surprisingly, they report significant deterioration in service.

Scam Call Center Shut Down

   

  From Yahoo! Finance:

A collaborative effort by the FBI, local police and Indian authorities has shut down a huge scam call center operation in India that saw Americans lose nearly $50 million. …

The FBI says that about 660 people in the U.S. reported falling victim to government impersonation and tech support scams since 2022 that were connected to the call centers, with losses totaling a staggering $48,778,230. In Maryland alone, nearly two dozen victims reported losing a total of $6,257,869. …

Interesting Parallel

      From the Washington Post:

A federal judge has found that the Internal Revenue Service violated federal law “approximately 42,695 times” when it shared confidential taxpayer addresses with immigration enforcement officials last summer.


U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly issued the ruling Thursday as part of ongoing litigation over a data-sharing arrangement between the IRS and the Department of Homeland Security.


Federal law requires that before the IRS hands over a taxpayer’s address, a requesting agency must first provide the IRS with the name and address of the person it’s looking for. The requirement exists to ensure that the government can access confidential tax records only for individuals it has already specifically identified.
The ruling finds that DHS did not follow this law. The judge wrote that the vast majority of the nearly 47,300 taxpayer addresses the IRS shared with Immigration and Customs Enforcement in August were disclosed without the IRS confirming that ICE provided a valid address for the person whose records it was seeking. … 

     This happened just before Bisignano became the “CEO” of the IRS. The data compromises at Social Security happened just before Bisignano became Commissioner of Social Security.

Interview With Commissioner

      The AARP recently interviewed Social Security Commissioner Frank Bisignano. They’ve published a transcript. The questions were only of the softball variety. They didn’t even ask about his dual role with the IRS!

Bisignano To Testify At Congressional Hearing

      The House Ways and Means Committee has scheduled a hearing with Social Security Commissioner Frank Bisignano for 10:00 on March 4. However, this hearing concerns Bisignano’s position as “CEO” of the IRS, a position that doesn’t really exist. Nothing will prevent Committee members from asking questions about Social Security or Bisignano’s business history.

A Poll

 

Four Times? Accidental?

      From Fox 4:

… 94-year-old Helen Cvik was declared legally dead in December 2025 by Social Security. The problem is, Miss Helen is still alive.

It's the fourth time since 2017 that Miss Helen has been declared dead by the SSA, including twice in 2025 alone. The first and second incidents in 2017 and 2020 were resolved quickly, with no explanation given for the error. …

The most recent accidental declaration has not been resolved, leaving Miss Helen and her family to pick up a $5,000 bill to cover her insurance, prescriptions, and her assisted living facility care. …

Computer Systems Down

      I understand that Social Security is having nationwide computer systems problems today. Could this be related to reassigning staff who normally maintain such systems to answering the phone?

Immigration Brutality At Social Security

      From Fox 4:

59-year-old Ramona Rakestraw said she has relied on Supplemental Security Income, or SSI, as her sole source of income while battling kidney disease and cancer. She tells FOX 4 that her payments stopped in October after she was told her immigration status was under review.

Rakestraw said she was born in 1966 at Parkland Hospital in Dallas [where JFK was taken after being shot] and has never lived outside Dallas County nor has she traveled outside the United States.

Kidney disease first sent Rakestraw to dialysis at age 28. 

She later received a transplant, but about 30 years later she returned to dialysis and received a cancer diagnosis in 2024.  …

Rakestraw said she took her identification and birth certificate to her local Social Security office in an effort to resolve the issue.

"That’s my income, my whole income," she said. …

Rakestraw said she has filed an appeal and completed the required paperwork. …

     And now the problem has been solved. It only took the involvement of a TV station. 

Over 1 Billion SSNs Exposed

      From PC Mag:

In a disturbing find, a cybersecurity vendor discovered an exposed online database that may have been storing as many as 1 billion Social Security numbers (SSNs). 

A database indexed using Elasticsearch was left open on the internet, according to security provider UpGuard. The stockpile contained 3 billion records, including email addresses and passwords, along with another dataset of 2.7 billion records, including SSNs.

Specifically, the SSNs consisted of two datasets spanning 353.3GB and 76.7GB, for a total of 430GB, UpGuard told PCMag. The company suspects a hacker or “amateurish threat intelligence vendor” is behind the database.  …

Other Than This, DOGE Was Great

      From an Interim Staff Analysis by the Democratic Staff of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform:

Following Elon Musk’s support for Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign, President Trump handed the U.S. government over to the world’s richest man through the U.S. Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. DOGE was nothing short of a catastrophe. It failed to achieve its stated goals and wreaked havoc across the federal government, weakening or terminating programs and services that the American people rely on and endangering privacy and public safety while President Trump and his billionaire friends line their own pockets. This interim staff analysis presents a preliminary account of DOGE’s costly and destructive actions during the first 13 months of President Trump’s second Administration, including: 

• Decimation and Demoralization of the Federal Workforce. DOGE coordinated with other executive branch agencies to purge the expert federal workforce and chill the nonpartisan civil servants that are left to serve the public. 

• Unlawful Attacks on Statutory Programs. The Trump Administration and DOGE have unlawfully attempted to abolish statutory programs and agencies. 

• Delay, Degradation, and Elimination of Programs and Services for Americans. From delays in getting new medications to patients, to diminished access to Social Security services and food safety inspections, to greater wildfire risks, to a global instability, the harms DOGE has imposed on the everyday lives of Americans are vast, varied, and still unfolding.

• Reckless Handling of Americans’ Data. DOGE illegally deployed systems and forcefully accessed data across federal agencies in clear violation of federal privacy and cybersecurity laws, putting Americans’ data and civil liberties at risk. 

• Dismantling of Safeguards Against Waste, Fraud, Abuse, and Corruption. The Trump Administration has weakened or eliminated key offices, fired employees, and invalidated or removed rules and regulations dedicated to protecting the public interest; and 

• Lying to the American Public. DOGE and its defenders have been caught providing false claims in court and to the American people. Additionally, DOGE claims that it terminated more than 13,440 contracts, 264 leases, and 15,887 grants across the federal government. However, DOGE’s estimated “savings” have been frequently found to be wildly inaccurate and inconsistent. The high costs of DOGE unequivocally erase any verified savings it can claim, and the full extent of its lies are still coming into focus. DOGE personnel also violated security protocols when accessing highly sensitive Social Security Administration data and potentially deceived agency leaders and federal courts to avoid disclosing those violations.

The Trump Administration has funneled an estimated $81 million to fund DOGE employees, resources, and activities with virtually no transparency or mechanisms of accountability. This staff analysis resulted in the following preliminary findings regarding the American people’s return on this egregiously mishandled investment:  

• Through DOGE alone, President Trump has cost the American people billions of dollars in damage and an intangible amount of waste and suffering. 

• President Trump used DOGE as a smokescreen to make billionaires richer at the expense of hardworking Americans. 

• America needs serious oversight and government reform that is by, of, and for the American people—not reckless and corrupt billionaires.

A New Cyberattack

      From Hackread:

A new wave of cyberattacks is stalking organisations across the UK, US, Canada, and Northern Ireland. According to the latest research from Forcepoint X-labs, attackers are impersonating the US Social Security Administration (SSA) to bypass security and take total control of private computers. ...  

It starts with an email that looks official but is riddled with red flags, like the fake domain SSA.COM and the misspelling of Statement as “eStatemet.” If a user falls for the bait and opens the attached .cmd script, the computer quietly begins to sabotage its own defences. The X-labs team’s report noted that the script’s first job is to check for administrator powers using a technique called PowerShell auto-elevation. Once it has control, it kills Windows SmartScreen (the system that usually blocks suspicious apps from running) by modifying the computer’s registry. It also strips away the Mark-of-the-Web, a hidden digital tag Windows uses to identify files from the internet. ...  

Once the guards are down, the script performs a silent installation of ConnectWise ScreenConnect. In a normal office, this is a legitimate tool for IT support. However, here, hackers are weaponising it as a Remote Access Trojan (RAT) to maintain a permanent “backdoor” into the network. Researchers noted that the software is hardcoded via a System.config file to call back to a specific server: ...

An Analysis Of The New Plan To Use SSA To Trap Inmigrants

       We face the prospect of noncitizens showing up for appointments at Social Security being arrested by ICE on their way into or out of the office because the agency has tipped off ICE. AltSSA, an anonymous Blue Sky account, has analyzed some of the legal aspects of what’s going to happen.

1/21 OK we are gonna start with this story. This is gonna be long and a little nuanced so stick with me. There will be a lot in here that will address SSA employees directly so if you know an SSA employee, please share with them! And if you see any errors or gaps in my knowledge, please let me know!

https://www.wired.com/story/social-security-administration-appointment-details-ice/

2/21 First it’s important to point out that allowing this type of data sharing is not technically new. It has been rare, specific, and approved individually. Also reminder here that if an immigrant has an SSN, they were documented and legal at the time the SSN was issued. We verify it with DHS.

3/21 A lot of appts are by phone, but certain appts require we verify ID and/or legal status at the appt, so these are done in person. This includes applying for an SSN for the first time, or a replacement card if not a citizen, or applying for benefits if you are an immigrant who can (ie refugees).

4/21 Side note that requiring immigrants already on benefits (mostly refugees who are disabled or elderly) to reverify legal status in person when doing their periodic redetermination, even if we know the document they have has an expiration date in the future, is a new policy and not coincidental.

5/21 This is likely because the regime is doing things like terminating Temporary Protected Status for countries like Haiti, which is, by definition, creating undocumented immigrants who were documented and legal until they changed that. Because they are garbage meat sacks masquerading as humans. 🤬🤬

6/21 Anyway. Let’s talk about current policy around sharing data with law enforcement/DHS. Like many of our policies, you can view this online (see link). This policy was last updated 4/2025 so by this regime. It details that such requests are supposed to be in writing and meet specific criteria.

https://secure.ssa.gov/apps10/poms.nsf/lnx/0203313095

7/21 The specific criteria can be found here (secure.ssa.gov/apps10/poms....) and here (secure https://secure.ssa.gov/apps10/poms.nsf/lnx/0203312080) and they are very specific. Each request is supposed to be approved individually by the Office of Privacy and Disclosure within the Office of the General Counsel at SSA.

8/21 Now they do mention one other policy that allows for ad hoc requests by LEOs (https://secure.ssa.gov/apps10/poms.nsf/lnx/0203312090....) which was updated in December 2025, but even that requires approval by the OPD and does not state an SSA employee can just give info to an ICE agent. It says the opposite actually.

9/21 So why did I do a policy deep dive? So it is crystal clear to everyone that this communication is being given verbally to specific offices only because they know this goes against our own policies and is almost certainly illegal on some level. This is not something we are allowed to do. Period. …

“They Should Be Helping Us”

       From The Columbian:

For the past several weeks, Sandra Graber has been desperately trying to help her friend, a 79-year-old Vancouver [Washington] resident, recover Social Security payments that didn’t arrive in December and January.

Her friend can’t go online to resolve the issue because she doesn’t own a computer.

Many senior citizens across Clark County and the United States are grappling with recent changes to Social Security and the increasing role that digital technology plays in their day-to-day lives.

Graber — a Cornelius, Ore., resident — didn’t want her friend named because she has early-onset dementia. Graber serves as her agent under power of attorney. She recently took her to the Social Security Administration office in Vancouver, where they were told that they could either wait in line for several hours or make an appointment for two months out. 

“They should be helping us. We’re paying them to help us,” Graber said. “And saying, ‘We’re short staffed; we just can’t get to it,’ that’s inexcusable. I’m sure there’s other people out there that are having the same problem that we’re having, and I feel sorry for them.” …

Graber, however, remains frustrated that the system hasn’t provided a viable way for people such as her friend who can’t go online and can’t easily confirm their identity in person or via phone call due to medical issues to access their benefits.

“There are people out there with different problems,” Graber said. “It just doesn’t make a lot of sense.” …