John Solly Is The Alleged Culprit In Data Theft

      From Wired:

JOHN SOLLY, A software engineer and former member of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), is the DOGE operative reportedly accused in a whistleblower complaint of telling colleagues that he stored sensitive Social Security Administration (SSA) data on a thumb drive and wanted to share the information with his new employer, multiple sources tell WIRED.

Since October, according to a copy of his résumé, Solly has worked as the chief technology officer for the health IT division of a government contractor called Leidos, which has already received millions in SSA contracts and could receive up to $1.5 billion in contracts with SSA based on a five-year deal it signed in 2023. Solly’s personal website and LinkedIn have been taken offline as of this week. …

Do You Trust The “Investigation”?

       From the Washington Post:

The Social Security Administration’s internal watchdog is investigating a complaint that alleges a former U.S. DOGE Service employee claimed he had access to two highly sensitive agency databases and planned to share the information with his private employer — a claim that, if true, would constitute an unprecedented breach of security protocols at an agency that serves more than 70 million Americans.
 …

According to the disclosure, the former DOGE software engineer, who worked at the Social Security Administration last year before starting a job at a government contractor in October, allegedly told several co-workers that he possessed two tightly restricted databases of U.S. citizens’ information, and had at least one on a thumb drive. The databases, called “Numident” and the “Master Death File,” include records for more than 500 million living and dead Americans, including Social Security numbers, places and dates of birth, citizenship, race and ethnicity, and parents’ names. The complaint does not include specific dates of when he is said to have told colleagues this information, but at least one of the alleged events unfolded around early January, according to the complaint. While working at DOGE, the engineer had approved access to Social Security data.

According to the complaint, he allegedly told the whistleblower that he needed help transferring data from a thumb drive “to his personal computer so that he could ‘sanitize’ the data before using it at [the company.]” The engineer told colleagues that once he had removed personal details from the data, he wanted to upload it into the company’s systems. He told another colleague, who refused to help him upload the data because of legal concerns, that he expected to receive a presidential pardon if his actions were deemed to be illegal, according to the complaint. ….

The whistleblower filed the complaint with the inspector general in January. When The Post contacted the agency and the company in January, both said they had not heard of the complaint. Both said they subsequently looked into the allegations and did not find evidence to confirm the claims. The company said it had conducted a “thorough” two-day internal investigation and concluded the assertions were unsubstantiated. Reached this week, both declined further comment. … 

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.

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.

DOGE Handling Of SSA Data About What We Expected — Highly Illegal

      From Politico:

Two members of Elon Musk’s DOGE team working at the Social Security Administration were secretly in touch with an advocacy group seeking to “overturn election results in certain states,” and one signed an agreement that may have involved using Social Security data to match state voter rolls, the Justice Department revealed in newly disclosed court papers.

Elizabeth Shapiro, a top Justice Department official, said SSA referred both DOGE employees for potential violations of the Hatch Act, which bars government employees from using their official positions for political purposes.

Shapiro’s previously unreported disclosure, dated Friday, came as part of a list of “corrections” to testimony by top SSA officials during last year’s legal battles over DOGE’s access to Social Security data. They revealed that DOGE team members shared data on unapproved “third-party” servers and may have accessed private information that had been ruled off-limits by a court at the time. …

Shapiro, a longtime DOJ veteran, said it’s not yet clear whether either of the two DOGE team members — who are not identified in her filing – actually shared data with the advocacy group, which is also unidentified. But she said emails “suggest that DOGE Team members could have been asked to assist the advocacy group by accessing SSA data to match to the voter rolls.” …

Shapiro also revealed that Steve Davis, a senior adviser to Musk and DOGE’s team, was copied on a March 3, 2025 email that included a password-protected file containing private information of about 1,000 people contained in Social Security systems. It’s unclear, she said, whether Davis ever accessed the file. And Shapiro said current SSA employees have been unable to access the file to determine precisely what it contained. …

Doing The Right Thing

     From the Washington Post:

Charles Borges, then chief data officer for the vast Social Security Administration, was alarmed last when he learned that members of Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service had copied a mainframe database containing the personal information of hundreds of millions of Americans, including names, birthdays, addresses and more.

The discovery prompted Borges to file a whistleblower complaint in August, telling Congress and the Office of Special Counsel that the cloud server where the database was uploaded had little oversight and was vulnerable to attacks by bad actors. 

The result: He said the Trump administration’s reaction to his complaint caused him to feel isolated and subject to a hostile work environment, prompting him to resign and give up a decades-long government career and dream job. … 

Borges is not the only Social Security official to raise concerns about the safety of data under the U.S. DOGE Service, which was launched by billionaire Elon Musk to cut costs across the government. 

Former acting Social Security commissioner Leland Dudek — who was elevated to that role by the Trump administration after showing loyalty to DOGE — said in an interview that Borges’s worries, as documented in his whistleblower report, are both “appropriate” and “accurate.” Dudek, who said he is on paid administrative leave pending a full separation from Social Security, said the type of cloud server that DOGE used is not sufficiently protected for such personal information and has been a well-known problem for years. 

“That absolutely has been the problem with that environment since I’ve been with the agency, that it is too little secured,” Dudek said. Borges, he continued, is “absolutely right.” …

The DOGE Chaos

      From the New York Times (emphasis added):

At the height of its power, the Department of Government Efficiency was operating out of headquarters that had become a haphazard scene of armed guards, makeshift bedrooms, children’s toys and windows obscured with garbage bags, according to a new report from Senate Democrats that accuses President Trump’s federal cost-cutting operation of putting Americans’ data security at risk. 

Staff members for Senator Gary Peters of Michigan, the top Democrat on the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, reported that young DOGE aides living and working on the sixth floor of the General Services Administration building sat at workstations eight or 10 laptops deep, where they were able to operate on Starlink networks that could have allowed them to work without being tracked. … 

In one instance, the report cites whistle-blower disclosures alleging that Jon Koval, a former DOGE employee at the Social Security Administration, asked about the possibility of uploading data to the cloud so that it could be retrieved by the Department of Homeland Security, but was rebuffed. One whistle-blower also said that data from Social Security’s numerical identification system, called Numident, did show up at the Homeland Security Department in a strange format, suggesting that it was not shared via a normal interagency process. …

    And from the report itself:

... An internal SSA risk assessment determined that the likelihood of a data breach with “catastrophic adverse effect” is between 35 and 65 percent. ...

During agency site visits, staff observed each DOGE workspace cordoned off with armed guards, providing an unusual layer of protection to their activities. Staff were not provided clear reasons why this was needed. Beyond security, DOGE workspaces were either completely or largely empty as their staff were able to work remotely at their discretion (despite strict in-office requirements for regular federal employees, in many cases without adequate office space).  ...

4th Circuit Hears DOGE Case En Banc After SCOTUS Leaves Them In A Quandry

      From Courthouse News Service:

An en banc Fourth Circuit debated the role of appellate courts during a testy hearing Thursday concerning an attempt to stop Department of Government Efficiency employees from accessing Social Security data.

A federal judge blocked DOGE from accessing the systems in March, questioning why officials needed large quantities of sensitive information on Social Security recipients. The Fourth Circuit denied the government’s attempt to stay the injunction ruling on the side of labor unions and retirees.

“The crux of this case and the crux of plaintiffs’ position is that government cannot grant itself an all-access pass to confidential, sensitive information merely by boldly asserting the word ’need’ or even the word ‘fraud,’” attorney Alethea Swift of the Democracy Forward Foundation, representing the unions, said.

The Supreme Court issued a June order reversing the Fourth Circuit’s conclusion and implemented a stay on a 6-3 vote. The high court majority said President Donald Trump was likely to succeed in the litigation and would be injured if the justices didn’t intervene, but did not issue an opinion to explain their reasoning.

Eye rolls and sighs dominated the day as the judges fiercely debated their role at this juncture, with Republican-appointed judges arguing the court should simply affirm the Supreme Court’s decision. In contrast, Democrat-appointed judges viewed the appellate court’s role as one requiring deeper analysis. …

     Here’s another report on the oral argument. 

Social Security Free To Share Data With DOGE

      From The Guardian:

A US appeals court on Tuesday rejected a bid by a group of unions to block the Trump administration government downsizing team known as the “department of government efficiency” (Doge) from accessing sensitive data on Americans.

The Virginia-based fourth US circuit court of appeals in a 2-1 decision said the unions were unlikely to prevail on claims that Doge would violate federal privacy laws by accessing data at the US Department of Education, treasury department, and office of personnel management. ...

The decision reverses a temporary injunction issued by a federal judge in Maryland, which had been paused by the appeals court in April. ...

The fourth circuit on Tuesday said the unions that sued along with a group of military veterans had not shown how they would be injured by Doge accessing agencies’ computer systems. They also probably lacked legal standing to sue because that access is not a “final agency action” that can form the basis of a lawsuit, the court said.

A dissenting judge said it was prudent to temporarily block access to the data while the case plays out, and that the standard his colleagues had imposed on the plaintiffs was too high. ...    

 

“Big Balls” Looked “Nervous, Almost Embarrassed”

“Big Balls”

      From Wired:

… “Edward [“Big Balls”] Coristine joined the Social Security Administration this week as a special government employee,” Stephen McGraw, an SSA spokesperson, tells WIRED. “His work will be focused on improving the functionality of the Social Security website and advancing our mission of delivering more efficient service to the American people.” …

Multiple sources at the SSA tell WIRED that Coristine has appeared in person to work on-site at the agency’s Woodlawn, Maryland headquarters. One SSA employee says they saw Coristine with DOGE engineer Aram Moghaddassi, a current X and former Neuralink employee deployed at the agency. The pair was spotted at the SSA cafeteria as recently as Monday, although it’s unclear what day this week Coristine’s employment officially began. “Coristine looked nervous, almost embarrassed,” the SSA source says. “Aram was on the phone with someone … then said ‘Yes I’m with him right now,’ gesturing to Big Balls.’” …

"Big Balls" Now A Social Security Employee

     There have been reports that Edward "Big Balls" Coristine, who had been employed by DOGE, had left employment with the federal government. Those reports turned out to be false. He only left DOGE. He's now a "special government employee" with Social Security. 

    It must be purely coincidental that this was announced the day after the Ways and Means Committee hearing with Commissioner Bisignano. 

Not Social Security But Still Interesting

      From NPR:

A former employee of the Department of Government Efficiency says that he found that the federal waste, fraud and abuse that his agency was supposed to uncover were "relatively nonexistent" during his short time embedded within the Department of Veterans Affairs.

"I personally was pretty surprised, actually, at how efficient the government was," Sahil Lavingia told NPR's Juana Summers. …

"Elon [Musk] was pretty clear about how he wanted DOGE to be maximally transparent," Lavingia said. "That's something he said a lot in private. And publicly. And so I thought, OK, cool, I'll take him at his word. I will be transparent."

Shortly after the interview was published online, Lavingia got an email. Just 55 days into his work at DOGE, his access had been revoked.

Big NYT Article On DOGE, Dudek And Social Security

      From the New York Times:

Elon Musk stood before a giant American flag at a Wisconsin political rally in March and rolled out an eye-popping allegation of rampant fraud at the Social Security Administration. Scammers, he said, were making 40 percent of all calls to the agency’s customer service line.

Social Security employees knew the billionaire’s claim had no basis in fact. After journalists followed up, staff members began drafting a response correcting the record.

That’s when Leland Dudek — plucked from a midlevel job only six weeks earlier to run Social Security because of his willingness to cooperate with Mr. Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency — got an angry call from the White House, according to several people familiar with the exchange.

“The number is 40 percent,” insisted Katie Miller, a top administration aide who was working closely with Mr. Musk, according to one of the people familiar with the April 1 call. President Trump believed Mr. Musk, she said. “Do not contradict the president.” 

Throughout the early months of this Trump presidency, Mr. Musk and his allies systematically built a false narrative of widespread fraud at the Social Security Administration based on misinterpreted data, using their claims to justify an aggressive effort to gain access to personal information on millions of Americans, a New York Times investigation has found. …

Mr. Dudek was recently placed on administrative leave … 

Mr. Dudek, 48, has told associates that while he did his best to fend off deeper cuts, he harbors deep misgivings about the effect of DOGE’s oversight, according to several people familiar with the conversations. … 

On Feb. 27, a DOGE engineer told Mr. Dudek in an email that the administration had identified roughly three dozen federal contracts in Maine as “nonessential,” including the two from Social Security. 

“We should cancel them,” wrote the engineer, Ethan Shaotran, 23, who declined to comment when reached by The Times. … 

Mr. Dudek faced another crisis on March 20, when a federal judge issued an order prohibiting Mr. Musk’s team from entering Social Security databases that contained personally identifying information. … 

On the night of the ruling, two DOGE leaders told Mr. Dudek that the agency should continue allowing access to the data despite the judge’s order, with one arguing that the order was so ambiguous that it could block all Social Security employees, not just members of DOGE, from gaining access, according to a person familiar with events. …

     One question I have after reading this is whether Dudek talked with the Times. I’ll guess he did.

Can The DOGE Kiddie Korps Survive Outside The Tech Hothouse?

     Over the decades it’s been my experience that people new to the Social Security world dramatically underestimate the complexity and sensitivity of the work that the Social Security Administration does. I wonder how long it will take for DOGE employees to figure this out. I doubt that their arrogance can long coexist with knowledge of just how complex Social Security is. 

     As an example of the complexity let’s imagine a recent widow calling in to ask about benefits she might be able to receive. Sounds like that would be a common sort of transaction and it is. Here’s some of the questions that should come up and there are plenty more that may come up:

• How old are you?
• Do you have any minor children?
• Do you have any disabled adult children?
• Are you working and, if so, how much are you earning?
• How much income of any kind do you have now?
• How much do you have in the way of resources, such as money in the bank?
• Are you disabled?

     Depending on the answers to those questions and potentially more, the widow and members of her family may be entitled to these sorts of benefits and she and others in her family may easily be entitled to two or three of these at the same time:

• Aged widows benefits
• Disabled widows benefits
• Child benefits
• Disabled adult child benefits
• Mothers benefits
• SSI
• Retirement benefits
• Disability Insurance Benefits

      If you think that there are online systems available now or in the near future able to seamlessly help a grieving woman whose only online device is a cell phone deal with all this online you just don’t understand people, much less grieving people and you must not have dealt with what passes for AI service now.

     The DOGE people aren’t used to working in an environment including multiple legacy systems. They’re never had to cope with computer illiterates. Those benighted souls weren’t the customers they were aiming at or cared about. They’ve never had to deal with anything like Social Security’s complexity. It will take them at least a couple of years to begin to learn it and I do mean “begin.” They really need to know it in depth and that can take a decade or more. They’re not going to be around the agency anywhere near that long.

Tracking DOGE

      DOGE Track is an online service tracking DOGE activities across the government, including Social Security. It tells you what has happened in great detail but gives no predictions for the future. It’s a great resource. There’s been so much going on that it’s been hard to keep track of it all. I’ll warn you that DOGE Track is a bit buggy. I can open it on my iPad but not my desktop. It’s labeled as a beta version, meaning they know it’s buggy and are working on it. 

Does It Even Matter Now?

     From SCOTUSblog:

BREAKING: The Supreme Court grants DOGE affiliates access to Social Security Administration records. Justices Kagan, Sotomayor, and Jackson would deny the request.

    The question now is whether the Trump Administration wants to give them that access. I hope not.

Got A Little Carried Away

      From a Washington Post article titled Trump administration races to fix a big mistake: DOGE fired too many people:

… At the Social Security Administration’s call center in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, IT workers were told by managers in mid-April that they needed to request a transfer or face possible firing, said Barri Sue Bryant, president of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 2809. Nearly all of the 40-plus workers in that office did so, sending their laptops and spare equipment to the agency’s Baltimore headquarters and awaiting a new assignment while the union attempted to explain to leadership how essential these employees were, Bryant said.

 “We are critically understaffed in all of our departments,” Bryant wrote in an email to leadership. “Having systems and employees down is not contributing to the goals of this agency.”
But management would soon find out on their own.


A specialized scanner that can quickly input forms and scan barcodes broke down and was unusable for a day. A customer service representative who was supposed to answer the 800 number couldn’t take calls for three days while her computer was in disrepair.
“It really sent everyone for a loop,” Bryant said.


After three days, the agency told the union the decision had been reversed. The employees got back their equipment and resumed their normal jobs in Wilkes-Barre.
 

Asked about the IT workers, Social Security provided an emailed statement from an unnamed official, whom it declined to identify. The statement did not address the reassignments but criticized “the fake news media, specifically the Washington Post” for “pushing a false narrative about Social Security. The truth is that President Trump is protecting and strengthening Social Security just like he promised.” …

Whither Musk's People At Social Security?

     I’m laying in supplies of popcorn. There is open acrimony between Donald Trump and Elon Musk. Who could have predicted?

    Can we now get Musk's kiddie corps of DOGE computer "experts" out of Social Security? Like being escorted out by security today?  With a subsequent investigation to see whether they did anything illegal?

"Chaos Has Ensued"

     From the Washington Post:

...  The administration’s ongoing shake-ups of the workforce, from buyout offers to firings to sweeping reorganizations, are also undermining efficiency.

At the Social Security Administration, for example, Trump officials and DOGE pushed thousands of central-office workers to take lower-level positions answering phones in field offices, threatening to fire whoever did not make the jump, according to emails reviewed by The Post and interviews with a half dozen agency employees.

Chaos has ensued across field offices in the weeks since the reassignments took effect, staffers said. Claims processing has bogged down as regular field office staff — already overburdened because of widespread resignations and retirements — are pulled off their normal duties to train incoming administrators and analysts.

But the backlog means the trainings are being shortened and rushed through, employees said, so inexperienced, reassigned staffers start work unprepared. That leads to more mistakes, more requests for help and more backed-up claims — and more time wasted all around.

To sum it up, “you now have half the staff with very little knowledge of how to do the work,” one relocated staffer said. “And the other half of staff overwhelmed with work and unable to really train or mentor these new folks.”

Asked about the reassignments, Social Security provided an emailed statement from an unnamed official, whom it declined to identify. The statement said DOGE’s work at Social Security had charted a new, better course for the agency.

“The voluntary reassignment of approximately 2,000 employees to direct service positions has not caused disruptions at the agency,” the statement read. “As these employees complete their training and become fully proficient in their new positions, they will further accelerate the progress the agency is making.” ...

Bisignano Doesn't Like Leaks But They're Sure Happening

     ABC News has obtained an audio recording of the meeting that Frank Bisignano had with Social Security staff yesterday. They have posted excerpts. It sounds like it was a rambling performance. I'll offer a few quotes here but if you weren't part of that meeting you probably want to look at the whole ABC piece.

... "So, I get a phone call and it's about Social Security. And I'm really, I'm really not, I swear I'm not looking for a job," Bisignano said, according to an audio recording of the meeting obtained by ABC News. "And I'm like, 'Well, what am I going to do?' So, I'm Googling Social Security. You know, one of my great skills, I'm one of the great Googlers on the East Coast."

"I'm like, 'What the heck's the commissioner of Social Security?'" said Bisignano, who now oversees one of the largest federal agencies that's responsible for distributing retirement, disability, and survivor benefits to more than 70 million Americans.

"Put that as the headline for the Post: 'Great Googler in Chief. Chief in Googler' or whatever," said Bisignano, who throughout the meeting repeatedly bemoaned media leaks from within the agency. ...

 "Are we having fun yet? Are we OK?" he asked those on the call. ...

Bisignano told the managers that they needed to believe that DOGE was "helping to make things better" even if "it may not feel that way." ...

"Did you guys know there was a protest against me? Who knows there was a protest against me?" he said. "I like that protest -- I want to prove them so wrong, man, this is going to be most fun I ever had." ...

     By the way, does anyone know whether Bisignano had any briefings from career people at Social Security between the time he was nominated and confirmed? I don't have any experience with these things. I would like to think that would be standard but Bisignano sounds like he came into the job cold.