Good Lord!

      This is from a Washington Post article. You really need to read the whole thing. This is most disturbing.

Representatives of Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service have sought for weeks to get around a court order barring their access to sensitive data and internal systems at the Social Security Administration, prompting career staff to repeatedly resist their efforts, according to a half dozen people familiar with the DOGE team’s actions and records obtained by The Washington Post.
The battle inside the agency led the Justice Department to intervene to deny DOGE access to the data, even as the Trump administration installed and promoted DOGE-friendly leaders to dramatically cut back services at Social Security. It involved staff, from rank-and-file employees to senior leaders, including acting commissioner Leland Dudek, who was appointed to his position after displaying public loyalty to DOGE. …

At the same time, Dudek mistakenly let one of the DOGE representatives into a Social Security database last week, violating the court order, according to a person familiar with events who, like others interviewed for this report, spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. That error led a federal judge to summon Dudek for a hearing Tuesday at federal court in Baltimore, but the Trump administration said in a filing late Monday that he would no longer appear. …

At first, officials obeyed the courts.
Immediately after Hollander issued her order, the agency cut off DOGE staffers from all systems, according to employees and records obtained by The Post. The compliance came at the direction of Michael Russo, then the chief information officer, who was recommended for the job by Frank Bisignano, President Donald Trump’s nominee to become the permanent leader of Social Security. …

But Russo’s swift action did not go over well with the Trump administration. He was reassigned in late March to a “senior adviser” position focused on “IT Modernization” in the office of the commissioner, according to a memo obtained by The Post. He was replaced as chief information officer by Scott Coulter, a New York-based hedge fund manager and a member of Musk’s DOGE team, according to the memo and court filings. …

Meanwhile, Mark Steffensen — another Trump appointee and DOGE ally serving as acting general counsel — was tasked with determining whether DOGE representatives should be allowed to access Social Security data. Steffensen, a former top financial executive, had assumed his role as a senior adviser at Social Security at Bisignano’s recommendation on Feb. 24, according to another memo obtained by The Post. …  

Soon, Steffensen was fighting with career lawyers at Social Security.
Attorneys in the office of general counsel wanted to draft agencywide guidance that would comply with the judge’s order, setting strict rules for how staff could interact with DOGE representatives, according to a person briefed on the events. But Steffensen initially wanted the lawyers to issue a memo giving DOGE access to Social Security data, the person said.
None of the career employees would agree to Steffensen’s plan, the person said. So he began circumventing the lawyers by telling DOGE representatives to keep working on their projects anyway, according to the person and records obtained by The Post. …  

 Near the end of March, the office of general counsel issued its guidance on DOGE’s data access at Social Security, according to a copy of the memo obtained by The Post. The final version appeared to align with career lawyers’ viewpoint. It said that “DOGE team members are restricted … from accessing, viewing, or otherwise working with” any “information that can be used to distinguish or trace an individual’s identity,” including “any nonpublic datasets that are aggregated or deidentified but could be used to identify a person.” … 

  In early April, lawyers with the Justice Department were called in to give their opinion, too, according to two people familiar with the discussions.
Department lawyers told Steffensen that under no circumstances should DOGE be allowed inside the agency’s data and that Social Security must follow the judge’s order, one of the people said. …

 But DOGE kept up the pressure and, according to current and former officials, tried unsuccessfully to get Steffensen fired for failing to get them access. Members of the DOGE team also sought an exemption from the judge for several projects, the officials said. It is unclear if the judge agreed.
In recent weeks, Social Security hired a new DOGE team member, but Dudek — not realizing this staffer was a member of the DOGE team — granted him access to some of the agency’s data, violating the judge’s order, according to records and a person familiar with the matter.
Once Dudek realized his mistake, he removed the DOGE staffer from the agency’s systems, the person said.

     As I have said before, I salute those who have fought the good fight to protect Social Security’s records. You deserve gold medals when these evil times are past. 

A New Affidavit From Tiffany Flick And I Don’t Understand It

      Social Security has posted an affidavit from Tiffany Flick in the case concerning DOGE access to agency databases. I don’t understand it. It seems to be saying that no names of living people have been intentionally added to the Death Master File. Maybe she’s hinting that Social Security didn’t do it; the Department of Commerce did it.

I Wonder What Happened

 

Deep Thoughts

      If a live man is listed as dead in the Death Master File, are dependent benefits payable to his “widow” and children? Sounds like a case for estoppel to me.

A Salute To Those Who Resist Weaponizing The Death Master File

      From the Washington Post:

Two days after the Social Security Administration purposely and falsely labeled 6,100 living immigrants as dead, security guards arrived at the office of a well-regarded senior executive in the agency’s Woodlawn, Maryland, headquarters.
Greg Pearre, who oversaw a staff of hundreds of technology experts, had pushed back on the Trump administration’s plan to move the migrants’ names into a Social Security death database, eliminating their ability to legally earn wages and, officials hoped, spurring them to leave the country. In particular, Pearre had clashed with Scott Coulter, the new chief information officer installed by Elon Musk. Pearre told Coulter that the plan was illegal, cruel and risked declaring the wrong people dead, according to three people familiar with the events.
But his objections did not go over well with Trump political appointees. And so on Thursday, the security guards in Pearre’s office told him it was time to leave. …

Staffers at Social Security began raising the alarm about the urgent need to address a flaw in the agency’s deaths database in February, according to a person familiar with the matter and records obtained by The Post.
Anybody granted the appropriate permissions within Social Security could mark someone as dead, employees had realized, without having to prove their demise in any way — for example by referencing medical records or a death certificate. In emails and meetings that rose up the management chain, employees warned that the dataset was vulnerable to manipulation, according to the person and the records.
Employees’ fear was partly that a bad actor who gained access to government credentials could label groups of living individuals as dead to target them for punishment, according to the person and the records. Some of those raising the alarm worried specifically that the Trump administration might try to use the database to go after people the president dislikes, the person said. …

A staff of fewer than a dozen career employees was assigned to work with Musk’s team on the project, according to a senior official who left the agency around that time. Career employees were concerned that they might be facilitating something illegal, asking themselves if they were at risk of going to jail for the work they were doing, the official said. …

One official chose to resign rather than remain involved in what he saw as an illegal attempt to repurpose the agency for immigration enforcement. …

Within Social Security, the general counsel’s office is preparing an opinion that will find the Trump administration’s unprecedented use of the death database a violation of privacy law, according to one person with knowledge of the upcoming declaration. The opinion will take issue with the agency knowingly and falsely declaring that living people are dead, the person said. …

What Should Banks Do?

      Banks have a clear legal obligation to freeze the accounts of people who have died. What obligation or even right do they have to freeze the account of some living person whom the President wishes to declare a nonperson? Can banks and other financial institutions continue to rely upon the Death Master File or whatever they want to call it now? They know it’s being deliberately manipulated to deceive them into doing things they shouldn’t do.

This Makes Sense If You Prefer That The Public Not Know What You’re Doing

     From Federal News Network:

The Social Security Administration is cutting staff from its communications office, and will rely on social media posts instead of press releases to update the media and the public.

Regional SSA offices, each representing several states, will no longer have fully staffed public affairs offices, because of the agency’s mass reassignment of employees to field offices. …

“Instead, the agency will be using X to communicate to the press and the public — formerly known as Twitter,” Kerr-Davis said. “This will become our communication mechanism.” …

What Due Process Rights Do These Folks Have? What’s To Prevent This From Being Done To Anyone Trump Regards As An Enemy?

      From the New York Times:

Since taking office, the Trump administration has moved to revoke the temporary legal status of hundreds of thousands of immigrants who were allowed into the country under President Joseph R. Biden Jr.

Now, the administration is taking drastic steps to pressure some of those immigrants and others who had legal status to “self-deport” by effectively canceling the Social Security numbers they had lawfully obtained, according to documents reviewed by The New York Times and interviews with six people familiar with the plans.

The goal is to cut those people off from using crucial financial services like bank accounts and credit cards, along with their access to government benefits.

The effort hinges on a surprising new tactic: repurposing Social Security’s “death master file,” which for years has been used to track dead people who should no longer receive benefits, to include the names of living people who the government believes should be treated as if they are dead. As a result of being added to the death database, they would be blacklisted from a coveted form of identity that allows them to make and spend money. …