Got A Story To Tell?

    The Federal Employees & Contractors Oral History Project (FECOHP) is “preserving the voices of those who’ve served the American people – before, during, and after January 2025.” Get in touch with them if you have a story that should be preserved.

Labor Day 2025

 

Bisignano A Prayer Leader

      Frank Bisignano is an "Executive Leader for Prayer" on "The Presidential Prayer Team."

Social Security Mostly Viewed Favorably

      From the Pew Research Center:

 

Chief Data Officer Resigns Over Misuse Of Agency Data

    I guess it's a coincidence this happened on the Friday afternoon before Labor Day. From the New York Times:

The Social Security Administration’s chief data officer, Charles Borges, has resigned, three days after submitting a whistle-blower complaint that alleged members of the Department of Government Efficiency had uploaded the confidential personal information of hundreds of millions of Americans to an insecure cloud server.

In his resignation letter, Borges said that he was quitting in part because he could not “verify that agency data is being used in accordance with legal agreements or in compliance with federal requirements.”

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A Poll

 

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COSS On Fox Business

      The Commissioner of Social Security has appeared on Fox Business to claim that his agency is now providing the best service to the public that it has ever provided.

Whistleblower Complains Of Data Security Risk -- How Long Until He's Fired?

      From the New York Times:

Members of the Department of Government Efficiency uploaded a copy of a crucial Social Security database in June to a vulnerable cloud server, putting the personal information of hundreds of millions of Americans at risk of being leaked or hacked, according to a whistle-blower complaint filed by the Social Security Administration’s chief data officer.

The database contains records of all Social Security numbers issued by the federal government. It includes individuals’ full names, addresses and birth dates, among other details that could be used to steal their identities, making it one of the nation’s most sensitive repositories of personal information.

The account by the whistle-blower, Charles Borges, underscores concerns that have led to lawsuits seeking to block young software engineers at the agency built by Elon Musk from having access to confidential government data.  …

     See also an article in the Washington Post on the whistleblower complaint. 

     The biggest question in my mind is why? Getting a copy of this vital database out of Social Security seems to have been an overriding priority for the Trump Administration. They had to have known they were doing something dangerous and probably illegal. Why the urgency? What did they want to do with the data? What are they doing?