I think a lot of taxpayers were unhappy that the prior system was ripe for abuse and was being abused for political ends, and were willing to vote in Trump & Co. to take a chainsaw to it.
We saw the Democrats weaponize IRS leaks of 100,000’s of taxpayers and there’s been no misuse of personal info so far, under DOGE just a lot of pearl clutching by left wing mouthpieces that are about to get their NGO funding or overpriced USAID subscriptions cut.
It’s still illegal to release personal information - I think that’s just a media talking point to try to shut down efforts at accountability. After all, the media didn’t care when the pre-DOGE government efficiency office was doing the same things under Obama.
This image appears to show which way each county voted. Assuming that is accurate, all it does is show whether you live near (blue) or far (red) from your nearest neighbor. But this information is irrelevant for our elections. This image and anyone who spreads it without proper commentary purposely misrepresents the truth. The truth is in the number of votes, not in the color of a map.
But also I would be surprised if everyone who voted for Musk is happy about what he’s doing.
I dunno, I never took Bruce Schneier or Brian Krebs for left wing mouthpieces. Both are highly respected in the computer security field and related journalism, I’ve never known them to express any political inclinations.
It’s also illegal to incite insurrection and assault police officers.
Yes, I think the map is colored by county or something, and while votes are what matters, a majority of the voters (as well as electors) were in favor of Trump over the alternative.
But also I would be surprised if everyone who voted for Musk is happy about what he’s doing.
I suspect most people have no idea what Musk is doing except for what they read online, if they bother. DOGE puts out fast and loose examples of waste that look bad (but aren’t always accurate), while the legacy media and the Democrat lawfare department makes up a bunch of claims for why government accountability under Trump is the work of the devil (but was fine under Obama)
Put me in the camp where a little risk of Musks stuff or government funding freezes causing problems seems smaller than the risk of ignoring our $T deficits and blindly sleepwalking into high inflation and national poverty. If this is what it takes to get spending and accountability back under control, I’ll take the risks.
On the personal security front, I guess I don’t see a big difference between half the bureaucracy having access to my personal info and having all of them plus a few extra computer nerds working for Musk / DOGE.
You made a mistake saying the President “owns” the information. The government owns it, the office of the President oversees the departments that maintain it.
The President can send whomever he chooses on fact-finding missions. It just so happens in this case they’re looking inward rather than outward.
Yes, go audit your own questionable activities is a great alternative.
By the way, “DOGE makes suggestions” and “The President adopts DOGE’s suggestions” does not equate to “DOGE overrides everyone’s authority and does whatever they want”. There’s still a hierarchy. Trump has ordered that findings be brought directly to his desk.
Did anyone complain about Michele Obama not being confirmed when she ripped apart the school lunch program? What about Hillary when Bill made her healthcare czar without being confirmed? People only have a problem with DOGE because 1) the hate Trump, and 2) DOGE is actually asking the tough (but rather obvious) questions instead of being a toothless dog-and-pony show.
The government brings in outside consultants to analyze data ALL THE TIME.
And I dare say that some who voted against Trump are pleasantly surprised that for once they’re actually doing what they said they’d do.
The IRS is not half the bureaucracy, and all employees were vetted. Leaks are rare, and when they occur, the leakers are found and prosecuted, because IRS appears to have sufficient change controls, access controls, security protocols, etc, to find the leakers.
On the other hand, a few of Musk’s nerds have criminal backgrounds and should never be given unrestricted access to this information. A point raised by Schneier is that these nerds can disable database audits and bypass change controls, which would allow them to change data while making it impossible for anyone to ever find out if or what they changed.
I’m good with getting spending and accountability under control, but it mustn’t be done without accountability.
Says who? All I’ve seen actually reported (as opposed to speculated and theorized) is that they have access to the data to review. There’s nothing (besides the mindless fearmongering) indicating they can manipulate/alter the data any moreso than anyone else.
See the reporting noted here a bit ago, with the headline being how DOGE “siezed control of [an agency]'s key systems”, only for the text to clarify that they merely gained access to the agency’s systems to review and the only thing they took control of was the agency’s social media accounts.
I actually don’t mind Trump looking at cutting spending aggressively. I like the closer look at nonsense like some of the stuff funded by the USAID. I’m actually expecting his administration to be more capable of trimming a ton of useless fat than Dems.
But I don’t like Doge basically operating as unchecked government department without oversight. Having them under the President Record Act seems hard to reconcile with their claims of promoting transparency and accountability when Doge itself cannot be held accountable for what it does.
I’d much rather have each Department tasked to trim their spending with advice from Musk and Doge rather than granting authority to an opaque government body (Doge).
How would you find out since they are not tied to FOIA rules. And even if you found out, your PII has been leaked or exploited, Doge is not subject to disclosure laws unlike the IRS so what you’re gonna do about it if they did leak PII or weaponized the IRS for personal financial or political gain?
In the end, I just want what was promised which is more transparency and more accountability. While Doge is exposing some of the waste (nowhere near as much as they’d need to so far but maybe give it time), it also fails at transparency and accountability of its own actions.
Didn’t that eugenics/racist guy who was forced to resign, Marko Elez, have admin write permissions to access social security payment systems? All the while Doge was swearing they only had review access so yeah I’m gonna trust them 100% now when they say they cannot make changes in the systems they “review”.
Says Bruce Schneier (the author of a (the?) Computer Science textbook on cryptography, creator of Blowfish cipher, and many other accomplishments) in DOGE as a National Cyberattack (emphasis mine): “highest levels of administrative access… External operators can now modify operations while also altering audit trails that would track their changes. Second, data exposure: Beyond accessing personal information and transaction records, these operators can copy entire system architectures and security configurations—in one case, the technical blueprint of the country’s federal payment infrastructure. Third, and most critically, is the issue of system control: These operators can alter core systems and authentication mechanisms while disabling the very tools designed to detect such changes.”
And how does he know this? He appears to have zero government affiliation whatsoever, with the same view from the peanut gallery as we have as far as knowing what access anyone has anywhere. Him being leaked this stuff would seem to be more of a security breech than anything DOGE is doing. Even that article you linked is nothing but a bunch of "potentially"s and "possibly"s.
The article has quite a few links to sources for its claims actually.
Either way, the article may speculate/extrapolate on what Doge has already done (and can do from here on), who has access to what, and what privileges Doge has. Whether confirmed or not, it highlights the threat of having uncleared outsiders mess haphazardly with the government systems. And a lot of the speculation is due to Doge having even less transparency than the opaque bureaucracy it’s supposed to fix.
The IRS is drafting plans to cut its workforce by as much as half through a mix of layoffs, attrition and incentivized buyouts, according to two people familiar with the situation.
It probably would, if run the same way that former commissioner ran it. And of course it will be when butthurt employees insist on making it dysfunctional just to prove their point. But in a bloated buraucracy where there are multiple layers who’s primary job is to delegate jobs to those below them, hacking out the fat just means that the level 5 person assigns a task to the level 1 worker, instead of that task filtering through levels 4, 3, and 2 before landing on the level 1 person’s desk.
After a century of grafting changes onto changes, sometimes starting over from scratch results in you finding a smooth operation doesnt require all the redundancies and contradictions that have only been considered essential because one hand didnt know what the other was doing.
I believe that IRS had an abundance of workers this past year.
The first time in my life I received a letter from the IRS this last month. Right off the bat they told me “this is not an audit” but you made a mistake on your 2023 year taxes. They included all their evidence!
I had failed to report several large interest payments.
I checked the box admitting that it was my error.
IRS charged me interest for the year on the amount I owed. What a shock !
!