The approach of the Ministry of Effectiveness of the Government to identify fraud at the Social Security Administration “is equivalent to hitting a fly with a hammer,” a federal judge said on Thursday, blocking unlimited access to the agency’s sensitive data.
In a 137 pages decisionThe American district judge Ellen Lipton Hollander wrote that the Trump administration has never justified the need to access the data – which, according to them, was vital to identify alleged fraud – and probably violated several federal laws.
“The DOGE team is mainly engaged in an SSA fishing expedition, looking for a fraud epidemic, based on a little more than suspicion. He launched a search for the proverbial needle in the hay boot, without any concrete knowledge that the needle is in fact in the hay menu,” she wrote.
Elon Musk examines the day of a meeting with the Republicans of the Chamber to discuss the Ministry of Government efficiency (DOGE) in Capitol Hill in Washington, March 5, 2025.
Kent Nishimura / Reuters
The judge’s order prevents the agency from granting DOGE access to systems containing information and ordinances personally identifiable in DOGE from destroying all the data in their possession which identify the individual taxpayers. However, the judge’s decision allows DOGE to continue to allow access to anonymized data from the agency.
According to Hollander, the decision to give DOGE “unlimited access to the entire SSA file system” has endangered the sensitive and private information of millions of Americans, risking information, in particular social security numbers, information on credit cards, medical and mental health files, hospital files, birth certificates and banking information.
“The government has not even tried to explain why a more personalized, measured and titled approach is not suitable for the task,” she wrote. “Instead, the government simply repeats its incantation of a need to modernize the system and discover fraud.
Two people enter a social security administration office in the suburbs of Detroit on March 7, 2025.
Jim West / UCG / Universal Images Group via Getty Images
The trial contesting DOGE’s access was filed last month by two national unions and a defenders’ defense group who argued that DOGE’s access violated confidentiality and law on administrative procedures. In a statement to ABC News, the president of the American state, county and municipal employees celebrated the decision to “major victory for workers and retirees across the country”.
“The court saw that Elon Musk and its unskilled lacqua presents a serious danger to social security and illegally accessed the data of millions of Americans,” said AFSCME president Lee Saunders in a statement.
In his decision, the judge also underlined the irony that DOGE has acceded to the sensitive information of millions of Americans while the identity of DOGE employees working in the SSA was hidden for reasons of confidentiality.
“Defense does not seem to share a confidentiality problem for the millions of Americans whose SSA files have been made available to the affiliates of Doge, without their consent,” she wrote.
