Elon Musk’s DOGE Is Being Sued Under the Privacy Act: What to Know

After months of contested congress who saw the elimination of the Ervin privacy supervisory council, President Gerald Ford signed the law on private life on December 31, 1974. Ford, who had presided over The Committee of the Domestic Council on the law of privacy that Nixon created for its last months in power for during its last months, highlighted “The vital need to provide adequate and uniform confidentiality guarantees for large quantities of personal information collected, recorded and used in our complex society.”

How is it relevant today?

DOGE reviews – including Democratic legislators, unions of federal employees and government surveillance groups – have given employees young people, controversial and apparently largely not adapted to access to sensitive data from the government constitutes a major confidentiality violation. Incidents represent “the most important and most important violation of personal information in American history”, ” According to John DavissonLawyer of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, one of the groups continuing to block the access of DOGE.

The Trump administration, on the other hand, says that DOGE employees need this data to accomplish their mission to eliminate the expenses and waste discovery programs that conflict with the agenda of President Donald Trump . After a federal judge temporarily blocked DOGE access to government payment systems, a White House spokesperson called the decision “Absurd and exceeding.” Musk targeted the judge On X, saying: “He must be dismissed now!”

Can the law on privacy stop Doge?

This will depend on knowing whether several judges agree with the arguments of the Trump administration claiming that the law does not prevent DOGE staff from accessing the sensitive data of the agencies.

The Government maintains that people can only continue agencies under privacy law in one of the four scenarios: when an agency refuses to grant someone access to a file about them ; When an agency refuses to modify someone’s file as he asked; When an agency fails to maintain someone’s dossier and it is subject to concrete damage, as a refusal of the advantages; Or when an agency violates the law requirements in a way that negatively affects someone. It remains to be seen whether the judges will determine that Doge’s access to data negatively affects people.

The agencies also argued that they did not violate the law on privacy because Doge’s activities are the exceptions of “the use of routine” of the law and “require”. In A judicial file Responding to a legal challenge, the Treasury Department said that DOGE staff have access the data to identify potentially inappropriate payments “in the pursuit of [their] Donations “as directed by Trump (triggering the exception” need to know “) and that sharing this information with other agencies was one of the” routine uses “that the agency had previously disclosed as required by the law on privacy.

The strength of this argument is based on how judges weigh two questions: if Doge’s staff accessing the data of each agency is employees of these agencies, and if the two exceptions apply to the situations in which they have accessed and shared the data.

Who uses the privacy law to continue Doge?

There are at least eight prosecution against the Trump administration on DOGE access to federal data, and all depend at least in part on the privacy law.

1. The American Federation of Government Employees, the Association of Judges of Administrative Law and more than 100 current and former federal workers Soumanchent Doge, Musk and the staff management office on what they claim is OPM’s illegal decision to give DOGE staff access to an employee federal database, alleging that members of the DOGE staff “do not have a legitimate and legitimate need for such access”.
2. The Electronic Privacy Information CenterOn behalf of an anonymous federal worker, continues OPM, DOGE, and the Ministry of the Treasury for having allegedly given DOGE Access to the OPM Personal Database and the Treasury Payment System “for inadmissible purposes under of the privacy law ”.
3. Student association of the University of California continues the Ministry of Education for having pretended to give students data to DOGE employees who are not, in the language of the privacy law, “employees who need files in the exercise of their functions ”.
4. Six government unions, two non -profit groups and the Think Tank Economic Policy Institute Continue the departments of labor and health and social services, the financial protection office of consumers and DOGE to prevent the Office from accessing a wide range of data, including complaints of wages for federal workers and injury reports, for allegedly incompatible purposes with the privacy law.
5. Two government unions and the alliance of the retired American defense group continue the Treasury for having allegedly given DOGE access to the income statements of the Americans in alleged violation of the Act respecting privacy and The own special rules of the Internal Revenue Service.
6. The National Union of Treasury Employees Prosecute the acting director of the CFPB, Russell Vought, for having given information on the employees of the CFPB to the members of Doge staff, alleging that their status of “special civil servants” place them outside the CFPB and therefore outside The need for the privacy law.
7. Nineteen general prosecutors Continue Trump and Treasury on DOGE access to federal payment systems, arguing that “many DOGE members have had access to [the system] were not cash employees “, which constitutes” a violation of the law on privacy “.
8. Six Americans Continue the Treasury and households on what they describe as violations of sensitive personal data they have given to the government while producing income declarations, asking for student loans, asking for disability payments and receiving retirement services.

Where are these cases?

In The AGS affair of the State,, A judge quickly published A temporary prohibition order restricting access to all cash systems storing sensitive personal and financial data. The case has since been awarded on a permanent basis to another judge, who slightly adjusted the order After The Trump administration opposed to his restrictions on people named politicians. A status hearing took place on February 14.

In The epic caseThe organization has asked the judge For a temporary prohibition prescription blocking access to certain cash and OPM systems. A status hearing will take place on February 21.