Trump orders full access to agency data for designated officials; Judge blocks DOGE access to Social Security systems

Federal agencies must now allow any officials designated by the president or agency leadership to have complete access to unclassified records, data, software systems and IT systems, President Donald Trump declared in an executive order late Thursday night. Trump’s directive aims to stop waste, fraud and abuse by eliminating information silos, requiring agency heads to “ensure Federal officials designated by the President or Agency Heads (or their designees) have full and prompt access to all unclassified agency records, data, software systems, and information technology systems — or their equivalents if providing access to an equivalent dataset does not delay access — for purposes of pursuing Administration priorities related to the identification and elimination of waste, fraud, and abuse.” “This includes authorizing and facilitating both the intra- and inter-agency sharing and consolidation of unclassified agency records,” the executive order states.

A federal judge issued a temporary restraining order last Thursday blocking Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency from further access to any Social Security Administration systems that contain personally identifiable information. Judge Ellen Hollander of the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland also ordered that all DOGE team members associated with the organization’s work at SSA, including Elon Musk and U.S. DOGE Service leader Amy Gleason, must disgorge and delete all non-anonymized personal information they obtained from the agency’s systems. The decision is an initial victory in the case where Democracy Forward led a group of unions and an advocacy organization in suing the Social Security Administration and its acting Commissioner Leland Dudek for giving DOGE access to “some of the nation’s most sensitive data, including the financial data, employment information, medical data, and personal addresses of millions of Americans,” according to the initial complaint.

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