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Treasury sued by union groups over systems access given to Musk, DOGE

The lawsuit alleges that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent provided DOGE workers with “full access” to personal and financial information of millions of individuals.
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A coalition of labor unions is suing the Treasury Department and Secretary Scott Bessent over the disclosure of Americans’ personal and financial information to Elon Musk and the tech billionaire’s Department of Government Efficiency surrogates.

In a lawsuit filed Monday to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, the Alliance for Retired Americans, the American Federation of Government Employees and the Service Employees International Union allege that the Treasury Department under Bessent allowed Musk and his DOGE associates to access the personal information of millions of individuals who have transacted with the federal government. That personal information includes names, Social Security numbers, birth dates, birth places, home addresses and telephone numbers, email addresses, and bank account information, according to the lawsuit. 

A Treasury employee initially prevented DOGE workers from accessing those records, through the department’s Bureau of the Fiscal Service. But according to the lawsuit, once Bessent was confirmed, he placed that employee on leave and provided the DOGE crew with “full access to the Bureau’s data and the computer systems that house them.”

Bessent “did so without making any public announcement, providing any legal justification or explanation for his decision, or undertaking the process required by law for altering the agency’s disclosure policies,” the lawsuit states.

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The Treasury Department did not respond to a request for comment by the time of publication.

The trio of union groups, represented by the Public Citizen Litigation Group and State Democracy Defenders Fund, are asking the court to put “an immediate stop” to the “systematic, continuous, and ongoing violation of federal laws that protect the privacy of personal information contained in federal records,” citing the Privacy Act of 1974 and the Internal Revenue Code’s protections for taxpayer information.

“The scale of the intrusion into individuals’ privacy is massive and unprecedented. Millions of people cannot avoid engaging in financial transactions with the federal government and, therefore, cannot avoid having their sensitive personal and financial information maintained in government records,” the lawsuit states. “People who must share information with the federal government should not be forced to share information with Elon Musk or his ‘DOGE.’”

Everett Kelley, national president of AFGE, said in a statement that the federal agency workers’ union — which added 8,700 members last month — joined the lawsuit in an effort to stand up “for the privacy rights of American citizens.”

“It is disgraceful that the Trump administration has allowed unelected billionaires and their lackeys unfettered access to the personal and financial information of Americans,” he said. “Together, we can stop this violation of American citizens’ privacy.”

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Politico reported Monday that Bessent told Republican lawmakers in a closed-door meeting on Capitol Hill that Musk and his DOGE team don’t actually have control over Treasury’s payments systems. The outlet also wrote that Bessent approved “read-only” system access to a team led by a Treasury liaison to DOGE — though Wired later reported that a 25-year-old engineer with ties to Musk “has direct access to Treasury Department systems responsible for nearly all payments made by the U.S. government.”

The Trump administration’s broader efforts to remake the U.S. government have been met with widespread criticism from federal workers. A pair of federal employees sued the Office of Personnel Management last week for failing to do a privacy impact assessment before setting up an on-premise server to send out a mass email blast to the federal workforce and store information that it received in response.

Federal workers and their supporters gather outside OPM on Feb. 4, 2025, in Washington, D.C., to protest Elon Musk and DOGE’s takeover of federal systems. (Scoop News Group photo by Madison Alder)

On Tuesday, dozens of federal workers and their supporters gathered outside OPM in Washington to push back on Musk’s apparent leadership on the Trump administration’s efforts to reshape the workforce.

Those demonstrators chanted “hands off our servers,” “Elon Musk has got to go,” and “we don’t want your tech solution, give us back our Constitution.” They also carried signs with phrases like “arrest Elon,” “stop the coup” and “fork Musk.” Some even held forks in reference to OPM’s “Fork in the Road” email about deferred resignation. That offer echoed a message Musk sent to Twitter employees after he bought the company and was also the title of an art piece Musk said he commissioned. 

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The demonstrators plan to be outside of OPM in the morning each day this week.

FedScoop reporter Madison Alder contributed to this article.

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