Employees with the Department of Government Efficiency who were detailed to the Social Security Administration last March shared sensitive data through a nonsecure third party server, in violation of agency security policies, the Justice Department disclosed in a court filing.
The Social Security Administration does not know what data was shared on the server or whether it still exists there, the Justice Department said in a Jan. 16 formal correction to statements that Social Security Administration officials made to a federal court in Maryland last spring.
But the disclosure about the third-party server confirms concerns among career government employees and data security experts that DOGE’s chaotic access to sensitive government data risks sharing this data broadly and without knowing what data was exposed or who has seen it. Last August, the Social Security Administration’s chief data officer, shortly before resigning, filed a whistle-blower complaint over DOGE employees’ activities, saying they had shared a crucial database on a private server.
The Justice Department’s filing addresses the period last March at the height of the conflict between career Social Security officials and DOGE over the sharing of sensitive information.
The Justice Department’s “corrections to the record” identified sworn statements that senior agency officials made asserting that the agency revoked DOGE employees’ access to sensitive data, statements the department later found to be false, though federal lawyers said the officials did not know they were false at the time.
According to the Justice Department, the inconsistencies were revealed through an internal agency review last fall. The agency notified Justice Department lawyers about its findings on Dec. 10. The department filed corrections to the court more than a month later.
The Social Security Administration did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Representatives John B. Larson of Connecticut and Richard E. Neal of Massachusetts, both Democrats, called for the DOGE employees to be prosecuted “for these abhorrent violations of the public trust.”
Mr. Larson is the top Democrat on the House Ways and Means subcommittee on Social Security. Mr. Neal is the top Democrat on the full committee.
“We have been warning about privacy violations at Social Security and calling out Elon Musk’s ‘DOGE’ for months,” Mr. Larson and Mr. Neal said in a joint statement on Tuesday evening.
In its corrections filing, the Justice Department also disclosed that a political advocacy group contacted two members of the DOGE Social Security team, asking for an analysis of state voter rolls the advocacy group obtained. The group was not identified in the court filing, but the Justice Department said the group’s goal was “to find evidence of voter fraud and to overturn election results in certain states.”
One of the DOGE employees signed an agreement with the advocacy group, which the Social Security Administration appeared to learn through a review of emails. The Justice Department did not provide details about what came of the agreement and whether sensitive data was shared inappropriately.
“Every Republican on the Ways and Means Committee must break their silence on what could very well be the largest data breach in our nation’s history, and as we have now learned, may have implications for election security,” Mr. Larson and Mr. Neal said.
Federal lawyers referred the two DOGE employees to the Office of Special Counsel for a potential violation of the Hatch Act, a Depression-era law enacted to ensure that the federal workforce operates free of political influence or coercion.
Joe Spielberger, the senior policy counsel at a nonpartisan watchdog group, the Project on Government Oversight, said it was a good sign that the Trump administration would make such a referral. But, he said, the corrections filing “goes way beyond potential Hatch Act violations, to say the least.”
He said the filing raised questions about whether the Social Security Administration misled the court last year about what officials knew at the time.
Nicholas Nehamas contributed reporting.
Eileen Sullivan is a Times reporter covering the changes to the federal work force under the Trump administration.
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