A DOGE employee stole Social Security information and put it on a thumb drive, report says

Former employee of Elon Musk’s Department of Public Works allegedly stole Americans’ personal information from the US Social Security Administration and kept it on thumb drive, according to whistleblower complaints. by The Washington Post.

A former DOGE software engineer told staff that he “has two restricted information on US citizens” and plans to use the information at his new company, according to the report, which added that the Social Security Administration’s inspector general is investigating the whistleblower’s complaint.

The former DOGE employee, whom The Washington Post did not identify, worked at the Social Security Administration last year. In October he went to work for a government contractor, where he told colleagues he found two databases, called the “Numident” and the “Master Death File,” according to The Post, which said the databases could include records of “more than 500 million living and dead Americans, including Social Security numbers, places and dates of birth, citizenship, race and ethnicity, and surnames.”

The man is said to have previously said he had no “God-level” limits to the SSA’s practices.

A spokesperson for the Social Security Administration, which is overseen by the DOGE, denied that a former employee had stolen information about US citizens. The spokesman said the Washington Post is “click-baiting and eager to spread disinformation to scare adults.” Office of the inspector general; which is independent from the Trump administration, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

This is the latest case of alleged breaches of Americans’ personal information linked to DOGE and its involvement in the Social Security Administration. In January, two DOGE members they are presumed to obtain and share Social Security numbers which was forbidden to them as part of an attempt to help a militant group that wants to “overturn the results of elections in other countries,” according to the lawsuit.

A whistleblower inside the agency last year said DOGE members put the American people at risk raising hundreds of millions of Social Security records to an insecure cloud server. Also last year, the judge banned the DOGE from accessing the SSA’s systems, accusing the Musk-led agency of “engaging in a fishing operation” in pursuit of fraud.

Several members of the DOGE was appointed to the Social Security Administration after Trump took office last year. According to The Washington Post, at least a dozen DOGE employees, most of them technicians or engineers, work at the agency, although their exact duties and activities have not been disclosed to the rest.