Fantastic.
I'll be interested to browse this sensitive data at some point when it inevitably becomes public in the next few years as a result of this kakistocracy.
It's amusing to me how so many people want to believe technical workers within the government are apparently all crusty, old, 50-something's instead of young "kids" in their twenties and thirties.
NSA, every branch of the military, and more are bursting at the seams with twenty-somethings that have access to some of the most sensitive information on the planet... yet nobody bats an eye.
Then we can consider the technical staff at places such as Experian, Capital One, and more... they're all fairly young too.
This has turned into quite the political narrative... "twenty-somethings have access to your data - be afraid, very afraid!"
The Espionage Act of 1917, Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, and Economic Espionage Act, among others, beg to differ.
We are fucked without even the benefit of lube.
Depends on who your friends in government are.
> The Espionage Act of 1917, Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, and Economic Espionage Act, among others, beg to differ.
Assaulting police officers and trying to overthrow the government is also illegal. People have been convicted of it. And yet if you know the right people you won't suffer any consequences:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pardon_of_January_6_United_Sta...
No, it was just the age apparently.
Sunk cost fallacy is a hell of a thing. It's why Q-Anon was able to grow.
But even concentrating on the age part - people in their 20s are working NSA and others. They're extremely unlikely to have access to the most sensitive information unsupervised since they're not senior enough. And definitely don't have a Yolo level decision making responsibilities. The restrictions, reporting, clearances and rules following in some of those places are unlike anything Doge ever did.
Yeah... No.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_protests_against_the_V...
"Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?" was about teens being sent out as well.
The word I used was 'teenage'.
I've worked with payment processing and some of the guys I saw makes 'big balls' look like an experienced and reliable custodian. Not to mention the high turnover, bargain priced overseas software outsourcing sweatshops.
It's not an ad-hom, it's a metric to gauge the maturity of the teenager granted such high level access and responsibility.
Here, the topic is a person. It's not an ad-hominem to describe facts about a person when your argument is explicitly about that person.
All jokes aside I’m confused why some people are responding to valid criticisms of this team by saying that we only care because they’re young.
Not only were the kids, and they were kids, they were also convicted criminals.
Don't give me the bullshit about "this situation". Go to your nearest hospital and notices a sea of young nurses handling you and your family's medical data on a clipboard, paper, and a very poorly secured 20 year old workstation.
You are inconsistent, and you will continue to be inconsistent. In fact, your bank account info is known by the teller who has similar qualifications, your purchases and address is known by the customer service representative hired straight out of high school or in a call center in Egypt, and so much more.
This talking point is entirely a political cudgel that only makes sense to the kind of folk that do not think past their favorite politician's tweets. On that fact, wanna know who's been managing your letters/calls that you've been sending your politician? These ones know your phone number, and any modern filter will be looking for your address.
If you ignore the core difference - scale - you won't be able to see the difference. Young nurse won't be able to leak all data on all people even if those local papers and workstation are left on the sidewalk for anyone to see
I abused that access, and almost got fired.
Taught me a big lesson.
All the collected info will soon either be used against us or sold to the highest bidder. (No, that's not paranoia, that's how the current administration acts.)
It is public knowledge that they were compromised and... just... nobody cared?
When you want to get rid of them, because they for example are disloyal, you start an investigation and arrest them for corruption or treason.
The SSA was never anything other than a Tenth Amendment violation to begin with, as shown by FDR's court packing threat[1], so a bit of external review seems in order.
Some sort of sane transition plan off of these socialized programs would be of great interest to a super-majority of voters, one expects.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judicial_Procedures_Reform_B...
There was the proven false claim that 40% of phone calls to SSA were fraudulent. I think it was DOGE fraud checking systems that proved that claim false, quite soon after Musk proclaimed it.
https://www.nextgov.com/digital-government/2025/05/doge-went...
Personally, it feels like the tiny nibbles that DOGE has managed to save from the massive banquet of spending that US government does is proof that there really isn't a lot of waste based on corruption. The spending is systemic and has built up over decades of various policy changes throughout many administrations of both colours.
Off topic, it feels as if this administration has also very effectively disproved any theory about the presence of a deep state controlling things from the background. Interestingly, Trump appears to be trying to show that it's possible, except for the fact that he's putting ridiculously unqualified and incompetent boobs into positions of influence. It'd be laughable except for the fact that this is not a TV show, this is real life.
> The spending is systemic and has built up over decades of various policy changes throughout many administrations of both colours.
Strong concur. Time for reform.
It is funny ... employment by goverment was actually going down for years. America has low taxes so it could pay its debt, but it is choosing to lower them for richests and put more debt in.
For whom, pray tell? Look at your combined burden, top to bottom, at all levels.
https://www.perplexity.ai/search/is-the-us-a-low-taxing-coun...
The problem is what "tax" means to US citizens as opposed to what taxes actually are. It's a communication / understanding issue.
Oh, and while I am doing it, I am also complaining about deficits, while making them larger by refusal to tax. And any program that helps someone not me is a waste of money, no matter how much money it actually saves via having functional country and society. I prefer things dysfunctional.
Newsflash: most of that debt is because of republicans who slash taxes each time the democrats stabilize the situation.
Federal government actually has quite a lot of useful and effective services. And then one party (republicans) that is intentionally trying to make it innefective and bad.
Please.
If my grandmother had wheels she would be a bicycle.
> The SSA was never anything other than a Tenth Amendment violation to begin with, as shown by FDR's court packing threat[1], so a bit of external review seems in order.
I know about the plan. But how did you make the jump from that to SSA being unconstitutional?
> Some sort of sane transition plan off of these socialized programs would be of great interest to a super-majority of voters, one expects.
A plan to eliminate program that keeps 22 million Americans out of poverty most of whom are seniors is of great interest to a super-majority of voters?
Kids, this is what happens when you read far right conspiracy theory websites for news.
The 10A was intended to preclude scope creep. In defense of FDR, the voters let the Progressives run plays.
So here we sit, decades later, waiting for a debt bomb to 'splode.
Tell me, how will the "Big Beautiful Bill", that adds multiple trillions to the debt while gutting essential social programs, will fix your "debt bomb"?
To me, it appears like straight up stealing, putting all the country's wealth in tax cuts to the rich and government contracts to military contractors. All the while placing the country on a sure path to financial and social ruin.
Prohibition, state-run eugenics programs, the end of freedom of contract, Wickard v. Fillburn, the Imperial Presidency, internationalist interventionism, etc. were all born from the original Progressivism movement.
Social Security has literally never missed a payment. It's arguably the most successful government program ever.
The reality is that all you armchair "ahhh deficit!!1" people have no answers to anything. We don't want granny dying in the street. I don't want that, you don't want that. Okay, so we need some social... security. It's not rocket science.
If you're not proposing real alternatives that actually at least have a chance of working, then you're just arguing in bad faith and nobody cares about you. And, to jump the gun here, no - private choice insurance IS NOT a replacement. That is explicitly not security and we run right back into "granny dying in street" problem.
More specifically, a stable system requires feedback loops.
Ours, like a vehicle without brakes, is running open-loop.
I guess that if all one cares about is blame management, then we can all just blame ${FIGURE} when the whole thing "unexpextedly" craters, rather than putting on the Big People Pants and reforming matters.
My interpretation of your reply is that nothing short of catastrophic societal collapse will constitute an effective argument?
As for DOGE, Trump has a couple options. He can shut it down and blame Musk, or he can let it keep running against the advice of his team. After DOGE is gone, they will be able to get a warrant and start looking for copies of the data. The first place to look is X.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/07/us/politics/trump-musk-do... (gift article link)
I do hope that after DOGE goes away, Trump goes back to supporting his base with respect to maintaining VA staffing and restricting H1B visas, especially after the R&D tax credit debacle cost so many tech jobs and the true potential for LLMs are being realized to increase productivity at all levels (as opposed to the halving the workforce at the bottom).
JKCalhoun•8mo ago
Wild. I remember when it was presumed that Conservative meant protector of individual freedoms, rights.
kibwen•8mo ago
Republicans, not conservatives, might rightfully have been the party of protecting individual rights and freedoms. Back in the 1850s.
bpodgursky•8mo ago
It's fine if you want to call it a bad idea... but stopping this access really doesn't give me the freedom to do anything.
FireBeyond•8mo ago
At least that's what the administration says when they want to argue that it's not subject to FOIA.
krapp•8mo ago
Presumed by whom? I've always understood Conservatism to be explicitly Christian in its ideology, opposed to womens' rights, "non-traditional" sexual orientation and gender identity, abortion, multiculturalism, pornography, modern art, rock music, drug use and a litany of other things. The freedom to think and act outside of the box of "traditional American values and culture" has rather more often been championed by progressives and leftists.
Conservatives do support the individual freedom to own a gun, though. For individuals of a certain phenotype.
JCattheATM•8mo ago
Which is funny, right? Their whole justification was to fight back if the government becomes authoritarian, when it turns out they love an authoritarian government that enforces their values.
lapcat•8mo ago
Hunting is very much a cultural issue, passed down the generations by family tradition, so you'd be hard pressed to change minds on that.
watwut•8mo ago
lapcat•8mo ago
watwut•8mo ago
lapcat•8mo ago
JCattheATM•8mo ago
tombert•8mo ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitary_executive_theory
hellotomyrars•8mo ago
saghm•8mo ago
BLKNSLVR•8mo ago
Except California, they're fucking wrong! ;)
cryptonector•8mo ago
eviks•8mo ago
watwut•8mo ago
refurb•8mo ago
What does this have to do with protecting individual rights?
The government already has your data. Whether another part of the government has access versus another seems like splitting hairs?
DOGE is the US government. Whether Jane in the SSA can look up your medical records or whether Big Balls in DOGE can see it is two shades of the same color.
anigbrowl•8mo ago
refurb•8mo ago
anigbrowl•8mo ago
I am sure you can think of situations where arbitrary and capricious decisions are made and sold to the public or staff at a business in the name of 'security' or 'economic necessity' or whatever, and that these terms are designed to limit discussion and establishment of consensus by creating a false sense of urgency. We should be cautious about letting unknown persons inspect our wallets just because they insist its urgent without clearly specifying how or why.
Here's an example (from the last century) of such rhetorical techniques being proposed specifically for their effectiveness in swaying opinion rather than developing policy: https://users.wfu.edu/zulick/454/gopac.html
refurb•8mo ago
“Waste, fraud and abuse” is defined by the OIG well before Trump. Just because you don’t like him means it doesn’t exist or they are “emotional buzzwords”.
https://oig.usaid.gov/node/221
Hence why the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 DOGE can have access - clearly across ideological lines.
anigbrowl•8mo ago
refurb•8mo ago
saghm•8mo ago