DOGE Day Afternoon

The hostile takeover of our private data should spur immediate, mass outrage

Today I want to dive deep into a horrible, very bad, new development that may radically impact all of our lives forever — here in the U.S. — unless we rise up (ha!) to stop it immediately. Fun times!

Before getting into that, I was delighted to read that the Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision, decided to not entirely shred the Constitution yesterday. The Court ruled that the Trump regime must "facilitate" the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Abrego Garcia — a Maryland resident with no criminal record, married to an American citizen, with three children including one “special needs” child — was mistakenly deported to El Salvador, for no reason. While the regime called the deportation an "administrative error” (oops!), they argued that American courts lacked authority to do anything once they threw an innocent person into a foreign hellhole, without any due process. As of now, Abrego Garcia still rots in a brutal Salvadoran prison, perhaps the one that Kristi Noem, secretary of homeland security and MAGA babe or “concentration camp Barbi”, visited for her now infamous photo op:

It is also nice that Trump rescinded the massive tariffs he was planning to impose on every country in the world after the market for US Treasury bonds started to crater, although he is still putting a 10% tariff on the rest of the world. In a few days, something like ten trillion dollars worth of wealth disappeared from the stock market, while U.S. retirement accounts lost 20% of their value. It seems a deeper loss of confidence and trust in the US Government and US economy is taking root. We are now in a trade war with China, and ordinary people — Trump supporters — will see the price of many consumer goods skyrocket in a few weeks.

We see some fissures starting to appear on the Right — not enough — while Trump has gone fully into Louis XIVth mode, surrounded by sycophants who call his every move an act of genius. Appearing on Joe Rogan, neoconservative critic Douglas Murray criticized Rogan for giving a platform to guests promoting fringe conspiracy theories, turbo-charging their career as influencers. Murray called out Ian Carroll, who claims Israel was involved in the 9/11 attacks despite a lack of evidence, and Darryl Cooper, who calls Winston Churchill the “chief villain of World War II” and downplays Nazi atrocities. Murray argued that meat-head Rogan helps these neo-Fascist edge-dwellers spread a “counter-narrative that is wildly off,” “throwing out counter-historical stuff of a very dangerous kind” that will lead many people to believe “horseshit of the most profound kind.”

It is, of course, difficult, if not impossible, to respond or even react to so many outrages happening so fast. However, I feel we need to pay attention to — in fact, interrupt — the accelerated effort to centralize U.S. citizens’ data across federal agencies in a single system. This is being attempted by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Next week, DOGE is planning to build a “mega API” for the IRS. As Wired reports in “DOGE Is Planning a Hackathon at the IRS. It Wants Easier Access to Taxpayer Data”:

A “mega API” could potentially allow someone with access to export all IRS data to the systems of their choosing, including private entities. If that person also had access to other interoperable datasets at separate government agencies, they could compare them against IRS data for their own purposes.

The goal is to replace legacy systems with a single cloud-based data hub. According to Wired, DOGE intends to partner with Palantir as “a third-party vendor.” Co-founded by Musk associate Peter Thiel, Palantir is a software company that works with intelligence agencies on mass surveillance.

Palantir has reportedly provided advanced data analysis and artificial intelligence (AI) tools to the Israeli military. According to reports, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) employed an AI system known as “Lavender” to generate target lists, identifying 37,000 individuals as potential threats, often with minimal human oversight. While Palantir’s specific relationship with Lavender has not been disclosed, the company has a strategic partnership with the Israeli Defense Ministry, supplying software to aid in military operations. Marc Owen Jones, an assistant professor of Middle East Studies at Hamad Bin Khalifa University, calls the Israeli military's use of Lavender, “the world's first AI-assisted genocide.”

DOGE’s effort to consolidate all of our data into one massive API is backed by Trump’s recent executive order to eliminate “information silos.” DOGE has been given access to sensitive data from agencies like the Treasury, Education Department, and Office of Personnel Management. This article, “Trump Order Sparks Privacy Alarm: What the Government Knows About You”, offers a useful overview. They write:

President Donald Trump has ignited a firestorm over privacy rights with a sweeping new executive order aimed at consolidating massive amounts of personal data held by the federal government. The move could create an unprecedented trove of information on nearly every person living in the United States—information that includes everything from Social Security numbers to medical diagnoses, student loan debt, and criminal records.

In March, Trump signed an executive order instructing federal agencies to dismantle “information silos” and share unclassified personal data across departments. The goal, according to the administration, is to root out waste, fraud, and abuse in government programs. But critics argue the initiative poses a historic threat to Americans’ privacy.

…

According to internal records reviewed by The New York Times, the federal government maintains at least 300 data fields across 23 systems at eight agencies. These include:

• IRS records: Income, alimony, gambling winnings, bank account info, charitable contributions

• Social Security Administration: Disability status, benefit claims, employment history

• Department of Education: Student loan defaults, FAFSA data, parental income

• Health and Human Services: Medical diagnoses, Medicaid, Medicare payments

• Homeland Security: Immigration status, visa numbers

• Labor Department: Employment, wages, unemployment benefits

• Office of Personnel Management: Federal job applications, salary histories

This expansive repository includes deeply personal information such as biometric identifiers, addiction treatment history, veteran status, and even login credentials for government services.

Critics and civil liberties advocates warn that merging tax, medical, and other personal data could create government dossiers on citizens, enabling misuse and surveillance, while increasing our vulnerability to cyberattacks, if this data gets into the wrong hands. In fact, some of Musk’s young DOGE operatives, including 19-year-old Edward Coristine, are known cyber-criminals. Coristine is the grandson of Valery Martynov, a former KGB lieutenant colonel who was executed by the Soviet Union in 1987 after being exposed as a double agent working for the FBI. Martynov's family relocated to the United States following his death. According to the cyberthreat intelligence firm Redsky Alliance:

A key member of Elon Musk's US DOGE Service team once assisted a cybercrime gang involved in data theft and cyberstalking an FBI agent, according to digital records reviewed by Reuters. Edward Coristine, a 19-year-old hacker, is one of the most visible figures in the DOGE initiative, which has broad access to official networks as it works to downsize the US government. He has gained attention for his online persona "bigballs," a name that became a pop culture reference. Musk has publicly praised him, calling him "awesome" on his social media platform, X.

In 2022, while still in high school, Coristine ran a company called DiamondCDN, which provided network services. According to corporate and digital records, one of DiamondCDN's clients was EGodly, a cybercrime group that boasted about hacking and harassment activities. Digital records from DomainTools and the cybersecurity tool Any.Run confirm this connection.

In an understatement, RedSky Alliance notes that Coristine’s “involvement in government networks raises questions about vetting procedures and the risks associated with appointing individuals with questionable pasts to sensitive positions.” As far as we know, DOGE operatives have not undergone standard federal vetting or received official intelligence clearances. Despite handling sensitive government data, DOGE staff lack proper security authorization.

Despite a lawsuit filed by labor unions and military veterans, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2–1 to lift a lower court's injunction, restoring DOGE’s access to our data. The lawsuit accused the Trump administration of violating federal privacy laws by granting DOGE access to our information including Social Security numbers, birth dates, addresses, and financial and citizenship details without proper justification. The court argued that the plaintiffs lacked the “standing” to bring this case, and also that the harm which could be caused by this centralization of data remained speculative. Unfortunately, once this massive surveillance database is created, it will be too late to prevent its misuse.

While recent news has suggested Musk is on the way out of his unofficial government role as “shadow President,” this is smoke and mirrors. We can argue whether Musk — as well as Thiel — literally hold a Nazi ideology, but they are, obviously, pretty close to that. I noted in a recent essay that Thiel has supported the political theorist Curtis Yarvin, who believes the US should be a dictatorship (like a tech company under a CEO), jokes about turning the underclass into biodiesel, and essentially supports White nationalism (in a 2007 essay, he draws nonsensical distinctions between “class B” and “Class A”, or “White” and “Swarthy” populations, and proposes the White or Class B populations are endangered by their more numerous competitors).

Elon Musk regularly amplifies white supremacist and neo-Nazi ideas and influencers on his social media platform, X (formerly Twitter). He reinstated accounts previously banned for extremist content, including those of Andrew Anglin, founder of the neo-Nazi website Daily Stormer. Musk endorses content promoting the "Great Replacement" theory, a white supremacist conspiracy alleging a deliberate plot to replace white populations with non-white immigrants. He agreed with a tweet claiming that Jewish people promote "hatred against whites" and seek immigration by "hordes of minorities.” And let’s not forget Musk's obviously calculated Nazi salutes during a Trump inauguration rally in January. The DOGE logo contains veiled but obvious references to Nazi symbolism and White Nationalist tropes.

We are on the verge of turning all of our private information over to these deranged, power-mad individuals, as we transition from a broken Democracy to an actively world-destroying tyranny. We probably should stop this, if we can. But, hey, whatever!