‘Infinite Nightmares at Once’: Veterans Data Swept Up in Musk’s Takeover of Treasury System – Military.com
Sensitive veterans data, including information about Department of Veterans Affairs benefits, are among the Treasury Department records Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency now has access to amid his quest to unilaterally cut government spending and personnel.Over the weekend, Musk and his team gained access to the system that the Treasury Department uses to make all U.S. government payments. The system includes taxpayer data, such as Social Security numbers, for nearly every American, which naturally includes scores of veterans. On top of that, information about VA disability and retirement benefits, Medicare and Medicaid payments and any other government benefits veterans might receive would be swept up in the system.”Anyone who’s receiving payments from the federal government, first and foremost, is likely to be concerned that payments that they are obliged to receive might not show up, either intentionally because they’re getting blocked for some reason that’s not explained, or even unintentionally, because they’re giving admin access to a critical piece of our federal infrastructure to random coders off the street, which violates like every principle of cybersecurity and administration of these systems that exists,” said Alan Butler, executive director and president of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a nonprofit privacy advocacy group.Read Next: First 10 Migrants Arrive at Guantanamo Bay and Will Be Held in Terrorist PrisonThe top Democrat on the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee also sounded the alarm Monday specifically about the risk to veterans.”With this takeover, Musk can now access veterans’ personal data — from where they live, to their bank account info, and the amount of their earned VA benefits,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said in a statement. “Veterans risked their lives to defend this country, and they deserve more than to have unaccountable billionaires playing with the benefits they earned and rely on.”The Treasury Department did not respond to Military.com’s request for comment Tuesday on concerns about veterans’ data being exposed to Musk and his team.Musk, the world’s richest man whose companies SpaceX and Tesla have earned billions of dollars from government contracts, was appointed by Trump to lead what was dubbed the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, to take a sledgehammer to government spending.Despite the name, DOGE is not actually a federal department. Rather, Trump signed an executive order on his first day in office that rebranded an existing White House office that was called the U.S. Digital Service into DOGE, which is also the name of a cryptocurrency that Musk has boosted in the past.DOGE, which Wired reported is staffed by 19- to 24-year-olds with previous connections to Musk’s companies, sought and gained access to the Treasury system after the White House’s effort to freeze wide swaths of government funding was blocked by court orders and elicited widespread public panic and outrage.By Musk’s own description, the goal of gaining access to the Treasury system is to stop some payments from going out.”Obviously, DOGE is trying to stop your tax dollars from being stolen for waste and fraud,” Musk posted Tuesday on the social media platform he owns, X, in response to Democratic criticism of him gaining access to the Treasury payment system.On Monday, the White House told The New York Times that Musk’s team’s access to the system is “read only,” meaning they cannot make changes or stop payments themselves.Even if that is true, Butler said, the access to the system is still concerning.”That is still a massive invasion of privacy, first of all, and still imposes significant ongoing risks,” Butler said. “Because ‘read’ includes the ability to exfiltrate data. … All of this just exponentially increases the odds that this data gets breached, that people’s private information is breached, that national security is breached. Infinite nightmares at once.”Two federal employees unions and an advocacy group called the Alliance for Retired Americans sued the Treasury Department on Monday over Musk’s access to the payment system. The lawsuit notes that veterans benefits, Social Security payments and tax refunds are handled on the system and argues that the move to give Musk and DOGE access violates federal privacy laws.Democrats have also cited the risk to veterans as they agitate to block Musk’s access.In addition to his statement Monday, Blumenthal sent VA Secretary Doug Collins a letter Tuesday, immediately after the Senate voted to confirm Collins to the job, outlining what he would like to see from Collins at the beginning of his tenure.Among Blumenthal’s demands, he called for Collins to “restrict, block, or remove Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) employee access to all VA data systems and records, including those holding veterans’ private health, benefits and related financial information, and VA employee personnel files.”House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, both Democrats of New York, also said Tuesday they were introducing a bill to “prevent unlawful meddling in the Treasury Department’s payment systems.” They are calling the bill “Stop the Steal,” a winking name that references Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election.”They are raiding the government and attempting to steal taxpayer money,” Jeffries said at a news conference Tuesday. “That’s what the situation at the Treasury Department is all about.”He said the legislation would block “people who are trying to steal personal, sensitive and confidential information related to Social Security recipients, Medicare recipients, taxpayers, businesses, not-for-profits, veterans and everyday Americans.”Related: Musk, Ramaswamy Proposal to Slash Spending Could Include VA Medical ServicesRebecca Kheel specializes in covering Congress for Military.com, holding lawmakers accountable for how their decisions affect military personnel and veterans. Her coverage includes military quality-of-life issues in the annual defense policy bill, debates over veterans’ health care and benefits, and how political gridlock affects the force.
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