A whistleblower on Tuesday accused former Department of Government Efficiency officials of illegally copying and storing the Social Security information for more than 300 people. File Photo by Bonnie Cash/UPI | License Photo
Department of Government Efficiency officials illegally copied the data of more than 300 million people, a Social Security Administration official says.
SSA Chief Data Officer Charles Borges said the data includes people’s Social Security numbers, names and dates of birth and was copied and saved on a private area of the SSA’s cloud storage, said in a letter sent to members of four congressional committees and the Office of Special Counsel.
“Borges’ disclosures involve wrongdoing, including apparent systemic data security violations, uninhibited administrative access to highly sensitive production environments and potential violations of internal SSA security protocols and federal privacy laws,” said the letter, which was attributed to Government Accountability Project officials Dana Gold and Andrea Meza.
The non-profit GAP compiled the letter and on Tuesday sent copies to the chairmen and ranking members of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security & Government Affairs, Senate Committee on Finance, House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and the House Ways and Means Committee.
A copy also was sent to Acting Special Counsel Jamieson Greer of the Office of Special Counsel.
Borges said DOGE staffers Edward Coristine, Aram Moghaddassi, John Solly and Michael Russo violated federal laws and regulations when they accessed and stored the SSA data.
Moghaddassi now is the SSA’s chief information officer. Russo in February became the SSA’s chief information officer for about a month before being replaced by Scott Coulter, who was listed as the agency’s CIO as recently as May.
The SSA is taking the matter seriously, SSA spokesman Nick Perrine told The New York Times.
“SSA stores all personal data in secure environments that have robust safeguards in place to protect vital information,” Perrine told the newspaper.
“The data referenced in the complaint is stored in a longstanding environment used by SSA and walled off from the internet.”
He said only “high-level career SSA officials have administrative access to this System with oversight by SSA’s information security team.”
Borges’ complaint comes after the Department of Justice was accused of ordering the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia to provide information on the names, dates of birth and Social Security numbers for minors who undergo gender transformation medical procedures.
