Dem
47
GOP
53
When most people think about Social Security, they think about seniors getting monthly checks and that is about it. But the Social Security Administration does more than send out 74 million checks every month. And to do its work, it collects a vast amount of data about every American, including their name, Social Security number, date and place of birth, gender, addresses, marital and parental status, parents' names, lifetime earnings, bank account information, immigration and work authorization status, health conditions (for people applying for disability benefits), and use of Medicare. Further, via data-sharing agreements with other federal agencies (including IRS and HHS) there is often additional data there about some people. By law, this information is private and available to only a limited number of people who need it in order to carry out Social Security's work, and then only under rigid conditions.
Even though Elon Musk has called Social Security the "biggest Ponzi scheme of all time," he thought it would be cool to get access to this trove of information for his own (unknown) purposes, so he unleashed a dozen 20-something hackers on the SSA and told them to go after the data. A coalition of unions and retiree groups didn't like this so much and sued. In April, U.S. District Judge Ellen Hollander in Maryland, a Barack Obama appointee, made a temporary ruling that the DOGEys had no business mucking around in the SSA databases and had to destroy any information they had already copied into their own computers until the case could be heard on its merits because their actions likely violated the 1974 Privacy Act. Among other things, she said that the administration showed no evidence why DOGE needed such sweeping access to personal information, rather than anonymized or statistical information. In May, the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit upheld Hollander's temporary ruling, 9-6. The administration was incensed at this restriction and made an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court.
On Friday, SCOTUS delivered. In an unsigned 6-3 ruling, the Court reversed Hollander's decision. The three Democratic appointees dissented, with Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson warning of "grave privacy risks for millions of Americans." Solicitor General John Sauer argued that the courts should not micromanage DOGE's ability to hunt for waste, fraud, and abuse, but didn't explain why this was an emergency and couldn't go through the regular order and wait until the courts had examined the merits of the case. In the Trump administration, many things are emergencies.
The newly confirmed head of the SSA, Frank Bisignano, called the ruling "a major victory for American taxpayers." On the other hand, Kathleen Romig, of the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, said: "While the appeals court considers whether DOGE is violating the law, its operatives will have 'God-level' access to Social Security numbers, earnings records, bank routing numbers, mental and reproductive health records and much more." Romig noted that when she previously worked at SSA, she had to be fingerprinted and go through a thorough background check to be even allowed to view anonymized data to do her research as a regular SSA employee. Now the DOGEys have free rein until the case is heard on its merits and fully appealed. (V)