Dem
47
GOP
53
The Social Security Administration's chief data officer, Charles Borges, resigned "involuntarily" Friday after he blew the whistle on the SSA improperly handling its data and rebuffing his efforts to correct the problem. He said what the SSA had done is potentially unlawful and he was prevented from trying to correct the problem. This made carrying out his statutory duties untenable and constituted an intolerable working environment. He said that his superiors had created a toxic climate of fear and intimidation within the agency.
Specifically, he said that Elon Musk's DOGEys copied the entire Social Security database to a cloud-based system that is completely outside the oversight of the SSA. He is required by law to vigorously protect the data he is in charge of. He can't do that if a duplicate copy is off on some cloud system over which he has no control. He said this is a high-risk situation since anyone with access to the cloud data could perpetrate identity theft on hundreds of millions of Americans and there is nothing he can do to prevent it. He clearly does not want to be around when the poop hits the ventilator, which is probably inevitable. Let someone else be in the hot seat when that happens.
In June, a federal judge blocked the DOGEys from accessing the SSA data, but later the Supreme Court basically said "if you can't trust a DOGEy, who can you trust?" The administration had argued that the president was authorized to allow anyone he wanted to get access to the data in order to modernize the SSA systems. Of course, one doesn't need access to all the data to write new software and, in any event, there has not been a competitive bidding process for the contract to modernize the system. In addition, Musk was acting as an officer of the United States even though he had not been confirmed by the Senate, as required. But those were mere details to a court whose basic principle is the president can do whatever he wants to whenever he wants to.
Borges has turned to the Government Accountability Project, a group that supports whistleblowers. He is also cooperating with investigators who are reviewing the situation. (V)