Lawmakers demand answers on DOGE's database access
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Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios
Democratic lawmakers are raising alarms about the security implications of Elon Musk's DOGE team's potentially unsanctioned access to sensitive government databases.
Why it matters: Several questions remain about the legality of the Department of Government Efficiency's work, including whether the staffers had proper security clearances and if their work violated federal privacy laws.
Zoom in: Democratic congressional leaders sent letters to President Donald Trump and the White House this week demanding answers to those questions.
- Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and his Democratic colleagues on the panel sent a letter to White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles on Wednesday.
- Democratic ranking members of several House committees sent a letter to President Trump on Tuesday asking if DOGE employees had proper security clearances and if they accessed Americans' sensitive personal information during their work at the USAID.
What they're saying: "No information has been provided to Congress or the public as to who has been formally hired under DOGE, under what authority or regulations DOGE is operating, or how DOGE is vetting and monitoring its staff and representatives before providing them seemingly unfettered access to classified materials and Americans' personal information," members wrote in the Senate Intel letter.
The big picture: President Trump's push to disrupt the federal workforce and government spending has come with some serious privacy risks, according to news reports.
- The CIA sent a list of all employees hired in the last two years over an unclassified email system, raising concerns that nation-state hackers can easily grab the information and identify those people, according to The New York Times.
- A 25-year-old DOGE operative has already made extensive changes to the code base for the Treasury Department's payment systems, per Talking Points Memo. (The Treasury Department has since said DOGE has "read-only" access.)
- Two federal employees are suing the Office of Personnel Management for allegedly connecting an unauthorized email server to its systems, bypassing a required privacy risk assessment.
The intrigue: No one seems to have been named to key cyber roles that would oversee the security of these systems.
- The White House doesn't have an acting federal chief information security officer, and no one has been nominated yet to lead the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.
- The Trump administration is also moving to turn each agency's chief information officer position into a political appointment, which would allow them to be hired and fired at-will.
What we're watching: Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), ranking member of the House Homeland Security Committee, introduced a resolution of inquiry Wednesday that would direct DHS to hand over documents about the impact of Trump's federal hiring freeze on the cyber workforce and security policies governing DOGE.
Go deeper: Musk team's access to Treasury records raises a row
