Elon Musk’s newly formed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has received yet another legal complaint about breaching the privacy of millions of Americans.
Privacy advocate group the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed the lawsuit on Tuesday, February 11, 2025, alongside a coalition of privacy defenders, multiple federal employee unions, and individual federal employees.
The aim is to prevent DOGE from accessing the data stored by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and request the deletion of any information Musk’s department has collected.
The EFF joins the wave of worried privacy experts and worker unions across the US filing lawsuits against the new government agency over supposedly illegal data access.
DOGE’s “unlawful” access to data
The OPM dataset contains “extraordinarily sensitive” details about all federal workers and anyone who has ever applied for a federal job, an expert explains. These include identifiable information such as names and social security numbers, work experiences, union activities, salaries, personal health data, and even classified information nondisclosure agreements.
According to the EFF, the mishandling of this information could open up the door to abuses, putting the safety and privacy of millions of people in the country at risk. For instance, Musk made headlines last year for publicly disclosing the names of government employees he wanted to fire after taking office.
“The question is not ‘what happens if this data falls into the wrong hands.’ The data has already fallen into the wrong hands, according to the law, and it must be safeguarded immediately,” wrote EFF in its announcement.
The law EFF refers to is the federal Privacy Act of 1974, under which access to this database and the disclosure of information should be strictly restricted. The news that DOGE, as recently reported by the Washington Post, could even modify or delete any existing OPM records is even more concerning.
All in all, EFF writes: “OPM’s data is extraordinarily sensitive, OPM gave it to DOGE, and this violates the Privacy Act. We are asking the court to block any further data sharing and to demand that DOGE immediately destroy any and all copies of downloaded material.”
BREAKING: We are suing DOGE and the Office of Personnel Management to stop the brazen and illegal data sharing of federal employee data with the “government efficiency” group. https://t.co/qtPvyNESKtFebruary 11, 2025
US President Donald Trump signed an executive order right after his inauguration ceremony tasking Musk’s DOGE with restoring “competence and effectiveness to our federal government.” This move, however, wasn’t without controversy.
The EFF lawsuit is indeed the latest action against the billionaire’s new government agency. The first legal complaint was filed by the National Security Counselors just moments after DOGE was officially recognized, under the Federal Advisory Committee Act.
Other legal actions followed suit, as various privacy experts around the country got increasingly worried about DOGE’s supposedly illegal data access. For instance, a coalition of labor unions also filed a lawsuit only a day before the EFF, on similar premises.
Both came just a few days after a similar lawsuit led a federal judge to temporarily block DOGE’s personnel from accessing Treasury Department information.
The EFF writes: “Violations of Americans’ privacy have played out across multiple agencies, without oversight or safeguards, and EFF is glad to join the brigade of lawsuits to protect this critical information.”
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