The Elon Musk’s government ministry, accused of unprecedented violations of privacy laws by accessing the most sensitive personal data of the Americans, affirms that the public disclosure of the identity of its employees is the illegal invasion of privacy.
Musk and some supporters of the group’s mission went to social networks to affirm that surveillance and media reports on Doge employees are moving into doxxing: the practice of disclosing personal identification information from an online individual without their consent. A clinical instructor at the Harvard Law School Cyberlaw Clinic, for example, published the names and emails of more than 30 Doge employees in an article on Bluesky on Thursday.
Edward R. Martin Jr.,
But the defenders of consumer protection and certain privacy lawyers say that Musk’s legal allegations are not clear at best, and at worst nonexistent. Government employees who make decisions, they said, have few expectations of privacy in their government functions. And Musk himself published the names and titles of several federal employees working on questions related to the climate on X in November, by driving at least one to delete their social media accounts, CNN reported.
“This certainly seems to be a case of” confidentiality for me and not for you, “said Cody Venzke, senior policy advisor to the National Defense Department of ACLU political defenders working on surveillance, privacy and technology.
DOGE is at the heart of a dozen prosecution against federal agencies, including American work, cash and education services. The proceedings say that the government has authorized Doge to access data, in particular mortgage declarations, income statements, immigration status and social security numbers, violating a private life law of the Watergate era and several other laws.
On Friday, a federal judge rejected a group of unions on Friday to temporarily prevent decades from the payment system of the Treasury Department. However, she left the door open to a future injunction, noting that if the groups could show that the government provided for the private information of the members imminently or sharing it with individuals outside the government, the court “would not hesitate to find an irreparable probability of damage”.
The government has argued in court documents that the attempt to prosecute DOGE access to government data is a restriction on Trump’s constitutional powers.
“The concerns concerning Doge violating privacy, which DOGE has access to many of these files and information through the government is not founded,” Zack Smith, principal legal researcher at the Heritage Foundation, said. “Because fundamentally, in the end, Doge and one of its employees are government employees working at the request of the President of the United States, the head of government’s executive power.”
Martin’s office refused to comment. Doge could not be joined to comment.
‘Extremely different’
Protctions against public disclosure of personal details on civil servants are essential to protect them against exposure to harassment and other threats, noted Smith.
“It certainly seems to be a standard double,” said Smith. “Generally of civil servants, government employees, their information is still somewhat protected.”
While government employees at the level of the line with little discretion can generally claim the protection of the privacy of the public surveillance, including the right to have personally identifying the details of the files published under the law on freedom of information – the staff in more senior roles or with more power in a separate bucket, said Aaron MacKey Freedom of expression and transmission to the frontier foundation.
EFF represents the complainants in a prosecution against Musk, Doge and its interim administrator, and the staff management office and its interim director Charles Ezell.
These are “extremely different cases,” said Venzke. There is a “big difference between Americans whose data is accessible by DOGE because they apply to Medicaid, Social Security or to deposit their taxes-and people who manage the DOGE program”, he continued.
For decades, the courts have repeatedly balanced the interests of officials from officials against the public’s interest in the disclosure of information related to the government.
Here, Doge workers have “an incredible quantity of power in the direction of the president,” said Mackey, arguing that the power discharges the balance of privacy protections against them.
“What is the concern here?” It is literally their names, ”he said. “Do you have an incredible amount of privacy regarding your name?” It’s minimal. And what is the public’s interest in disclosure? »»
However, the lack of powerful legal arguments cannot ultimately dissuade Musk and others from turning the tables of the adversaries of Doge.
Success – or any other – may “not be the point,” said Venzke. Threats similar to those of Martin can “get the scary effect”.
