The DOGE lawsuits violate the Privacy Act of 1974: The fight against the rifling of DOGE employees in a large public sector
As Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency rampages through the US government, its access to sensitive data is alarming federal agencies and Americans who interact with them. In the month since the Trump administration began its purge of federal workers, opponents fighting DOGE in court have been pinning their hopes of stopping the world’s richest man on a 50-year-old law.
More than half a dozen lawsuits are seeking to block DOGE employees from rifling through these vast troves of data. One thing they all have in common: They allege that DOGE’s actions violate the Privacy Act of 1974.
The Privacy Act is a law that limits how the federal government can collect, use, and share information about US citizens and other people in the United States.
The law has some features such as allowing people to access records about them, letting people correct records if they are wrong, and being able to restrict who can access records.
The Privacy Act prohibits an agency from disclosing someone’s records—even within the agency—unless that person approves in writing or the agency meets one of the law’s 12 exceptions. Most of the exceptions relate to specific circumstances, such as congressional oversight, law enforcement investigations, court orders, census work, and National Archives preservation. Agencies can give their records to their own employees, or give them to third parties for routine use, if they have a need for the record in the performance of their duties.
What is wrong with the Attorney General’s move fast and break things mentality: Nixon’s case against the public’s power from the Watergate scandal
Nixon used the government’s powers to intimidate and investigate his political enemies. He tried to use the IRS to target liberal political groups with audits and scrutiny of their tax exemptions, and he deployed the FBI to spy on and harass his political opponents. Legislators wanted future presidents to not weaponizing government power after Nixon quit over the Watergate scandal.
“Congress must act before sophisticated new systems of information gathering and retention are developed, and before they produce widespread abuses,” North Carolina Democratic senator Sam Ervin said as he introduced one of the bills that inspired the Privacy Act. “The peculiarity of new complex technologies is that once they go into operation, it is too late to correct our mistakes or supply our oversight.”
The court did not issue a temporary restraining order that the Attorney General has said they will fight to the end. “Every day that he is allowed to operate without a congressional mandate and with little apparent supervision, Musk is destabilizing our government and disrupting critical funding for education, public health and national security. His move fast and break things mentality is not only reckless, but also unconstitutional, and we are prepared to pursue this case for as long as it takes to bring this chaos to an end.”