The Social Security Administration is rushing cuts to phone services at the White House’s request, the agency’s acting commissioner told Social Security advocates in a meeting on Monday, two sources who attended tell Axios.
Social Security rushing service cuts at White House request, sources say
Previously:
No, 150-Year-Olds Aren’t Collecting Social Security Benefits
Trump’s Medicaid reversal should worry Social Security recipients.
The US Treasury Claimed DOGE Technologist Didn’t Have ‘Write Access’ When He Actually Did (archived)
Sources tell WIRED that the ability of DOGE’s Marko Elez to alter code controlling trillions in federal spending was rescinded days after US Treasury and White House officials said it didn’t exist.
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As WIRED has reported, Elez was granted privileges including the ability to not just read but write code on two of the most sensitive systems in the US government: the Payment Automation Manager (PAM) and Secure Payment System (SPS) at the Bureau of the Fiscal Service (BFS), an agency that according to Treasury records paid out $5.45 trillion in fiscal year 2024. Reporting from Talking Points Memo confirmed that Treasury employees were concerned that Elez had already made “extensive changes” to code within the Treasury system. The payments processed by BFS include federal tax returns, Social Security benefits, Supplemental Security Income benefits [Social Security Disability Insurance], and veteran’s pay.
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On February 4, WIRED reported that Elez did, in fact, have admin access to PAM and SPS. Talking Points Memo reported later that day that Elez had “made extensive changes to the code base for these critical payment systems.” In a letter that same day that did not mention Musk or DOGE, Treasury official Jonathan Blum wrote to Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, “Currently, Treasury staff members working with Tom Krause, a Treasury employee, will have read-only to the coded data of the Fiscal Service’s payment systems.” (Krause is the top DOGE operative at Treasury and CEO of Cloud Software Group.) The letter did not say what kind of access the staff members actually had.
Previously:
Cloud Software Group: As Elon Musk Begins Shutting Down Payments to Federal Contractors, a Strange Money Trail Emerges to His Operatives Inside the U.S. Treasury’s Payment System
Elon Musk is the billionaire CEO of the publicly-traded EV company, Tesla. As such, under corporate law, he owes a Duty of Loyalty to Tesla. Notwithstanding this well-established law, Musk is engaged in an array of other corporate endeavors outside of Tesla, including being the CEO of SpaceX, a private rocket company.
Read More »
Elon Musk and his team at the Department of Government Efficiency—or DOGE—have been granted access to a sensitive Treasury Department payment system that contains the personal information of every American who receives tax refunds, Medicare, Social Security, and other payments from the government.
‘It’s a Coup’: Musk’s DOGE Granted Access to Treasury System That Pays Out Social Security
Buying domestic data from data brokers is just something the government does all the time. Bypassing restraints enacted by the Supreme Court, federal agencies (along with local law enforcement agencies) are hoovering up whatever domestic data they can from private companies all too happy to be part of the problem.
Well, That’s Everyone: Senator Wyden Letter Confirms The NSA Is Buying US Persons’ Data From Data Brokers
For decades, the government has used the Third Party Doctrine to obtain massive amounts of phone records without a warrant.
Even prior to the creation of the Third Party Doctrine by the Supreme Court in 1979, government agencies were obtaining phone records using pen register requests that provided them with info on numbers called and the length of the calls. This method, however, required the government to supply some information of its own: specifically, a targeted source phone number phone companies could use to search for call metadata.
Ron Wyden Wants To Know Why The DEA Still Has On-Demand Access To Trillions Of Phone Records
After years of continuous, unrepentant abuse of surveillance powers, the FBI is facing the real possibility of seeing Section 702 curtailed, if not scuttled entirely.
FBI Director Admits Agency Rarely Has Probable Cause When It Performs Backdoor Searches Of NSA Collections
One of the top priorities of the Republican Party is allowing countless rich tax cheats to get off without reprucissions:
I am beginning to think that the “populist” turn of the Republican Party may be lacking in substance
Related:
Rich Americans Are Stiffing the Taxman to the Tune of $66 Billion
A bipartisan group of six senators and two members of the House of Representatives on Wednesday introduced legislation to protect Americans’ data from being used by U.S. adversaries.
US lawmakers seek new law to protect TikTok user information
Now do the other mobile apps! Then again, who would they buy our data from then?!
A newly declassified report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence reveals that the federal government is buying troves of data about Americans.
The US Is Openly Stockpiling Dirt on All Its Citizens
Related:
U.S. Spy Agencies Buy Vast Quantities of Americans’ Personal Data, U.S. Says
Ms. Cat’s Chronicles 
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