Alice Gainer reports: A federal judge in New York heard arguments Friday as states seek to continue blocking Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency from accessing sensitive Treasury Department records. More than a dozen states, including New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, are challenging DOGE and the Trump administration’s authority. New York Attorney General Letitia James and…
Category: Breaches
EFF Sues DOGE and the Office of Personnel Management to Halt Ransacking of Federal Data
On February 11, Jason Kelley of EFF wrote: EFF and a coalition of privacy defenders have filed a lawsuit today asking a federal court to block Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) from accessing the private information of millions of Americans that is stored by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), and to delete any data…
No penalties even when deputies share a woman’s nudes after an illegal phone search
Nate Anderson reports: In 2019, Haley Olson’s life in Grant County, Oregon, was upended when people in town appeared to know about private nude photos that Olson kept on her phone. Worse, some of the people appeared to have seen and shared the photos. The incidents all had some relationship to the local sheriff’s department,…
Federal judge skeptical DOGE has authority to embed agents throughout federal government
Ryan Knappenberger reports: A federal judge Friday expressed doubt that agents from Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency had the authority to access wide swaths of data at the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. U.S. District Judge John Bates, a George W. Bush appointee, pushed the…