The U.S. Department of Justice told a federal court on Tuesday that a team linked to Elon Musk and the DOGE project operating within the Social Security Administration (SSA) stored sensitive Social Security data on servers that were never officially approved by the agency. Court filings also say that two team members secretly communicated with an external legal advocacy group connected to efforts to overturn election results in certain states.
Issue surfaced during corrections to sworn statements
According to the Justice Department, the problem came to light while correcting sworn statements submitted last year by senior SSA officials in lawsuits over access to federal data. Those corrections indicated that team members shared information through third-party systems and may have accessed private records that a judge had previously barred them from viewing. The revelations raised serious questions about how the DOGE project actually operated inside the SSA.
Election-related contacts and potential legal violations
Elizabeth Shapiro, a senior Justice Department official, said the SSA referred two DOJ employees for potential violations of the Hatch Act, which prohibits federal employees from using their positions for political purposes. The filing states that both individuals were in contact with a legal advocacy group seeking to overturn election outcomes in specific states.
One of the employees reportedly signed a voter data privacy agreement that could have involved using Social Security numbers to match federal records with state voter rolls. Shapiro said SSA leadership was unaware of the agreement and the external communications at the time earlier court statements were made, and that the agency believed its prior representations—that DOGE focused on fraud detection and technology modernization—were accurate at the time.
The DOJ added that there is no evidence other SSA employees, beyond the involved DOGE members, knew about the advocacy group or the voter-related agreement. Neither the employees nor the advocacy group were named in the filing.
Pentagon involvement and unclear data transfers
Emails reviewed by the Justice Department suggest that personnel from the Department of Defense may have been asked to assist the group with accessing SSA data for comparison with voter lists. It remains unclear whether any data was actually transferred.
Unauthorized servers and handling of restricted data
Shapiro also disclosed that Steve Davis, Musk’s chief adviser associated with the DOGE project, received a copy of a March 3, 2025 email containing a password-protected file with private information on approximately 1,000 individuals drawn from Social Security systems. It is unknown whether Davis accessed the file. Current SSA employees are unable to open it to verify its exact contents.
The SSA continues to assert that DOGE never had direct access to official record systems. However, the DOJ acknowledged it is possible Davis was sent limited outputs derived from SSA systems—a detail included in the corrected court filings.
Documents further state that one DOGE team member briefly accessed private Social Security profiles even after a court barred such access, though Shapiro said the access was never used. In another instance, a different DOGE member had access for two months to a call-center profile containing sensitive information; it is still unknown whether any private data was accessed during that period.
Data sharing via unapproved services
Finally, the Justice Department reported that DOGE members shared data links using Cloudflare, a third-party service not approved for storing SSA data and therefore not subject to the agency’s security controls. The DOJ said this practice exposes systemic weaknesses in how the DOGE project handled sensitive and access-restricted information.
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