Associated Press: Unions Ask Court to Stop Doge From Accessing Social Security Data of Millions Of Americans

Washington, D.C. — On Friday night, a coalition of unions and retirees represented by Democracy Forward filed a motion for emergency relief to halt Elon Musk’s so-called “Department of Government Efficiency’s” (DOGE) unprecedented, unlawful access to personal, confidential, private, and sensitive data regarding millions of Americans across the country from the Social Security Administration (SSA). Democracy Forward filed suit on behalf of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), Alliance for Retired Americans, and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT).

Tiffany Flick, who most recently served as Acting Chief of Staff to the former Acting SSA Commissioner before retiring last month, submitted a declaration in support of this lawsuit that outlines the significant steps taken by SSA career civil servants to protect sensitive data as members of DOGE descended on the agency.

See coverage below:

ASSOCIATED PRESS: Unions ask court to stop DOGE from accessing Social Security data of millions of Americans

A group of labor unions are asking a federal court for an emergency order to stop Elon Musk ‘s Department of Government Efficiency from accessing the sensitive Social Security data of millions of Americans.

The motion for emergency relief was filed late Friday in federal court in Maryland by the legal services group Democracy Forward against the Social Security Administration and its acting commissioner, Leland Dudek. The unions want the court to block DOGE’s access to the vast troves of personal data held by the agency.

Included in the filing is an affidavit from Tiffany Flick, a former senior official at the agency who says career civil servants are trying to protect the data from DOGE. “A disregard for our careful privacy systems and processes now threatens the security the data SSA houses about millions of Americans,” Flick wrote in court documents.

Karianne Jones, a lawyer for the unions and a retiree group behind the lawsuit, said it is not fully clear what kind of access that DOGE might have to personal data about taxpayers. But she said the apparent scope and the lack of information about what DOGE is looking for mean the potential impact is “huge.”

“Essentially what you have is DOGE just swooping in and bullying their way into access to millions of Americans’ private data. They cannot explain why they want this data. They can’t really tell you what data they want. They just want everything. They want the source code, and they want to do it without any restrictions,” she said.

WASHINGTON POST: Former Social Security official describes hostile takeover by Musk team

These and other allegations are included in a sweeping declaration filed as part of a federal lawsuit Friday from Tiffany Flick, the agency’s acting chief of staff until she was forced out in mid-February.

The declaration is the first in-depth public account from a high-ranking government executive of how Musk’s team is operating at one of dozens of agencies as it leads a downsizing of the federal government under President Donald Trump.

But it was the unorthodox — and in her mind, improper — manner used by the chief information officer and another DOGE-aligned appointee to infiltrate agency headquarters that alarmed Flick, who delivered her declaration to lawyers for Democracy Forward. The group is representing a coalition of unions and retirees that filed a motion for emergency relief in U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland Northern Division on Friday seeking to halt DOGE’s “unprecedented, unlawful seizure of personal, confidential, private and sensitive data.”

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