The government’s efficiency department approach to identify fraud in social security administration “is equivalent to hitting a fly with a deck,” said a federal judge on Thursday, blocking Doge’s unlimited access to the data of the confidential agency.
In Decision of 137 pagesThe American District Judge Ellen Lipton Hollander wrote that the Trump administration never justified the need to access the data, which argued that it was vital to identify alleged fraud, and probably violated multiple federal laws by doing so.
“The Doge team is essentially involved in a fishing expedition in SSA, in search of an epidemic of fraud, based on little more than suspicion. It has launched a search for the proverbial needle in the bird, without any knowledge of concrete that the needle is really in the hay,” he wrote.
Elon Musk observes during the day of a meeting with the Republicans of the House of Representatives to discuss the Government Efficiency Department (Doge) in Capitol Hill in Washington, on March 5, 2025.
Kent Nishimura/Reuters
The judge’s order prevents the agency from granting Doge access to systems that contain personal identification information and orders Doge members to destroy any data in their possession that identifies individual taxpayers. However, the judge’s decision allows Doge to continue allowing access to the agency’s anonymized data.
According to Hollander, the decision to give Dege “unlimited access to the entire SSA registration system” in danger the confidential and private information of millions of Americans, risking information, including social security numbers, credit card information, medical and mental health records, hospitalization records, marriage and birth and bank information records.
“The Government has not even tried to explain why a more personalized, measured and titled approach is not suitable for the task,” he wrote. “On the other hand, the government simply repeats its enchantment of the need to modernize the system and discover fraud. Its method of doing so is equivalent to hitting a fly with a deck.”
Two people enter an office of the Social Security Administration in Suburban Detroit, on March 7, 2025.
Jim West/UCG/Universal Images Group through Getty Images
The demand that challenges Doge’s access was filed last month by two national unions and a defense group that argued that Doge’s access violated privacy laws and the Law of Administrative Procedures. In a statement to ABC News, the president of the American Federation of State Employees, of County and Municipal celebrated the decision as a “great victory for workers and retirees throughout the country.”
“The court saw that Elon Musk and his unqualified lackeys have a serious danger to Social Security and have illegally accessed the data of millions of Americans,” said AFSCME president Lee Saunders, in a statement.
In his decision, the judge also pointed out the irony that Dege has accessed the confidential information of millions of Americans, while the identities of the dux employees who work in the SSA have been hidden for privacy reasons.
“The defense does not seem to share a privacy concern for the millions of Americans whose SSA records were available for dux affiliates, without their consent,” he wrote.
