Report claims DOGE employee copied Social Security data onto a thumb drive

A former staffer from Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency allegedly took Americans’ personal information from the U.S. Social Security Administration and saved it onto a thumb drive, according to a whistleblower complaint described in a report by The Washington Post.

According to the report, the former DOGE software engineer later told co-workers at his new workplace that he “possessed two tightly restricted databases of U.S. citizens’ information” and intended to use that material at his new company. The report also said that the Social Security Administration’s inspector general is looking into the whistleblower complaint.

The former DOGE employee, whose identity was not disclosed by The Washington Post, had worked at the Social Security Administration last year. In October, he left that role and joined a government contractor, where he allegedly told colleagues that he had obtained two databases known as “Numident” and the “Master Death File,” according to The Post. The paper said those databases may contain records tied to “more than 500 million living and dead Americans, including Social Security numbers, places and dates of birth, citizenship, race and ethnicity, and parents’ names.”

The man also reportedly said that he once had unrestricted “God-level” access to the SSA’s systems.

A spokesperson for the Social Security Administration, which remains under DOGE’s control, rejected the claim that a former employee had taken data belonging to U.S. citizens. The spokesperson accused The Washington Post of being “desperate for clicks and eager to publish fake news to scare seniors.” The inspector general’s office, which operates independently from the Trump administration, did not immediately answer a request for comment.

This marks the latest alleged case involving the possible exposure of Americans’ personal data related to DOGE and its activity within the Social Security Administration. In January, two DOGE members were suspected of accessing and sharing Social Security numbers that were not available to them, reportedly as part of an effort to support an advocacy group that aimed to “overturn election results in certain States,” according to a lawsuit.

In another whistleblower allegation made within the agency last year, DOGE members were accused of placing Americans at risk by uploading hundreds of millions of Social Security records to a cloud server described as vulnerable. Also, last year, a judge blocked DOGE from accessing SSA systems, saying the Musk-led agency appeared to be “essentially engaged in a fishing expedition” while searching for fraud. Several DOGE members were placed at the Social Security Administration after Trump took office last year. The Washington Post reported that at least a dozen DOGE employees, most of them engineers or technical staff, were working at the agency. However, their precise duties and activities were not explained to the broader staff.