{"id":530230,"date":"2026-03-12T00:17:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-12T00:17:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/530230\/"},"modified":"2026-03-12T00:17:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-12T00:17:09","slug":"social-securitys-internal-watchdog-investigates-whistleblower-complaint","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/530230\/","title":{"rendered":"Social Security’s internal watchdog investigates whistleblower complaint"},"content":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 The Social Security Administration\u2019s internal watchdog is investigating a whistleblower complaint into what it describes as a former Department of Government Efficiency<\/a> worker\u2019s potential misuse of data obtained from the Social Security Administration<\/a>.<\/p>\n

According to a document the Associated Press obtained Wednesday, the SSA\u2019s inspector general informed the leadership of four congressional committees that it was launching the probe after receiving an anonymous complaint.<\/p>\n

The Washington Post on Tuesday reported that a former DOGE software engineer had allegedly told several co-workers that he possessed two tightly restricted databases of U.S. citizens\u2019 information and had at least one data set on a thumb drive that he would share with his new employer.<\/p>\n

The SSA said the allegations have been refuted by the agency, the former employee, and the company.<\/p>\n

Senate Finance Committee Ranking Member Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said in a statement that the allegations, if true, would represent \u201cone of the largest known data breaches in American history\u201d and called for a \u201cfull public accounting.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\"The<\/p>\n

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\"Prime<\/p>\n

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The Social Security Administration maintains records on hundreds of millions of people \u2014 including health diagnoses, income, banking information, familial relationships and personal biographic data. <\/p>\n

The agency has faced lawsuits over alleged mishandling of government data and DOGE\u2019s access to sensitive personal information. <\/p>\n

Last August, whistleblower Charles Borges, who worked as the chief data officer at the Social Security Administration filed a disclosure<\/a> to the special counsel\u2019s office, stating that more than 300 million Americans\u2019 Social Security data was put at risk after DOGE officials uploaded sensitive information to a cloud account not subject to oversight. <\/p>\n

In January, the Trump administration admitted in court<\/a> that DOGE workers had unauthorized access to sensitive SSA data, shared SSA data using an unapproved third-party service, and engaged in activities outside the scope of SSA\u2019s mission, including signing a \u201cvoter data agreement\u201d with a political advocacy group. <\/p>\n

That litigation is ongoing. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 The Social Security Administration\u2019s internal watchdog is investigating a whistleblower complaint into what it describes…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":442710,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[45,49,48,208104,24446,1376,133,2841,94401,8929,12005,13188,7741,131,132,714,5545,208103,61,2845,17286,8615],"class_list":{"0":"post-530230","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-personal-finance","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-charles-borges","12":"tag-department-of-government-efficiency","13":"tag-donald-trump","14":"tag-finance","15":"tag-general-news","16":"tag-government-budgets","17":"tag-government-programs","18":"tag-information-security","19":"tag-international-agreements","20":"tag-lawsuits","21":"tag-personal-finance","22":"tag-personalfinance","23":"tag-politics","24":"tag-privacy","25":"tag-ron-wyden","26":"tag-technology","27":"tag-u-s-news","28":"tag-u-s-social-security-administration","29":"tag-washington-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/530230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=530230"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/530230\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/442710"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=530230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=530230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=530230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}