Halls of Shrewd'm / US Policy❤
No. of Recommendations: 8
So it was real, Elez was accidentally given read/write access for, it looks like, less than a day.
Treasury Department officials said Tuesday that the agency last week “mistakenly” and “briefly” gave a member of Elon Musk’s team the power to alter a sensitive federal payments database, prompting an internal forensic investigation that remains ongoing.
The disclosure, made in a series of court filings, undercuts the Trump administration’s repeated public claims that the DOGE team’s access to the federal payments system was limited to a “read-only” basis.
Senior Treasury officials wrote in sworn declarations that Marko Elez, a 25-year-old former SpaceX and X engineer, was erroneously granted “read/write” privileges to a secure payments system on Feb. 5.TLDR: The Fiscal Bureau was using cyber tools to track his usage and discovered the morning of Feb 6 Elez had accidentally been configured with read/write access. Elez didn't know he had write access, they are investigating but think there's little chance anything happened.
https://archive.is/tR1tW
No. of Recommendations: 2
Treasury Department officials said Tuesday that the agency last week “mistakenly” and “briefly” gave a member of Elon Musk’s team the power to alter a sensitive federal payments database, prompting an internal forensic investigation that remains ongoing.
The disclosure, made in a series of court filings, undercuts the Trump administration’s repeated public claims that the DOGE team’s access to the federal payments system was limited to a “read-only” basis.
Senior Treasury officials wrote in sworn declarations that Marko Elez, a 25-year-old former SpaceX and X engineer, was erroneously granted “read/write” privileges to a secure payments system on Feb. 5.
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Thanks Lapsody. This clears up all the allegations made prior to Feb 5 that DOGE was entering cancellations of payments, etc directly into TPS. Same for allegations made after Feb 5 as well. BTW, you forgot to bold this,
Elez didn't know he had write access, they are investigating but think there's little chance anything happened.
We should all complement the watchdogs over at Treasury who caught the mistake the next morning and corrected it the same day. Good for them. The Treasury Dept announcement also reflects the ongoing push for transparency in our Government. We got a refreshing, timely and straight forward admission of the mistake and its correction.
Now we are assured that everything goes through standard request processes to Treasury Dept employees authorized to enter transactions into TPS. The unproven allegation that DOGE is entering directly is finally settled and we should not be hearing this particular allegation any longer. But we all know we will because the allegation is so effective at keeping the liberal anxiety level cranked up to Defcon 1.
No. of Recommendations: 1
Muck: "Oops, my bad. Some of what we say will be false."
(I'll keep that typo as an accurate description of Musk's rule as "mucker up in chief".)
No. of Recommendations: 3
Thanks Lapsody. This clears up all the allegations made prior to Feb 5 that DOGE was entering cancellations of payments, etc directly into TPS. Same for allegations made after Feb 5 as well. BTW, you forgot to bold this,
Elez didn't know he had write access, they are investigating but think there's little chance anything happened.
I did summarize accurately. But in reality two people got put on leave, access was granted by the new guy, then there was a leak. People in the treasury knew and were leaking to reporters that he had read/write access. A few days later they started blaring that it was "read only" access - after it was being played up by the press. It looked like a reaction to the press stories. So because attention was drawn to it by insiders with knowledge leaking, it was stopped. It was likely stopped due to the leaks and the talking going on within and without the Treasury.
So it doesn't clear up all the allegations, and we need an independent inquiry in these times. Trump pivots when something comes out that makes him look bad, that's one of his constraints. Even the investigation could be done to head off other investigations. Anything which puts Trump's crew on notice about FA is worthwhile.
