No. of Recommendations: 14
I don't think we differ that much. If there is an established procedure to credential Presidential agents, then it should be followed. And if Trump was in too big of a hurry to get going, that comes as no surprise to me. So by now I assume everyone is properly credentialed and the President, through his agents, can get back to bringing in the sunshine.Somewhat. After our discussion the other day, I had a little free time and dug into a bit. A lot of what DOGE is trying to do appears to run afoul of the Privacy Act of 1974:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privacy_Act_of_1974In a nutshell, the Act prevents federal agencies from disclosing personally identifiable information collected or stored by their agency to any other agency, or for purposes other than that for which it was collected. So (for example) the Treasury Department can't just give people from another agency access to their entire payments systems data. There are a few categories of exemption (not relevant here), and you can disclose with notice and consent of the individuals involved (probably not feasible here). As you can guess from the date, this was done in response to Watergate and the Nixon Administration's perceived misuse of agency records for an "off-label" purpose.
That appears to be the statute that's being cited by folks trying to stop DOGE from gaining total control of all these systems. The agencies aren't supposed to allow other agencies to access information protected by the Privacy Act.
That appears to have been the line drawn in the injunction that was agreed to in the first of those suits, which bars Musk and DOGE from having access to the Treasury records and systems. Musk's lieutenants that are
part of Treasury can look at the data, but Musk cannot.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/judge-weigh-block-doge-a...
