Democrats Alarmed By DOGE Access To ‘Sensitive Databases’ At Education Department
HuffPost
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) and other lawmakers called the agency’s assurances against privacy violations “woefully inadequate.”
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and other lawmakers pressed the Education Department on Wednesday to clarify how much access Elon Musk’s team had been granted to student loan borrowers’ sensitive data and what they planned to do with it.
In a letter to acting Education Secretary Denise Carter, Democrats said the agency had provided “woefully inadequate” information about who was using the data and to what end. They said the Education Department’s written response to their questions earlier this month raised “new concerns” about what Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency is up to.
“The Department refused to confirm or deny whether DOGE had been granted access to the National Student Loan Data System or other databases with sensitive federal student loan data,” Warren wrote in the letter, joined by 14 other Democrats.
DOGE’s access to the data is now the subject of a federal lawsuit brought by veterans and labor unions alleging the Trump administration violated the Privacy Act by sharing social security numbers and other sensitive information without consent.
A judge in that case issued a restraining order Monday blocking Musk’s team from accessing the information, saying the unions were likely to succeed in their argument that the White House broke the law.
