The newly formed Government Efficiency Department (Doge) from Elon Musk has received another legal complaint about violating the privacy of millions of Americans.
Privacy Defense Group The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed the lawsuit on Tuesday, February 11, 2025, together with a coalition of privacy defenders, multiple federal unions of individual federal employees and employees.
The objective is to prevent Doge from accessing the data stored by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and requesting the elimination of any information that the Musk department has compiled.
The EFF joins the wave of worried privacy experts and workers’ unions throughout the United States that present demands against the new government agency on supposedly illegal data access.
Doge’s “illegal” access to data
The OPM data set contains “extraordinarily sensitive” details about all federal workers and any person who has requested a federal work, explains an expert. These include identifiable information, such as social security names and numbers, work experiences, union activities, salaries, personal health data and even non -dissemination of classified information.
According to the EFF, the mismanagement of this information could open the door to the abuses, putting the security and privacy of millions in the country at risk. For example, Musk arrived at the headlines last year to publicly reveal the names of government employees who wanted to say goodbye after assuming the position.
“The question is not ‘what happens if these data fall into the wrong hands.’ The data has already fallen into the wrong hands, according to the law, and must be protected immediately,” EFF wrote in his announcement.
The EFF Law refers to the Federal Privacy Law of 1974, under which access to this database and the dissemination of information must be strictly restricted. The news that Dege, as recently reported by the Washington Post, could even modify or eliminate any existing OPM record is even more worrying.
In general, EFF writes: “OPM data is extraordinarily sensitive, OPM gave it to doge, and this violates the privacy law. We are asking the court to block more to share data and demand that dege destroy each and every one immediately of copies of copies of discharged material. “
Breaking: We are demanding the staff of the personnel management to stop the exchange of shameless and illegal data of the federal data of employees with the group of “government efficiency”. https://t.co/qtpvynesktFebruary 11, 2025
The president of the United States, Donald Trump, signed an executive order just after his inauguration ceremony that marked the Duxt more of Musk with the restoration of “competence and effectiveness for our federal government.” This movement, however, was not exempt from controversy.
The EFF demand is in fact the last action against the new government agency of the billionaire. The first legal complaint was filed by the National Security Directors Moments after Doge was officially recognized, by virtue of the Federal Advisory Committee Law.
Other legal actions followed their example, since several privacy experts worldwide worried more and more about the supposedly illegal data access of Doge. For example, a coalition of labor unions also filed a lawsuit only one day before EFF, in similar facilities.
Both arrived only a few days after a similar claim led a federal judge to temporarily block Doge personnel to access the information of the Treasury department.
EFF writes: “The violations of the privacy of Americans have developed in multiple agencies, without supervision or safeguards, and EFF is pleased to join the demand brigade to protect this critical information.”
