Questions are swirling about how much Elon Musk and his government efficiency (DOGE) have access to American personal data and delicate federal payment systems.
Shortly after President Trump took office, Musk turned to the agency responsible for handling payments and revenues for the Bureau of Finance Services, and deployed members of his cost-cutting panel to the Treasury Department.
Finance Services is functionally a federal account-payable division, processing trillions of dollars worth of transactions per year, including Social Security and Medicare payments.
Reports that Doge employees have access to critical payment systems and oust a three-year Treasury veteran has fueled vigilance among Democrats, career staff and financial experts.
The White House and Treasury argue that the administration is simply conducting a review of financial services, claiming that DOGE employees can only observe payments made through agents. I'm doing it.
However, a Treasury email reported Thursday that the Treasury chief was pushing for the use of access to payment systems to freeze payments for the US Agency for International Development (USAID) indicates. New York Times.
And Musk called on Thursday to take better control of its financial payment system, shortly after the Justice Department agreed to limit the number of Doge employees who have access to such programs. . The order comes in response to lawsuits filed by several government unions against the Ministry of Finance.
“Billions of taxpayer dollars for known fraud entities are still approved by the Treasury,” Musk wrote on X, a social media platform he purchased in 2022.
“This needs to be stopped now!”
Below are five major questions about accessing Doge's federal payment system.
How much access does Doge have?
The White House has denied multiple reports that DOGE employees have been given extensive access to the financial services system.
Wired Magazine reported On Tuesday, a 25-year-old former Musk employee named Marco Erez was “privileged” [that] Two financial systems known as Payment Automation Manager (PAM) and Secure Payments System (SPS) include the ability to write code as well as read. SPS is the way that financial services get paid, and PAM is the way that the government issues them.
Cloud Software Group CEOs Elez and Tom Krause were two special federal employees authorized under the Department of Justice's access to financial services order, but they are unable to edit or modify the system. It was.
But Erez resigned Thursday after the Wall Street Journal revealed a series of racist social media posts from subsequently deleted social media accounts, the White House confirmed.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bescent said Thursday that the Doge team is “not messing around” with the system.
“We don't tinker with the system. They're read-only,” he said. “They are looking. They can't make any changes. It's an operational program that suggests improvements.”
“They don't have the ability to change the system. I don't have the ability to accept the changes,” he added.
White House spokesman Karoline Leavitt told reporters Wednesday that Doge engineers were not allowed to write new code for their payment systems.
A White House spokesman previously told Hill that Doge had successfully made President Trump's promise to hold the government more accountable and restore taxpayer dollar control.
What is the purpose of access?
For months before and after the 2024 election, Trump and Musk pledged to guide billionaires to lead aggressive efforts to reduce both the size of the federal government and the amount it spends.
Doge's interest in financial payment system raised concerns that Trump's appointees, already approved by Congress and signed into law by the president, are unilaterally blocking payments.
Musk claims that it handles billions of dollars with fraudulent payments that financial services should not be sent. However, experts say financial services do not have the legal authority to block payments ordered to process under the law.
“The Bureau of Finance Services is not a policy work with political appointees. It is completely mechanical. The agency will receive tax credits and tell the subsidy recipients, the contractors paying, and they will pay.
Sarin said it was unable to consider good reasons for political appointees wanting access to the payment system, and it amounted to short-circuiting the intended path of financial operations.
Prior to Erez's resignation, the White House refused to comment on both read and write access to the basic code, or on what technical changes have been made to the Treasury PAM and SPS platforms. I was.
Doge's ongoing operations may be viewed as destructive by those ingrained in the federal bureaucracy, a White House spokesperson added.
Journalist and economics researcher Nathan Tankas told Hill that Doge staff could be targeting another platform known to them: Automatic standard application for payments (ASAP). This is partially used to pay for nonprofit organizations.
“ASAP is a system they use when they want to target specific government agencies for grants and other expenditures they make.
“My report says they have access, technical details and are getting and modifying data from another system called ASAP, PAM and International Ministry of Finance Services,” he added. A financial services system for making international payments.
Is your personal data safe?
Read-only access allows Doge officials to access core American financial information, including Social Security numbers.
“We're talking about Social Security numbers and personal information about all Americans,” Sarin said.
Personal data concerns lie at the heart of the federal coalition lawsuit filed against the Treasury, leading to a DOJ order restricting DOGE access.
The union accused them of inappropriately disclosing sensitive personal and financial information to mask allies.
“The scale of invasions into individual privacy is large and unprecedented,” the union wrote. “Because millions of people are inevitable to engage in financial transactions with the federal government, it is inevitable that personal information and financial information that are sensitive to the government's records will be maintained.”
The DOJ order approved by Judge Colleen Coller Coterry on Thursday morning will be held while the judge considers whether to grant a provisional injunction to the union.
Is it legal to access this way?
Union litigation is one of several legal challenges to its involvement in Doge's federal payment system.
“People who have to share information with the federal government should not be forced to share information with ELON MUSK or his” DOGE “. And federal law read complaints filed by the Alliance for retired Americans and other groups.
Labour Federation AFL-CIO and several of its associated public sector unions also complained on Wednesday about Doge's access to the labor sector.
White House spokespersons, in contrast to external advisors, are committed to federal law by people with appropriate security clearances, in compliance with federal law, in compliance with federal law. He told Hill that he was doing it.
What is at risk for global payments?
Like many government computer code, many of the fiscal services payment systems are written in COBOL, a legacy programming language that is not compatible with more modern software.
Some of it is also written in assembly language. This is a more basic type of computer code that corresponds to machine code binary, on-off instructions.
Experts described these systems as extremely vulnerable and insanely easy.
“They made one wrong move and were able to break this system easily,” Tankus said. “Everything is taking enormous operational IT risks right now.”
