Why Legislation on Privacy is the Top of the Legal Spear Against Musk and Trump

Cnn
–

What Access Elon Musk has to carefully guarded government data – including sensitive information it has collected about and from the US public – is an important fighting front in the rapidly moving legal war on how President Donald Trump has tried to drastically transform federal bureaucracy.

Several lawsuits accuse the administration of having violated privacy law and other protection in allegedly allowing affiliated companies of the musk-led Department of Government Efficiency of taking control of severely limited government IT systems. The judges are moved quickly – sometimes planning hearings in just a few hours’ notice – to try to understand what doge -affiliated companies are reaching into the digital infrastructure through which the government carries some of its most basic operations.

“We don’t have much facts except what’s out in the media,” Judge Colleen told Kollar-Kotelly Administration Attorneys in a case about the government’s system for the transfer of trillion of dollars payments every year.

Already, litigation has been brought to challenges the alleged actions that Musk Associates has taken to seize the keys to IT systems on the Office of Personal Management, Treasury Department and Department of Labor. There may be more litigation, as Doge -affected companies have also set their views on sensitive data from several other agencies, including the US Agency for International Development, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Managing Major Federal Health Programs .

Democratic lawyers generally from a dozen states said on Thursday that they also planned to add to the pile of litigation.

It is not clear what kind of Vetting Musk’s allies – installed on agencies across the federal bureaucracy, usually in a temporary status known as “special government employees” – were exposed to before taking the helm of systems normally operated by A small group of career federal staff. The Trump administration has also not been upcoming what boundaries are placed in the use of data, although the systems are typically covered under Federal Privacy Act.

“It’s not just about these officials in relation to these agents of Elon Musk,” said Kathleen Clark, a professor of Washington University who specializes in legal and government ethics. “It is also a question of whether these agents of Elon Musk illegally opened and downloaded information protected by the statute.”

To the claims of illegal access, the Ministry of Justice has said in court that appropriate protocols have been followed and the security of such data has not been broken.

The data -located litigation is probably only a wave of legal control, DOGE will be exposed to, as other newly archived cases accuse Musk and others of making sweeping changes in how the federal government operates without having authority to do so. But the demands of privacy have been the tip of the spear in the legal effort to slow down Musk’s unprecedented and very disturbing march through the federal bureaucracy.

“You can’t just bring everyone you want to get into the federal government, it’s not like the private sector,” said Virginia Canter, the most important ethical adviser at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington or Crew. “There are laws in place that protect people’s access to information collected by the government.”

In a statement, the White House defended the efforts of DOGE and said that the reforms were made by appropriate government employees, not outside advisers.

“Cutting waste, fraud and abuse and becoming better managers of US taxpayer’s hard -earned dollars can be a crime for Democrats, but it’s not a crime in a court,” spokesman Harrison Fields said.

The Treasury case has already given an agreement from the Trump administration that restricts who would have access to the public payment system operated by the Treasury Department’s Bureau of the Fiscal Service while the trial goes on.

Attorneys in the Ministry of Justice have had to face questions in court about the state of games around the data systems and why DODE wants access to them – but these lawyers have not had clear answers.

“I don’t know if I can say that nothing has been done” with items in the system, said lawyer Bradley Humphreys at a hearing Wednesday in the Treasury while emphasizing that the department thought there had been no violation of the Americans’ Private information.

While not directly aimed at DOGE, another trial against the Trump administration produced similar coverage from the government’s lawyers.

Several FBI employees together with the Agency’s union have sued the Ministry of Justice over its collection of information from the agency staff to identify who was working on January 6 Capitol Riot Probes, including the investigation of Trump. The lawsuits claim that the release of names or other information about employees who worked with the probes presenting serious risks to their security.

In a hearing on Thursday, employees’ attorneys raised concern that Musk or his allies could access DOJ computers that contained the information. The pressure of the court could not say with certainty who may have access to the data in the future, and he opposed to sign on a proposed temporary agreement that would block someone in the government from releasing the information publicly.

“There has not been an official disclosure outside the department,” said DOJ lawyer Jeremy Simon, while also acknowledging that other government officials could have gained access to the list through “unofficial” funds.

Judge Jia Cobb issued an administrative order that maintained the status quo until another consultation Friday.

The administration has been able to avoid one of the lawsuits as Judge on Thursday rejected an emergency request to stop Trump administration’s use of a newly created government-provoking email distribution system that is alleged to provide security concerns of protecting officials’ private data .

Judge Randy Moss told the challengers that they would need to rework their trial after the Office of Personnel Administration said it had done the required privacy assessment that was the basis for the case.

But the legal danger is left for other aspects of Dog’s extensive data mining mission.

Course in the Treasury and the FBI cases will continue in the coming weeks. On Friday, a federal judge gave up that he will not limit the Department of Government Efficiency Associates from accessing data on work department for now and rejecting an emergency request from trade unions and a think tank to set restrictions on Dog’s access.

In litigation, the challengers claimed that employees in the departments were told that they would be terminated if they did not open the systems for the new government.

In danger, says their lawsuit is the security of data systems that “contain the most private, sensitive employee and medical information about virtually any worker in America.”

In a Thursday Evening Evening Declaration, A DOGE representative who is detailed for the department said that he and others like him would follow all legal rules of the data and would comply with any directive from the agency leaders.

This story has been updated with additional developments.

CNNS Tami Luhby, Ella Nilsen and Rene Marsh contributed to this report.