Doge improperly shared sensitive social security data, DoJ court filing reveals

After months of denials, the Trump administration has acknowledged in a federal court filing that employees working for Elon Musk’s supposed cost-cutting operation accessed and improperly shared Americans’ sensitive social security data.

The justice department court filing, submitted on Friday in an ongoing lawsuit, reveals that a member of the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) signed a secret data-sharing agreement with an unidentified political advocacy group whose stated aim was to find evidence of voter fraud and overturn election results in certain states.

The Social Security Administration (SSA) told the court it had no prior knowledge of the March agreement and only discovered it during an unrelated review in November. The agency has referred two potential violations of the Hatch Act, which prohibits federal employees from engaging in political activity, to the Office of Special Counsel for investigation.

“Based on its review of records obtained during or after October 2025,” the filing said, “SSA identified communications, use of data, and other actions by the then-SSA DOGE Team that were potentially outside of SSA policy and/or noncompliant with the District Court’s March 20, 2025, temporary restraining order.”

The court filing added that Doge members shared data with each other using Cloudflare, an unauthorized third-party server, and that the agency had been unable to determine what information was transmitted or whether it still exists on the server.

In one instance, a Doge staffer sent an encrypted, password-protected file to Steve Davis, described as a senior adviser to the Doge operation, that the agency believes contained names and addresses of approximately 1,000 people derived from social security systems. Officials have been unable to access the file to confirm its contents.

The revelations are an about-face for social security officials, who have long insisted there was no evidence Doge had potentially compromised personal data. In August, after former chief data officer Charles Borges warned Congress that Doge was storing Americans’ data in an unsafe environment. An SSA spokesperson, Nick Perrine, said the agency was “not aware of any compromise to this environment”.

The disclosures come in response to a lawsuit filed in February by unions and an advocacy group attempting to block Doge from accessing social security data. A federal judge had temporarily barred the operation from accessing sensitive information, stating that Doge “essentially engaged in a fishing expedition at SSA, in search of a fraud epidemic, based on little more than suspicion”. The supreme court later lifted that restriction.

In response to the latest filing, the Democratic representatives John Larson of Connecticut and Richard Neal of Massachusetts, the ranking members on the House social security subcommittee and ways and means committee, have called for prosecutions.

“The DOGE appointees engaged in this scheme – who were never brought before Congress for approval or even publicly identified – must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law for these abhorrent violations of the public trust,” they said in a joint statement.

The lawmakers added: “Today, we learned alarming news that proves the brave whistleblower who came forward in August was right.”

According to the court filing, one Doge team member conducted searches of personally identifiable information on the morning of 24 March, even after the agency believed it had revoked all such access in compliance with the court’s temporary restraining order. The final search occurred at about 9.30am, with full access terminated by noon that day.

Additionally, the filing disclosed that Doge members had been granted access to several systems beyond what the agency had previously reported to the court, including employee records, personnel access information and shared workspaces that would have allowed team members to exchange data.

Last April, more than two dozen federal employees across multiple agencies told the Guardian and What a Day that Doge operatives had been secretly recording meetings, monitoring computer activity and using AI tools to scan for disloyalty, creating an environment that one housing and urban development employee described as “being in a horror film where you know something out there [wants] to kill you but you never know when or how or who it is”.

Doge, launched by Musk at the start of the Trump administration with promises to root out alleged massive social security fraud, did not ultimately identify any widespread waste, fraud or abuse within the retirement and disability programs the agency administers, according to the filings.