In this specific case? Unclear. Will wait for the lawsuits.
In the last weeks, the DOGE bros have broken the Privacy Act of 1974 [1] and numerous court orders [2].
[1] https://epic.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/EPIC-v-OPM-25-cv...
[2] https://tax.thomsonreuters.com/news/19-state-ags-file-suit-a...
At least to my mind it’s not clear how a government employee can have access but for doge it’s breaking the law. The devil is in the specific details.
We know this wasn’t done when they were rummaging around the Treasury. Courts are granting restraining orders because the DOGE bros acted so incompetently. (It’s generally incredibly hard to restrain government employees.)
> it’s not clear how a government employee can have access but for doge it’s breaking the law
Same way a park ranger can’t walk onto a military base and start rummaging through documents. Or start tweeting them. (Or hell, the President himself tweet your tax return.)
Sorry, do you have a source for that? Having trouble verifying it.
I agree there are standard vetting and security clearances, and they should be followed.
[1] https://epic.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/EPIC-v-OPM-25-cv...
Self-assessed conflict of interest is conflict of interest.
"But what about SpaceX" SpaceX people are thankfully shielded appropriately from his crazy ideas
C'mon USA, do something funny.
Except the second half never happened.
We’re seeing more “claims” than “disclosures”. Can you point me any examples of the latter?
If the individual is trolling, which could be the case here, then responding is just feeding the troll. It encourages them.
The better thing in both cases is to ignore them. At most, respond to the comment, but not the individual, with facts (like that Musk is directing contracts to his own companies) so that others don't fall into the same fantasy land.
> At most, respond to the comment, but not the individual, with facts
There is still a purpose for the response. It may not be for a particular reader, but there are other readers. It would be worth it to flag and move on if there is nothing to engage with but that’s not the case here.
Created by FDR through acts of the Congress. DOGE is ironically recapitulating the lawlessness that tanked Sourh Africa’s economy.
Also, we’re seeing a breathless expansion of federal executive power. The administrative state isn’t going away. It’s being subsumed. The size of the government is being increased, not decreased—that’s why the GOP budget calls for $2 trillion in new deficits over ten years.
One can celebrate cost cutting. But other than USAID, there is no sign anything durable is being done. The power of the central government is being expanded in ways that should be obviously problematic for anyone thinking ahead: next cycle, a Dem President can just cancel student debts by firing everyone in loan collections and shredding the loan documents.
This sort of condescension is characteristic of people who hold the opinions you do. The rest of your post is complete nonsense.
Not in Germany. Public insults are punishable. Doing so in a permanent way with lots of outreach (like the web is) increases the consequences.
Not sure why anyone should be emulating Germany right now.
Or is it just contributing to a one-way ratchet that only ever increases partisan polarization and hostility for no reason at all, instead of seeking to de-escalate and solve problems?
P.S. this goes for Trump/Musk/DOGE supporters too. Name calling and vindictive personal attacks aren't decreasing the deficit, they're not paying off the debt, they're not reducing weaponization of government against conservatives, they're doing nothing to address border and immigration concerns, and they aren't reducing crime. So I ask you, too, what problems are being solved with vindictive, spiteful namecalling?
On the other hand you have an internet user calling them a bozo.
De-escalating the conflict and lowering the temperature of discourse, as you suggest, massively favors the group trying to ram through these changes. If we take a deep breath and calmly work it out, it will already be over and nothing can be done.
Elected officials take notice of these urgent issues when there is significant public outcry. Now I'm not saying that one person calling them bozos meaningfully moves the needle, but as a principle if a regular person wants to do their best to stop what is happening, they must use strong language.
The GOP budget blows out our deficit by an additional $2 trillion over the next ten years. This government doesn’t actually care about the deficit.
DOGE is some combination of a loyalty purge, giving Musk keep-busy work, a distraction from Trump’s tax increases & proposed deficit spending and propaganda.
> what problems are being solved with vindictive, spiteful namecalling?
Piss people off. Particularly in the centre. The far right has been ignoring norms and now the law. We need the centre enraged enough to break at least norms and conventions to go after these folks. I’m personally interested in the state laws the DOGE bros may be breaking.
> weaponization of government against conservatives
The government is clearly being weaponized against anyone who has ever opposed Trump in any way. You are in a reality tunnel.
The correct response in a democratic society to people attacking political enemies as enemies of the state, spreading untruths, attacking the rule of law, and acting like assholes is _to not do these these things_.
Actions the left has allowed during past progressive administrations had real downsides that inflict real harms on real victims. I am frustrated at them and I wish they never would've done those things, but I recognize that insulting them and calling them names is only going to encourage them to be even less charitable in return.
It's not about being nice, it's about not deliberately and intentionally making things worse by stoking polarization for no reason other than to dehumanize and ostracize the other side.
This isn't a complicated idea, it's like mutually assured destruction: we're all better off when we all step back for a second from being pissed off and afraid... slow down... think... recognize that we all lose if we all stay on the offensive, so let's dial things down and be more diplomatic instead of intentionally continuing to make tensions and polarization worse.
Both sides have to recognize that both sides do it and both sides are better off if neither does it.
We are not the foolish prisoners in the prisoner's dilemma who are unable to communicate and thus unable to collectively work together to find win-win and avoid lose-lose. But we have to actually humanize and respect eachother in order to facilitate that dialogue, and that starts with not dehumanizing eachother.
Going through your past posts it seems you may be referring to warrantless wiretapping, which I’ve been railing about for ages. Of course the groundwork was laid by Bush’s PATRIOT act, but absolutely the DNC is extremely corrupt and many democrat leaders have done awful things. I’m not a democrat or a neoliberal and the DNC is very far from a left wing or progressive party. But none of that changes the fact that we’re currently in the midst of a fascist coup, and your whataboutism comes across as fascist apologia.
You seem to make the mistake I see a lot of online rational tech people make, which is to assume that the DNC represents leftism, and to then associate all the evils of the DNC with “the left”. Read some actual left-wing theory like Kropotkin dude. The DNC is a deeply compromised center-right neoliberal party, as anyone on the actual left will be quick to tell you.
Name calling isn’t going to do anything, and lowering yourself by it is, at best, self-harming.
It just increases polarization which makes us all feel more uncomfortable and less safe. I wish we could all treat eachother with respect and decency, and I really do mean this in the most bipartisan sense possible.
Both sides do it and we'd all be better off if both sides stopped.
There's no guarantee a mutually respectful dialogue solves the problem, but it sure doesn't hurt to try that instead of starting out with dehumanizing the other party in a social conflict as the opening move.
So, if you want to win in the court of public opinion, maybe go for the throat in Round 1. Sadly, respectful dialogue is not en vogue.
Aren't we supposed to be allowed to vote in a democracy?
Here is the law text: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/105
By the way it seems most of the stuff I produce for the government contains copyright notices. I don't know if those notices are valid or not, but none of the stuff I produce is in the public domain or released to the public.
They are not. They de facto cancelled contracts while rooting around at the Treasury. Given the lack of transparency at DOGE, it’s unclear how the front-line bros can claim they were following official instructions versus making calls on their own.
If they were a meteorologist conducting analysis and improving models, they could get hired on without difficulty. If they were the developer tasked with doing that integration after the contract was awarded, it also shouldn't be an issue to get hired by AccuWeather.
- https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/10/us/politics/trump-musk-do...
....and that was a lie.
Also they've been hoovering up cash like it's going out of style. I think at last count DOGE had slurped up $40M and nobody knows where it's gone
Yes americas right wing courts blocked justice from being applied in this case but this would hardly be baseless.
“Official duties” is load bearing in this sentence.
If the work is found to have been improperly authorised, this DOGE bro is acting in his personal capacity. That means personal liability for his actions and lawbreaking.
Not if they’re violating a court order without executive privilege.
Wick officially works for the USDS and CFPB. If Bessent and Trump haven’t given a clear order to violate the law, his actions cease to be on behalf of the United States but instead enacted in his personal capacity. Similar to a park ranger walking into a military base and trying to run off with some kit.