According to a protected disclosure filed with the Office of Special Counsel, Borges told the Government Accountability Project that DOGE officials working at Social Security created a “live copy” of the country’s Social Security records in a separate cloud environment that sidestepped usual security checks.

The group says those lapses put the Social Security information of more than 300 million Americans at risk.

  • phutatorius@lemmy.zip
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    97
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    12 days ago

    All U.S. Social Security numbers may need to be changed

    Yeah, sure, and winged monkeys may fly out of my ass. But I doubt it’ll happen.

  • Archer@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    61
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    12 days ago

    They actually need to publicly release everyone’s SSNs so that they can’t be used for authentication anymore, which they never should have been

    • FauxLiving@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      17
      ·
      12 days ago

      The Trump administration is building a computer system so that States can ‘verify’ a person’s citizenship prior to allowing them to vote.

      This system has failed in many, many ways. That makes me think that they would use the SSN database and other intelligence sources in order to setup the system to fail at a much higher rate for everyone but likely MAGA voters.

        • FauxLiving@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          5
          ·
          12 days ago

          This is a conspiracy I can get behind!

          Oh yeah this part is 100% my personal inference:

          That makes me think that they would use the SSN database and other intelligence sources in order to setup the system to fail at a much higher rate for everyone but likely MAGA voters.

          It isn’t completely baseless, the DHS has created a tool called Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE. The push on the right is to make it so that everyone has to prove their citizenship in order to vote. So a system like this SAVE system is what they would want to put in place to make it easy to ‘verify citizenship’ at polling places.

          Having an electronic tool who’s underlying system is a complete black box and exclusively controlled by the executive branch which has been shown to incorrectly identify people’s citizenship status would allow a group acting in bad faith to surreptitiously introduce ‘errors’ that affect voters who have been identified (by the domestic spy network that is Google and Co.) as being likely opposition voters.

          I’m not saying that this is what IS happening. I’m saying that this system is exactly the kind of system that you would design if you were trying to do what I’m suggesting.

          Here’s a source about the system, because you shouldn’t just trust ‘people’ on the Internet:

          https://www.propublica.org/article/save-voter-citizenship-tool-mistakes-confusion

  • guywithoutaname@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    44
    ·
    12 days ago

    Regardless of whether or not they are breached, the social security numbering system needs to be changed because it is far from a secure number.

  • GreenKnight23@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    33
    ·
    11 days ago

    I fucking CALLED IT.

    I’ve been getting so many loan applications since they opened pandoras box last year. never had this problem. I even just got an alert my SSN has been found on the darknet.

    take my advice, freeze your credit report at all three major credit firms NOW. don’t wait, takes an hour for all three all online. doesn’t matter of you’re 9 or 90, do it do it do it.

    • aceshigh@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      8
      ·
      11 days ago

      Also - create an irs profile and check to require a password to file taxes. And also create ssa profile and check the data.

  • dhork@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    24
    ·
    12 days ago

    I’m less upset that all SSNs might end up compromised and more upset that no one is going to get punished for it. If a career Federal Employee did this, they would be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

    But since it was Elon’s friends who did it, everyone in power will just shrug and say “who knew this would be such a big deal”…

  • rumba@lemmy.zip
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    24
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    11 days ago

    0 chance they hand out new SSID, that’s money and work and confusion, imagine every medical entity changing over that code?

    First, the govt would need to make a lookup table.

    Anyone that used their old ssid for something, or a system that had the old ssid in it, would need a translation to the new ID.

    Sooo at what point could you safely stop accepting old ID’s because they’re all changed over? Never. Some random medical provider in east bumfuck, TN, still uses your SSID from their own paper copy. So you’re stuck accepting old SSIDs and translating them into new SSIDs on demand, which completely breaks any security of changing IDs in the first place.

    There have been enough nexus/credit leaks over the years, it’s hardly news that those ID’s are compromised.

    • MrMcGasion@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      8
      ·
      11 days ago

      Just a minor bit of pedantry, but Social Security Numbers are generally abbreviated as SSN, SSID usually refers to a “Service Set Identifier” aka WiFi network name.

      • XeroxCool@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        4
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        11 days ago

        You didn’t get your SSN converted to SSID with the microchip Moderna mRNA vax?

  • turmacar@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    22
    ·
    11 days ago

    more than 300 million Americans

    I know wiggle room is the gold standard of journalism… but you can just say “all Americans”.

  • WraithGear@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    19
    ·
    11 days ago

    ssn was never intended to be a form of identification. it was specifically decided that it would not be used as a form of identification by the administration that controlled it

  • Formfiller@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    18
    ·
    11 days ago

    SIEZE Elons assets arrest try him and repair the damage to American infrastructure with his money

  • dan69@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    17
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    12 days ago

    lol I can confirm this, just gave my ssn to a reputable company’s hr system. And it says that info is already exists…

  • maplesaga@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    15
    ·
    11 days ago

    I have long predicted the entire goal of DOGE was to feed more data to Palantir, and clearly no other company is ever going to be given this level of security clearance, so they become dependent on it forever. I think this view is gaining more traction from what I’ve seen.

  • RoyaltyInTraining@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    16
    arrow-down
    3
    ·
    11 days ago

    I will keep laughing at Americans till they manage to get their broken democracy to establish an ID system like every other country.