If this article was done by anyone but a legit news organization I’d think it was fiction. NPR reports on what happened when DOGE showed up at the National Labor Relations Board in early March. I can hardly believe it’s real:
But according to an official whistleblower disclosure shared with Congress and other federal overseers that was obtained by NPR, subsequent interviews with the whistleblower and records of internal communications, technical staff members were alarmed about what DOGE engineers did when they were granted access, particularly when those staffers noticed a spike in data leaving the agency. It’s possible that the data included sensitive information on unions, ongoing legal cases and corporate secrets — data that four labor law experts tell NPR should almost never leave the NLRB and that has nothing to do with making the government more efficient or cutting spending.
The employees grew concerned that the NLRB’s confidential data could be exposed, particularly after they started detecting suspicious log-in attempts from an IP address in Russia, according to the disclosure. Eventually, the disclosure continued, the IT department launched a formal review of what it deemed a serious, ongoing security breach or potentially illegal removal of personally identifiable information. The whistleblower believes that the suspicious activity warrants further investigation by agencies with more resources, like the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency or the FBI.
The labor law experts interviewed by NPR fear that if the data gets out, it could be abused, including by private companies with cases before the agency that might get insights into damaging testimony, union leadership, legal strategies and internal data on competitors — Musk’s SpaceX among them. It could also intimidate whistleblowers who might speak up about unfair labor practices, and it could sow distrust in the NLRB’s independence, they said.
The new revelations about DOGE’s activities at the labor agency come from a whistleblower in the IT department of the NLRB, who disclosed his concerns to Congress and the U.S. Office of Special Counsel in a detailed report that was then provided to NPR. Meanwhile, his attempts to raise concerns internally within the NLRB preceded someone “physically taping a threatening note” to his door that included sensitive personal information and overhead photos of him walking his dog that appeared to be taken with a drone, according to a cover letter attached to his disclosure filed by his attorney, Andrew Bakaj of the nonprofit Whistleblower Aid.
NPR verified all the evidence.
I think it’s pretty clear by now that the DOGE agenda is something other than what they say it is. They’re intent upon obtaining information for their own purposes. So far, they aren’t actually saving any money and their attempts to find “fraud” are absurd. Just this week they falsely labeled 6100 undocumented immigrants who are paying into social security as dead, “eliminating their ability to legally earn wages and, officials hoped, spurring them to leave the country.”
(THAT IS SO STUPID! These people are not collecting social security, they are paying into the system that supports the rest of us without any hope of getting the benefits. It’s unfair to them, of course but they do it because they are trying to work and earn money in America and it’s part of the deal. Trying to deport people like this, who are contributing much more than they are taking out is utterly braindead. )
Anyway, here’s how “efficient” this new self-deportation gambit is:
Jim Francis, a consumer law lawyer who is suing Social Security for wrongly entering a Maryland woman into the file, cast the repercussions in dire terms.
“It’s the source of that data that the whole world uses, which is why, if it’s inaccurate, it has such devastating impacts on people,” he told the Post. “Overnight, you literally become financially paralyzed.”
Tom Kind, a 90-year-old retiree in Colorado, told the Post that he had experienced being listed as dead, calling it a “nightmare.” In addition to losing benefits and health coverage, he faced a challenge convincing the agency that he was still alive. After jumping through a number of bureaucratic hoops, he had to show up to an office in person for an interview, proving he was alive.
DOGE is involved in pressuring people to self-deport and is using social security data to do it. They have no clue what they’re doing and 90 year olds are being financially paralyzed. What the hell?
I think a lot of this is because their actual agenda is something else entirely and this stuff is a cover. DOGE people are playing very fast and loose with all of our personal information and nobody knows exactly what they are up to except that they are intent upon getting to it and won’t take no for an answer. And apparently there’s nothing anyone can do to stop them.
