A whistleblower within the U.S. DOGE Service has alleged the agency improperly uploaded the complete Social Security records of the American public to a digital cloud storage system, potentially jeopardizing the sensitive personal information of over 300 million individuals.
According to Chief Data Officer Charles Borges, agency personnel sidestepped established security protocols and ignored a judicial mandate to create a full replica of the Social Security Administration’s (SSA) master database on a cloud server. Borges contended that this action placed the data outside the SSA’s purview, leaving the agency with no visibility or control over who could access it.
While not claiming the cloud repository has been breached, Borges warned that housing one of the government’s most critical datasets in an environment lacking stringent security measures creates a severe and unacceptable risk to citizens. The exposed information includes names, birth dates, and other personal details that are prime targets for identity theft.
The account by the whistle-blower, Borges, underscores concerns that have led to lawsuits seeking to block young software engineers at the agency built by Elon Musk from having access to confidential government data.
The New York Times first reported these allegations. The situation adds to the existing controversy surrounding DOGE’s access to SSA data, which has sparked internal disputes since the group, led by Musk, first obtained clearance.
In response to the allegations, SSA spokesperson Nick Perrine stated the agency was “not aware of any compromise” of the stored data.
“Commissioner [Frank] Bisignano and the Social Security Administration take all whistleblower complaints seriously,” Perrine said.
Perrine asserted that “SSA stores all personal data in secure environments that have robust safeguards in place,” describing the system in question as a “long-standing environment” that is “walled off from the internet” and under the oversight of career officials and security teams.
The White House deferred requests for comment to the SSA.
The disclosure has been formally submitted to the Office of Special Counsel, which handles whistleblower cases, and to the leadership of multiple congressional oversight committees in both the House and Senate. A spokeswoman for the Special Counsel’s office confirmed it does not confirm or deny the existence of filings.
A spokesperson for Senator Rand Pau, who chairs the Senate Homeland Security Committee, acknowledged receiving the disclosure and confirmed it is under review.
Democratic lawmakers, long critical of DOGE’s data handling, pointed to the report as validation of their fears.
A spokesperson for House Oversight Democrats, Sara Guerrero, said, “Today’s whistleblower report confirms what we’ve been warning for months: DOGE is putting Social Security checks, health records and the personal data of millions of Americans at risk.”
Representative Richard E. Neal echoed this sentiment, calling for a probe and labeling the incident “the danger we feared and warned of — a credible whistleblower report of the Trump Administration recklessly making vulnerable the personal data of over 300 million Americans.”
Cybersecurity expert Richard Forno of the University of Maryland Baltimore County characterized the alleged actions as a significant failure, stating, “It’s a cybersecurity failure, it’s a management failure. This is not supposed to happen in a properly functioning government bureaucracy.”