A group of U.S. senators on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence sent a letter Wednesday to the White House raising alarms about potential privacy and national security risks posed by the recently created Department of Government Efficiency.
The letter, which was sent to White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and signed by Committee Chair Mark Warner, D-Va., and Sens. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., Martin Heinrich, D-Minn., Angus King, I-Maine, Michael Bennett, D-Colo., Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., Jon Ossoff, D-Ga.., and Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., states they have "grave concern" about DOGE's actions, "which risk exposure of classified and other sensitive information that jeopardizes national security and violates Americans' privacy."
DOGE was established by executive order 20 Jan. during President Donald Trump's first day in office with the purpose of "modernizing Federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity." The agency, which is led by Elon Musk as a "special government employee," is a reorganization of the former U.S. Digital Service and "established in the Executive Office of the President." The temporary organization "shall be dedicated to advancing the President’s 18-month DOGE agenda," and will terminate, according to the executive order, 4 July 2026.
Several media reports, including from The New York Times, The Washington Post, TechCrunch and Wired, state the DOGE team has gained extensive access to several federal agencies, including the Treasury Department and U.S. Agency for International Development. It has also sent representatives to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Labor Department and Health and Human Services.
The Washington Post interviewed more than two dozen current and former officials, who claim "many of these moves appear to violate federal law."
Wired reports a 25-year-old engineer, who has worked for Musk in the private sector, "has direct access to Treasury Department systems responsible for nearly all payments made by the U.S. government."
Pending lawsuits
Two federal employees also sued the Office of Personnel Management for allegedly connecting an "unauthorized commercial server" to the agency's network in order to email the federal work force. The motion claims DOGE of "sidestepping federal law by setting up a server to support mass emails to the entire workforce without conducting a privacy impact assessment," according to FedScoop. The lawsuit also claims the server, officially called the Government-Wide Email System, and other linked systems is "retaining information about every employee of the U.S. Executive Branch."
In response, the OPM asked a federal judge to dismiss the lawsuit, saying the claims were unsubstantiated and that the E-Government Act requires PIAs only for systems that deal with public information, not federal employees. The agency also submitted a PIA on the new system and stated that it "maintains only the names and government email addresses of federal government employees, as well as voluntary responses to mass emails."
A separate lawsuit, filed by the Alliance for Retired Americans, the American Federation of Government Employees and the Service Employees International Union, sued the Department of Treasury for allegedly providing DOGE staff with "access to highly sensitive information about taxpayers and others who send and receive payments from the government, including allegations of violations of privacy protections that were enacted in the 1970s as well as Internal Revenue Service Code," according to a post by the Center for Democracy & Technology.
Transparency and cybersecurity concerns
Members from the Senate Intelligence Committee wrote in their letter to the White House that “No information has been provided to Congress or the public as to who has been formally hired under DOGE, under what authority or regulations DOGE is operating, or how DOGE is vetting and monitoring its staff and representatives before providing them seemingly unfettered access to classified materials and Americans' personal information."
The senators also raised concerns about whether DOGE was complying with cybersecurity controls for federal networks. "Such unregulated practices," they wrote, "with our government's most sensitive networks render Americans' personal and financial information, and our classified national secrets, vulnerable to ransomware and cyber-attacks by criminals and foreign adversaries."
The senators, in their letter, requested answers to 22 questions, including for who is operating under DOGE, what is being accessed and who is conducting oversight.
In a post on X, which is owned by Musk, Katie Miller, who is an advisor to DOGE and was responding to an Associated Press post about DOGE's actions with USAID, said that no classified material was accessed by DOGE "without proper security clearances."
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt has offered a defense of Musk and the work of DOGE, saying that Trump "campaigned across this country with Elon Musk … and that the two of them — with a great team around them — were going to look at the receipts of this federal government and ensure its accountable to American taxpayers. That's all that is happening here."
Jedidiah Bracy is the editorial director for the IAPP.
