'Technofascism': Whistleblower Says DOGE Goons May Have Taken Private Labor Data

Despite finding a letter with "threatening language, sensitive personal information, and overhead pictures of him walking his dog" taped to his door, a technology expert at a federal labor agency has become a whistleblower, urging U.S. officials to investigate data practices by President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk's so-called Department of Government Efficiency.

NPR on Tuesday published a lengthy report about whistleblower Daniel Berulis' submission to Congress and the U.S. Office of Special Counsel sounding the alarm over DOGE employees' recent activities at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)—which the president also has tried to effectively shut down, leading to court battles.

While DOGE didn't respond to NPR's request for comment, Tim Bearese, the NLRB's acting press secretary, claimed that the Musk-led entity had not requested access to the agency's system, and the NLRB had not granted it. He also said the agency investigated after Berulis raised concerns but "determined that no breach of agency systems occurred."

"As an agency protecting employee rights, the NLRB respects its employee's right to bring whistleblower claims to Congress and the Office of Special Counsel, and the agency looks forward to working with those entities to resolve the complaints," he added.

Those who spoke with NPR struck a much different tone. The reporting features interviews with Bearese, his attorney—Andrew Bakaj of Whistleblower Aid—and dozens of other experts in tech, law enforcement, the labor movement, and government. It adds to mounting worries about what DOGE is doing across various agencies under the reign of the richest man on Earth.

"I can't attest to what their end goal was or what they're doing with the data," Berulis—who found evidence of up to around 10 gigabytes of data, or the equivalent of a full stack of encyclopedias, leaving the NLRB system—told NPR. "But I can tell you that the bits of the puzzle that I can quantify are scary... This is a very bad picture we're looking at."

"The amount of data that was taken is the equivalent to a section of the New York Public Library, and the amount of people it could impact is in the hundreds of millions," Berulis noted in a Tuesday statement from Whistleblower Aid. "Our information systems appear to have been assaulted, and someone with the capacity and mandate to investigate needs to do so."

According to NPR, labor law experts "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."

Russ Handorf, who spent a decade in cybersecurity roles at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, reviewed Berulis' records and told NPR that "all of this is alarming" and "if this was a publicly traded company, I would have to report this [breach] to the Securities and Exchange Commission."

Sharon Block, a former NLRB board member and now executive director of Harvard Law School's Center for Labor and a Just Economy, said that "there is nothing that I can see about what DOGE is doing that follows any of the standard procedures for how you do an audit that has integrity and that's meaningful and will actually produce results that serve the normal auditing function, which is to look for fraud, waste, and abuse."

"The mismatch between what they're doing and the established, professional way to do what they say they're doing... that just kind of gives away the store, that they are not actually about finding more efficient ways for the government to operate," she told NPR.

It's not just DOGE affiliates, including Musk, who may have access to the data taken from federal agencies, including the NLRB. NPR reported that "if the data isn't properly protected after it leaves the agency or if DOGE left a digital door open to the agency itself, data could also be exposed to potential sale or theft by criminals or foreign adversaries."

In Whistleblower Aid's statement, Bakaj said that "what is particularly alarming is that in addition to private data being exfiltrated out of NLRB systems—and within minutes of DOGE personnel creating service/user accounts in NLRB systems—someone or something within Russia appeared to attempt to login using all of the correct credentials (e.g. usernames/passwords) on several occasions. This near real-time unlimited access by Russian actors heightens concerns to a level not previously seen and could have destroyed the agency's entire infrastructure in a matter of minutes."

"If the compromise of American's data wasn't concerning enough, the targeted, physical threats and surveillance of my client takes this to another level," he added. "It is time for Congress to act and investigate to keep our democracy from slipping away, something that could take generations to repair."

While NPR readers called the report "sickening" and shared warnings of "technofascism," there is also some optimism in this story: Berulis hopes that he not only prompts a probe but also provides a roadmap for other government employees to come forward.

"I believe with all my heart that this goes far beyond just case data," the whistleblower said. "I know there are [people] at other agencies who have seen similar behavior. I firmly believe that this is happening maybe even to a greater extent at other agencies."