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Advocates Warn 'Musk Is Stealing Your Personal Social Security Data'
"There is no way to overstate how serious a breach this is. And my understanding is that it has already occurred," said the president of Social Security Works.
Feb 18, 2025
News that the acting head of the Social Security Administration left her post this past weekend after facing off with Elon Musk's lieutenants over their efforts to access government records set alarm bells blaring, with advocates warning that the unelected billionaire is moving to seize highly sensitive data.
"There is no way to overstate how serious a breach this is. And my understanding is that it has already occurred," said Nancy Altman, president of Social Security Works, a progressive advocacy organization that warned late Monday that "Elon Musk is stealing your personal Social Security data."
The Washington Post and other outlets reported Monday that Michelle King, a veteran of the Social Security Administration (SSA), left her position over the weekend after clashing with members of Musk's Department of Government Efficiency, an advisory commission known as DOGE that President Donald Trump has unleashed on federal agencies.
The New York Timesreported that King stepped down after Musk's cronies sought access to "an internal data repository that contains extensive personal information about Americans."
In King's place Trump installed Leland Dudek, described by the Post as a "manager in charge of Social Security's anti-fraud office," to lead the Social Security agency until a permanent commissioner is confirmed. SSA administers retirement benefits and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) for tens of millions of Americans.
Max Richtman, president and CEO of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, said in a statement that "there is no justifiable reason for Musk and DOGE to have access to Americans' deeply personal information."
"Seniors, people with disabilities, and Americans everywhere of good conscience should be on high alert," said Richtman. "When a dedicated public servant resigns after more than 30 years due to the intrusive activities of Elon Musk and DOGE, that truly is a 'canary in a coal mine' moment."
"If there is an evil intent to punish perceived enemies, someone could erase your earnings record, making it impossible to collect the Social Security and Medicare benefits you have earned."
Altman noted Monday that SSA "has data on everyone who has a Social Security number, which is virtually all Americans, everyone who has Medicare, and every low-income American who has applied for" SSI.
"SSA has comprehensive medical records of people who have applied for disability benefits. It has our bank information, our earnings records, the names and ages of our children, and much more," said Altman. "Older people are disproportionately susceptible to scams. The data at SSA leaking would make the number of scams skyrocket. And, if there is an intent to punish perceived enemies, someone could erase your earnings record, making it impossible to collect the Social Security and Medicare benefits you have earned."
Altman toldThe Associated Press that "if there is an evil intent to punish perceived enemies, someone could erase your earnings record, making it impossible to collect the Social Security and Medicare benefits you have earned."
Musk's team of dozens of staffers—many of whose identities are not publicly known—have infiltrated departments across the federal government with the stated goal of rooting out waste and fraud, which critics say is merely a pretext for gutting critical programs that Trump and the unelected billionaire oppose. On Monday, advocacy groups filed an emergency lawsuit aiming to stop DOGE from accessing taxpayer data from the Internal Revenue Service.
"Hundreds of millions of Americans across the nation file taxes and provide sensitive, personal information to the IRS and they do so knowing that Congress has put in place protections to safeguard their data. DOGE is taking a wrecking ball to these protections and harming hardworking Americans and small businesses in the process," saidSkye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward. "DOGE must not be permitted to trample on the American people's rights and that is why we are honored to represent our clients in this federal court challenge to put a stop to DOGE's lawless and harmful activities."
Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office last week, Musk claimed without evidence that his team uncovered "crazy things" in a "cursory examination of Social Security."
"We've got people in there that are 150 years old," Musk said. "Now, do you know anyone who's 150? I don't, OK. They should be in the Guinness Book of World Records."
Wiredreported that "computer programmers quickly claimed that the 150 figure was not evidence of fraud, but rather the result of a weird quirk of the Social Security Administration's benefits system, which was largely written in COBOL, a 60-year-old programming language that undergirds SSA's databases as well as systems from many other U.S. government agencies."
"Because COBOL does not have a date type, some implementations rely instead on a system whereby all dates are coded to a reference point. The most commonly used is May 20, 1875, as this was the date of an international standards-setting conference held in Paris, known as the 'Convention du Mètre,'" Wired explained. "These systems default to the reference point when a birth date is missing or incomplete, meaning all of those entries in 2025 would show an age of 150."
"That's just one possible explanation for what DOGE allegedly found," the outlet added. "Musk could also have simply looked up the SSA's own website, which explains that since September 2015 the agency has automatically stopped benefit payments when anyone reaches the age of 115."
Martin O'Malley, the former governor of Maryland who served as SSA commissioner under the Biden administration, told the Post that Musk's team "will break" the Social Security system if they're given unfettered access.
"They will break it fast," O'Malley warned, "and there will be an interruption of benefits."
This story has been updated to include a statement from the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare.
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GOP Proposes $4.5 Trillion Tax Giveaway to the Rich While 'Ransacking' Food Stamps and Medicaid
"House Republican leadership put a giant bullseye on Medicaid, with the intent to strip Americans of their healthcare benefits to pay for tax cuts for billionaires and big corporations."
Feb 12, 2025
House Republicans unveiled a draft budget resolution on Wednesday that calls for $4.5 trillion in tax breaks that would disproportionately benefit the wealthy while proposing $2 trillion in cuts to Medicaid, federal nutrition assistance, and other programs.
Lawmakers are set to mark up the House GOP's budget blueprint on Thursday as Republicans look to craft a sprawling reconciliation bill that can pass both chambers of Congress with a simple-majority vote. Last week, Senate Republicans released their own budget resolution that proposed significant cuts to Medicaid, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and other spending that benefits working-class families.
"Instead of tackling rising prices and delivering relief for American families, House Republicans are charging ahead with trillions of dollars in deeply unpopular tax breaks for billionaires like Donald Trump and Elon Musk," Alex Jacquez, chief of policy and advocacy at the Groundwork Collaborative, said Wednesday in response to the House GOP resolution.
"And, they're paying for their billionaire handouts by ransacking healthcare, food assistance, and other vital programs that American workers and families rely on," Jacquez added.
The new resolution released by the Republican-controlled House Budget Committee specifically calls on the chamber's energy and commerce panel to "submit changes in laws within its jurisdiction to reduce the deficit by not less than" $880 billion over the next decade. The House Energy and Commerce Committee has jurisdiction over Medicaid.
The measure also instructs the House Committee on Agriculture, which has jurisdiction over SNAP, to cut no less than $230 billion in spending between fiscal years 2025 and 2034.
"They wanna do a giant tax cut that disproportionately helps the rich while taking away people's health insurance and food while still adding trillions to the debt," Bobby Kogan, a former Senate Budget Committee staffer who is now senior director of federal budget policy at the Center for American Progress, wrote in response to the resolution.
Overall, the House GOP's budget resolution calls for $2 trillion in cuts to "mandatory spending" over the next decade, taking aim at a category that includes Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, and SNAP. While Social Security benefits cannot be cut through the reconciliation process, Supplemental Security Income (SSI) can.
Congressional Republicans have outlined a number of ways they could slash Medicaid and SNAP, including punitive new work requirements that analysts say would strip benefits from tens of millions of low-income people.
But Families USA executive director Anthony Wright said Wednesday that "we don't need to know the mechanisms of how Medicaid would be cut to know the impact would be catastrophic: The sheer size of the proposed cuts means millions of Americans losing coverage, hospitals and clinics plunged into budget shortfalls, and healthcare services we all depend on being eliminated."
"This budget resolution is a five-alarm fire alert for our healthcare," said Wright. "House Republican leadership put a giant bullseye on Medicaid, with the intent to strip Americans of their healthcare benefits to pay for tax cuts for billionaires and big corporations."
Kobie Christian, a spokesperson for the progressive coalition Unrig Our Economy, issued a similarly scathing statement on Wednesday, arguing that House Republicans "showed us that what they value is more tax breaks for greedy billionaires and giant corporations with everyday people paying the price."
"At a time when everyday Americans face increasingly higher prices, Speaker Johnson and his stooges want to write billionaires a check and force working-class people to foot the bill for their outrageous tax breaks for corporations and the ultra-wealthy," said Christian. "Everyday Americans will not stand for these games—it's time for Republicans in Congress to end their campaign that puts the ultra-wealthy first on the backs of the rest of us."
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Old, Disabled People, and Social Security: A Study in Depression
Jun 25, 2015
Editor's note: Supplemental Security Income (SSI) is a safety net program that provides a very basic income to older adults and people with disabilities who have either no or very limited other income and resources. The maximum possible federal monthly benefit for an individual is currently $733. SSI has changed little since it was signed into law in 1972, and increasing numbers of recipients are living in poverty, going hungry, or becoming homeless. The SSI Restoration Act of 2015 would update the income and asset limits to better reflect reasonable assistance in today's dollars.
You work your whole life. You pay your taxes - boy, do you pay your taxes. Unlike upper-middle and upper-class folks who have tax preparers and accountants to help them with their taxes and find deductions and loopholes and so forth, you get slammed every year and you can barely keep afloat...then, the worst happens.
You get old and disabled, and you can't work anymore, and your disability/social security isn't really enough to live on, and you never were able to get much retirement money together, so the government gives you something called SSI. Between that and Social Security you still don't have enough to live on but what can you do?
To add indignity to insult, the government tells you how much money you can have in the bank and it ain't much, and then if you work they cut out some of the SSI so you still don't have enough to live on.
If someone lends you money to get by you can't repay the debt out of your Social Security or SSI because the government watches everything you do and they don't want you to borrow money or pay it back because the bottom line is the government is afraid to be cheated. Sadly enough, they are mostly afraid of being cheated by poor people. Rich people seem to be able to get away with murder.
So if you get a job you can't keep your SSI money. The government will take it back. For example, if you're getting $280 from SSI and you make $300 you are no better off than before you got a job. Probably worse off, because the SSI goes bye-bye and you have to pay taxes on your new income.
So, if you want to improve your lot (adding a swimming pool, perhaps, or more likely having a decent meal for a change), you will have to make twice as much to improve it; otherwise, like the Red Queen, you have to run like hell just to stay in place.
Now a bunch of politicians and well-wishers are trying to change the laws a little bit...not majorly, just minorly, to make it a little easier for us to survive. And yet they will run into obstacles.
I wish everyone who opposes making life a little better for poor old disabled people (or even poor old people) would put $10.00 in an envelope and send it anonymously to a poor old person.
In the meantime, I'm looking for a part-time or freelance job. I'm 72 and I'm broke and can't afford to live on Social Security and SSI and I don't really know what to do. Also, I'm in dialysis, so that chews up around four days a week. So I'll keep looking for a job, albeit futilely, and if I can figure out a way to rob a bank I might do that...I have an electric wheelchair and could do a slow-speed chase down the street if I had to....
So, whilst I'm thinking of it, if anyone out there wants to offer me a job I would be extremely happy, and also, I could use a nice little house with a yard for my dog and a couple of tomato plants and maybe a lemon tree or an avocado tree. Just thought I'd put that out there.
Cheers to all, and remember, wait for the supermarket sales! And never give up - fight to the bitter end.
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