Perhaps it is time that the US stops relying on SSNs being “secret”…
emsign · 1h ago
Doesn't change the fact that DOGE are criminal scumbags with root access who did illegal things nobody should ever do. It doesn't matter at all if SSNs were replaced by something decent when young naive and impressionable scumbags with root access and no morals whatsoever will simply steal the data anyway. Quite the contrary even, secure SSN as data loot is even more valuable to the thieves.
2OEH8eoCRo0 · 47m ago
They should be considered unique (public) usernames
msgodel · 46m ago
My understanding is that they're not even guaranteed to be unique.
XorNot · 3h ago
ED25519 keys being short and quick to generate makes this state of affairs infuriating whenever it turns up - SSNs, credit card numbers etc.
themafia · 3h ago
My deep suspicion, given some of the players involved in DOGE, is that most of this information is being exfiltrated for the purposes of training AI models. They'll likely be used for social and political manipulation of groups and possibly even individuals. There's a big market for "pre-crime" solutions which will also rely heavily on this type of data and are already being deployed by various state-level law enforcement agencies.
The coming of the "digital caste" society powered by "social credit" scores seems to be the end game. This is a battle of the rich and powerful against the average citizen and they want to reduce all of us back into fiefdom. We can no longer trust a large federal or even state government with these tools.
emsign · 1h ago
This is a realistic concern. I can't understand why peopleare downvoting it.
matheweis · 44m ago
There are at least two reasons:
First is Hanlon’s Razor; “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity”. It appears to be especially applicable here.
Second is that this kind of information (with far richer data) is already accessible to and used by corporations at scale; think credit bureaus, background checkers, etc.
tyleo · 16m ago
I agree with Hanlon’s Razor to some extent but it does fail to provide accountability, “they aren’t cruel, just incompetent so the behavior is okay.”
0xy · 3h ago
Copied from one secure S3 bucket to another secure S3 bucket, both inaccessible from the internet, both on SSA infrastructure.
What exactly is the problem?
afavour · 2h ago
> However, according to the complaint, the copied data had far fewer security measures in place to protect it than the SSA's standard protocols typically require.
> According to Andrea Meza, an attorney with the Government Accountability Project who represents Borges, the cloud environment appeared to be set up for DOGE-affiliated Social Security staffers, but it "lacks independent security, monitoring and oversight." She said Borges "has serious concerns about the vulnerability it causes for nearly every American's data."
Not all applications of "secure" are equal.
Cthulhu_ · 27m ago
It may be secure enough for being on S3, but that's not the whole definition of secure for government / SSNs, where there's (presumably) sheaves of paperwork explaining what exactly the storage needs to conform to and, more importantly, what paperwork and procedures need to be in place.
saagarjha · 2h ago
There are processes for copying data around. The person who works the front desk at Google doesn't have access to all of Gmail, for example.
anonymousiam · 2h ago
Wrong political party involved in doing it?
jackstraw42 · 1h ago
Surely this is ragebait.
camillomiller · 4h ago
Edward "Big Balls" Coristine is a DOGE employee who now works for social security, just in case you were wondering who that might be.
How anyone thinks a 19-year old right wing scoundrel has any place in any organization is beyond any comprehension.
Cthulhu_ · 25m ago
The US top government is anarchy right now, descending into totalitarianism. Silver lining, this shit has highlighted how fragile the US democracy is and how easily the checks and balances fail if they're being ignored and there's no consequences for ignoring them. In a functioning democracy, none of this would have happened and the people that tried it removed from office and jailed.
All previous administrations have failed too, in that they didn't tighten up the loopholes. Probably because they feared they could be used against them.
freen · 3h ago
In order to make a government “small enough to down in a bathtub” you need to convince the general public that it is corrupt and incompetent, which has been the GOP play all along.
If your core argument about why you should govern is that government is the problem, is it any surprise that you sabotage any attempt at good governance?
Effective government is an existential risk for the GOP.
jimkleiber · 3h ago
Hard to make a lot of money when the government provides good services for free.
freen · 3h ago
Hard to have effectively indentured servitude if there’s a social safety net.
Remember even Hayek advocated for universal, government funded healthcare! Ayn Rand was on social security!
roenxi · 3h ago
I doubt you could source a quote for the Hayek point, but more interestingly Rand's taking social security doesn't sound like any sort of contradiction with her views or an extreme anti-welfare position. Just because a policy is a terrible idea doesn't mean people shouldn't take advantage of it while it is in force.
As a hypothetical, if the government took everyone's houses away and lotteried them back out out I'd say that was a terrible policy. I'd still be happy enough to move in to somewhere if I won a house though, because although the policy is appalling I'd rather be an owner than a renter and there aren't paths to owning.
Ditto, Ayn would probably have preferred that she wasn't taxed in the first place, but if they're going to give some of the money back she'd be stupid not to take it and there is no moral problem for her while taxes >= welfare receipts.
n4r9 · 2h ago
In "The Road to Serfdom":
> There is no reason why in a society which has reached the general level of wealth which ours has attained the first kind of security should not be guaranteed to all without endangering general freedom. .... There can be no doubt that some minimum of food, shelter, and clothing, sufficient to preserve health and the capacity to work, can be assured to everybody. ... Nor is there any reason why the state should not assist the individual in providing for those common hazards of life against which, because of their uncertainty, few individuals can make adequate provision. Where, as in the case of sickness and accident, neither the desire to avoid such calamities nor the efforts to overcome their consequences are as a rule weakened by the provision of assistance – where, in short, we deal with genuinely insurable risks – the case for the state’s helping to organize a comprehensive system of social insurance is very strong.
roenxi · 2h ago
That doesn't read like support for universal government funded healthcare. He's talking insurance in the more traditional meaning of the word where it involves unexpected catastrophes as opposed to the weird modernism in healthcare where it means paying for things that are likely to happen (or even volunteered for).
Eg, that quote doesn't involve government covering medical costs for someone in their old age.
He might even have been excluding things like catching the flu, seeing the doctor and needing a week off work since he's talking about things people could not make adequate provisions for on their own.
n4r9 · 1h ago
Yeah, there are going to be differing interpreations of "common hazards of life" and "adequate provision". But it certainly sounds like he's advocating state-funded healthcare for e.g. cancer, which is very different to what many modern libertarians believe.
roenxi · 1h ago
Maybe; he is advocating for a safety net. But I note he didn't say that either and, being an economist, he would probably have had the standard reservations - what exactly is the upper limit of care being provided to someone for "cancer"? It is very vague. If people still sometimes die of cancer when spending $X there is always room to spend $X+1 until the money runs out. No entity in existence can cover that sort of cost. If we lose the lighthouse of the free market pricing then it isn't at all clear how we'd work out what is reasonable.
The "genuinely insurable risks" and "few individuals can make adequate provision" comments he made in that quote are serious caveats on what he said. He clearly isn't advocating for what would be called universal state-funded healthcare in the modern context. He appears to be talking about a bare-bones public insurance scheme [0] for certain rare events where he didn't go into detail on what he thinks is reasonable to cover. I'd like it if everyone reverted to that sort of scheme, any English speaking country could get a tax break if they went back to that sort of system. The expectation would be that most people don't use it.
[0] Actual insurance, not this modern scheme of branding a welfare system as "insurance" to fake that it is financially responsible.
richrichardsson · 2h ago
> Rand's taking social security doesn't sound like any sort of contradiction with her views or an extreme anti-welfare position. Just because a policy is a terrible idea doesn't mean people shouldn't take advantage of it while it is in force.
Assuming that integrity and hypocrisy don't play any part in judging a person.
roenxi · 2h ago
I don't recall the details of Ayn's moral arguments because they aren't of great interest to me, but there just isn't a fundamental inconsistency between campaigning against welfare and accepting welfare. There isn't any hypocrisy in pointing out that something creates horrible incentives, then doing what the incentives suggest. If anything it is a great show of consistency in belief.
The alternative position would be kinda crazy. It'd be pretty close to "The government has injured me and therefore I will make myself even worse off for no reason or gain to anyone!"
msgodel · 43m ago
You know last time I was laid off, and this time too actually, I haven't figured out where these social safety nets are. I could have really used it last time too, that was a significant struggle.
I don't think it's actually intended to be helpful and probably needs to go away.
The coming of the "digital caste" society powered by "social credit" scores seems to be the end game. This is a battle of the rich and powerful against the average citizen and they want to reduce all of us back into fiefdom. We can no longer trust a large federal or even state government with these tools.
First is Hanlon’s Razor; “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity”. It appears to be especially applicable here.
Second is that this kind of information (with far richer data) is already accessible to and used by corporations at scale; think credit bureaus, background checkers, etc.
What exactly is the problem?
> According to Andrea Meza, an attorney with the Government Accountability Project who represents Borges, the cloud environment appeared to be set up for DOGE-affiliated Social Security staffers, but it "lacks independent security, monitoring and oversight." She said Borges "has serious concerns about the vulnerability it causes for nearly every American's data."
Not all applications of "secure" are equal.
All previous administrations have failed too, in that they didn't tighten up the loopholes. Probably because they feared they could be used against them.
If your core argument about why you should govern is that government is the problem, is it any surprise that you sabotage any attempt at good governance?
Effective government is an existential risk for the GOP.
Remember even Hayek advocated for universal, government funded healthcare! Ayn Rand was on social security!
As a hypothetical, if the government took everyone's houses away and lotteried them back out out I'd say that was a terrible policy. I'd still be happy enough to move in to somewhere if I won a house though, because although the policy is appalling I'd rather be an owner than a renter and there aren't paths to owning.
Ditto, Ayn would probably have preferred that she wasn't taxed in the first place, but if they're going to give some of the money back she'd be stupid not to take it and there is no moral problem for her while taxes >= welfare receipts.
> There is no reason why in a society which has reached the general level of wealth which ours has attained the first kind of security should not be guaranteed to all without endangering general freedom. .... There can be no doubt that some minimum of food, shelter, and clothing, sufficient to preserve health and the capacity to work, can be assured to everybody. ... Nor is there any reason why the state should not assist the individual in providing for those common hazards of life against which, because of their uncertainty, few individuals can make adequate provision. Where, as in the case of sickness and accident, neither the desire to avoid such calamities nor the efforts to overcome their consequences are as a rule weakened by the provision of assistance – where, in short, we deal with genuinely insurable risks – the case for the state’s helping to organize a comprehensive system of social insurance is very strong.
Eg, that quote doesn't involve government covering medical costs for someone in their old age.
He might even have been excluding things like catching the flu, seeing the doctor and needing a week off work since he's talking about things people could not make adequate provisions for on their own.
The "genuinely insurable risks" and "few individuals can make adequate provision" comments he made in that quote are serious caveats on what he said. He clearly isn't advocating for what would be called universal state-funded healthcare in the modern context. He appears to be talking about a bare-bones public insurance scheme [0] for certain rare events where he didn't go into detail on what he thinks is reasonable to cover. I'd like it if everyone reverted to that sort of scheme, any English speaking country could get a tax break if they went back to that sort of system. The expectation would be that most people don't use it.
[0] Actual insurance, not this modern scheme of branding a welfare system as "insurance" to fake that it is financially responsible.
Assuming that integrity and hypocrisy don't play any part in judging a person.
The alternative position would be kinda crazy. It'd be pretty close to "The government has injured me and therefore I will make myself even worse off for no reason or gain to anyone!"
I don't think it's actually intended to be helpful and probably needs to go away.