A federal judge in Maryland issued a court order Thursday blocking Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency from accessing Social Security Administration systems as DOGE attempts to investigate the agency for waste and fraud.
DOGE’s concerns about inefficiencies and corruption in the sprawling entitlement program hold no basis that warrants access to sensitive databases, U.S. District Judge Ellen Hollander wrote in a decision that directs Musk’s initiative to destroy SSA data it has obtained.
The Maryland judge accused DOGE of engaging “in a fishing expedition at SSA, in search of a fraud epidemic, based on little more than suspicion.”
“It has launched a search for the proverbial needle in the haystack, without any concrete knowledge that the needle is actually in the haystack,” Hollander said. “The defense does not appear to share a privacy concern for the millions of Americans whose SSA records were made available to the DOGE affiliates, without their consent.”
DOGE is barred from installing software in Social Security systems and must remove any software that has already been installed under the court order.
Musk has raised concerns about information he says DOGE has discovered during “cursory” examinations revealing deep dysfunctions in Social Security’s infrastructure.
“Why are there 20 million people who are definitely dead marked as alive in the Social Security database? Why were hundreds of hundreds of millions of dollars of Small Business Administration loans given out to people aged 11 and under, according to the Social Security data” he questioned during a recent Fox Business interview. “Like these must be some very enterprising eight-year-olds. You know, some pretty strong 150-year-olds.”
Musk said during an appearance in the Oval Office last month that there were “a whole bunch of Social Security payments where there’s no identifying information.”
SOCIAL SECURITY TO IMPOSE IDENTITY CHECKS AND LIMIT PHONE SERVICES IN FRAUD CRACKDOWN
Part of DOGE’s effort to slash the bureaucracy includes cutting leases for 23 SSA offices across the country.
Additionally, the SSA is now requiring beneficiaries to prove their identity online or in person at an SSA office instead of over the phone in an effort to crack down on fraud.
