While it often seems that no one is watching the watchmen under the Trump administration, a new report from Wired suggests there is at least one agency still keeping tabs on the Department of Government Efficiency and its seemingly unfettered reach into the guts of government. The publication, citing government records and sources, revealed that the Government Accountability Office (GAO) launched an investigation back in March into how Elon Musk’s pseudo-agency has been handling data in the offices that it has pried its way into.
According to the report, the GAO has requested information from a number of agencies where DOGE has dug in its claws, including the Social Security Administration, the Departments of Education, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Labor, and the Treasury. Included in the requests are any incident reports on “potential or actual misuse of agency systems or data,” as well as records of systems that DOGE has accessed, among other details.
The audit, which comes from an agency that operates under the legislative branch, marks the first significant challenge to DOGE’s operations that has not come from the courts. Per Wired, the investigation—which is scheduled to wrap up by the end of spring and will produce a publicly accessible report of its findings—will focus primarily on DOGE’s adherence to privacy and data protection laws and regulations. The probe was reportedly spurred by requests from multiple agencies, meaning there are likely still people within the workforce who are at least a little skeptical of what Musk and the DOGE team are up to.
While we’ll have to wait and see what exactly the GAO report says, there is little question that DOGE is operating on the “move fast and break things” principle and seems anxious to gain access to as much information as it can. Earlier this month, it was revealed Musk’s group was planning on trying to hack together a system that would make it easier to access taxpayer data. DOGE has seemingly been on a mission to gain access to as much personal information as it can while it digs around in government systems. The New York Times recently published a look at just what records DOGE may have been able to collect from different agencies, and it’s a lot—at least 314 different points of data, including things like medical notes, credit history, and biometric identifiers, just to name a few.
Attempts to limit DOGE’s reach have had middling success thus far. While several courts have issued temporary blockages preventing DOGE from accessing certain information, higher courts have given it the go-ahead to move forward, and there isn’t a whole lot of hope that the Supreme Court would step in and stop it. Perhaps the GAO report will find evidence of malfeasance or reckless disregard for the rules that might provide enough reason to hit the brakes, but it seems like the train has already left the station, and it’s going to be hard to get it to come back.
