Whistleblower responds after DOJ confirms DOGE mishandled Social Security data
PBS News Hour - Segments
PBS NewsHour
4.1 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 27 January 2026
⏱️ 9 minutes
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| 0:00.0 | The Social Security Administration now says members of Elon Musk's Doge team working at the agency last year accessed and shared sensitive data. |
| 0:09.9 | In a court filing earlier this month, the Trump administration amended what it had previously disclosed, writing that one Doge employee at SSA signed an agreement with an unnamed political advocacy group to analyze voter |
| 0:22.5 | roles to, quote, find evidence of voter fraud and to overturn election results in certain |
| 0:27.8 | states. In another instance, a Doge member shared personally identifiable information of a thousand |
| 0:33.9 | people in an encrypted email attachment, though the government says they aren't sure |
| 0:38.6 | what specifically was shared or whether it was accessed. |
| 0:42.1 | And SSA also said Doge shared data on third-party cloud servers that are quote, outside |
| 0:48.3 | SSA security protocols so the agency doesn't know what information was shared or if it still exists on the server. |
| 0:56.0 | The latest disclosure seemed to confirm some key concerns first raised in a whistleblower |
| 1:01.0 | complaint last summer filed by the agency's chief data officer. That whistleblower, Chuck |
| 1:07.0 | Borges, involuntarily resigned from government in August and filed a retaliation complaint late last year. |
| 1:13.1 | I spoke with him earlier alongside his lawyer, Deborah Katz. |
| 1:17.2 | Welcome to you both. Thanks for being here. Thank you. Thank you. Great to be here. |
| 1:19.7 | So Chuck, before we get into the details, these new details, with no filing rather, |
| 1:24.2 | confirms what first you shared when you came forward in your whistleblower complaint |
| 1:28.6 | months ago. What did you think when you saw all this, especially after months of government |
| 1:32.9 | denials? |
| 1:33.9 | I'll be honest. I was pretty disappointed. You know, this is a situation where the public |
| 1:39.3 | loses. You know, my disclosure essentially outlined three concerns that I had. |
| 1:45.0 | The first was that Doge employees had inappropriate access to our data. |
| 1:50.0 | The second was what they violated a temporary restraining order, |
| 1:54.0 | and that the third was that they had uploaded sensitive social security data |
... |
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