DOGE employees ordered to stop using Slack
412 comments
·February 5, 2025code_runner
hintymad
> DOGE is obviously a completely illegal operation
Could you share you reasons. From what I gather, the EO[1] does a few things to avoid potential law suits:
- It revised the purpose of an existing agency, USDS. The general purpose is not changed: "Modernizing Federal Technology and Software to Maximize Efficiency and Productivity". This avoids the issue of creating a new agency without the approval from Congress.
- It cites cites the sectio 3161 of title 5 of United States Code, to create DOGE as a "Temporary Organization" for only 18 months. This avoids the law suits that the EO creates a new government entity with out the approval of Congress.
- It orders each government agency to hire DOGE teams, each of which includes a lead, a lawyer, an HR, and an engineer. Agency heads should ensure that DOGE agenda is implemented. This is within the authority of an EO.
- The EO voids previous EOs to avoid law suits on future conflicts.
[1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/esta...
voxic11
The USDS wasn't established by Congress, it was established by Obama via Presidential memoranda and OMB budget request.
hintymad
Thanks! I knew that Obama created the USDS, but I thought he still needed the support from Congress. Well then, in that case I'm not sure why Trump would rather repurpose the USDS. Maybe it's easier to set up a temporary entity for DOGE that way?
speakfreely
Pretty amusing that Obama essentially created a SPAC for Trump and Musk to use to dismantle the civil service.
hintymad
And a curious question: I was seeking the truth on the qualifier "obvious" and the legality of the EO in general, and I presented my case with references to the actual EO. My reasoning could be very wrong but at least I tried to stick with the discussion of the actual legality of the EO.
What's your reason to flag it and downvote it without counter arguments? Anything that does not agree with your rage is automatically morally bad bad bad?
unsnap_biceps
I believe that the existence of DOGE and the EO is legal. I don't believe that what they are actually doing (according to reports) is legal. I believe they are doing illegal things based upon Musk's own tweets, however, I do actually hope he is just trolling and it's not actually happening as he says it is.
That said, even if it's just trolling, trolling has no place in government. We all deserve better and we need to trust that what is said is the truth.
dylan604
> hope it will be get reined in before
oops. they already have access to data, and there's no unseeing what they've seen.
_DeadFred_
They are also tweeting 'findings' to create a narrative.
alfiedotwtf
It's weird seeing America going so hellbent against Wikileaks (Hillary jokingly saying "can't we just drone him") vs now where the top brass are live tweeting leaks
Terr_
Musk is repeating his playbook from acquiring Twitter: Get wide access to systems, cherry-pick information, and then blast out a completely wrong summary of it, knowing that supporters will amplify it, believe it, and never check the source material.
For example, asserting that two groups are exchanging money simply because they're both customers at the same bank.
https://www.techdirt.com/2025/02/03/the-twitter-files-playbo...
yuppii
Just because you do not like the information surfacing and how they have used the labor of tax payers to support and fund totally ridiculous and/or illegal activities both in US and overseas, does not make these "findings" less important. I am surprised how many people are approaching this in such a partisan way, even in a place like Hacker News.
mcv
Flynn and Musk attacking Lutheran organizations? I thought this administration was going to pretend to be super Christian.
Dig1t
I mean it’s raw data, putting “findings” in quotes does not change the fact that this is concrete evidence of corruption.
These are taxpayer dollars:
LUTHERAN IMMIGRATION AND REFUGEE SERVICE INC: $367,612,906
LUTHERAN SOCIAL SERVICES OF THE SOUTH, INC: $134,190,472.95
LUTHERAN SERVICES FLORIDA, INC.: $82,937,819.95
dangus
Of course there is “unseeing.” They can be tried for rather obvious crimes and thrown in prison.
whatever1
They will get a blanket pardon anyway. So in the end we will have to apologize to them.
jeroenhd
Trump already pardoned 1600 violent insurectionists. If they get tried now, they'll be out of jail the very next day.
ty6853
I was assured right here on HN that the data was public to begin with, and downvoted for suggesting it was possible unseen corruption. Hopefully if that is true they find it just matches what has released publicly.
https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=ty6853&next=42914628...
littlestymaar
This whole operation is as related to finding corruption exhibits as the Moscow trials were to finding traitors in the Red Army.
It is a (ridiculous) pretext for purging the system from people that the new power deems “uncooperative”.
unsupp0rted
> DOGE is obviously a completely illegal operation
What laws does it break?
I like to watch those "Auditors" on Youtube who film in public places. Every cop assures them that filming a police officer / police station / inside a public library is illegal. About 25% of the time they detain them, and about 10% of the time they arrest them.
When they ask what law they've broken, they never get a straight answer.
ty6853
I think the one they're going for is that being a senior officer with material authority requires confirmation per the appointments clause, constitutional law instead of a federal statute.
Whether musk is operating as such seems dubious but possible.
rawgabbit
Is DOGE an advisory body or real government audit agency. It is acting like the later but is solely creation of Musk.
https://www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/federal-unions-s...
https://www.hrdive.com/news/federal-workers-unions-challenge...
wavefunction
US' Privacy Act of 1974
hiatus
Some of the exceptions include:
- For routine uses within a U.S. government agency
- For law enforcement purposes
null
alfiedotwtf
Presidential Pardons
phendrenad2
Unfortunately we're well past "legal" and "illegal" when it comes to the federal government. The last 4 presidents have pushed things through without the proper procedures. DOGE is just the one you're noticing.
Dig1t
It’s obviously completely legal actually. The president has the power to do this.
Reducing bureaucracy, rooting out corruption, and shrinking government waste also polls really well.
Democrats should be much more careful about positioning themselves on this long term.
If they are seen as the party of more bureaucracy and corruption (they already are) this will further tarnish their reputation and decrease their odds of winning elections in the future.
The way it’s currently playing out the people complaining the loudest seem like the most guilty benefactors of corruption, they are damaging their reputations and don’t even realize it.
swat535
> DOGE is obviously a completely illegal operation,
Which law(s) are they breaking? Please cite them specifically.
I'm genuinely asking because you are making a very assertive statement.
jklinger410
> DOGE is obviously a completely illegal operation
This narrative infuriates me. Either you are right, and entire wings of our government are abetting a coup, or you are wrong, and our government has huge back doors that no one is watching.
Both realities reveal something urgently broken with the United States. In a way that should scare the entire western world to its core.
darth_avocado
DOGE is not illegal. However the legality of some of the things they do is under question. The current government, including DOGE is being operated like “Just do as many things as possible, so that the lawsuits can’t keep up”. While lawyers are busy trying to stop big things, many small but important items will slip through the cracks and will take decades to undo.
Edit: BTW this strategy has always been available, it’s just that career politicians aren’t incentivized to do this for “good” because they want long political careers.
randallsquared
> it’s just that career politicians aren’t incentivized to do this for “good” because they want long political careers.
That's not why: Reagan, Clinton, W, and Obama all had the opportunity for sweeping changes of this magnitude without regard to further political careers, but none of them wanted to make radical changes. Their view of the US government (even Reagan's!) was "basically doing a good job, but maybe needs a tweak". The current administration does not appear to share this view, though we'll see how that goes.
shafyy
> BTW this strategy has always been available, it’s just that career politicians aren’t incentivized to do this for “good” because they want long political careers.
Or, you know, maybe it's also because politicians who are not total psychos don't want to fuck over an entire country for their own gains.
jklinger410
> While lawyers are busy trying to stop big things, many small but important items will slip through the cracks and will take decades to undo.
So the government is designed in such a way that someone can do illegal things without those currently running the systems simply saying "no?"
They have the power to do the things, and then we have to wait for it to be litigated. Watching the cases against Trump drop like flies after he got elected, knowing the Supreme Court is packed full of members of one party. This doesn't seem like a reliable solution.
dangus
lol, DOGE is obviously illegal. Trump created a fake department of the government without congressional appropriation of funds.
stainablesteel
[flagged]
HumblyTossed
> Both realities reveal something urgently broken with the United States.
Our government operations expect people to conduct themselves as adults.
Clearly, if we survive Elon's coup, we need to encode these norms into law.
llamaimperative
IMO it might be a good time for a constitutional convention after this. Our system has always had gaping holes in it and I think the outcome of all this could be catastrophic for so many normal Americans across the political spectrum that they'd be willing to actually close many of them in good faith.
jltsiren
The broken part is the idea that the legislative and judicial branches can act as checks and balances for the executive branch. In the end, the executive branch is the only branch with the ability to do something. The other two are just a bunch of talking heads.
Many other republics have split the executive branch into multiple semi-independent centers of power. The head of state and the head of government can be separate roles. A directly elected president may be responsible for signing laws and appointing senior officials, while a prime minister subordinate to the parliament may be in charge of running the executive branch. And government departments may have dual leadership with a politically appointed minister setting the directions and a career director appointed by the president running the department. Because the director's term is independent from the political appointees, they can refuse to comply if the minister asks something illegal.
Republics have all kinds of failure modes. For example, Hungary was supposed to be a robust parliamentary republic. But due to non-proportional elections, slightly over 50% of votes were enough for a sufficient supermajority to rewrite the constitution.
neom
DW covered this today with a professor who seems to generally know what he's talking about and from what I could tell is not spinning anything in particular: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpKhyL9PEPQ
He does a good job of explaining the facts of the legalities etc.
taurknaut
I'm not really sure if you can call it a "coup" if all parties involved admit he was legitimately elected. Furthermore, this isn't exactly a bait-and-switch. He told us what exactly what he wanted to do. We already knew he would try to do illegal stuff. If you break the law and nobody who voted for you complains (unrealistic I realize, but bear with me), is the rule of law really that secure? If we only criticize Trump when he breaks the law, but not the democrats when they send arms to Israel in blatant violation of the Leahy Laws, how can we get upset when people push the boundaries further?
It's been more than 20 years (or might be about that?) that we passed the law that said "if you prosecute Bush for warcrimes we will invade the Hague". Granted, we were never a treaty cosigner (sharing the lovely company of Russia, North Korea, and Iran), but it's very convenient we have a "laws for thee but not for me" attitude.
Look I'm just saying we've been headed in this direction for a while and I don't expect the institutions we're supposed to care about preserving doing much to stop it. Americans need to get a lot more mad if they want politicians to represent them well. I'd hazard a guess most americans have never contacted their representatives, vote in their non-swing state (effectively making their vote worthless), and pat themselves on the back for a civic duty well done. I think we've gotten ourselves into a position where politicians who have spent most of their careers failing to pass legislation now need to pull political ability from who the hell knows where to actually follow through on their promise to fight facism. Very grim times.
exceptione
What most people do seem not to grasp here is that MAGA is full steam working to make sure it doesn't matter who you are going to vote. Trump is just the smoke screen.
IF, by a rare circumstance, the media moguls decide to not sane-wash the incredible fire-hose of lies, corruption, fake news, and religious extremism, and the DEMs get into office in some next term, those DEMs will find the state destroyed beyond repair.
Health epidemics, broken foreign relation relations, dysfunctional government agencies (filled to the brim with stupid or evil clients from the shadow elites), downright abolished agencies, information sphere completely muddied in Musk-style, tech oligarchs sworn allegiance to MAGA (done), abolishment of fact checkers (in progress), removal of experts and intelligentsia (busy), impoverished voters (in progress).
You can enter the cockpit, but MAGA makes sure you are never going to fly again. If you want to get somewhere, you will need the fixers.
People here are discussing legalities with a situational awareness of 3 millimeter maximum. This feverish is understandable, we MUST interpret things like they are normal. If you want to keep it that way, don't read the next sentence.
As soon as the news broke of Trumps reelection, all cases where dropped quickly. That is all you need to now.
tmaly
I just saw a thread by a lawyer on X that broke down the EO creating DOGE.
It was very interesting how they got around things.
code_runner
They seem to be still be deciding what the EO actually is, and they also didn’t create a non-governmental entity like trump promised.
dgrin91
The title here is poor. Its not that Slack is subject to FOIA and other systems are not - its that the org structure of DOGE is being transition from being under OMB to directly under the executive office. If they use Slack there it would be presumably not be subject to FOIA.
viraptor
Practically, this probably doesn't make a difference. FOIA relies on at least one person in the department to not be antagonistic towards the process. Otherwise they can just make up excuses. That's the standard experience for people sending requests.
I don't think anyone from the new DOGE would actually be helpful in responses anyway.
hx8
If the data is on Slack servers, then Slack may be more than willing comply with FOIA.
vesinisa
Slack can't just willy-nilly hand over US government data to the public. There's a process that needs to be followed for FOIA requests as some classes of information are just not public. In fact, most of the data on a government Slack server would probably fall under those FOIA exemptions.
hondo77
Not when I worked in the US govt. We were told that everything we did in our Slack was FOIA-able. FWIW.
viraptor
FOIA requests go to the information owner, not to anyone hosting it. It's not even specific to IT. Paper notes/documents are also covered.
davidt84
They're all subject to FOIA...
karaterobot
Here is the distinction:
> This would make DOGE a Presidential Records Act entity, meaning records it creates are not FOIAble until years after a president leaves office rather than a Federal Records Act entity, which would make its records FOIAble now.
It's how soon you can make a request.
anothername12
The article outlines some reporting changes (from OMB to White House chief of staff??) to get around that apparently
hiatus
That remains to be seen. From the same article:
> "Just changing the name alone under the Executive Order doesn't affect DOGE's recordkeeping status,” Jason R. Baron, professor at the University of Maryland and former director of litigation at the National Archives and Records Administration told 404 Media in a phone call. “The administration apparently has made a determination that DOGE will be a presidential component subject to the Presidential Records Act. However, that will surely be challenged in the courts in connection with FOIA lawsuits. Under FOIA, it will be for the courts to decide whether under existing DOGE is acting more like a federal oversight agency or as a presidential component that solely advises the President.”
sitkack
DOGE is not acting as an oversight agency, they are locking people out of systems and modifying code, so they can't be an oversight agency.
Congress needs to do their job here.
slowmovintarget
The article is fairly sloppy and uses lots of scare-quotes, but basically it's saying that communications for the DOGE team will report in to the Chief of Staff making them subject to the Presidential Records Act instead of the general reporting conditions for the OMB.
The article also states that 'DOGE is gutting...' when that's not true. They're advising the President, and the President is cleaning house. They investigate, recommend, the President decides, and those decisions get acted on. This is how a task force like this is supposed to work.
BryantD
"The President decides..." within the limits of his constitutional powers. Which do not include, for example, impoundment or unilaterally shutting down agencies authorized by Congressional acts.
paradox460
Exactly. I made this comparison elsewhere, but it still fits. They are akin to the US Chemical safety board. They have investigative powers, but that's it. They can't actually change anything, just issue recommendations.
Now, USCSB makes some incredible YouTube videos, I somehow doubt Doge will do the same
karaterobot
> They're advising the President, and the President is cleaning house.
That may be a distinction without a difference. The reason to have advisors around is so you can rely on them to make a proposal you can sign off on, because they understand your overall vision. If they're not proposing cuts he agrees with, he'll replace DOGE leadership until he finds people who do.
null
sitkack
[flagged]
adrien79
BOYCOTT TESLA, TWITTER, SPACEX. SELL YOUR $TSLA STOCK. Do it for America. And for the world. The rest of the planet is watching. America, get your shit together!!
bdangubic
was about to hit the international space station for the weekend but imma boycott the shit out of spacex now :)
and worry not, anyone owning tesla stock is getting their punishment eventually :)
Aurornis
> Employees working for the agency now known as DOGE have been ordered to stop using Slack while government lawyers attempt to transition the agency to one that is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act,
> The messages indicate that, under Elon Musk’s leadership, DOGE is actively taking steps to make sure its communications and records are not subject to the Freedom of Information Act,
> This would make DOGE a Presidential Records Act entity, meaning records it creates are not FOIAble until years after a president leaves office rather than a Federal Records Act entity, which would make its records FOIAble now.
Regardless of where you stand on the topic of cutting federal budgets, the lack of transparency should be alarming to everyone.
Broad actions like this should have the utmost transparency, not a team of lawyers doing their best legal maneuvering to keep it out of the public's reach.
smb06
Oh they want to eliminate the possibility of public filing a FOIA request. Democracy died in Darkness.
yapyap
Man I’d hate to work in such a volatile environment.
malfist
That's probably part of the goal. Get people to quit and not replace them. One party has been on the "break the government to prove the government doesn't work" warpath for decades now
the_optimist
Perhaps revisit your premise prior to asserting malicious intent.
voxl
The biggest problem with the USA is people look at the current state of the government and somehow don't see pre Nazi Germany. If the percentage of these sympathizers is large enough then there is no course correction that will be possible in two years.
francisofascii
I agree. What's worrying is any stable working environment that exists now can become volatile like this overnight. It is more uncommon with Federal employment, but is pretty common in the private sector unfortunately.
127raf
Avoiding FOIA is one thing. Why do organizations that handle sensitive information use Slack in the first place?
Salesforce gets all the Slack data and can do whatever it likes. This is utter incompetence.
torginus
I don't have an opinion on the political aspects of this, but I find the choice of uploading all your data to a central server by default an insane choice, and I hate that this is the default in the modern world.
Why can't software come in a box, like it used to - then it can run on a machine that I control, and only talk to machines that I control too.
Then it's not a matter of belief and blind trust and hoping against hope that nobody's spying on me - it's the matter of basic common sense and due diligence.
krapp
>Why can't software come in a box, like it used to - then it can run on a machine that I control, and only talk to machines that I control too.
At some point you will want or need to talk to machines you don't control, because society consists of people other than yourself, and machines that they control. And in this hell of other people, "basic common sense and due diligence" are synonymous with blind trust.
torginus
IRC used to work like I described, and it had no trouble talking to strangers.
Websites are usually hosted on machines the owner controls, running software the owner controls, yet have no trouble talking to the external world.
squigz
> IRC used to work like I described, and it had no trouble talking to strangers.
Except for the server, which is usually run on a box you don't control.
> Websites are usually hosted on machines the owner controls, running software the owner controls, yet have no trouble talking to the external world.
Most websites are absolutely not ran on machines the owner controls...
Havoc
This seems to me that there can be only two outcomes here. Either gov gets completely neutered and stops existing in conventional form. Or this ends in treason charges.
nabeards
Lots of Elon apologists in this thread, yeesh.
DOGE is obviously a completely illegal operation, and I really do hope it will be get reined in before they can cause an issue so big that _even trump's croniest cronies_ have to admit what is going on.
For someone who claims to love freedom of speech, Elon is pretty quick to determine who can say what, and how much access to _his_ data people have.