Disclosure of personal information to DOGE “is irreparable harm,” judge rules
111 comments
·February 25, 2025dragonwriter
johnnyanmac
It's progress. I remember the alst judge rejecting a TRO because no damages were proven yet. And that's still the judgment as 14 states are suing.
timr
You remember that, because it was last Friday. It was also discussed in this article.
Judges of different political persuasion are ruling differently on the same issue (in different cases), and the headline is misleading -- the opinion of a single judge, pre-trial, is of low significance wrt the merits of the case itself.
You could just as easily write a headline that "judges are split on US gov't violating privacy law", and it would be completely factual.
ranger_danger
Most headlines seem to be extra-misleading these days, even from the left. I have not seen so much outrage lately over things that turn out to be meh, in a long time.
Like that woman from the town meeting with the corrupt local sheriff, that was escorted out by 'unidentified' 'black shirt' security... nobody seemed to realize that she was already yelling at them on several occasions that night, was told to stop yelling, then kept doing it, and THAT is when they asked her to leave, and she still refused, prompting them to 'assault' her out of the building.
nimish
TROs are preliminary injunctions in all but name. I expect SCOTUS to issue writs of mandamus reining them in otherwise Congress will simply remove the nationwide ability to issue them from the lower courts.
timewizard
We should possibly recognize that building federal troves of data that rely on the "good deputy" model are outmoded and need massive overhaul.
dpe82
Alternatively, we could recognize the importance of electing officials who are serious and competent - a strategy that proved reasonably effective for over 200 years.
Dylan16807
Not alternatively. They're both important and competent officials do not stop database abuse, they only lessen it.
eggnet
That will require inoculating the population against propaganda.
jaydeegee
In Finland schools teach media literacy maybe that's a start.
jachee
How does one synthesize a mind vaccine?
throwawaymaths
> a strategy that proved reasonably effective for over 200 years.
not a student of US history, I see.
timewizard
I think everyone recognizes the importance of that. I think a large part of the country would disagree with your assessment of the current administration and might take issue with your total lack of similar assessment for the previous administration.
I also think anyone with a passing understanding of history would doubt your claim that this has been "reasonably" effective for 200 years. As if no prior generation had to deal with an administration they felt was incompetent or as if there aren't prior presidents that are demonstrably worse than any Trump administration.
Finally, again, if you're going to rely on an "electorate that recognizes social issues identically to me" to protect federal data, I think you've actually made the problem worse. Perhaps your social moors shouldn't be nation wide existential issues?
zombiwoof
How are all the Silicon Valley tech bros feeling about their divine king Musk now
somethoughts
At what point can we start calling them Texas Tech Bros? The two primary ones are pretty much living mostly in Texas and Florida at this point.
readyplayernull
Left a taste of feet?
huang_chung
Tech-bros that invented and deployed nearly every privacy-invading technology of the last 20 years, tracked your every movement, scanned your email to show you ads, sold data for profit, now come to HN to cry privacy concern about a government audit.
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goatlover
How come there isn’t much discussion of DOGE on this site? Seems rather important and relevant to the question of whether the Silicon Valley approach to breaking things and moving quickly works for government. Also whether such an agency should have access to our data.
dang
I understand the perception, but it has actually been by far the most-discussed topic on HN of recent weeks.
[editing - bear with me...]
Jtsummers
It gets [flagged] and [flagged][dead]ed very quickly. Some people flag because they don't care about politics, others flag because they're in favor of what's happening, the rest flag because all the discussions turn into flamewars and are unproductive.
afavour
I do understand wanting to avoid “politics” (however that gets defined) on HN but in this particular moment it feels like a real loss.
I’ve read articles about how DOGE might have misinterpreted data because of COBOL, just today I saw the announcement of all these “5 things” emails being plugged into AI… there are a lot of people on HN well positioned to comment knowledgably on this stuff but the threads get flagged very quickly.
pyuser583
It’s all so speculative.
I was contacted by a reporter asking about the possible security implications of the Doge stuff.
All I could think of was the false/misleading claims about DNS traffic on Trumps server back in 2016.
I said something like, “if the humans in charge grant access to another human, a secure system would grant the new human access.”
They didn’t use my quote.
IAmGraydon
Do a search for "doge" or "musk". There are plenty threads that don't get flagged.
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wruza
Also HN is not that efficient at flamewars. When a new iphone generates 2k comments, you have to logout to visit (enables cache/cdn/?), cause it stops responding otherwise. Now imagine 10 politics threads on the frontpage with thousands of flamers piling in. HN simply can’t do that. It’s a niche lisp server for discussing this week’s ai-generated ts frameworks. Politics go reddit.
Jtsummers
dang rewrote things so it's more efficient now. They don't have to paginate large threads anymore and performance remains good.
It used to be that a single thread with ~200 comments could slow down the server, on the front page there are 3 discussions I saw (quick scan) at or over 200 and one over 600.
Terr_
While I don't flag them, I also don't typically vouch/upvote them. I just comment for however long they might last, with the idea that a certain amount of off-topic-ness is inevitable and a kind of safety-valve.
As much as I like a good politics/law discussion, for this "DOGE stuff" on HN I try to limit my support to items which are either:
1. News about technical details
2. Discuss information-security policies and principles
3. Contain a significant niche educational component, like how Impoundment has been historically used and how Nixon's abuses of it led to the Impoundment Act of 1974.
timr
Fourth option: the articles are basically flamebait, as this one happens to be. Nothing of substance has occurred here; a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order for a couple of weeks until the case can move forward.
TheAlchemist
I don't know. Is it really not important that a single guy, the richest in the world and heavily dependend on government subsides, able to access personal data of every single government employee ? (And send them pretty childish emails over the weekend !)
Given the fact that people with very questionable backgrounds "work" on this data, it all looks like a massive potential for data leaks. It happens in plain sight, and apparently not many people object. Or more accurately, as on this website, they are silenced.
jcranmer
A temporary restraining order is an extraordinary measure, never granted as a right. To grant one, the plaintiff needs to succeed on all four factors: irreparable harm, likelihood of success on the merits, balance of equities, and public interest.(Yes, I've read enough TRO-related stuff that I can recite the verbiage from memory.)
Winning a TRO essentially requires that the judge agree you're going to win your case eventually and that you can't even wait until a preliminary injunction hearing to get some relief. On the flip side, losing a TRO doesn't mean all that much.
dragonwriter
> Nothing of substance has occurred here; a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order
A TRO is something of a substance, both literally in itself and its immediate effect, and also as an indicator on the merits since a TRO requires a finding of probability of success on the merits.
inetknght
> Nothing of substance has occurred here; a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order
Maybe nothing of substance to you.
But it's certainly something of substance to US citizens. Which are, I argue, a majority of HN users given YCombinator's location.
brink
fwiw, I flag nearly every time because of the latter reason. Almost universal cheap, knee-jerk, low-effort comments in every thread I've seen.
wnevets
> How come there isn’t much discussion of DOGE on this site?
The exact same reason any negative story about Elon, Twitter, Tesla or SpaceX disappears from the front page. They get flagged to death immediately.
It also doesn't help that Paulg is still an Elon fan.
IAmGraydon
This thread is literally on the front page and not flagged.
goatlover
He's not concerned with what's going on in DC? Does he think Elon is qualified to waltz in and start slashing and burning the Federal Bureaucracy? Congress hasn't approved DOGE.
onemoresoop
Maybe what is happening benefits him so he is quietly cheering on. If he stays quiet and makes no mentions of current events I will continue to assume so. I feel that if this ultimately escalates a few more rungs everybody will have to lose.
wolfcola
paulg is more concerned with “wokeism” than he is with the federal government being stripped for parts.
TimC123456
The posts tend to get quickly flagged and thus buried. Search the archives for relevant names and keywords, and you’ll see lots of relevant yet flagged posts. Even discussions about this fact tend to get flagged.
dijksterhuis
> How come there isn’t much discussion of DOGE on this site?
hopefully saving @dang a job.
this meta comment provide some links to other comments from dang about Major Ongoing Topics (MOTs), what happens with flagging, why some groups feel there isn't enough discussion, others feel there's too much discussion, and how moderation works for MOTs (substantively new information is often key).
DamnInteresting
If you use https://news.ycombinator.com/active, [flagged] and [dead] threads are shown, so long as there is engagement. I wish that @dang would make this the HN front page in these harrowing and hectic times. It is currently too easy for important threads to be smothered.
plorkyeran
There's ten or so submissions per day that hit the front page and then instantly get flagged off.
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xqcgrek2
[flagged]
ronbenton
What does you mean? The following sounds to me like a pretty reasonable concern and not farfetched that a judge would make this interpretation
>The American Federation of Teachers and other "plaintiffs have shown that Education and OPM likely violated the Privacy Act by disclosing their personal information to DOGE affiliates without their consent"
blackguardx
Where did you learn this? I learned in fourth grade that the proper process is an appeal to a higher court, of which the supreme court is the last word. They are called judicial "opinions" for a reason. Do they not teach this stuff anymore?
kc711
Congress should take checks and balances seriously, which includes respecting judicial independence rather than calling for impeachment just because a ruling goes against their political preferences.
goatlover
Presidents can be impeached too. Next election is only two years away.
2OEH8eoCRo0
What did the judge do wrong?
worik
[flagged]
malfist
If you want to keep a democracy, yes. Checks and balances are critical to a functioning democracy
ipaddr
The next election cycle begins soon.
goatlover
Unless the US is transitioning into an authoritarian regime.
drawkward
What the fuck kind of question is that? Of course the executive does, under our constitution.
pixl97
Lol, that is just a piece of paper that doesn't mean shit unless someone is willing to enforce the words on it. There has been a shortage of enforcers recently.
goatlover
If one party doesn't want to abide by that piece of paper, then there's no reason to consider them legitimate.
skaushik92
The issue is that the executive branch still has prosecutorial power with impeachment as one of the only remaining checks against that (if I’m understanding correctly).
defrost
> with impeachment as one of the only remaining checks against that
impeachment appears to be a wet noodle of a check that carries all the weight of nanny saying "you've been a very naughty boy".
Two impeachments and a felony conviction didn't check squat, if I'm not mistaken.
jfengel
What part of the Constitution says that? The article about the judiciary is pretty brief. It says that they get to decide things, but it doesn't actually clarify that everyone has to abide by their decisions.
Just because it's obvious doesn't mean it's legally valid.
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timr
[flagged]
ronbenton
She did write "This continuing, unauthorized disclosure of the plaintiffs’ sensitive personal information to DOGE affiliates is irreparable harm that money damages cannot rectify"
Anyways, for people who want the primary source, here's the opinion/restraining order: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mdd.576...
timr
Yes. That's what I said -- one of the requirements of a temporary order like this, ahead of trial is that the potential damages are irreversible.
It's not a judgment on the case itself.
danparsonson
> The American Federation of Teachers and other "plaintiffs have shown that Education and OPM likely violated the Privacy Act by disclosing their personal information to DOGE affiliates without their consent," said the order
762236
[flagged]
kc711
The issue isn't employers accessing their own records but the government improperly sharing sensitive personal data with DOGE affiliates without consent or a legitimate need-to-know justification, likely violating the Privacy Act.
ipaddr
No they disclosed your private information as a citizen.
shakna
> It may be that, with additional time, the government can explain why granting such broad access to the plaintiffs' personal information is necessary for DOGE affiliates at Education to do their jobs, but for now, the record before the Court indicates they do not have a need for these records in the performance of their duties
You need to have a reason to look at that information. It is not yours to do whatever you want with.
avs733
No, this lawsuit is not about employee records. It is about customer records. Just like I can't share customer data with whoever the hell I want, they are arguing that there is a process and it was violated. Its the same lawsuit as if a company had a privacy policy on their website and just said 'nah bro' I'm going to give your social security number to some random drug addict to train a nazi AI.
neRok
> No, this lawsuit is not about employee records. It is about customer records.
That's not what the article says...
> The plaintiffs include "unions and membership organizations representing current and former federal employees and federal student aid recipients and six military veterans who have received federal benefits or student loans,"
I wonder how much of this employee data is actually "personal", and not data relevant to their employment, which presumably isn't "private" from the perspective of the employer. So for example, I imagine their home address and birth date would be considered private; but their job title , primary place of work, start date, etc would not be "private data"...?
avs733
Federal student aid recipients are not employees of the department of education.
762236
That is a useful clarification (that it is customer records, not employee records)
worik
> They're arguing that employers can't access their internal records on their employees.
How are they doing that?
dralley
Elon Musk is not a government employee and he is not their boss.
danparsonson
I can't even fathom why anyone is listening to him. If a bunch of teenagers and discount Tony Stark turns up at your office and starts trying to fire people and demanding access to your data, isn't the correct response to tell them to fk off?
excalibur
Please prosecute while there's still someone with integrity to do it.
analog31
And someone to prosecute without immunity.
ShakataGaNai
Except the second it looks like their might be a chance for prosecution... there will be a pardon.
johnnyanmac
You can't pardon Civil cases. Nor civil contempt, given the course of how likely these people are to follow court rulings.
ty6853
If it were prosecuted the same way as the peasants, the direction of prosecution is generally in the direction of the person who granted access, as asking people to do illegal stuff seems to be considered fair game bait to get people prosecuted.
This is a temporary restraining order (TRO), so the judge did not need to, and did not actually, rule that they did violate the Privacy Act, but that they likely did so, and that this probability of success on the merits coupled with the fact that the disclosure of their banking information would constitute irreparable harm justifies a TRO while the case proceeds.