WASHINGTON – If you received a tax refund, Elon Musk could get your Social Security number and even your bank account and routing numbers.
Paying off a student loan or a government-backed mortgage? Musk and his lieutenants could dig through that data, too.
If you get a monthly Social Security check, receive Medicaid or other government benefits like SNAP (formerly known as food stamps), or work for the federal government, all of your personal information would be at the Musk team’s fingertips. The same holds true if you’ve been awarded a federal contract or grant.
Even your private medical history could potentially fall under the scrutiny of Musk and his assistants if your doctor or dentist provides that level of detail to the government when asking Medicaid to reimburse him or her for the cost of your care.
A staggering volume of information on the private lives of millions of Americans will be available to Musk and his associates unless the courts thwart the billionaire businessman from gaining access to the Treasury Department’s payment and data systems.
The amount of sensitive data that Musk and his team could access is so vast it has historically been off limits to all but a handful of career civil servants. Public interest groups say it should remain off limits and that Americans have the right to expect that private information entrusted to the government will remain private.
“When Americans interface with the government, there’s a law in place, a privacy law, that is supposed to foreclose people from seeing it or using it for anything but (processing) these payments,” said Lisa Gilbert, co-president of Public Citizen, a consumer rights advocacy group. “And so it’s incredibly problematic to think about an unelected billionaire and his team having access to it, being able to see it or change it.”
A federal judge in New York temporarily blocked Musk and his team on Saturday from accessing government processing systems after attorneys general in 19 states filed suit. The states, led by New York Attorney General Letitia James, argue Musk and his assistants aren’t authorized to access the payment system, could jeopardize confidential information and could block federal funds to states for health clinics, preschools, climate initiatives, and other programs.
An outraged Musk responded to the ruling by posting a message on X, the social media platform he owns, calling the judge corrupt and saying he should be impeached.
A hearing in the case is set for Friday.
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Musk is seeking access to the payment system as part of his stated push to eliminate government waste and inefficiency. President Donald Trump has put Musk in charge of the newly created Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, to carry out his campaign promise to slash government spending and regulations. Musk is an unpaid adviser to Trump, and DOGE isn’t really a government department but is instead an advisory team to the Trump administration.
Musk hasn’t said why he wants access to the Treasury Department’s payment system, which distributes money on behalf of the entire federal government. In fiscal year 2023, the system paid out more than $5 trillion, or roughly 88% of all federal payments.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who was appointed by Trump, gave representatives of Musk’s team access to the payment system a couple of weeks ago after facing resistance from a top Treasury official. The official, David Lebryk, a career civil servant, abruptly retired after the standoff.
The White House said Musk and his lieutenants have “read-only” access to information in the Treasury system. But the Treasury Department acknowledged in court documents filed Tuesday that one DOGE staff member had been mistakenly granted “read/write” permission on Feb. 5.
The staffer was identified as Marko Elez, a 25-year-old software engineer. The error was discovered the next day, and Elez’s access was promptly changed to “read-only,” the court documents said. Elez wasn’t aware that he had been given “read/write” permission, never used his “write” privileges and apparently never even logged into the system during that time, the documents said.
Elez later resigned after The Wall Street Journal unearthed racist messages he had posted on social media, although Musk has since said he had been reinstated after Trump and Vice President JD Vance came to his defense.
Privacy advocates and other experts say there is no reason why Musk and his team should have any access to the system.
“The government paying its bills should be a nonpartisan thing,” said Don Moynihan, a professor at the University of Michigan’s Ford School of Public Policy. “There’s no reason why people doing government reform should need (access to) the system.”
Musk and his team are looking to overturn more than 140 years of government precedent that began with the founding of the federal civil service system in 1883, said Max Stier, founding president and chief executive officer of the Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit organization that focuses on improving government.
“Since the 1880s, we’ve had a political consensus – Democrat, Republican and independent – that our government is going to provide the best service with a career civil service, and one that is nonpartisan and based on merit,” Stier said. “The process of overturning that 140 years has been done in an ugly way and in ways that are really hurting the people in government.”
In this case, “people won’t get vital money that they need for their lives, for their businesses – for everything,” he said.
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Potential for conflicts of interest
Democrats in Congress also have sounded the alarm.
Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, warned in a Feb. 7 letter to the Social Security Administrator’s acting commissioner, Michelle King, that the attempt by Musk’s team to access the payment system amounts to “a two-front invasion on Americans’ financial security and privacy.”
“The information collected and housed at the agency could have significant commercial value as well as competitive advantage for individuals seeking to use it for financial gain,” Wyden said. “Likewise, it could be misappropriated to target American citizens and businesses for political or exploitative means.”
Musk and his business interests, such as his aeronautics company Space X, have received billions of dollars in government contacts over the past decade, raising further concerns about granting him access to the payment system.
“What if he decided not to disperse money to his competitors?” said Gilbert of Public Citizen, which also has sued to stop Musk from accessing the system. “The corrupting potential here is enormous.”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Musk would recuse himself from any contracts or funding that might pose a conflict of interest.
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Inexperienced coders and artificial intelligence
Another factor raising alarms is that several members of Musk’s team carrying out his sweeping orders are young engineers such as Elez who are fresh out of college – one is reportedly a recent high school graduate – and have little or no government experience. Without that background, they may not fully appreciate the sensitive nature of private data or understand the consequences of mishandling it, Stier said.
“You’re injecting people (into the government) who may be quite expert at coding but don’t know these systems, don’t know the consequences of things breaking and, very importantly, have not engaged with the people who do,” he said.
The Musk team’s suggestion that artificial intelligence could be used to help identify government waste is another reason for concern, several experts said, because of the absence of guardrails needed to protect against errors.
“We do know that AI is prone to errors and also know that a lot of people who are building AI don’t know a lot about government,” Moynihan said. “And so there is a real risk of building a tool that has blind spots built into it.”
Gilbert said the use of AI raises additional fears about protecting privacy given how quickly and easily information identified through the use of such tools can be distributed.
“The idea that it might be making decisions about who is worthy of payment is fairly terrifying,” she said.
Follow Michael Collins on X @mcollinsNEWS.
