On Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court overruled two lower courts and temporarily gave Elon Musk’s DOGE unrestricted access to Americans’ confidential Social Security records.
Indiana Democratic Party Chair Karen Tallian released the following statement in response:
“In George Orwell’s famous novel 1984, the government is all seeing, and reminds citizens, “Big Brother Is Watching You.” Nothing is private and everyone is under constant surveillance. Big Brother is not a person, but an idea designed to instill fear and obedience.
By allowing Elon Musk’s ‘DOGE’ team unfettered access to Americans’ personal data and information, the US Supreme Court just took a major step toward making this nightmare a reality.
The data now at-risk includes Social Security numbers, birth dates, bank account numbers, and medical records – all things we try so hard to protect.
These records are protected under the Privacy Act of 1945, which mandates strict protection of data. It requires government personnel having access to this data go through background checks, have specialized training and sign confidentiality agreements.
It also restricts the use of data by any agency to only those specific points that are necessary for that agency’s purpose. In other words, no one person or group gets access to everything, and no one gets access at all without a good reason.
However, Elon Musk demanded access to all this info. And the Trump administration sided with Musk. Why?
Trump and Musk’s arguments were shot down by two federal courts – but the Supreme Court stepped in on Trump’s behalf with an emergency ruling allowing Musk and DOGE to access every American’s confidential data on a temporary basis while the lower court decides the merits of the case.
This means by the time the lower court decides on whether DOGE should even have this access, the Supreme Court has already allowed them to comb through, and possibly copy, the private data of every American.
No one, not Elon Musk, Donald Trump or any other Republican, have given a good reason why they need this data. If anything, Republicans from Indiana have enabled this behavior with their silence.
All this comes just weeks after Trump signed a deal handing over full access to all US government data to Palantir, an infamous artificial intelligence (AI) company founded and controlled by Vice President JD Vance’s long time friend Peter Thiel. Now that trove of data is set to get even bigger and more invasive.
We call on Congress to pass legislation to stop this unprecedented invasion of privacy from moving forward. Sens. Young and Banks, Reps. Mrvan, Yakym, Stutzman, Baird, Spartz, Shreve, Carson, Messmer and Houchin: protect Hoosiers and demand an end to this.
Trump, Elon Musk and the GOP must come clean with Hoosiers and tell us what they want with all this data before the vision of our future becomes a boot stamping on a human’s face – forever.”
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