DOGE software approval alarms Labor Department employees
Elon Musk’s DOGE received approval from the Department of Labor to use software that could allow it to transfer vast amounts of data.
Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has received approval from the Labor Department to use software that could allow it to transfer vast amounts of data out of Labor’s systems, according to records seen by NBC News and interviews with two employees.
The approval for Musk’s team to use the remote-access and file-transfer software, known as PuTTY, has alarmed some of the Labor Department’s career employees. Musk, the head of DOGE, has dispatched subordinates throughout the government to radically overhaul or dismantle federal agencies with the backing of President Donald Trump.
Many of the details around DOGE’s actions have remained secret, though it has moved to gain access to large swaths of data held in the computer systems of individual agencies.
That access has become contentious, and a federal judge issued a restraining order Saturday temporarily forbidding DOGE’s access to sensitive Treasury data, a case that does not involve the Labor Department. Democrats, labor unions and privacy advocates have filed lawsuits trying to halt data access at other government offices. Their concerns include the alleged use of artificial intelligence to analyze federal data and the alleged use of a computer server not familiar to government employees.
Transferring government data outside established protocols could have high stakes for anyone whose information is in those databases, because of the chance that more people would have access to their information than originally intended, increasing chances of a breach.
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