Elon Musk barred from accessing US Treasury payments data
Temporary order restricts efforts of billionaire's Department of
Government Efficiency to infiltrate multitrillion dollar system
A federal judge has barred the US Treasury from handing data from its
payments system to outsiders, in an early legal blow to Elon Musk's
crusade to slash government spending.
Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly put the temporary order in place after
Musk boasted that his team at the Department of Government Efficiency
(Doge) was "rapidly shutting down" Treasury remittances, having
apparently gained access to the system that disburses trillions of
dollars, including social security payments and Medicare, each year.
Representatives of government employees and retirees have sued to stop
the sensitive data being shared with Musk and others at Doge, arguing
that such moves were "depriving them of privacy protections guaranteed
to them by federal law".
Although the US government reassured the court that only two of Doge's emissaries, Cloud Software group chief executive Tom Krause and
25-year-old coder Marko Elez, had access to the sensitive system, Kollar-Kotelly pushed for an order preventing any information being
shared outside the Treasury, while she considers a more permanent
injunction.
As a result, Musk himself will not be able to review data pulled from
the payments system.
https://www.ft.com/content/097b286f-376e-40eb-8804-69a6d217803d
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