The Trump administration violated a federal privacy law to get information about millions of government workers of the Government Efficiency Department (DOGE) of Elon Musk, privacy advocates including Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed two labor on behalf of two labor Accused in a new trial. A group of unions and current and former federal employees.
Groups allege that Dogi and Personnel Management Office (OPM) violated Privacy act of 1974Which protects the information maintained by federal agencies. The OPM “millions of current and former federal employees, contractors and job applicants are aware of the tens of,” with disabilities, background investigations, including information and health records. The agency has information about workers in highly sensitive roles, for which their government employment can also be problematic, such as the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) workers, say this. Labor groups allege that Musk and his Dogi employees were allowed to reach the OPM computer network, which used to store this information, before they were considered government employees, the sensitive information of the workers was threatened Used to put in
Doge lacks “a legitimate and valid requirement for such access” for OPM files, the groups alleged. They are asking the American district court in the southern district of New York to suspend the reach of Dogi employees in the system, and prevent them from using any information that they allegedly accessed already illegally. Have gone They also want the court to order any copies of data to be illegally destroyed.
OPM is already facing Separate suit The Trump administration's “thorns in the road” offered the resignation from labor groups, which promised payment that the Congress had not yet appropriated. Is a federal judge S0 delayed The time frame for choosing the option to take a proposal for federal workers, Take further By the court.
While the Trump administration has insisted that the employees of DOGE have received legally information and there is necessary approval to do so, they have not given much detail about those clearances. Government employees have expressed doubts that the inexperienced cadre of employees in Dogge may have generally made it through a tough withdrawal process to reach sensitive information in a few weeks. The lawsuit emphasizes that no exception to the privacy act for law enforcement purposes, not applicable in this case.
Access to OPM information can create new weaknesses for that data, Fear of expertsFinally, OPM databases were Violated in 2014As a result, more than 20 million people are being compromised.
Labor unions and staff are prone to harmful consequences of disclosure and use of information accessible by Dogge, claiming claims. “President Trump, Dogi Director Elon Musk, and others have repeatedly threatened to set government employees on fire that they consider disorganized. They have repeatedly and illegally and illegally set fire to government employees and closed the entire departments. And they have positively placed policies that want to eliminate government employees based on their gender identity. ,
“White House will continue to fight these battles in court, and we hope that we will expect to be destroyed,” we hope that the White House press secretary Karolin Lewit said in a statement. “The President has the full right to exercise his executive rights on behalf of the American people, who gave him a historic mandate to rule on 5 November.”
Improvement, 11 February: An old version of this story wrongly identified President Donald Trump as one of the defendants in the trial. He is not directly nominated as defendants.