US Supreme Court allows DOGE broad access to Social Security data
WASHINGTON: The US Supreme Court on Friday permitted the Department of Government Efficiency, a key player in President Donald Trump's drive to slash the federal workforce, broad access to personal information on millions of Americans in Social Security Administration data systems while a legal challenge plays out.
At the request of the Justice Department, the justices put on hold Maryland-based US District Judge Ellen Hollander's order that had largely blocked DOGE's access to "personally identifiable information" in data such as medical and financial records while litigation proceeds in a lower court. Hollander found that allowing DOGE unfettered access likely would violate a federal privacy law.
The court's brief, unsigned order did not provide a rationale for siding with DOGE. The court has a 6-3 conservative majority. Its three liberal justices dissented from the order.
Liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, in a dissent that was joined by fellow liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor, criticised the court's majority for granting DOGE "unfettered data access" despite the administration's "failure to show any need or any interest in complying with existing privacy safeguards."
In a separate order on Friday, the Supreme Court extended its block on judicial orders requiring DOGE to turn over records to a government watchdog group that sought details on the entity established by Trump and Musk.
DOGE swept through federal agencies as part of the Republican president's effort, spearheaded by billionaire Elon Musk, to eliminate federal jobs, downsize and reshape the US government and root out what they see as wasteful spending. Musk formally ended his government work on May 30.
Two labour unions and an advocacy group sued to stop DOGE from accessing sensitive data at the Social Security Administration, or SSA, including Social Security numbers, bank account data, tax information, earnings history and immigration records.
The agency is a major provider of government benefits, sending cheques each month to more than 70 million recipients including retirees and disabled Americans.
Democracy Forward, a liberal legal group that represented the plaintiffs, said Friday's order would put millions of Americans' data at risk.
"Elon Musk may have left Washington, D.C., but his impact continues to harm millions of people," the group said in a statement. "We will continue to use every legal tool at our disposal to keep unelected bureaucrats from misusing the public's most sensitive data as this case moves forward."
In their lawsuit, the plaintiffs argued that the Social Security Administration had been "ransacked" and that DOGE members had been installed without proper vetting or training and demanded access to some of the agency's most sensitive data systems.
Hollander in an April 17 ruling found that DOGE had failed to explain why its stated mission required "unprecedented, unfettered access to virtually SSA's entire data systems."
"For some 90 years, SSA has been guided by the foundational principle of an expectation of privacy with respect to its records," Hollander wrote. "This case exposes a wide fissure in the foundation."
Hollander issued a preliminary injunction that prohibited DOGE staffers and anyone working with them from accessing data containing personal information, with only narrow exceptions. The judge's ruling did allow DOGE affiliates to access data that had been stripped of private information as long as those seeking access had gone through the proper training and passed background checks.
Hollander also ordered DOGE affiliates to "disgorge and delete" any personal information already in their possession.
The Richmond, Virginia-based 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals in a 9-6 vote declined on April 30 to pause Hollander's block on DOGE's unlimited access to Social Security Administration records.
Justice Department lawyers in their Supreme Court filing characterised Hollander's order as judicial overreach.
"The district court is forcing the executive branch to stop employees charged with modernising government information systems from accessing the data in those systems because, in the court's judgment, those employees do not 'need' such access," they wrote.
The six dissenting judges wrote that the case should have been treated the same as one in which a 4th Circuit panel ruled 2-1 to allow DOGE to access data at the US Treasury and Education Departments and the Office of Personnel Management.
In a concurring opinion, seven judges who ruled against DOGE wrote that the case involving Social Security data was "substantially stronger" with "vastly greater stakes," citing "detailed and profoundly sensitive Social Security records," such as family court and school records of children, mental health treatment records and credit card information.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Star
8 hours ago
- The Star
Chinese spies at Stanford? US tightens visa policies over espionage fears
Chinese spies at Stanford University. American and Chinese pawns for Beijing at Duke Kunshan. Chinese student scouts near a military site in Michigan. These are some of the 'bombshell' allegations that have been fuelling online buzz and US government efforts to sever educational ties between the US and China in recent months. A day after The Stanford Review – a student-run conservative newspaper – published a report on May 7 alleging that Beijing was conducting a 'widespread intelligence-gathering campaign' on campus, Senator Ashley Moody, Republican of Florida, cited the piece as evidence that Congress must pass her bill to prevent all Chinese citizens from obtaining US student visas. Similarly, months after a Duke University student published an account of her experiences with Chinese media during a trip to China, two US representatives wrote to Duke's president seeking to shut down Duke Kunshan, the university's joint campus with Wuhan University in China, alleging that it was helping to facilitate Chinese propaganda and intellectual property theft. And, months after claims that Chinese students were spying near a military site in Michigan, the University of Michigan – facing pressure from lawmakers – announced it would end its partnership with Shanghai Jiao Tong University. Capping this trend, the State Department announced last week it would 'aggressively' revoke visas of Chinese students, including those with 'connections' to China's Communist Party and in 'critical fields', citing Beijing's 'intelligence collection' and theft of US research. Lawmakers and government officials involved say that US engagement with Chinese students and universities must be restricted to protect national security. But US-based China scholars and education advocates call the risks overstated and often unsubstantiated, and the proposed responses disproportionate. The cost, they say, of misjudging the balance between openness and protecting national security is high – putting not only America's ability to understand China, but also its capacity to innovate, at risk. That risk has become all the more potent as US President Donald Trump's administration targets international students more broadly, from expanding the review of visa applicants' social media accounts to revoking Harvard University's authority to host them at all. 'I do not believe that the danger here is that students on campus are going to gain access to secrets or be a national security risk,' said Dennis Wilder, a senior fellow at Georgetown University's Initiative for US-China Dialogue on Global Issues, adding that open campuses offered little intelligence value. Wilder, who previously worked at the CIA, said there was a conflation of worry about control by Beijing with the actual gathering of intelligence. 'There is a very real fear among Chinese students studying in the US that they are being monitored by other Chinese students on behalf of the Chinese embassy – but that doesn't mean those students are spies.' Defining spying as 'the stealing of secrets that a foreign government does not want you to have', Wilder cautioned that an overly broad definition would lead to a wasting of resources. 'Chasing after students means missing the bigger, more dangerous targets,' he said, citing as an example of a higher priority the case of Su Bin, a Chinese businessman who pleaded guilty in 2016 to hacking the computer networks of major US military contractors. China specialists have also questioned the strength of the evidence cited in some of the published allegations. 'The Stanford Review article relies heavily on anonymous sources and anecdotal experience, which could create serious problems for accurately assessing the nature of the risk,' said Rosie Levine, executive director of the US-China Education Trust, a Washington-based non-profit that facilitates academic exchanges. And that, Levine said, could lead to blanket suspicion being cast upon all Chinese students based on their country of origin rather than any problematic behaviour. 'I fear that articles like this will put a target on the back of Chinese students who are genuinely in the United States to get a good education,' she said, arguing that targeting behaviours rather than specific nationalities or institutions might be more productive. The Review article cited anonymous students and experts to claim the presence of spies at Stanford – without describing any concrete intelligence-gathering operation involving a current student or faculty member. It cites one former visiting researcher from China – Chen Song – who was indicted by the Department of Justice in 2021 for concealing her affiliation with the People's Liberation Army. The case was ultimately dismissed, a fact the report did not mention. Without directly criticising the article, some Stanford researchers and faculty warned that a more systematic collection of evidence was crucial to 'sound policy'. They also pushed for using spying-related terms more precisely. 'Espionage is a serious crime, and, while some cases will rise to that threshold, applying the label too broadly risks flawed prosecutions and confusing different aspects of research security,' said Larry Diamond, Matthew Pottinger and Matt Turpin in a letter to the Review. Pottinger and Turpin both worked in the White House during Trump's first term. The Stanford Review did not respond to a request for comment. China analysts were quick to outline the stakes of miscalibration. 'US academic institutions attract top talent globally, and many from China remain in the US and continue to make valuable contributions to research and development in their fields. This is a 'brain drain' from China that benefits the US,' said Jeremy Daum, a senior research scholar at Yale Law School. Daum recalled the Justice Department's China Initiative, a controversial and deactivated programme begun in the first Trump administration, saying that in the name of protecting against economic espionage, its investigations focused more on individuals' connections to China rather than on criminal acts related to the transfer of intellectual property. 'Naturally, crimes should be investigated, and confidential materials in businesses and universities should be protected,' Daum said. 'There is no basis, however, for suspecting anyone based solely on their nationality, ethnicity, affiliations, or the affiliations of their affiliations – such as where they only attended a school that had military research ties unrelated to their own work.' Levine said that, left unchecked, broad classifications would 'cast a net so wide that non-sensitive programmes that benefit Americans will be inadvertently affected'. That has already happened in states across the country. Florida International University, for instance, in 2023 cancelled a two-decade-old hospitality programme with the Tianjin University of Commerce after Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed a law restricting US-China partnerships. Since the start of Trump's second term, efforts targeting US-China education exchanges based on sweeping criteria have picked up. Last month, the full House of Representatives passed a bill that incentivises US universities to cut partnerships with a broad group of universities in China. Last week, the State Department declined to provide details on what areas of study or type of link to the Communist Party would make a Chinese citizen subject to greater visa scrutiny. Washington has already set rules that prevent foreign students and scholars from gaining access to sensitive information on university campuses, such as 'export administration regulations' on certain advanced technologies. And in 2020, the US government cancelled visas for graduate programme students from Chinese universities believed to have close research relationships with China's military. For proponents of exchange, the benefits include deep country expertise that Wilder says has been instrumental to US policy on China for decades. While there were more than 11,000 American students in China as recently as 2019, the latest available estimate, from 2024, hovers around 1,000. Experts say government oversight of US-China exchanges is often shaped by broad or inaccurate assumptions. 'American students are not as naive as the congressional committees seem to want to believe they are,' Wilder said, noting that they are often aware that they may be targets for Beijing's espionage or propaganda before heading to China. Andrew Polk, founder of the Trivium China consultancy, noted that US scrutiny often hinged on whether an institution has ties to the Chinese Communist Party – but in China, 'everything is linked to the CCP'. That ubiquity, he argued, makes such a standard too blunt to be meaningful. Jessica Chen Weiss, a professor of China studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), said reports about Chinese intelligence gathering often 'make little effort to convey a sense of proportion, either in the risks or benefits of having Chinese students'. The Stanford report, for instance, 'uses language like 'existential' without acknowledging that more than 90 per cent of Chinese-born doctoral students in STEM stay in the US ... And it assumes that the US can stay ahead if we prevent Chinese IP theft, whereas China is in the lead on many technologies', she said. Ho-fung Hung, another professor at SAIS, said clear parameters should be established for research areas that are off-limits. 'Even at the height of the Cold War, US and USSR scientific and technological cooperation continued. But a clear boundary needs to be set,' he said. 'Without such boundary, universities are going to be cautious and reluctant to continue working with Chinese scholars and students in all fields,' he continued, adding that China could help the situation by 'rethinking, revising, or refining the law that obliges all individual citizens, companies and organisations to spy for the state'. - SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST
The Star
9 hours ago
- The Star
WorldPride attendees to march through Washington in defiance of Trump
Workers place barricades at the Dupont Circle park, ahead of weekend WorldPride events in Washington, D.C., U.S., June 6, 2025. REUTERS/Kent Nishimura WASHINGTON (Reuters) -LGBTQ+ people from around the world will march through the streets of Washington on Saturday in a joyful celebration meant to show defiance to President Donald Trump's rollback of queer rights. The parade route will come within one block of the White House grounds in one of the final main events of the weeks-long WorldPride celebration. On Sunday a more political event, dubbed a rally and march, will convene at the Lincoln Memorial, a revered space in the U.S. civil rights movement as the site of Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech in 1963. Events will play out in the U.S. capital in the wake of the Trump administration's measures to curtail LGBTQ+ rights. The Republican president has issued executive orders limiting transgender rights, banning transgender people from serving in the armed forces, and rescinding anti-discrimination policies for LGBTQ+ people as part of a campaign to repeal diversity, equity and inclusion programs. While proponents of DEI consider it necessary to correct historic inequities, the White House has described it as a form of discrimination based on race or gender, and said its transgender policy protects women by keeping transgender women out of shared spaces. Moreover, the White House said it has appointed a number of openly gay people to cabinet posts or judgeships, and noted that the Trump administration took steps to decriminalize homosexuality globally, and that its 2019 initiative "Ending the HIV Epidemic" aimed to cut HIV infections by 90% by 2030. "The President is honored to serve all Americans," White House spokesperson Harrison Fields said in a statement. Event organizers said they were unaware of any counterprotests or anti-LGBTQ+ demonstrations planned for Saturday or Sunday. The National Park Service, however, has decided to fence off Dupont Circle, a popular public space, until Sunday night at the request of the U.S. Park Police, which said closure was necessary to "secure the park, deter potential violence, reduce the risk of destructive acts and decrease the need for extensive law enforcement presences." Capital Pride Alliance, which is organizing WorldPride events, said it was "frustrated and disappointed" at the closure. "This beloved landmark is central to the community that WorldPride intends to celebrate and honor. It's much more than a park, for generations it's been a gathering place for DC's LGBTQ+ community, hosting First Amendment assemblies and memorial services for those we lost to the AIDS epidemic and following tragic events like the Pulse nightclub shooting," the alliance said. (Reporting by Daniel Trotta; editing by Donna Bryson and Paul Simao)
The Star
12 hours ago
- The Star
Singapore and the US still in early stages of tariff negotiations, says Vivian Balakrishnan
SINGAPORE: It will be some time yet before countries can know for certain the final shape of the United States' tariff regime against virtually all its trading partners. This is as, aside from the revisions and legal challenges to the trade barriers that have been announced, it is clear that the US is looking to conduct multiple rounds of bilateral negotiations with its trading partners, which will take time, said Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan on Saturday (June 7). His meetings with US senators and members of Congress also showed there was bipartisan recognition between the Republicans and Democrats that trade, investment, intellectual property protection, reliability and supply chain security remain vital issues to the Americans, he added. In a Zoom call with the Singapore media to wrap up his five-day visit to Washington, Dr Balakrishnan said both sides reaffirmed the strong and stable bilateral relationship during his visit. 'The relationship with the United States is a vital, critical one for Singapore – it spans the entire gamut... the economy, defence, security, and we're also pursuing emerging opportunities in areas like cyber security and energy,' he said. 'So, it is a relationship which needs to be tended to, and attended to carefully.' In his meetings with senior US administration officials and members of Congress, Dr Balakrishnan conveyed Singapore's appreciation for the bipartisan support that enabled bilateral cooperation to flourish across a wide range of areas. Both sides also expressed commitment to continued constructive engagement and to advance cooperation in both traditional areas such as defence, as well as new and emerging areas such as critical technologies, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement. Dr Balakrishnan told reporters he had fairly extensive discussions on tariffs during his visit, including their impact on open economies like Singapore, and that his US counterparts understood his perspective. At his meeting with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on June 4, Dr Balakrishnan said he raised the impact of the US tariffs, and came away assured that the measures were not directed at Singapore. 'Nevertheless, I expressed our concern with the secondary impact, because any impact on global trade, any friction in the system, will have an impact on an open economy like ours, where our trading volume is three times our GDP,' he said. 'So that point needed to be made.' Manufacturing activity in Singapore shrank for the second consecutive month in May on the back of global trade uncertainty, according to purchasing managers' index figures released on June 2. Dr Balakrishnan said he 'made the point repeatedly' to his US counterparts that America has a trade surplus against Singapore, and that the city-state should not be subjected even to the baseline 10 per cent tariff. That said, Singapore is more concerned with sectoral tariffs, and will be looking at them 'very carefully' so as to minimise these as much as possible, he said. The majority of US President Donald Trump's sweeping 'Liberation Day' tariffs announced on April 2 have been paused for 90 days, but on June 4, Trump signed an order to double tariffs on steel and aluminium imports from 25 per cent to 50 per cent. In May, Deputy Prime Minister Gan Kim Yong said there were early indications that Washington was open to discussing how the Republic could ensure a continued supply of semiconductors to the US, and that talks were on for preferential or even zero US tariffs on Singapore's pharmaceutical exports. Dr Balakrishnan said: 'We're still in the early stages of our discussions and negotiations, so let's watch this space.' Responding to a question from the media on whether he faced any challenges engaging US officials on his visit, he said there were no hurdles to interactions with the Americans. 'They were very welcoming, courteous. We got along in our own usual direct and constructive manner, so I have no anxiety on that front,' he said. The anxiety is that the world order that had prevailed for 80 years and which helped Singapore to succeed – premised on free trade and the free flow of investments – is clearly changing, and this period of transition is 'the time of greatest danger', he added. This is a time when the Republic needs to be alert and prompt in responding to change, said Dr Balakrishnan. 'And it is also important to interact frequently, candidly, openly and constructively with our interlocutors, and especially with a superpower which is of great strategic importance to us,' he added. 'So what's important is to recognise that situation has changed, to be able to have complete, comprehensive and candid conversations, and then for us to take the appropriate precautionary measures or to make the necessary adjustments domestically as well.' Prior to being in Washington, Dr Balakrishnan was in London, where he met the United Kingdom's Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs David Lammy, with whom he discussed economic ties, geostrategic issues and potential areas of cooperation. - The Straits Times/ANN
