A Social Security card is displayed on Oct. 12, 2021, in Tigard, Ore. (AP Photo/Jenny Kane, File)
A Social Security Administration official responsible for overseeing the agency’s data access resigned from his role on Friday, days after submitting a whistleblower complaint alleging that U.S. DOGE Service staffers uploaded critical personal information for more than 300 million people to the digital cloud.
The SSA’s chief data officer, Charles Borges, wrote in a resignation letter to Commissioner Frank Bisignano that he was “involuntarily leaving” his position. The new leadership in the technology and executive offices “created a culture of panic and dread, with minimal information sharing, frequent discussions on employee termination, and general organizational dysfunction,” he wrote in the letter, obtained by The Washington Post.
In the whistleblower disclosure, which was sent to the Office of Special Counsel as well as several congressional committees, Borges raised concerns that DOGE staffers bypassed safeguards, circumvented a court order, and created a copy of the SSA’s entire collection of data that was put onto the cloud, or a network of remote servers on the internet. Borges said the agency had no oversight of who had access to the file.
Borges also said that his requests for visibility into the potential federal violations of the agency’s data handling “have been rebuffed or ignored by agency leadership, with some employees directed not to reply to my queries.”
Borges’ attorney, Andrea Meza, said in a statement that her client “no longer felt that he could continue to work for the Social Security Administration in good conscience given what he had witnessed. He will continue to work with the proper oversight bodies and will refrain from making any further comments at this time.”
DOGE’s access to Social Security data has been a point of controversy since Elon Musk’s group of young technologists first gained access to the agency, leading to internal clashes – including the resignation of an acting SSA administrator in February.
For months, DOGE had sought access to records to search for evidence of widespread fraud in payments to millions of retirees and disabled people. DOGE leaders wanted to build a single centralized database despite concerns from government workers, The Post previously reported. DOGE stands for Department of Government Efficiency.
Borges said earlier this week that DOGE members had gained access to some databases containing sensitive data in March before a court order blocking their access went into effect. Although access was revoked after the court order, Borges said he later learned that DOGE representatives immediately requested access to data, which they were given.
After a Supreme Court decision in June cleared the way for DOGE to gain access to the data amid ongoing litigation, DOGE created a copy of the agency’s most critical database of millions of Americans’ personal information to put in the digital cloud within the agency’s Amazon Web Services system.
Borges has not alleged that the cloud had been hacked or compromised, but he warned that hosting a copy of one of the government’s most sensitive datasets on a cloud without security controls substantially threatened the safety of Americans’ information. The data includes people’s names, birth dates and other information that could be used to steal their identities.
Borges served for over two decades in the U.S. Navy and worked in the General Services Administration, the Office of Management and Budget, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In his role at the Social Security Administration, he oversaw data access. Yet, he said he learned about the data transfer after the fact from workers in the agency reporting to him.
Neither the agency nor the White House immediately responded to requests for comment Friday.
Earlier this week, an SSA spokesperson, Nick Perrine, said that the agency was “not aware of any compromise” to the storage of Americans’ Social Security information and that Bisignano takes whistleblower complaints seriously.
“SSA stores all personal data in secure environments that have robust safeguards in place to protect vital information. The data referenced in the complaint is stored in a long-standing environment used by SSA and walled off from the internet. High-level career SSA officials have administrative access to this system with oversight by SSA’s Information Security team,” Perrine said at the time.
