You turn to us for voices you won't hear anywhere else.

Sign up for Democracy Now!'s Daily Digest to get our latest headlines and stories delivered to your inbox every day.

Federal Workers Sue DOGE, Alleging Musk Illegally Compromised Personal Information

HeadlineFeb 05, 2025

The CIA has offered its employees eight months of salary and benefits in exchange for their early retirement, becoming the first U.S. intelligence agency to offer buyouts to its entire workforce. This comes after the White House said at least 20,000 civilian U.S. government workers — or about 1% of the federal workforce — have accepted a buyout offer advanced by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.

On Monday, unions representing civilian government employees sued the U.S. Treasury and Secretary Scott Bessent, alleging the department illegally granted Elon Musk and his DOGE associates access to the personal information of millions of people across the U.S., including Social Security numbers, tax returns, home addresses, phone numbers, bank account information and more.

Separately, Wired magazine reported federal workers are seeking a temporary restraining order as part of a class-action lawsuit accusing a group of Elon Musk’s associates of operating an illegally connected server from the fifth floor of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. The motion contends Musk’s moves not only violate federal law but are potentially exposing vast amounts of government workers’ personal information to hostile foreign adversaries through unencrypted email.

The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us.

Non-commercial news needs your support

We rely on contributions from our viewers and listeners to do our work.
Please do your part today.
Make a donation
Top