Yes, 'DOGE' did put our Social Security data at risk. Here's what lawmakers are doing about it.

Two Democratic congressmen are calling for a criminal investigation into the entity known as the Department of Government Efficiency after the Trump administration admitted in court filings that the organization shared Social Security data on an unauthorized private server.

The Social Security Administration said in a Jan. 16 court filing that “DOGE” employees tried to hand over sensitive personal records to an unnamed advocacy group seeking to “overturn election results” and sent confidential information on about 1,000 Americans to Elon Musk’s workers.

“The ‘DOGE’ appointees engaged in this scheme — who were never brought before Congress for approval or even publicly identified — must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law for these abhorrent violations of the public trust,” said House Social Security Subcommittee ranking member John Larson, a Connecticut Democrat, and Ways and Means Committee ranking member Richard Neal, a Democrat from Massachusetts, in a joint statement.

“Elon Musk and his ‘DOGE’ believe they are above the law and refused to appear before Congress. Republicans have blocked every effort to hold this administration accountable, voting down our resolutions demanding documents, even changing House Rules to shield ‘DOGE’ from accountability and protect themselves from having to take another vote on the issue,” Larson and Neal said.

The call for a criminal investigation follows a court filing by the Social Security Administration outlining how DOGE workers used the third-party cloud service Cloudflare in March 2025 — which was against the agency’s security policies. 

“SSA did not know, until its recent review, that DOGE team members were using Cloudflare during this period. Because Cloudflare is a third-party entity, SSA has not been able to determine exactly what data were shared to Cloudflare or whether the data still exist on the server,” according to the court filing.

The disclosure mirrors what Chuck Borges, the former chief data officer at the SSA, said in his whistleblower complaint, warning that the private data of more than 300 million Americans was at risk after DOGE employees uploaded a copy of the Social Security Administration’s database to a cloud environment. Borges did not immediately respond to a MarketWatch request for comment.

The Social Security Administration notified the Justice Department of its concerns on Dec. 10, 2025, and notified the court about a month later. The agency also said in the court filing that it referred the two DOGE employees to the Office of Special Counsel for a potential violation of the Hatch Act, a law that ensures that federal workers operate free of political influence or coercion.

“SSA is entrusted with the sensitive data of hundreds of millions of Americans, and protecting that data from illegal use must be a top priority. Anyone involved must be held accountable and the Social Security Administration must take immediate steps to ensure nothing like this can happen again,” said Nancy LeaMond, AARP’s chief advocacy and engagement officer. 

The disclosures in the court filing come after a tumultuous year for the Social Security Administration, which was overseen by the Musk-led DOGE in what was trumpeted as an effort to root out waste, fraud and abuse. The agency also saw several leadership changes, job cuts, regional office closures and troubles with its telephone customer service in the past year.

The Social Security Administration did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“This week’s revelations are just the tip of the iceberg. We need to know exactly who has our data and what they are doing with it. And those who have committed illegal acts must be prosecuted,” said Alex Lawson, executive director of advocacy group Social Security Works.