Welp. I finally got around to reading the Social Security whistleblower report and, well, if you were worried about DOGE stealing our Social Security numbers – you were right.
Chuck Borges, the Chief Data Officer at the Social Security Administration, has laid it all out in black and white. DOGE operatives – including 19-year-old hacker Big Balls – were given access to the crown jewels: the NUMIDENT database, which holds everything tied to your Social Security card. That means names, birthdates, citizenship, race, parents’ SSNs, addresses, even medical and financial data .
Here’s what he says happened. Back in March, a federal court ordered DOGE cut off from SSA’s data after unions sued over the reckless access Musk’s team was demanding. SSA briefly complied – then, within 24 hours, DOGE insiders had their access restored with even more privileges than before . Borges says this was a flat violation of federal law and a federal judge’s restraining order.
By June, things escalated. Under the leadership of DOGE-aligned CIO Aram Moghaddassi and adviser Michael Russo, the team created a live cloud copy of the entire Social Security database. Not a sanitized test version – a full working duplicate of every American’s record – parked in a self-administered server environment with no independent oversight. Internal auditors flagged it as “very high risk,” warning that a breach could be catastrophic. The warning was ignored .
And that’s where Big Balls comes in. Edward Coristine, this teenage hacker with a history of cybercrime and Russian-linked domains, somehow landed top-level clearance inside SSA. Borges says people like him were granted unrestricted access, bypassing normal approval channels, and even given the ability to edit data in core systems .
So what does this mean? If that cloud copy gets compromised – or misused by insiders – Americans could face identity theft on a scale we’ve never seen. Benefits for seniors could be disrupted. Healthcare and SNAP records could be manipulated. In the worst-case scenario, the government might have to reissue Social Security numbers to everyone – a logistical and financial nightmare .
Borges raised alarms internally, but the SSA’s lawyers reportedly told staff not to answer his questions. That’s why he went public. According to him, right now there is no independent security control over the duplicate database holding the personal information of over 300 million Americans.
The bottom line: the nightmare scenario critics warned about – Trump and Musk’s DOGE operatives taking control of Social Security’s most sensitive data – isn’t hypothetical. It’s already happened. And who knows who has access to it now.