DOGE’s construction of a surveillance state | DOGE is rapidly assembling a sprawling monitoring system, the foundation of many authoritarian regimes

For 50 years there have been clear norms around the siloing of data in the federal government, meaning that each department manages its own data and that transfer of data between agencies is strictly regulated. But **DOGE has been building a master database of American residents housed in the Department of Homeland Security using data from databases spread across dozens of federal agencies** such as the SSA, IRS, and HHS. Earlier this month, a whisteblower alleged that DOGE employees were stuffing backpacks with multiple laptops filled with data extracted from around the federal government. DOGE hasn’t yet retrieved data from intelligence agencies like NSA but the head of the NSA was recently fired:

> **“NSA Director Tim Haugh and his deputy Wendy Noble have been disloyal to President Trump,” Loomer said in a post on X early Friday. “That is why they have been fired.”**

The Federal Privacy Act of 1974 was passed to prevent the building of a master database of American residents by the federal government. However it didn’t give judges the ability to halt illegal data practices and didn’t establish an enforcement arm. Consequently the United States is the only country in the 38-member OECD without a data protection agency to enforce comprehensive privacy laws. For example, in the European Union, each country has a dedicated data protection authority that can conduct investigations, write rules, issue fines and even demand a halt to data processing.

> “This is what we were always scared of,” said Kevin Bankston, a longtime civil liberties lawyer and a senior adviser on A.I. governance at the Center for Democracy & Technology, a policy and civil rights organization. “The infrastructure for turnkey totalitarianism is there for an administration willing to break the law.”

!ping SNEK