> Numident is used to store records of every person who has ever applied for a Social Security Card
IIRC, a Social Security Card application is a multi-page form which contains a good portion of the info most financial institutions use to verify identity.
I'm curious what this actually means. Common sense would translate this to "fired" but since they didn't use that term, I'm guessing something else is at work here, probably involving whistleblower protection laws.
I'm always intrigued by these letters, because there's not really anything the Senator can do to force a response. He can say you have two weeks to respond, but aside from forcing someone to testify, or trying to pull funding, this Senator really doesn't have any leverage
Senators, especially committee chairmen, have quite a bit of implicit leverage, beyond the direct leverage of subpoenas or directly cutting funding to an offending agency.
Any given Senator is to some extent constantly in a favor-trading game with executive branch officials. People from the President on down need congressional cooperation to get their pet provisions into bills, programs funded, nominees approved, etc. A Senator can tell a White House official "I'd love to help you with that, however I have this issue with this agency not responding to my requests". Assuming it's a reasonable thing, whoever at the agency is in charge of this then gets an irate call from their boss's boss's boss ordering them to cooperate.
Of course this mostly doesn't actually get played out, because everyone understands the dynamic that defying senatorial requests will ultimately cost the President in terms of cooperation on other issues. So the norm is mostly to comply with reasonable requests, unless you're quite sure that it's a top-level priority where the White House really wants to take a stand.
I believe how it works is that if the letter is not responded to, it becomes a subpoena. If that's not responded to, it becomes either criminal or civil contempt of Congress. Bear in mind that this senator is chairman of the Senate Finance Committee.
It Crapo's serious, he can try to recruit some other Republicans in congress and start making some noise. There must be at least a few who are particularly keen on privacy issues and/or care about their constituencies SS checks. And these are issues that are easy to scare voters with, and can rile up both party's bases and independents. Plus, everyone hates Musk.
But that'll never happen, because Trump won't allow it and his party has become slavishly obedient to his every whim. In any other Congress, DOGE would already be the subject of congressional joint investigation.
It’s not hyperbole. People shutting down frank discussion of what these folks are doing because it might hurt their feelings is part of why we’re where we are now.
Saying mean things about the people consistently calling for political violence for decades and currently attempting to shift the country very far toward authoritarianism, isn’t the problem.
So now all of us on the left must police our speech for fear of what some lunatic might do? Why?
Charlie Kirk himself said that gay people should be stoned to death -- do you think perhaps that might have incited a few deranged people? Why don't people like you ever demand that the right curtail their own speech for fear of what the lunatic fringe might do?
"…to transfer data from the Numident database to a private cloud within SSA's AWS cloud environment."
This clarified everything for me. The US government has entered into several large cloud provider contracts and as part of the contracts, the clouds have been evaluated and approved for use. Not for every use nor for every kind of data, but government security folks go over everything with a fine toothed comb, demand additional controls, and so forth.
AWS used to have at least two “private” clouds (existence of which was not secret) for the US government as of 2021; probably there are more now.
My impression is that this guy is a typical bureaucrat who has power based on his ability to gatekeep access to information; he’s upset someone went around him. His concerns might have some validity but they aren’t nearly so shocking as the story is being made out to be. Likely DOGE copied the data BECAUSE of this guy getting in the way.
The guy’s hysterical exaggeration makes me think he is part of the “resistance” and just wanted to be a wrench in the works for the Trump administration.
Trump is demonstrating on a near weekly basis (in lawsuit after lawsuit) that the president IS the executive branch, that the bureaucracy exists solely to help the president carry out his duties, and that bureaucrats who don’t follow instructions don’t belong in government.
The Supreme Court is backing him nearly 100% because he’s right and they are protecting the the presidency; this is not due to loving or even wanting to support Trump; several of the right-wing justices like ACB and Roberts hate him.
So IMO this guy is making a mountain out of a molehill and any “hostile work environment” is largely of his own creation.
That said, I admit I could be wrong, and will wait for the inevitable investigations and lawsuits.”, but I expect it to fizzle because I don’t think there is any “there” there.
> My impression is that this guy is a typical bureaucrat who has power based on his ability to gatekeep access to information; he’s upset someone went around him.
Gatekeepers exist for a reason. Sometimes the stuff inside the gates is important.
For someone to think that doing an end-run around this guy and creating a new non-authoritative copy of this database is reasonable, you have to think that there's a reasonable end that couldn't be achieved by going through the established channels.
The only thing that I've heard of is using AI to look for "waste, fraud and abuse", and it's very unclear to me how looking at, say, my parents' SSN application for my SSN several decades ago is going to tell you whether that application or any disbursements are fraudulent.
IIRC, a Social Security Card application is a multi-page form which contains a good portion of the info most financial institutions use to verify identity.
I'm curious what this actually means. Common sense would translate this to "fired" but since they didn't use that term, I'm guessing something else is at work here, probably involving whistleblower protection laws.
> I'm curious what this actually means.
See perhaps "constructive dismissal":
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructive_dismissal
A work environment is made hostile to the (mental/physical/emotional) well-being of a someone such if they want to stay safe/sane they have to leave.
A bit further down in the article
effectively forced him from his role as chief data officer
Any given Senator is to some extent constantly in a favor-trading game with executive branch officials. People from the President on down need congressional cooperation to get their pet provisions into bills, programs funded, nominees approved, etc. A Senator can tell a White House official "I'd love to help you with that, however I have this issue with this agency not responding to my requests". Assuming it's a reasonable thing, whoever at the agency is in charge of this then gets an irate call from their boss's boss's boss ordering them to cooperate.
Of course this mostly doesn't actually get played out, because everyone understands the dynamic that defying senatorial requests will ultimately cost the President in terms of cooperation on other issues. So the norm is mostly to comply with reasonable requests, unless you're quite sure that it's a top-level priority where the White House really wants to take a stand.
https://legalclarity.org/what-is-the-penalty-for-refusing-a-...
https://www.senate.gov/about/powers-procedures/investigation...
As a chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, he can call SSA head for a senate hearing, which he can’t refuse
But that'll never happen, because Trump won't allow it and his party has become slavishly obedient to his every whim. In any other Congress, DOGE would already be the subject of congressional joint investigation.
A letter and a formal response meant nothing. One day we might see all these out. Good luck America.
Saying mean things about the people consistently calling for political violence for decades and currently attempting to shift the country very far toward authoritarianism, isn’t the problem.
Charlie Kirk himself said that gay people should be stoned to death -- do you think perhaps that might have incited a few deranged people? Why don't people like you ever demand that the right curtail their own speech for fear of what the lunatic fringe might do?
This clarified everything for me. The US government has entered into several large cloud provider contracts and as part of the contracts, the clouds have been evaluated and approved for use. Not for every use nor for every kind of data, but government security folks go over everything with a fine toothed comb, demand additional controls, and so forth.
AWS used to have at least two “private” clouds (existence of which was not secret) for the US government as of 2021; probably there are more now.
My impression is that this guy is a typical bureaucrat who has power based on his ability to gatekeep access to information; he’s upset someone went around him. His concerns might have some validity but they aren’t nearly so shocking as the story is being made out to be. Likely DOGE copied the data BECAUSE of this guy getting in the way.
The guy’s hysterical exaggeration makes me think he is part of the “resistance” and just wanted to be a wrench in the works for the Trump administration.
Trump is demonstrating on a near weekly basis (in lawsuit after lawsuit) that the president IS the executive branch, that the bureaucracy exists solely to help the president carry out his duties, and that bureaucrats who don’t follow instructions don’t belong in government.
The Supreme Court is backing him nearly 100% because he’s right and they are protecting the the presidency; this is not due to loving or even wanting to support Trump; several of the right-wing justices like ACB and Roberts hate him.
So IMO this guy is making a mountain out of a molehill and any “hostile work environment” is largely of his own creation.
That said, I admit I could be wrong, and will wait for the inevitable investigations and lawsuits.”, but I expect it to fizzle because I don’t think there is any “there” there.
Gatekeepers exist for a reason. Sometimes the stuff inside the gates is important.
For someone to think that doing an end-run around this guy and creating a new non-authoritative copy of this database is reasonable, you have to think that there's a reasonable end that couldn't be achieved by going through the established channels.
The only thing that I've heard of is using AI to look for "waste, fraud and abuse", and it's very unclear to me how looking at, say, my parents' SSN application for my SSN several decades ago is going to tell you whether that application or any disbursements are fraudulent.