Except that they, an unelected private group, have already attempted to get all private and confidential citizen data from the US treasury, and have been blocked by the courts as it is illegal.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/feb/08/judge-tem...

They have tried to get data of all payments to US citizens including pensions, 401k, benefits and allowances etc. All foreign aid and diplomacy payments are included, and they have been charged with trying to find ways to illegaly stop these payments.

Be very careful in supporting what Musk and DOGE do. They are unelected, and have been given unprecedented access to government data. Scary times are ahead.

What are their guardrails? Do they have accountability? Does "parallelise" mean compiling data on people from different systems? Dossiers? Are they even following the law?

> They have simply...

Oh yes, because this is all very simple. What is "waste"? How is it defined? Who decides what is waste and what isn't?

That's actually not what they've been tasked with:

> This Executive Order establishes the Department of Government Efficiency to implement the President’s DOGE Agenda, by modernizing Federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity.

There's nothing about government spending programs or staffing in there. Also the EO includes this funny sentence: "USDS shall adhere to rigorous data protection standards."

Do you have an alert setup to tell you when people are bashing the DoGE?

”Simply been tasked with X”

We’re on a community that discusses, amongst other things, the running of firms and startups.

Just because someone is simply tasked with X, doesn’t mean we all agree to ignore the big picture. The big picture of

1) Complex projects

2) Security

3) High functioning teams

4) Ethics

This is fundamentally unethical, and irresponsible. I 100% think you agree with me on the irresponsible part.

You may sincerely stand on the reduction of waste, which frankly no one is going to argue. But a team this small, for a project this vital? This fast?

What was that saying? Good, Fast, Cheap? Pick 2? Why the flippty flip, is anyone here OK with fast and cheap?

Hell, What precisely are these people doing? What are the project milestones? Where can we see what’s going on?

And if the transparency of their actions is a cybersecurity risk - then which independent body is checking them?

Edit: Forget their elected, unelected status. Why should we turn around and trust them? What are they planning to do. I don’t want more outrage - you could find the whole thing was running on alien souls. What is the replacement method, and what is the gain we can expect from the changes?

If they’ve taken charge - then they should do the work, and do it well. And if it’s tech related or s/w related stuff, then talk about it, and explain.

Who has been tasked? Under what authority? Not Elon Musk, according to Donald Trump.

More seriously, if it was true it would be a stupid task, with stupidly inappropriate people selected to do it. What is actually happening is idiot destruction. Whether that was the intent or simply the obvious outcome of stupidity is irrelevant to the damage being done.

Maybe it's temporary, not 'once you build it they will use it'. Time will tell, if in the end a dictatorship proves itself to run things more efficiently and make everyone richer, then other countries will follow the US and adopt the same model.