Cybersecurity Policy Report, DOGE Team Temporarily Blocked From Accessing Treasury Systems, (Feb 24, 2025)
A White House government efficiency team has until March 24 to certify that its personnel assigned to the Treasury Department have received the same data security training as other federal employees and have undergone background checks, according to a federal court ruling.
Until then, the White House Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), now officially known as the U.S. DOGE Service and led by presidential adviser Elon Musk, will be barred from accessing “any Treasury Department payment record, payment systems, or any other data systems maintained by the Treasury Department containing personally identifiable information and/or confidential financial information of payees,” Judge Jeannette Vargas of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York said in an order issued Friday.
The order is a partial win for 19 state attorneys general who challenged DOGE access to Treasury payment systems in State of New York, et al., v. U.S. Department of the Treasury, et al., No. 25-cv-01144 (S.D.N.Y. Feb. 7, 2025).
But the preliminary injunction issued by Judge Vargas essentially maintains the status quo that DOGE Treasury personnel had been acting under since the issuance of an emergency temporary restraining order earlier this month (CPR, Feb. 10).
Additionally, Judge Vargas’ order contemplates that the preliminary injunction will be lifted once the DOGE personnel at Treasury have received the necessary data security training and undergone background checks.
Nevertheless, New York AG Letitia James (D.), the lead plaintiff in the case, claimed victory.
“Giving the world’s richest man unauthorized access to our nation’s central payment system, and our most sensitive personal information, puts all Americans—and the essential funds they depend on—at risk,” AG James said in a statement.
“Today we won a court order stopping unauthorized, unelected, and unvetted individuals like Elon Musk from accessing our nation’s most sensitive financial information. We will continue to fight to defend the rule of law and protect all Americans from this administration’s destruction,” she added.
Judge Vargas found that many of the AGs’ claims lacked merit. She noted, for example, that the federal Privacy Act of 1974 protects only individuals’ privacy, not the privacy of state governments, and that states lack standing to sue over privacy violations on behalf of their residents.
But she questioned the activities of the DOGE Treasury team, which is being led by Tom Krause, chief executive officer of Cloud Software Group, Inc., and which briefly included Marko Elez, a 25-year-old software engineer who worked for Mr. Musk.
Messrs. Krause and Elez apparently were not provided “any specific training on the numerous federal regulations and policies governing the handling and care of sensitive information,” Judge Vargas said.
“The Court finds, based on the record before it, that Plaintiffs have established that there is a realistic danger that confidential financial information will be disclosed absent the grant of injunctive relief,” she said.
“More fundamentally, there is a realistic danger that the rushed and ad hoc process that has been employed to date by the Treasury DOGE Team has increased the risk of exposure of the States’ information,” she continued.
“Indeed, a real possibility exists that sensitive information has already been shared outside of the Treasury Department, in potential violation of federal law,” she added.
“The process by which the Treasury DOGE Team was appointed, brought on board, and provided with access to BFS [Bureau of the Fiscal Service] payment systems could have been implemented in a measured, reasonable, and thoughtful way,” Judge Vargas said. “To date, based on the record currently before the Court, it does not appear that this has been the case.”
The lawsuit is one of several pending in federal courts challenging the DOGE team’s access to federal systems in ways that could endanger individual privacy and the cybersecurity of federal networks.
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