For the past four months, a team of people from Elon Musk's so-called Department of Government Efficiency has gone from one federal agency to another, looking at data.

Very early on, we found that they had access to the sensitive payment data system or payment systems within

the U.S. Treasury.

Vittoria Elliott reports on Doge and Musk's operatives for Wired.

We know from my colleagues reporting that they have gained access at the Social Security

Administration, and we also know from documents filed in another lawsuit that when members of Doge were at the Social Security Administration,

that they sought access to the SAVE database, which is run by the U.S. citizenship and immigration services, and that tracks people who are in the country legally.

Vittoria and her colleagues also reported that Doge operatives are cross-referencing data from the many agencies of the U.S. government.

Doge also has been accessing the U.S. database, and it appears that they are querying it

against social security data, IRS data, and also state voting data. There's no one list of what

data or systems Doge has accessed. Vittoria and other reporters are carefully piecing

together a larger puzzle, based in part on what the government itself is saying. This week,

the Department of Homeland Security, Doge, and the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services

announced what they called a comprehensive optimization of one of the country's largest immigration

databases for enforcement purposes. You know, while that kind of data would normally maybe be

shared if there was an investigation, you know, it's not like everything is perfectly siloed.

It does seem that that access and that data overlay is much

greater than it has historically been. The consistent refrain from Musk and his associates is that

this is about efficiency. Just listen to Airbnb co-founder and Doge member Joe Gebia on Fox News last

month. We really believe that the government can have an Apple store-like experience, beautifully designed,

great user experience, modern systems.

And sure, in theory, that sounds great.

...