That discussion was flagged for clearly partisan reasons, and it's very disappointing to see it wasn't unflagged.
Everything the EFF says in that article is true. Tbh I think they're underselling it, and burying the lede. This is an evil maid situation; with people who have repeatedly proven themselves extremely self interested and untrustworthy.
Idk what the issue is here? It's a gov org with access to sensitive info. Sure, if they're selling the data or publishing that's an issue but as long as it's kept internal and used to... reduce waste... what's the real issue?
EFF was a cool org. Sad to see them shilling to waste gov money.
First, they got rid of all of the people at USAID whose job was to monitor contracts for waste and abuse. Second, they shut down programs with no notice, leaving millions of dollars of food and medicine to spoil. Then, when the inspector general (whose job is to audit and report waste) reported that they were directly causing waste by removing all the internal controls and letting food spoil, they fired the inspector general.
That is not reducing waste. It's using "reducing waste" as a pretext to radically transform the government.
You should see how many resources FEMA and the US Military willingly burns quarterly just to ensure the same funding the next go-around.
I'm liberal and I agree these are problems - but somehow I don't think saving the world is solely America's responsibility. Maybe Europe and well... the rest of the world can take a swing.
That's also assuming all of that money even provably made it to the "intended recipients" which anyone being honest knows likely isn't the case.
I'm perfectly aware that the government can be inefficient. But there's a huge difference between "let's make the government work more efficiently" and "let's destroy everything, no matter the human, strategic, or even monetary cost". Even if you think that shutting down USAID is legally and morally justifiable, I don't see how you can possibly justify shutting it down without any notice or plan for the people who are affected. Go and read the declarations in the AFSA v. Trump case. How do you justify things like interrupting the treatment course of tuberculosis for patients, which promotes resistance to the drugs. They are acting incredibly irresponsibly. It really speaks volumes about the Silicon Valley way of doing things - move fast and just ignore all consequences to real people. I've seen it in startups before. It makes me incredibly depressed about working in tech.
And Europe funds foreign aid at a much higher percentage of GDP than we do.
We've seen many occurrences where private or sensitive information has been compromised due to carelessness or incompetence by employees. Sometimes this is the result of credentials that have more permissions than required, or due to carelessness, or poor security policies. Other times we have seen employees abuse access for personal reasons. I don't know what's going on with DOGE, and I don't know if it's illegal. The reporting and testimonials do not inspire confidence that the data is being handled in a careful and secure manner.
If the lawsuit proves everything is above board, that's great, and I would not consider it a waste of time by EFF. I would attribute the needlessnes of it to the lack of transparency and accounting by the government agents.
How did the Biden administration in particular contribute to making it easier for the National Public Data data breach to happen? National Public Data was a private data broker that offered background checks services scraped personal information including SSNs from public data sources, failed to protect it, and went bankrupt from lawsuits (deserved). Did the Biden administration do anything comparable to allowing unelected people with no accounting or security experience bypass the usual government employment process and access Treasury data?
I've been an EFF member for over 15 years, donating at the top levels. I received notice of this action in my email this morning, and it seems to me that EFF has now crossed the line between advocating for digital rights and political activism. I'm afraid that they may lose a lot of financial support by doing this.
The EFF has been suing the government to protect people's privacy for decades. How is suing the NSA over data collection any less political activism then suing DOGE over data collection? The only difference is that you like the people they're suing.
These are hardly meaningful differences from EFF's perspective. They see their role as protecting American's data privacy from government overreach. Why should they restrict themselves only to abuses in data collection and ignore issues with data retention and dissemination? Just like in the NSA cases, EFF's argument is that DOGE is violating the law and, to use your phrase, abusing their capabilities. There's no reason for EFF to trust that DOGE is abiding by the law and not trust the NSA. If anything, the NSA acted far more professionally. To my knowledge, the NSA never hired a 19-year-old who goes by the moniker "Big Balls" and had previously been fired for unauthorized information disclosure. To my knowledge, they never hired a 25-year-old who proudly displayed racial animus.
I think EFF will have a difficult time trying to identify any illegal disclosure to unauthorized personnel. The lawsuit is speculative at this point, and discovery will likely show that personal information was not disclosed outside of DOGE. If their claim is that DOGE is unauthorized, their arguments will be novel.
Maybe so, but the harms in the NSA cases were also speculative. A lot of what EFF has historically advocated against, going back to the Clipper Chip in the nineties, were about potential injuries, not actual injuries. The point was to intervene before the abuse happened.
>crossed the line between advocating for digital rights and political activism
The lawsuit was filed by individual federal employees claiming their private health records, social security data, and other private information was revealed to people without a legal basis to possess the employees private data, in direct violation of the Privacy Act of 1974, 5 U.S.C. § 552a.
Any fair judgement of EFF would await the findings and ultimate outcome of the lawsuit.
