Raw Story: 'This is very bad': Whistleblower reveals 'brazen' DOGE team looting sensitive labor data

[Dennis Donovan]

Raw Story - 'This is very bad': Whistleblower reveals 'brazen' DOGE team looting sensitive labor data

Travis Gettys
April 15, 2025 8:17AM ET

A whistleblower has revealed that engineers with the Department of Government Efficiency had smuggled out highly sensitive data they had accessed from the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).

The DOGE employees arrived at the agency's headquarters in early March and immediately reviewed its data to ostensibly to maximize efficiency and identify costs to cut, but whistleblower Dan Berulis told Congress that technical staff members believed their actions within those sensitive systems looked like what criminal or state-sponsored hackers might do, reported NPR.

“The amount of data that was taken is the equivalent to a section of the New York Public Library, and the amount of people it could impact is in the hundreds of millions,” Berulis said. “Our information systems appear to have been assaulted and someone with the capacity and mandate to investigate needs to do so.”

The DOGE team may have been granted access to sensitive information on unions, ongoing legal cases and corporate secrets – all of which labor law experts say should never leave the agency – and the employees working under Elon Musk asked that their activities not be logged on the system and apparently tried to cover their tracks.

"I can't attest to what their end goal was or what they're doing with the data," Berulis told NPR. "But I can tell you that the bits of the puzzle that I can quantify are scary. ... This is a very bad picture we're looking at."

/snip

[Dennis Donovan]

1. NPR: A whistleblower's disclosure details how DOGE may have taken sensitive labor data

NPR - A whistleblower's disclosure details how DOGE may have taken sensitive labor data

April 15, 2025
5:00 AM ET
Jenna McLaughlin

In the first days of March, a team of advisers from President Trump's new Department of Government Efficiency initiative arrived at the Southeast Washington, D.C., headquarters of the National Labor Relations Board.

The small, independent federal agency investigates and adjudicates complaints about unfair labor practices. It stores reams of potentially sensitive data, from confidential information about employees who want to form unions to proprietary business information.

The DOGE employees, who are effectively led by White House adviser and billionaire tech CEO Elon Musk, appeared to have their sights set on accessing the NLRB's internal systems. They've said their unit's overall mission is to review agency data for compliance with the new administration's policies and to cut costs and maximize efficiency.

But according to an official whistleblower disclosure shared with Congress and other federal overseers that was obtained by NPR, subsequent interviews with the whistleblower and records of internal communications, technical staff members were alarmed about what DOGE engineers did when they were granted access, particularly when those staffers noticed a spike in data leaving the agency. It's possible that the data included sensitive information on unions, ongoing legal cases and corporate secrets — data that four labor law experts tell NPR should almost never leave the NLRB and that has nothing to do with making the government more efficient or cutting spending.

Meanwhile, according to the disclosure and records of internal communications, members of the DOGE team asked that their activities not be logged on the system and then appeared to try to cover their tracks behind them, turning off monitoring tools and manually deleting records of their access — evasive behavior that several cybersecurity experts interviewed by NPR compared to what criminal or state-sponsored hackers might do.

/snip

[Dennis Donovan]

2. Josh Marshall: Oh dear you're going to want to read this.

Josh Marshall
‪@joshtpm.bsky.social‬
Oh dear you’re going to want to read this. Looks like DOGErs were caught exfiltrating NLRB data, likely on unions, for private (seemingly Elony) use. This is must read. What we’ve all suspected. But now details. www.npr.org/2025/04/15/n...

April 15, 2025 at 8:23 AM

https://bsky.app/profile/joshtpm.bsky.social/post/3lmu2yppo322z

[SergeStorms]

3. All the information DOGE is gathering......

is going to be used to make sure pro-Trump candidates never lose an election again.

Democracy has been murdered in the United States of America. Right-wing, fascist, domestic oligarchs are the murderers.