On Thursday, the federal judge issued a temporary limiting order that prohibits the Social Security Administration in the awarding of Elon Musk and his Ministry of Government efficiency access to sensitive records stored in the agency systems or from the possession of sensitive data they have already received.
The orderPublished by Judge Ellen L. Hollander from the US District Court for the Maryland district was the latest decision aimed at preventing Mr. Musk’s team from peeking through the agency database for concerns about personal data protection.
While Judge Hollander blocked the highest social security officials – Leland Dudek and Michael Russo – and the agency’s employees in their systems to enter their systems by Mr. Musk’s team systems focusing only on documents such as tax records that would allow Mr. Musk’s team to analyze people at individual level. The order stated that the agency could provide Mr. Musk’s team edited or anonymized data that facilitated a wider analysis without the federal data protection laws.
In other lawsuits, which question the aggressive inputs of Mr. Musk into the Ministry of Finance and education, judges issued similar orders that prohibit officials there to pass sensitive data. Given that President Trump escalated the efforts to deport students and other foreign nationals, including some with valid visas, lawyers claimed that agencies data systems can be used to help the wider immigration intervention.
IN Awarded statementsOfficials of the Ministry of Finance insisted that they did not give sensitive tax data stored in their systems to the Ministry of Internal Security.
As in other cases, the lawyers claimed that the risks of incorrectly published data were still speculative because the groups that filed actions did not show clear evidence that Mr. Musk’s approach to social security data led to identity or political retaliation. The lawyers also claimed that letting the Musk team to audit the books of the agency does not mean illegal “publication”, such as an escape that could lead to identity theft.
But judge Hollander said va 137-Stránek’s view Accompanying the order that the intrusion into social security data concerned sufficient quantities to justify the two -week order to restrict while the action continued. She said that pensioners, when they were sending their banking data and other financial data to the agency to gain common benefits, had adequate expectations that their records would not be used to inform government efforts to reduce expenditure.
“Unlimited access to the PII that SSA provided to the DOGE team, without a designated need and/or without reasonable training, detailed agreements and/or on the background of all DOGE team members,” she wrote using the abbreviation for personally identification information and social security management, “would be very offensive to a reasonable person.”
She added: “The expectations of the privacy of shared applicants are objectively reasonable. It is almost obvious that PII, such as SSN, medical information and some financial records, are considered private, sensitive and intimate information in our society.”
Judge Hollander came about a month after the coalition of trade unions sued Mr. Musk, who described the social security of the Ponzi scheme to focus on the agency’s data. Mr. Musk also supported Cuts to the Call Center of the AgencyAnd other changes that critics warned could make it easier for customers to support and even make it easier for fraudsters to pretend to be social security recipients.
The order expires in 14 days. Judge Hollander asked both parties to file proposals by March 27 to plan further steps, such as the extension of the court order that would prevent Mr. Musk’s team to ban access to the databases.
