The Trump administration says DOGE has a 10-person team of federal employees at the Social Security Administration, seven of whom have been granted read-only access to agency systems or personally identifiable information.

In a scathing ruling on Thursday, a federal judge wrote that DOGE “essentially engaged in a fishing expedition at SSA, in search of a fraud epidemic, based on little more than suspicion.”

Judge: Social Security officials likely broke privacy laws by giving DOGE "unbridled access to the personal and private data of millions of Americans."