type: timeline_event
A whistleblower alleged on March 10, 2026 that a former Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) software engineer had exfiltrated two tightly restricted Social Security Administration databases — containing records on more than 500 million people, living and dead — and carried them out on a thumb drive to his new job at a government contractor.
According to reporting by the Washington Post, the former DOGE engineer told co-workers at his new employer that he possessed two databases of U.S. citizens' information and was planning to use the data at his new company. The Social Security Administration's inspector general, acting on an anonymous complaint filed with lawmakers in early March, opened a formal probe into the allegations.
The revelation arrived on top of an earlier January 2026 court filing in which the Trump administration admitted that DOGE employees had already shared sensitive Social Security data on an unauthorized private service, and that DOGE staff had attempted to transfer confidential records on roughly 1,000 Americans to an unnamed advocacy group seeking to "overturn election results."
Senate Finance Committee ranking member Ron Wyden called the allegations "one of the largest known data breaches in American history, perpetrated by Trump appointees for the explicit purpose of weaponizing Americans' sensitive personal data for political gain." House Oversight Committee Democrats, led by ranking member Robert Garcia, formally expanded their ongoing DOGE investigation in response and demanded the Social Security Administration answer detailed questions about DOGE's data access.
The episode illustrated the broader pattern of DOGE's operation inside federal agencies: personnel with minimal government experience and no clear statutory authority gaining access to some of the most sensitive datasets held by the U.S. government, with little oversight, and in at least one case allegedly walking out the door with that data.