In a biting ruling on Thursday, a federal judge in Maryland issued a temporary restraining order blocking Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency team from having access to personally identifiable information on Americans stored by the Social Security Administration. Judge Ellen Lipton Hollander said anyone on Musk's team who already has any of the data must delete it, the New York Times reports. "The DOGE Team is essentially engaged in a fishing expedition at SSA, in search of a fraud epidemic, based on little more than suspicion," Hollander wrote. "It has launched a search for the proverbial needle in the haystack, without any concrete knowledge that the needle is actually in the haystack."
DOGE first tried to gain access to the personal information a month ago, in a standoff that resulted in the acting commissioner leaving her job after denying Musk's team. The new order, in response to a lawsuit brought by unions and federal retirees, prevents the agency from letting DOGE see the information. "We will work to comply with the court order," a Social Security spokesperson emailed CNBC. Hollander said the defense doesn't seem worried about the privacy of the millions of Americans whose personal information was shared without their consent, though, "ironically, the identity of these DOGE affiliates has been concealed because defendants are concerned that the disclosure of even their names would expose them to harassment and thus invade their privacy." (More Department of Government Efficiency stories.)
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