In the United States, three federal employee unions have filed a lawsuit against the administration of President Donald Trump in an attempt to prevent the Treasury Department from sharing confidential data with Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), UNN reports citing Axios.
Details
"The lawsuit, filed in a federal court in the District of Columbia on Monday, alleges that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent granted DOGE representatives access to the Bureau of the Fiscal Service, which manages the US government's accounting, central payment systems, and public debt," the publication writes.
This, as indicated, follows similar reports that DOGE representatives allegedly gained access to data of American citizens and secret locations at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in the District of Columbia.
Representatives of the Trump administration declined to comment on the issue due to the upcoming court proceedings.
"The unions argue in the statement that instead of protecting Americans' personal information as required by law, "Besant took punitive action against officials who tried to protect this information from unauthorized access and gave DOGE full access to the data," the publication points out.
Bessent, the Treasury Department and the Bureau of Fiscal Service are named in a lawsuit filed by the Alliance of Retired Americans, the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).
The complaint states that Musk and other DOGE members had been trying to gain access to the Bureau's records for some time, but were "denied" by the employee who was then in charge of the Bureau.
"Within a week of being sworn in as Minister of Finance, Mr. Bessent placed this civil servant on leave and granted individuals associated with DOGE full access to the Bureau's data and the computer systems in which it is stored," the complaint says.
"He did so without making a public statement, without providing any legal justification or explanation for his decision, and without carrying out the procedure required by law to change the agency's information disclosure policy," the document says.
"The scale of the invasion of people's privacy is enormous and unprecedented," the complaint states.
Democratic congressmen oppose DOGE, which Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer characterized as "an unelected shadow government that is carrying out a hostile takeover of the federal government.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, a Democrat, said that Democrats will introduce a bill designed to prevent DOGE from accessing the Treasury Department's payment systems.
And Democrats said they would intervene to stop DOGE after Musk said President Trump had agreed to shut down USAID.
Trump has not yet responded directly to these comments, but on Monday he said: "Elon cannot and will not do anything without our approval. And we will give him approval where it is appropriate; where it is inappropriate, we will not.