How Dangerous is What Elon Musk Now Knows About You?

It’s more than just your tax returns

DOGE: Damed Oligarchs Grabbing Everything (Image created by the author using Gemini)

The information from the Treasury Department that Elon Musk and his minions stole on January 31 can be more damaging to you than you might think.

A Freedom of Information Act page on the U.S. Department of the Treasury website lists information about you that is entrusted to the Department:

• Your immigration and travel records
• Your Social Security payments
• Your medical history under some conditions
• Your employment personnel records
• Your military service records
• Your law enforcement records
• And your tax returns

On this web page, you can request information about any of these records, which as you may have heard, are now also available to Elon Musk’s minions at the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) since they walked into the Treasury Department and demanded access.

Ask yourself: Do you want to share your private information with hackers? Specifically, these hackers?

• Akash Bobba, 22, who writes code like a wizard but is called a “little boy” by some who know him (As a former techie who went to a couple of DEF CON conferences, I can tell you that writing code does not prepare a little boy to make moral and mature decisions about your data.)
• Edward Coristine, 19, a college dropout who in a previous job leaked sensitive information to a competitor company and who is known as “Big Balls” for a reason I don’t even want to try to find online
• Luke Farritor, 23, who in college used AI to decode three characters in an ancient scroll and who was a Thiel Fellow there (yeah, that Thiel, Peter, who once made huge donations to Republicans but has since “lost interest in democracy”)
• Gautier Cole Killian, about whom we know little except his age — 24 — because he deleted his media accounts and personal website immediately after joining Musk’s team
• Gavin Kliger, 25, a self-proclaimed white supremacist and misogynist who … oh, he’s no longer on the team, since he didn’t delete his media accounts or website, and the media got hold of his background
• Ethan Shaotrano, 22, about whom a Threads user might have created the most informational post: “Ethan Shaotran — DOGE-shit Elon Musk Nazi acolyte.”

I decided to use the Treasury Department website to see exactly what information is now available to Musk and these Nazi acolytes. As a test, I selected immigration and travel records. I traveled to Mexico last year on business and wondered what little Akash or Gavin might know about my trip and my business in Mexico.

Immigration and travel records proved to be a difficult search, at least for me, since, unlike Akash, Gavin, et al., I don’t have access to the actual Treasury database.

I had to choose among a number of record types, beginning with A-File (whatever that is) and ending with Record of Proceeding (which must have something to do with immigration rather than travel). I chose Visa records and discovered I could fill out a form that somebody would answer — in about 198 days.

That’s a long time to wait to find out what Musk’s minions can know immediately by accessing the databases directly.

A team of too-young-to-know-better hackers can now access your tax, social security, medical, and personnel records and use that information to get a new credit card in your name and buy Ego for Bentley MacBooks for all their friends. They can withdraw money from your bank account to vaca at Mar-a-Lago and take out a loan in your name for the down payment on a beachfront condo you’ll never get to live in. They can file a fraudulent tax return and claim your paltry refund, steal your even more paltry unemployment benefits, and have all their dental work done under your health insurance. They can even find out about your cousin’s immigration status or find a misdemeanor in your past and use these choice bits of information to extract $6.75 for their coffee every morning for the next decade.

In short, they can just about ruin your life.

If you’ve been hearing the news, you know about the judge who tried to intercede on your behalf — the judge who blocked Musk’s hackers from accessing the Treasury databases at least until February 14 and ordered the destruction of copies they made.

On February 14, today, Judge Paul Engelmayer is likely facing impeachment by Republicans in Congress for trying to protect you, and the block will prove to have been very temporary.

Even if there were a block after the 14th, well, I know hackers. When they steal data, they don’t destroy it. It’s too easy to hide it and too much fun to use it to create havoc.

Musk’s little boys are too young to know better. Musk himself? Oh, he knows. For Musk, “government efficiency” is no government at all to protect you from him.

For Musk, DOGE is nothing more, or less, than “Damned Oligarchs Grabbing Everything.”

What are we gonna do?