Summary

Elon Musk allegedly installed an unauthorized server at the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), gaining access to sensitive federal employee data, including Social Security numbers, home addresses, and medical histories.

Young, inexperienced staffers are reportedly using this access to target positions for removal, particularly DEI offices.

Security concerns have been raised, with fears of hacking and HIPAA violations.

Senior officials have been locked out of key systems, limiting oversight of DOGE’s actions, which could significantly impact the federal workforce.

    • Allonzee@lemmy.world
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      16 hours ago

      I voted for her out of attempted harm reduction, and I agree, she probably is.

      Wealthy neoliberals care as much about their fellow citizens as wealthy fascists, as they both have the same God they worship 💰

      One appeals to pretending to care about people’s well-being while taking bribes to hurt them, the other appeals to pretending to care about idiot bigot’s blood lust while taking bribes to hurt them.

      • lennybird@lemmy.world
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        15 hours ago

        Yeah you’re probably not far off. Similarly, I held my nose and voted for her as well. She was obviously the better choice, if only because her legacy was tied to a platform that at least on paper was significantly better than the alternative (e.g., climate change).

        Alas I raise Hillary because of the double-standards of her buttery males versus this which is infinitely worse — yet, naturally, not a peep from conservative circles.

        Because we know they’re hypocrites and ends justify means to them.

        • JcbAzPx@lemmy.world
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          15 hours ago

          Perhaps if we had a candidate we didn’t have to hold our nose over, this all could have been avoided.

          • lennybird@lemmy.world
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            12 hours ago

            Honestly, right-wing media domination is so strong that we could resurrect George Washington, merge his DNA with Reagan’s corpse, then conjoin that with Trump’s head and call him GigaTrump and Republicans wouldn’t vote for him because of the (D).

  • Punchshark@lemmy.ca
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    13 hours ago

    Where are all the 2A folks? I thought this is what they were alive for? To take down a tyrannical government

  • Hadriscus@lemm.ee
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    19 hours ago

    Ok so this is really a hostile takeover right out of a black mirror episode. It’s starting to dawn on me

    • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      2 hours ago

      While I appreciate that it dawned on you… Why did it take this long? They told us exactly what they were going to do.

    • samus12345@lemm.ee
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      17 hours ago

      Like [insert dystopian story here], but stupider. That seems to be the theme.

    • Soulg@sh.itjust.works
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      17 hours ago

      Don’t worry, musk is aligned with Trump, so the anti tyranny gun people are too busy bending over to give a fuck

      • ShaggySnacks@lemmy.myserv.one
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        17 hours ago

        I’m all for fighting tyranny and oppressive governments wanting to take ma guns. However, I vote R and it’s not my rights that are being trampled. It’s my own team that is seeking the end of democracy. So, I will gladly bend over and take it without lube for my boy, Trumpy and Musky.

        • The 2A Ammosexuals
        • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          2 hours ago

          At this point, I’m starting to just hope that I live long enough to get to the end of the “First They Came for” sermon and see all of the shocked Pikachu faces as all of these braindead fascist fucks are up against the wall. “But I didn’t think they were talking about me!”

  • sumguyonline@lemmy.world
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    12 hours ago

    Mark my words, the lawsuits on this are going to be EPIC. He is not elected, he does not hold an official position that has ever existed, and he is meddling with extremely sensitive information, I promise you there is lawyers licking their chops and praising the universe for sending this idiot to put their kids thru college. He isn’t vetted, he isn’t approved by Congress, and he’s dabbling in things that result in very serious prison sentences when handled improperly… Trumps judges simply won’t be able to ignore the extreme ramifications when a slick high priced lawyer is spelling out how musks scent is all over documents leading to vast amounts of financial loss. Long story short, there’s a reason people need a long list of credentials before accessing things like the OPM, and those entail the financial responsibilities that come with mishandling… Musky gonna learn this one the hard way.

    • GeeDubHayduke@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      2 hours ago

      I don’t disagree, but who’s gonna press charges? The second that happens, The “proud” boys, 3%ers et al mobilize and begin wiping out the prosecutors families.

      • Scott_of_the_Arctic@lemmy.world
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        1 hour ago

        Agreed. White nationalists are very keen to murder a judges children. Even when they don’t have presidential backing. It helps that they have disproportionate representation within law enforcement and corrections.

        Just look at the Delphi murders. The local cops got rid of the FBI, fabricated evidence, destroyed evidence and, coerced witnesses. The local prison where their framed suspect was being held tortured a confession out of the guy over the course of several months in solitary confinement. And the judge and prosecution conspired to prevent half the defence’s evidence and witnesses being used and preventing them from suggesting alternative suspects. All this to protect Patrick westfall, a meth dealing white supremacist who brutally and ritualistically slaughtered his snitch’s daughter.

  • WhatYouNeed@lemmy.world
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    17 hours ago

    Who is paying these new doge employees? Settling up a new department takes time, getting everything reviewed, approved then signed off. Until they are an offical government dept they wouldn’t have authority to do anything.

  • houstoneulers@lemmy.world
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    18 hours ago

    I really hope this mobilizes the public sector into fighting him as hard as possible by all the appropriate means.

    • Zink@programming.dev
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      18 hours ago

      My first thought when seeing the headline was “quick, somebody tell the conservatives that he’s using Hillary’s server to do it, then maybe something will happen!”

    • geneva_convenience@lemmy.ml
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      19 hours ago

      Hillary had the decency to destroy Libya. Did Elon not get the memo that America is the holy country of the chosen people?

      • chaogomu@lemmy.world
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        17 hours ago

        Gaddafi was a fucking monster. No one misses him or his corpse freezer. So when the people started rising up, the UN said, sure, we can help out a bit. And so flew a handful of missiles. And zero troops.

        No, the problem is that after giving minimal help to oust Gaddafi, no one stepped in to restore order. So the civil war continued.

        As a note, the Arab Spring is part of why the Saudis helped Leon buy Twitter. To make sure it couldn’t be used for that sort of uprising again.

  • Leraje@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    1 day ago

    It’s been wild reading news stories coming out the US over the last couple of weeks.

    Not the stories themselves of course, but the air of shock and alarm in both the stories and in the comment sections - and its not just Lemmy, its everywhere there’s a comment section - when you knew what he was going to do, he told you what he was going to do - why are you now in any way surprised or disturbed?

    The main question I have is that I’ve been hearing from Americans for decades now how gun ownership means you have a 2nd amendment based militia ready to go to protect the constitution and yet in the face of what is completely obviously the initial stages of a coup, I see no signs of that militia. Where are you?

    • atempuser23@lemmy.world
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      17 hours ago

      It sounds like you are in a different country. Start getting involved in your politics to decouple from the USA and shield from its influence. It’s more urgent than it seems.

      The outrage you see here from the US lemmings is the minority opinion. There is no internal force or opposition to what you see.

    • CileTheSane@lemmy.ca
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      19 hours ago

      A third of the population think this is a good guy with a gun authoritarian power so this is great. A third of the population are complaining about how the Democrats aren’t good enough to vote for in the midterms, and a third of the population are busy arguing with the other 2 thirds.

    • Furbag@lemmy.world
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      17 hours ago

      The main question I have is that I’ve been hearing from Americans for decades now how gun ownership means you have a 2nd amendment based militia ready to go to protect the constitution and yet in the face of what is completely obviously the initial stages of a coup, I see no signs of that militia. Where are you?

      This was always posturing. It was a dumb fantasy invented by the right to mythologize the country’s origins, skew the intent of the framers, and most importantly, give them plausible deniability in the gun control debate.

      If gun owners truly believed in the myth of the “people’s militia” being a necessary apparatus to prevent government oppression or tyranny, they would have picked up their rifles and stopped the insurrectionists attacking the capitol building on January 6th, 2021. A literal violent coup and they sat back and did nothing. No - worse than nothing, they agreed with the people trying to interrupt the peaceful transfer of power!

      The idiot masses won’t stand up to tyranny with force or strength of arms, ever. The propaganda machine will convince Americans to shoot their neighbors long before they ever even think to shoot at their ruling class.

    • truehoax@sh.itjust.works
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      19 hours ago

      Even the people who make shooting a tyrannical government their whole identity didn’t bring their guns on Jan 6. It’s always been hot air.

      • chaogomu@lemmy.world
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        17 hours ago

        There were guns, they were just left in the stashes. The Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and 3%ers all had weapon caches ready to go, they just didn’t open them.

        Also a few pipe bombs. Those were deployed but not detonated.

    • ouRKaoS@lemmy.today
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      14 hours ago

      I see no signs of that militia. Where are you?

      Spread out over the entire country, and mixed together with another militia that’s opposed to them that’s also probably 2-1 larger. The left isn’t as armed

    • fine_sandy_bottom@discuss.tchncs.de
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      14 hours ago

      I don’t think shock and alarm really captures my thoughts.

      I was deeply concerned by the prospect of a Trump presidency prior to November 5th. I’ve been despairing since then. Watching the current shit storm unfold I think I’m probably just discombobulated.

    • brygphilomena@lemmy.world
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      15 hours ago

      Because no one wants to be the first to start a revolution. No one wants to be a martyr to get the cause going. No one is desperate enough yet to put their life and freedom on the line.

    • Goodmorningsunshine@lemmy.world
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      16 hours ago

      I’m neither shocked nor alarmed. I’ve known America was dead since November 5th. Now it’s just a question of when/if I’ll get out and the knowledge that at least I won’t ever have kids to feed the fascists.

    • MrNobody@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      1 day ago

      I see no signs of that militia. Where are you? I don’t even see signs of mass protest. Just idle chat online. Theres alarm, but its all complacent, Land of the free, to sit around and watch their country burn. Yet they still make fun of the french for WWII.

      At least the french know how to fucking riot.

    • TangoNoir@lemm.ee
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      1 day ago

      You put the equivalent of mobsters in the White House and suddenly these checks don’t matter. As a country we fucked around and found out.

      Seriously I tried warning people but they were certain that our existing laws would hold up. It’s heartbreaking.

    • TangoNoir@lemm.ee
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      1 day ago

      There are a lot of reasons for this. Many of us did see it coming. However, we have all still been culturally brainwashed to think that our government has too many checks for things to get this far out of hand.

      • TangoNoir@lemm.ee
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        1 day ago

        So it’s like your average American doesn’t believe this is even a possibility regardless as to what they have said.

    • TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      when you knew what he was going to do, he told you what he was going to do - why are you now in any way surprised or disturbed?

      My guess is that people’s reaction is more like: “I thought politicians lie? Why would they do this?”

      I know Musk is not technically a politician, but the same confused reaction and bewilderment that you mentioned is applied to Trump’s current actions as well.

    • theherk@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      Knowledge of that which is forthcoming, doesn’t prevent it from being disturbing when it arrives.

    • nifty@lemmy.world
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      18 hours ago

      People are setting up some processes to respond to all of this. Not everything is worth reacting to as it’s a distraction.

    • telllos@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      Because gun are for poor people to kill themselves, and Kamala was in favour of Israel so we let Trump get elected

  • meowmeowbeanz@sh.itjust.works
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    1 day ago

    Musk’s crew at DOGE—Trump’s weird fake agency—built a secret server to swipe every federal worker’s private deets. Skipped the law? Obviously. No privacy checks, no rules—just a free pass to dig through Social Security numbers, health records, and your cousin’s lame USAJOBS résumé.

    The “talent” running this circus? Some college kid and a teen who probably still texts “XD” unironically. Peak competence. They’re blasting spam emails like it’s 2003, while China’s hackers lick their chops.

    Congress is suddenly shocked? Please. They let this dumpster fire burn until the lawsuits rolled in. Musk calls it “streamlining.” I call it digital kleptocracy with a side of Space Karen vibes.

    If this is “innovation,” humanity’s screwed. Imagine a Bond villain—but instead of lasers, he’s got Excel sheets and your mom’s dental records.

    Stay frosty. The future’s here, and it’s run by rich twits playing Sims: Government Edition.

    • MisterFrog@lemmy.world
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      2 hours ago

      This is why I think it’s heinous presidential pardons were ever allowed to be on the books. Must have reminded the founders of the kingly powers they sought to replace?

      How did no one ever consider that you can do as many crimes as you want, so long as the president will pardon you?

      Like???

      Really dumb, if you ask me.

    • comfy@lemmy.ml
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      14 hours ago

      Yes. So what?

      Law doesn’t matter. Breaking the law is common. And if anything, Trump’s first term is all the proof we didn’t even need that laws won’t stop this.

      • werefreeatlast@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        Not anymore! With constitution 2.0 only bad moms who forget to pick up their kids from the baseball game on time will ever be prosecuted for capital offences and sentenced to capital punishment… Not rich guys!

    • jaybone@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      Do you have to be a citizen to commit treason? Did he actually obtain citizenship after committing his visa fraud? I’d like to see the long form certificate of his citizenship. Last time they complained someone was born in Africa it was a big deal…

      • WoodScientist@sh.itjust.works
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        2 days ago

        He is a US citizen. He can be charged, convicted, and hanged for treason. And there isn’t even any case law about whether a non-citizen can be charged with treason.

      • JasonDJ@lemmy.zip
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        2 days ago

        Treason holds a special place in my heart.

        There’s the slight problem of “it’s only treason if you fail”, though. It’s a corollary of “history is written by the winners”.

        • Phoenicianpirate@lemm.ee
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          2 days ago

          Not really. Sometimes even the Victor’s of wars and battles executed the traitors to the other side that helped them. Very much a case of love the treason hate the traitor.

      • WoodScientist@sh.itjust.works
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        1 day ago

        This is one of those things were pardons and laws don’t really matter. The way this thing is going, most of the citizens of DC will literally want to see Trump, Musk, and Vance’s heads on pikes. If things get bad enough, the military and those guarding the president may simply look the other way and let the mob storm the gates. Most of the instances you see of revolutionary crowds storming a dictator’s palace only occur because the military abandons them.

        Trump and Musk are at a very real risk of ending up like Mussolini, hanging from a lamppost. That’s how Fascist leaders like him often end up.

        • Kitathalla@lemy.lol
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          1 day ago

          most of the citizens of DC will literally want to see Trump, Musk, and Vance’s heads on pikes

          If things get bad enough, the military and those guarding the president may simply look the other way and let the mob storm the gates

          I wish I could live in your fantasy world, mate, but it’s never going to happen. The ideological divide has mutated beautifully into full-on trench warfare between camps of cheerleaders/fans. There are more than enough of the ‘other’ in positions that matter to make the machine’s gears keep turning.

          • ynthrepic@lemmy.world
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            1 day ago

            I’d prefer things end without violence… Which puts me in the most impossible timeline there is. It’s so frustrating realizing they’re all literally stupid or manipulated by stupid. Stupid being the promise of wealth, power, and fame ironically at all costs.

  • Valorie12@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    After this, is there any question that he didn’t do something to hack vote counting machines? I’m feeling like this election wasn’t legitimate.

      • StopTouchingYourPhone@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        Fantastic long read. ty.

        But if you’re expecting a sexy story about Elon Musk messing with vote-counting software from outer space, sorry, you won’t get that here.

        As in Bush v. Gore in 2000, and in too many other miscarriages of Democracy, this election was determined by good old “vote suppression,” the polite term we use for shafting people of color out of their ballot. We used to call it Jim Crow.

    • chuckleslord@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      Yes, he didn’t. They want to make everyone question the legitimacy of the elections, so they’re pretending that they orchestrated something. In reality, there was nothing suspicious about the election. The only ratfucking was the normal, Gerrymandering kind. And a metric fuck ton of misinformation.

    • BmeBenji@lemm.ee
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      2 days ago

      In a two party, first past the post voting country no election is legitimate

          • Test_Tickles@lemmy.world
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            1 day ago

            This public masturbation thing you’re doing is really weird. “I voted for the fascists because the Democrats were heading towards fascism” is just weird. I mean at least the maga are honest about it, they wanted Nazis, they voted for Nazis, and they’re happy as peaches to get Nazis. But not you. No, the Democrats forced you to choose Nazis and so the Nazis are their fault?
            I don’t get what you are doing, but at this point it’s moved past trolling to just feeling weird and gross.

            • NSRXN@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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              1 day ago

              I voted for the fascists because the Democrats were heading towards fascism

              no one said that. it’s a strawman

              • Test_Tickles@lemmy.world
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                1 day ago

                Oh, I’m sorry. I interrupted before you got that far into your wank? I can see why it would leave you feeling frustrated.

          • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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            1 day ago

            Elon Musk is currently taking over the U.S. and you still want to argue about elections as if they will even ever happen again outside of what Putin does.

            You don’t have to be sick of being disenfranchised by Democrats anymore because they’re now the puppet opposition.

          • DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social
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            1 day ago

            Not that I haven’t said much the same, but you’re about to find out what disenfranchisement really feels like while whining about what voting system you should have had.