(Musk is vexed 🤨, irate even 😠, that they have been
outed -- he didn't want us to know who these fine young people are)
Akash Bobba – A 22-year-old Indian-American engineer, Akash graduated from the Management, Entrepreneurship, and Technology program at UC Berkeley. He has interned at Meta and Palantir and is currently part of Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
Luke Farritor – 21 years old. An American software engineer, Luke gained recognition for using artificial intelligence to decipher ancient Herculaneum scrolls, earning a $700,000 prize. He interned at SpaceX and is now a member of DOGE.
Ethan Shaotran – 20 years old. There is no publicly available information about an individual named Ethan Shaotran.
Edward Coristine – 19 years old. Edward appears to have recently graduated from high school and was enrolled at Northeastern University. He interned at Neuralink and is currently listed as an "expert" at the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), reporting directly to the chief of staff.
Gauthier Cole Killian – 24 years old. Also known as Cole Killian, he attended McGill University and worked as an engineer at Jump Trading. He is currently listed as a volunteer with DOGE.
Gavin Kliger – 23 years old. Gavin attended UC Berkeley until 2020 and worked for the AI company Databricks. He is listed as a special adviser to the director of the federal OMP for information technology.
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Elon Musk and his DOGE minions are aggressively demanding, and have obtained, access to sensitive federal data, including data about treasury department payments. Vast amounts of highly sensitive data are at stake. They have accessed sensitive Treasury data, including Social Security and Medicare customer payment systems. This access was granted without congressional approval, full background checks, or proper security clearances. Reuters reports that the Treasury Department confirmed that Musk and his team from DOGE have "read-only access" to its payment system. The system includes sensitive data related to Social Security and Medicare customer payments. Lawsuits have been filed to stop Musk's access to government computer systems, arguing unauthorized access to sensitive information about Americans, including personal details like addresses and Social Security numbers.
Federal law at 18 USC §1030(a)(2) and (a)(3): Fraud and related activity in connection with computers, controls who has access to federal computers with federal data. Section (a)(2) criminalizes unauthorized access to obtain information from any department or agency of the United States or from any protected computer. Section (a)(3) criminalizes intentionally accessing a nonpublic computer of a department or agency of the United States without authorization, where such conduct affects the use of the computer by or for the government. The penalties for violations under section (a)(2) are specified in subsection (c)(2) of the statute. For a first-time offense, the penalty is a fine under Title 18 or imprisonment for not more than one year, or both. If the offense involves an attempt to commit an offense punishable under this subparagraph or if the defendant has a prior conviction under this section, the penalty increases to a fine under Title 18 or imprisonment for not more than ten years, or both. To be convicted under section (a)(2), the government must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant (i) knowingly accessed a computer, (ii) did not have authorization or exceeded authorization, and (iii) intended to obtain information from the computer.
Those lawsuits are going to be very interesting to follow. Trump judges will have to figure some way to decide that Musk and his young minions did have authorized access. From what I can tell, Trump's authorization of Musk and DOGE alone is not sufficient to legalize the data access. While a president has broad executive powers, the law does not provide an exception for presidential authorization. In addition, Musk's access to sensitive data potentially violates other federal statutes, including the Privacy Act of 1974, the Federal Information Security Modernization Act, and strict taxpayer privacy provisions under the Internal Revenue Code. These laws impose strict controls on access to personal and financial data, and presidential authorization does not override these legal protections.
To protect Musk and his young minions from criminal culpability, Trump judges would need to say that DJT's authorization implicitly authorizes access to the data. I guess that's how this will probably resolve some day when the case gets to the USSC, maybe in 2027. By then all the damage will have been done.
In related free, wild and butt naked MAGA weirdness, one source reports about how Republicans in congress see all this: Republican Senators Say They’re Fine Handing Their Power to Elon Musk -- Musk’s actions may be unconstitutional but “nobody should bellyache about that,” Sen. Thom Tillis said -- “He’s doing exactly what he should be doing,” Florida Sen. Rick Scott said Monday night. “He’s going through every agency and looking at how to make sure the money’s spent right.”
Musk is just making sure the money is spent right? Two US senators saying this in public?? Really???
Well there we have it. The MAGA GOP is just fine with abdicating power and allowing illegality. Presumably that is because the pesky law gets in the way of MAGA's kleptocratic authoritarianism. Or, is that just Germaine's standard over the top, hypersensitive hyperbole, unwarranted alarmism, or whatever?
Q: How much worse does MAGA need to act before most sleepwalking people start waking up, or will they just keep on sleepwalking?
