Court Slams Door on DOGE’s Social Security Data Grab—Crypto Bros Left Scrambling

A federal appeals court just yanked the leash on Dogecoin’s attempted raid of Social Security databases—turns out, ’to the moon’ doesn’t include taxpayer privacy. The ruling cuts off access cold, leaving crypto enthusiasts to mine something else—like actual useful blockchain applications.

Judges cited ’glaring security risks’ in the original proposal, which smelled more like a Vegas buffet for data hackers than a financial revolution. Meanwhile, Wall Street quietly pockets another win while retail bagholders rage-tweet.

Judges say DOGE overstepped with data grab

Trump and Elon launched DOGE to wipe out what they call “government waste.” That includes cutting jobs, gutting federal departments, and cracking open databases. But this time, they ran into resistance.

DOGE had already been cleared to access sensitive information at the Treasury, Education, and Office of Personnel Management, but now the line has been drawn at Social Security.

Three separate plaintiffs – two labor unions and an advocacy group – sued DOGE, Elon, and SSA in February. They wanted DOGE banned from accessing SSA’s most secure internal systems. Those systems hold data on roughly 73 million Americans, including people who get retirement and disability benefits.

Elon said the system is corrupt. He claimed that millions of dead Americans were still getting checks, even though that statement has no proof behind it. Trump echoed the same fraud claims, despite also saying he wouldn’t cut Social Security. But federal judges weren’t moved.

Judge Robert King, who joined the majority in the 9–6 vote, made it clear in a written opinion that SSA was trusted with sensitive information and had failed to protect it.

“This highly sensitive personal information has long been handed over to SSA by the American people with every reason to believe that the information would be fiercely protected,” King said.

King added that trust was broken the moment DOGE was allowed into the system. Judge Hollander had already made it clear two weeks earlier that DOGE had no business digging around in those systems. The level of access DOGE received was higher than that of even SSA’s most senior staffers.

King said the evidence was solid and the stakes were higher than anything DOGE had done before. “The case over Social Security data was substantially stronger,” he said.

Judge Julius Richardson, one of the six who voted against keeping the injunction, said the court should’ve treated this case the same as DOGE’s previous data access at other departments. But Richardson got outvoted. The majority didn’t agree. They saw Social Security data as a different beast.

DOGE is now being forced to back off. The ruling says the agency can’t access SSA’s data and also demands that DOGE delete any personally identifiable information it has already pulled from the SSA. That part is final unless Trump’s team gets the Supreme Court involved.

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