Get the Hell Out of DOGE: Elon Musk’s Team Infiltrates Education Department Data

Underlings in the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or U.S. DOGE Service—who are combing through troves of government finances to prune spending they deem wasteful or discordant with President Donald Trump’s ideology—have seized access to federal Education Department data.

DOGE injected the Education Department data, including “sensitive internal financial” information into Microsoft’s artificial intelligence (AI) software Azure, The Washington Post reported last week. DOGE officials are dissecting the agency’s spending over Education Department contracts, grants to institutions, and even menial amounts of money down to work trip expenses, according to news reports, with the goal being to hack away at the agency’s funding and staffing until the Trump administration disposes of the department entirely.

This incursion into protected data, not only at the Education Department, but across the federal government, almost certainly flouts scores of privacy laws. Plus, the austerity expedition is being carried out, in some cases, by deeply inexperienced DOGE staff who likely could not pass standard federal security clearances. One 19-year-old DOGE employee worked at a network monitoring firm that hires reformed black hat hackers, Wired reported. He also maintained multiple domain names registered in foreign countries, which a federal agency would have flagged in vetting him.

DOGE workers within the Education Department are apparently federal employees who cleared background checks, an Education Department spokesperson told the Post. “Nothing inappropriate or nefarious” is happening, she said.

However, this vague assurance addresses none of the still-standing, and highly alarming, privacy considerations.

First, consider the mammoth scope of the information the Education Department collects. Students and their families who fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, are sketching an intimate picture of their households for the department—including where they live, their contact and demographic details, Social Security numbers, financial assets of both applicants and parents, and tax information.

In fact, after a recent law change, the Education Department and Internal Revenue Service now share data on FAFSA filers. That tax data included on the FAFSA is subject to strict protections. As the Education Department’s Office of the Chief Information Officer noted in 2023, the agency “must have adequate controls in place to protect the confidentiality of that information and implement safeguards to prevent unauthorized access and use.”

The department needs this type of information to administer financial aid, and thus has collected data on everyone who either applied for or received a Pell Grant or student loan to attend college, which is a vast swath of the country. More than 42 million Americans have student loans, according to a lawsuit filed last week by two consumer protection organizations, Student Defense and Public Citizen Litigation Group. The duo is suing to prevent DOGE’s access to confidential information, arguing the entity is infringing on such fundamental federal laws as the Privacy Act of 1974, which dictates how government agencies can store and use personal data.

Millions of college go-ers supplied the Education Department with information about their lives with implicit trust the agency would guard it and only rely on it to help them make key choices about financial aid. They, and future college applicants, shouldn’t have to fear DOGE officials with unclear political motives will leverage it for their own aims.

Distressingly, beyond DOGE workers intruding into Education Department systems, their reported practice of feeding sensitive data to AI risks its public exposure. Data that is used in AI software is particularly vulnerable to accidental information disclosure and hacks. Microsoft has admitted some staffers manually read posts on its AI chatbot to monitor for inappropriate behavior, and a run-of-the-mill bug with ChatGPT even once allowed users to read others’ chat histories.

In essence, DOGE processing individuals’ data through AI bolsters the risk of unnecessary exposure. It is mishandling information in ways that compromise basic principles of data protection and privacy.

Recognizing that privacy dangers currently abound, Rep. Bobby Scott, a Virginia Democrat and ranking member of the House Committee on Education and Workforce asked the Government Accountability Office, the watchdog agency, last week to assess the security of Education Department IT systems, as well as several other agencies’. A collection of House and Senate members, including Scott, also sent a letter to the Education Department last week, demanding to know how the agency is securing sensitive data.

Ultimately, the Trump administration has not shared its full vision for the Education Department and the data housed within it—beyond dismantling it, which cannot formally happen without congressional approval.

For one, Trump has been vocal about targeting diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts. DOGE could probe Education Department databases to identify degrees offered by colleges that receive federal funding and that do not pass the new administration’s anti-diversity litmus test. The department could then pressure institutions to abandon these programs, including by threatening their access to federal money in some fashion.

The Trump Education Department has already ordered employees to review grants to institutions and potentially cut those connected to DEI initiatives, NBC reported last week.

The department could also probe employee data to determine which staff to kick out. The DOGE team reportedly scrutinized employee records to figure out who took diversity-related training and then put them on leave, according to the Post. About 100 Education Department staff members are on leave, and as many as 300 took the diversity training, the Post reported.

A playbook for purging DEI work from higher education has already been developed, and the person who helped draft it has been publicly crowing about his newfound access to the Education Department.

Christopher Rufo, a conservative pundit who was floated as a potential Education Secretary under Trump, was, starting a couple of years ago, part of a far right-wing takeover at New College of Florida, a public liberal arts institution.

Republican Governor Ron DeSantis named Rufo and other similarly minded conservatives to the college governing board in 2023, who in the years since have axed programs like gender studies and fired many high-level administrators.

New College, once considered a haven for the marginalized, including many LGBTQ students, was transformed into a right-wing beacon. The Education Department under President Joe Biden in fact began investigating whether the conservative leadership of New College created a hostile environment for LGBTQ students that drove them out.

Rufo posted to X last week, documenting him purportedly visiting the Education Department office. He wrote he heard “incredible excitement about what the DOGE boys are uncovering” and that “turns out, the IT department holds the keys to the castle.”

Later, Rufo promised in a post that he would start “a new campaign to expose ideological corruption” at the Education Department.

“The permanent bureaucracy must—and will—be held to account,” he wrote.

Rufo has long bemoaned diversity programs of all stripes in higher education, and may rely on information gleaned from Trump’s Education Department to strike at what he called in an essay this month “discriminatory DEI bureaucracies” among colleges.

He urged the administration to wield the Civil Rights Act against colleges to promote “colorblindness” over diversity. The Trump administration could start civil rights investigations into institutions, in which it “could demand internal admissions data, such as students’ SAT scores, GPAs, and class ranks, disaggregated by race,” Rufo said.

This would represent an astonishing level of government encroachment into operations most often left to colleges—but then, DOGE representatives executing intrusions across government are trampling traditions or privacy concerns.

The Trump administration should heed calls of consumer and privacy advocates, government officials, and American citizens and excise DOGE, composed of many untrained operatives, and block them from accessing this data. It’s data entrusted to the government for the sole purpose of helping students, many of them vulnerable, afford college—it’s not for some inexperienced, teenage coders to rifle through as they execute the will of DOGE head Elon Musk.