I’m following several lawsuits related to recent Trump/DOGE antics. Among them is a lawsuit by the Alliance for Retired Americans related to DOGE access to Treasury fiscal systems.
First of all, none of the DOGE techies who have been mentioned at Wired have the expertise to even understand the Treasury systems, much less modify them without hopelessly breaking them. Most of the DOGE people are script kiddies, not folks who have worked with large enterprise systems—especially systems likely to have been written in Java.
Secondly, most of these people have no training in working with larger enterprise systems. Working with Teslas and space ships does not equip you to create the massive systems in place at Treasury and likely many other government systems. Heck, there’s no indication any of them even know how to use project management systems such as Git, if this screenshot of a X-witter post is any indication.
To stop the costly destruction that could be catastrophic for so many people in this country, lawyers for several groups filed a lawsuit against Treasury, demanding that DOGE be stopped from potentially damaging these essential systems. They also asked for a Temporary Restraining order to take effect while the case is litigated.
During a hearing yesterday, the judge and both sides agreed to a proposed order to ‘maintain the status quo’ of the systems by only allowing limited read-only access to DOGE ‘special employees’. However, they agreed to let Treasury employees unfettered access to the systems.
Any person who is an employee (but not a Special Government Employee) of the Department of the Treasury and who has a need for the record or system of recordsin the performance of their duties;
Employees like Thomas Shedd, who was brought in by DOGE. Employees like Shedd who is an employee solely because of DOGE coercion.
Employees like Shedd who can now rummage about these systems without any hindrance, doing whatever he wants to these systems.
Legal folk: you don’t like techies like me to write about or dabble with the law because we’re not experts. At the same time, you don’t bring in tech experts likebe me to ensure you’re not making a terrible mistake with the legal agreements you make. And this was a hell of a bad agreement.
You should have phrased the order to only include employees who were employed in the Treasury before January 1, 2025. Now, DOGE could tell Bessant to ‘hire’ any number of DOGE people who will have free reign over these system, and they won’t violate this court order.
In fact, Bessant can go to Congress or write letters to Congressional members stating that the DOGE special employees have read-only access, while DOGE-affiliated techs have unrestricted access to everything.
Bad call. Really bad call. Lawyers, next time, talk to the techs.
Also published at Substack
