The top social security officer goes according to the Musk team after data access

The top official of the social security authority resigned this weekend after members of the so-called Efficiency Ministry of the government of Elon Musk requested access to sensitive personal data about millions of Americans who were held by the agency, according to the persons familiar with the matter.

The resignation of Michelle King, the incumbent commissioner, is the latest abrupt departure of a high -ranking federal official who refused to provide Mr. Musk’s Lieutenants access to closely kept data. The team of Mr. Musk has embedded itself in agencies throughout the federal government and was looking for access to private data because it is about the efforts to exterminate fraud and waste.

The social security payments make up about 1.5 trillion dollars or a fifth of the annual federal expenses in the United States. President Trump has undertaken not to create cuts in the program’s pension provision, but he stated that he is willing to search for ways to reduce wasteful or improper expenses from the pension program that pays millions of Americans.

An examination that was created in the general inspector of the social security authority last year showed that the agency almost 8.6 trillion from 2015 to 2022.

The team of Mr. Musk at the social security administration was looking for access to an internal data repository that contains extensive personal information about Americans, two people familiar with the matter who spoke for fear of retaliation about the condition of anonymity. The agency’s systems contain financial data, employment information and addresses for people with a social security number.

“SSA has extensive medical documents from people who have applied for benefits in disabilities,” said Nancy Altman, President of Social Security Works, a group that promotes the expansion of social security. “It contains our bank information, our income documents, the names and age of our children and much more.”

Ms. Altman warns of the risks of Mr. Musk’s team to secure access to the data and added: “There is no way to overestimate how serious a violation is.”

According to a former employee, access to this information is generally kept close to the agency due to data protection concerns. It is not clear how many employees of Mr. Musk’s employees strive for access, regardless of whether they were ultimately successful or whether they were granted a full employment status from the social security authority.

Ms. King was made the incumbent commissioner of the social security administration in January with around 58,000 employees. In 1994 she began as a representative of the bilingual claims in the agency and climbed through the ranks, there is numerous high -ranking positions, including the CFO and deputy commissioner for operations. Washington Post first reported Ms. King’s departure.

A family member said Ms. King had no comment.

Ms. King was replaced by Leland Dudek, a career officer who has supervised the agency’s anti-Fri-Fraud office. He did not answer a request for a comment. Before he was named, Mr. Dudek published comments on LinkedIn to praise and say the team of Mr. Musk that he had helped his efforts, so people who saw his contributions. Mr. Dudek deleted his account.

The Senate has not yet recorded Mr. Trump’s selection of the Frank Bisignano agency, a managing director of financial technology that operates a digital payments.

A spokesman for the White House, Harrison Fields, said on Monday that he would expect Mr. Bissignano to be confirmed soon.

“In the meantime, the agency is led by a career expert for social security as a acting representative,” Fields wrote about X. In the name of the American people, not to appease bureaucracy that failed for far too long. “

The Mr. Musk team has also applied for access to sensitive data in the financial department and in the Internal Revenue Service.

The White House confirmed this weekend that Mr. Musk’s team received access to taxpayer information from the tax survey authority.

In January, the finance department crowded a career officer, David Lebryk, after opposing the team of the team in the government’s great payment system in the Fiskald service office.

When Musk spoke in the White House last week, he said without providing evidence that a fleeting examination of the social security administration found that people who had been listed in the systems in their systems for 150 years were received. And in a post on X on Saturday evening, Mr. Musk published a picture of which he said that he came from a social security database that he had proposed stated that dead gathered payments.

Martin O’malley, who worked as the commissioner of the social security management in the bidges administration, said in an interview that Mr. Musk’s claims were not true about the agency.

“They only do things,” he said, referring to Mr. Musk’s proposal that there are more than a million people in social security in the age range from 150 to 159.

Mr. O’malley described Ms. King as “completed officials”.

Mattathias Schwartz Reported reports.