With the Help of a Good DOGE, Trump Admin Unleashes Federal Data Aggregation Practices
Posted on June 30, 2025
A new piece in The Hill underscores the dangers of Trump’s moves to consolidate all the federal government’s data stores. Leading the charge is Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which is insatiably chewing through records from widely-ranging government systems to the professed end of reducing waste. Initiatives such as this not only reinforce a pattern in which government builds ever more complete files on citizens, but it puts their data at greater risk of compromise.
While, DOGE is certainly the most conspicuous element of Trump’s data centralization push, it is far from the most serious. Using DOGE for cover is a Trump executive order from March instructing agencies in his administration to relax data sharing restrictions. The order stipulated a 30-day timeline for compliance, so any resultant policy changes have most likely already taken effect.
But the most concerning aspect of the executive order is the mandate for tighter coupling of state data systems to federal ones. Although it doesn’t outright coerce states into sharing data with the federal government, it threatens to withhold federal funding from states which refuse. This tactic is much in vogue today among leaders of both parties for making state and local governments subscribe to top-down political projects.
The primary danger that attends concentrating data into fewer hands is that it exponentially increases how much is revealed about the subjects of that data. Two data points on an individual are greater than their modest sum because they also allow correlation—A plus B makes A, B, and the association of A and B. In cutting across a wide swath of federal agencies, DOGE analysts are able to assemble a far more detailed picture of citizens than any of the source agencies could individually.
These Trump White House moves once again highlight that agencies’ self-imposed data governance policies are inherently insufficient. The text of the executive order states that agency heads are to follow the order “to the maximum extent consistent with law”. Assuming this is honored in practice, it still means that the statutes on the books prior to the order were the only real backstops on interagency data aggregation. Seasoned civil libertarians know that Americans cannot rely on the government to voluntarily tie its own hands: only legislation and transparency can impose any real limits on government data collection and usage.
As critics point out, in addition to the adverse impacts on privacy which may result from these newly revised data policies, it also puts citizens’ data at greater risk of theft. As the ACLU aptly puts it, each government entity should have only the data it needs to do its respective job. The IT field more broadly terms this the “principle of least privilege”, a bedrock security practice that only the most flagrantly irresponsible stewards of data would defy. DOGE is taking an extremely liberal interpretation of the least privilege it requires to effect its professed mission of rooting out fraud. The fledgling “department” could have just as easily accomplished its mission by installing a singular DOGE officer in each agency chosen for audit, so that each auditor can view only that agency’s data.
The prospect of data security lapses is not strictly a civil liberties concern, but the appeal to the security pitfalls of concentrating troves of sensitive data does align civil liberties campaigners with national security interests, the latter historically having more influence on government policy. As the piece in The Hill accuratelypoints out, amassing into one data store what was formerly split into multiple incentivizes hackers to concentrate on that target, and makes successful attacks that much more damaging. And remember, “hackers” are not limited to isolated Internet ne’er-do-wells, but extends to hostile nation-state cyberwarfare units.
The one critical point The Hill misses is how consistent Trump’s directive, unsettling as it is, with presidents before him, going back at least as far as George W. Bush. CCDBR has on many occasions remarked on fusion centers, FBI facial recognition databases assembled from state government data, and the NSA pilfering from the rest of the government.
The FBI is one of the most gluttonous data hogs in the government. In addition to the aforementioned state driver’s license photos it slurps up, the FBI taps into data stores such as the State Department Passport Photo File, Department of Defense’s Automated Biometric Identification System. The bureau’s FACE Services Unit grants it yet more interagency access.
But of course, none are more notorious data sleuths than the NSA. It is able to tap into the FBI Data Intercept Technology Unit. The Snowden files also show the extent to which the NSA infiltrated bodies like the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to enable even wider access. At least the agency is cordial enough to reciprocate, though, as it allows the FBI and DEA to tap into NSA troves under its ICEREACH program.
Still, Trump’s refusal to rein in government data hoarding only entrenches a trend accelerated during the War on Terror. With each administration continuing in this direction, the route for walking such practices back becomes ever longer. A concerted push by constituents to urge their representatives to restrain government data collection remains as vital as ever.
You can read the full article from The Hill here.
