The Verge reports:

The Trump administration breached a federal privacy law by letting workers from Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) access information on millions of government workers, privacy advocates including the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) allege in a new lawsuit filed on behalf of two labor unions and a group of current and former federal employees.

The groups allege that DOGE and the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) violated the Privacy Act of 1974, which protects information maintained by federal agencies. OPM maintains information on “tens of millions of current and former federal employees, contractors, and job applicants,” including disabilities, background check information, and health records, the lawsuit says. The agency also has information on workers in “highly sensitive roles for whom even acknowledging their government employment may be problematic,” such as Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) workers, it adds. The labor groups allege Musk and his DOGE staffers were allowed to access OPM computer networks that stored this information before they were even considered government employees, putting workers’ sensitive information in jeopardy.

DOGE lacks “a lawful and legitimate need for such access” to OPM files, the groups allege. They’re asking the US District Court in the Southern District of New York to suspend DOGE staffers’ access to the system, and prevent them from using any information they allegedly illegally accessed already. They also want the court to order any copies of data unlawfully accessed to be destroyed. [Continue reading…]