Legally??? vandalizing national government administrative platforms/enterprise databases/registries by automating falsehoods in a unique identifier (UID) master files that triggers a domino effect that locks people out of essential services and their finances to pressure them to self-deport!

The UID in question is the US social security #, issued by the Social Security Administration (SSA) to US citizens, permanent residents and temporary working residents. This data driven tactic by DOGE was incredibly simple for any data scientists to see and do while being incredibly deleterious to many. All DOGE data scientists had to do was,

• get the Social Security #s of people legally in the US who registered with the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) One app,
• access the Social Security Administration SSA Enterprise Data Inventory Assets system
• go to the ‘death master file‘ (DMF),
• join the Social Security #s of people registered on (CBP) One app that are red flagged for deportation to the SSA DMF database
• mark them as dead in the SSA DMF database.

This action delinks/cuts them off/from any service related to that number which maybe anything under the purview of the SSA such as Medicare, benefits, retirement funds, disability support etc. or anything that requires a Social Security as ID such as credit, bank accounts, salary, and more. This is tampering with personal information (PI) and the official records of the state to trigger a domino effect of nefarious and harmful actions. This in effect, terminates the financial lives of those put onto the death list by DOGE.

The SSA is collaborating with the Department of Homeland Security – tagline ‘making America safe again’ and with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and the Internal Revenue Agency (IRS) that tried to resist but it was futile as it was taken over by DOGE. The proliferation of lists, such as a terrorist watch list, for which there are many, or F.B.I. criminal records list, which one might be on erroneously – think Maher Arar in Canada or Kilmar Ábrego García in the US, or you get on them because DOGE introduce errors. Regardless, even if you are rightly on the naughty list, due process ought to still matter – the US is sounding more like Duterte and other dictators, but alas I digress.

Tampering with ‘master files’ is a no no for data managers, records managers and archivists; these are official records that ought to be accurate, reliable and authentic. Are there copies of these databases? Can they be returned to their original state? Are logs kept in the enterprise systems of actions taken and by whom and when? Even if data were officially archived, the US Archivist has been fired, putting at risk the institution legally and historically authorized to maintain the memory of the nation. Ought the Rule of Law Tools in Post Conflict States for Archives apply? Who would take those records and keep them safe, who would scurry them off to safety?

Colloquially, this is called juking the stats, a term coined by the Wire, whereby the police in the show reclassify violent crimes to be lesser ones to meet their tough on crime targets and the education system in poor performing schools teach to pass tests and not to educate. But that is not strong enough, even though the harms are comperable.

In critical data studies,

• This is a form of technological solutionism,
• where DOGE is committing data harms,
• the process exemplifies the social and material outcomes of data driven decision making touted by social physicists,
• it is mechanical objectivity where decisions are made with data to absolve administrators of the social responsibility of their actions,
• platformitization which is changing a system to meet ones desired outcomes,
• it illustrates the social shaping qualities of data demonstrating that they are not politically neutral,
• it is a form of memoricide (a war tactic), where archives and registries are purposely targeted for destruction thus removing connections to land, family, history and culture.
• More importantly, DOGE database tactics are forms of structural and infrastructural violence.

From a technical perspective, are linked data and interoperability friends or foe, why is it so easy to for DOGE to get access to the public administration’s enterprise systems and how is that legal?

For a history of the Social Security # and how it was initially resisted, perhaps presciently, read The Known Citizen by Sarah Igo, here is a Harvard Magazine article about her work.