Overview

• On Aug. 26, SSA Chief Data Officer Charles Borges filed a whistleblower complaint alleging DOGE staff copied the NUMIDENT master file to a vulnerable cloud environment without independent security monitoring.
• Borges submitted an Aug. 29 “involuntary resignation,” asserting retaliation, exclusion, and a hostile work environment after raising his concerns.
• In a Sept. 2 letter, SSA General Counsel Mark A. Steffensen rejected the allegations, saying SSA follows rigorous security procedures and reports no known compromise of the referenced environment.
• The letter claims Borges’ exhibits exposed proprietary system details and employee information, labels the public release highly irresponsible, and demands that GAP remove un‑redacted materials as SSA mitigates any resulting risk.
• The NUMIDENT database contains extensive personal identifiers for hundreds of millions of people, and a federal court fight earlier this year ended with the Supreme Court restoring DOGE’s access in June.