Privacy advocates file lawsuit to stop DOGE from peeking at IRS taxpayer data

A coalition of watchdog groups and unions has filed a lawsuit seeking to block Elon Musk’s DOGE team from accessing sensitive taxpayer information at the IRS.

A similar battle is brewing at the Social Security Administration as Musk’s deputies try to pry open some of the government’s most closely-guarded data doors.

“DOGE and its game of governmental whack-a-mole has wreaked havoc on the American system of government and caused incredible concern for the privacy of the American public,” said the complaint filed in federal court for the District of Columbia.

The lawsuit notes that Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” team has already tapped into computer systems at numerous federal agencies, including the Treasury Department, the Education Department and USAID.

But it argues taxpayer data at the IRS enjoys special legal protections.

“It’s very personal,” said Nina Olson, the longtime National Taxpayer Advocate at the IRS who now heads the non-profit Center for Taxpayer Rights, one of the groups filing the lawsuit. “If you just take a look at your 1040 or whatever form you’re filing, it’s your family structure. It’s your income from all sorts of sources. It’s all sorts of deductions. It’s your health information.”

Olson says keeping that information confidential is critical to maintaining taxpayers’ willingness to file.

“From day one, every IRS employee is trained on the confidentiality of return information,” she added.

Taxpayer privacy

Last year, a former IRS contractor, Charles Littlejohn, was sentenced to five years in prison for leaking information on the tax returns of Donald Trump and other wealthy individuals to the news media.

For decades, the executive branch had easy access to taxpayers’ data, but Congress passed a law in 1976 restricting that — partly in response to concerns that President Nixon had weaponized the information to help friends and punish foes.

“This nation already once experienced a President who sought to collect tax information on his political allies and enemies,” the lawsuit says. “Following the Watergate era, Congress clearly and unequivocally acted to protect the American people from these intrusions.”

The lawsuit points to media reports about a DOGE employee, Gavin Kliger, who arrived at the IRS last week and met with agency officials. DOGE was reportedly seeking access to the agency’s Integrated Data Retrieval System,” which would provide a broad window into sensitive taxpayer data.

“The problem is we don’t know what uses that they’re proposing,” Olson told Morning Edition in a separate interview on Tuesday. “Access to that database, to that system — IDRS — is closely controlled and IRS employees are only allowed to access those components that relate directly to their job duties.”

DOGE team is accessing other agency data

The White House has said DOGE is hunting for misuse of government dollars, without offering details.

“Waste, fraud, and abuse have been deeply entrenched in our broken system for far too long,” White House spokesman Harrison Fields said in a statement. “It takes direct access to the system to identify and fix it.”

Olson questioned whether the DOGE team had the experience to spot any tax fraud.

“Do these folks have background in tax law?” she asked on Morning Edition. “You have to have training on that. And so if you’re just a software engineer, it’s — you know, you don’t have the background to say it’s fraud.”

DOGE employees have also sought access to other sensitive government databases, including at the Social Security Administration.

Acting Social Security Commissioner Michelle King reportedly quit in protest of DOGE’s efforts over the weekend, a departure first reported by The Washington Post.

“There is no justifiable reason for Musk and DOGE to have access to Americans’ deeply personal information,” said Max Richtman, president of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare. “Social Security is not a playground for Musk and his unqualified minions (who do not understand how Social Security works) to run amok.”

Nancy Altman, president of Social Security Works, agreed in a press released headlined “Elon Musk is Stealing Your Personal Social Security Data.”

“SSA has comprehensive medical records of people who have applied for disability benefits. It has our bank information, our earnings records, the names and ages of our children, and much more,” Altman says. “There is no way to overstate how serious a breach this is. And my understanding is that it has already occurred.”

The lawsuit over tax data seeks to block DOGE from accessing any further information at the IRS and to delete any data it’s already gathered.