Senator demands to know status of 'duplicate' SSA database 'immediately'

Summary

A US Senator is demanding answers after a Social Security Administration (SSA) employee who blew the whistle on Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) dealings involuntarily resigned last month, citing workplace hostility in response to his concerns. Republican Senator Mike Crapo (it's pronounced Cray-poe), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, sent a letter to the SSA's commissioner, Frank Bisignano, giving him just two weeks to provide answers to concerns raised last month by now-former SSA Chief Data Officer Charles Borges. The former CDO's whistleblower complaint alleged DOGE had duplicated a critical database filled with taxpayer information, known as Numident, to a test cloud environment that wasn't managed by Borges or SSA, and which allegedly is without any oversight controls. As Chairman of the Senate Committee on Finance, I must take very seriously every allegation made by a protected whistleblower ... I consider the protection and security of PII held by the agency to be a matter of first importance Numident is used to store records of every person who has ever applied for a Social Security Card in the United States. Crapo's questions are numerous, but one with a much shorter deadline stands out: He wants to know whether that duplicate database "was accessed, leaked, hacked, or disseminated in any unauthorized fashion," and he wants it "immediately upon receipt of this letter." "As Chairman of the Senate Committee on Finance, I must take very seriously every allegation made by a protected whistleblower," Crapo added. "Further, given the large amount of sensitive data under SSA's control, I consider the protection and security of PII held by the agency to be a matter of first importance." The SSA didn't directly answer questions about its response to Crapo, instead sending us an identical statement to the one it provided when we covered the original whistleblower complaint last month. "We are not aware of any compromise to this environment and rema...