{"id":10402,"date":"2025-03-17T15:33:43","date_gmt":"2025-03-17T15:33:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fusionmindlabs.com\/blogs\/doge-staffer-broke-rules-with-unencrypted-email\/"},"modified":"2025-03-17T15:33:43","modified_gmt":"2025-03-17T15:33:43","slug":"doge-staffer-broke-rules-with-unencrypted-email","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fusionmindlabs.com\/blogs\/doge-staffer-broke-rules-with-unencrypted-email\/","title":{"rendered":"DOGE staffer broke rules with unencrypted email"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/p>\n
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According to testimony from a senior government cybersecurity official in a federal lawsuit, a staffer at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) violated Treasury policies by sending an email that contained unencrypted personal information.<\/p>\n

As reported, Marko Elez<\/a>, a DOGE employee working at the U.S. Treasury, sent a spreadsheet with unencrypted personally identifiable information to two Trump administration officials before his resignation in early February. This resignation came after racist social media posts linked to Elez surfaced online<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The details of this security breach were revealed in a court filing on Friday, which included testimony from David Ambrose, the chief security and privacy officer at the Treasury’s Bureau of Fiscal Services. This division of the Treasury is responsible for disbursing trillions of dollars in federal funds<\/a> to American households every year. A coalition of U.S. attorneys general<\/a> filed the lawsuit in an effort to block the Trump administration’s DOGE team from accessing highly sensitive personal and financial data on millions of Americans held by the Treasury unit where Elez was posted.<\/p>\n

According to the court filing on Friday<\/a>, Ambrose stated that the Treasury conducted a forensic analysis of Elez’s department-issued laptop following his resignation. The analysis included a review of his Treasury email account, which revealed the security lapse.<\/p>\n

Although the filing did not specify the exact data that was shared, it described the personal information as including a name (such as a person or entity), the type of transaction, and an amount of money.<\/p>\n

Ambrose noted that Elez acted “contrary to [the department’s] policies” because the data was not encrypted, and the email was not approved before it was sent.<\/p>\n

Bloomberg was the first to report<\/a> the court filing on Friday.<\/p>\n

Following his resignation, Elez was rehired on February 18 and now works at the Social Security Administration, according to a person familiar with personnel matters who spoke to TechCrunch.<\/p>\n

In response to the filing, the coalition of U.S. attorneys general that brought the suit stated on Friday<\/a> that Ambrose’s declarations “do nothing to allay any of the concerns” that the states brought “about the rushed and chaotic nature of the Treasury DOGE Team onboarding process.”<\/p>\n

In a separate case, a federal court is also considering blocking DOGE from accessing systems<\/a> at the Social Security Administration that hold sensitive information on Americans.<\/p>\n

Elez did not respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
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According to testimony from a senior government cybersecurity official in a federal lawsuit, a staffer at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) violated Treasury policies by sending an email that…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":10403,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[143,1027,180,3330],"class_list":["post-10402","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-cybersecurity","tag-department-of-government-efficiency","tag-privacy","tag-u-s-treasury"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/fusionmindlabs.com\/blogs\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2025\/03\/GettyImages-477538536.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fusionmindlabs.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fusionmindlabs.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fusionmindlabs.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fusionmindlabs.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10402"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/fusionmindlabs.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10402\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fusionmindlabs.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fusionmindlabs.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fusionmindlabs.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fusionmindlabs.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}