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46 sats \ 5 replies \ @Undisciplined 12 Feb \ on: EFF Sues OPM, DOGE and Musk for Endangering the Privacy of Millions news
I've always thought this could be an issue. There's no way to know if something is a legitimate expenditure without knowing who the recipients are and knowing who the recipients are might violate privacy guarantees that have been put in place.
From a big picture perspective, the presumption should be that the spending is illegitimate, until demonstrated otherwise: i.e. the burden of proof should be on the state to demonstrate that the spending is beneficial to society.
An approach in-line with that view, would be to suspend everything and only resume activities after they meet some oversight standard (which may involve the recipients waving their privacy protections).
Yeah... the idea that you have any expectation of privacy when you work with a government or an org that is funded by a gov is a joke. Its not right but come on.
I have to say at this point I'm impressed with the strategy of Elon and whoever came up with this approach. If they had tried to use the "approved" approaches we would only be hearing about blue ribbon committees that would give us a report in a couple years.
Musk makes a good point when he says the US is a bureaucracy not a democracy. Neither is good but the first step of improvement is to be honest about where you are... few say stuff like this.
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I've also been impressed with the approach. I thought they'd get bogged down in the bureaucratic quagmire, and they still might, but so far they've made a bigger splash than I expected.
I don't know as much about program administration, but there are serious protections in place for respondents to federal surveys. There's something like a 5-year prison sentence for revealing something like individual census responses. Those penalties are there to make people more comfortable about disclosing potentially incriminating personal information.
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To me what is happening now is amazing... not because I think the state is being dismantled but because things are being brought into the light and not ignored. It opens a door to ask a lot of tough questions about government. It also exposes the priorities of these democrats... even more clear for the dense among us.
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And, it's only been three weeks.
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Its almost like all presidents do not really care about making cuts. Real cuts. Trump is the first if we are to judge by actions alone. Which is what we should do. They are all pro liars including Trump so that's the best approach IMO.
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