Grok is now embedded in X dot com, Elon Musk’s A.I. machine: NAJ screen shot
The Big Picture –
By Glynn Wilson –
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein believed in the benefits of racial diversity on human evolution and society, fought for sexual freedom in his life in the great 20th century, and worried about the threat posed by corrupt politicians and governments to individual liberty. So he must be turning over in his grave as Elon Musk, tech billionaire turned toady hacker to Donald Trump, works against these legacies and has hijacked Heinlein’s neologism Grok as the name for his Machine Learning or Artificial Intelligence program. X.A.I. Grok most likely now contains more private information on all Americans than any program in history and is being prepped to run government agencies, starting with customer service bots, and to turn its super brain on to carry out Trump’s campaign promise of “retribution” – by fine tuning Trump’s “enemies list” and training the bots to collate all the information and destroy Trump’s opponents. This is vindictive mob boss retribution, with its own super computer and A.I. Bot Army, and he believes he has the power to get away with it. We will see.
Grok, the only English word that derives from Martian from Heinlein’s book Stranger in A Strange Land, is understood to mean “to understand profoundly and intuitively,” but also “to drink,” since water was so important to Mars, where little of it existed on the Red Planet. Maybe this is why Musk is so obsessed with sending a rocket to Mars, claiming he can create a human colony there, still an idea for science fiction, not fact. The technology does not exist and will not in the lifetime of anyone alive now. It is a massive waste of U.S. taxpayer dollars, which Musk is being granted to play with in the form of billions of dollars in federal contracts, most by NASA in a privatizing of the U.S. space exploration program that rarely even raises eyebrows anymore.
According to various analyses of Stranger, the Martian Race had encountered the people of the fifth planet, grokked them completely, and left nothing behind but asteroid ruins. Is that what Musk wants for us?
“All that groks is God,” according to one analysis. In other words, Grok IS God. Does Elon Musk think he is God? Or can play God?
It could be that some people are bound by a Faustian Bargain, and their time may soon be up.
The keystroke logging software used by the National Security Agency (NSA) for its remote intelligence gathering operations is also named GROK, as is the generative artificial intelligence chatbot developed by Musk’s xAI.
The book’s main character, Valentine Michael Smith, is a Martian-raised human who comes to Earth as an adult, bringing with him words from his native tongue and a unique perspective on the strange ways of Earthlings. Elon Musk is also a stranger in a strange land in many ways, a native of South Africa in America who suffers from Asperger’s Syndrome and an apparent addiction to the powerful hallucinogenic antidepressant drug Ketamine.
It is a profound irony that Musk’s Grok is now pushing his racist conspiracy theory about white South Africans being the subject of “Genocide” from the country’s majority Black population, a false conspiracy theory picked up and promoted by no less than the president of the United States himself.
Why do we bring this up now?
Multiple inside government sources are now saying Musk’s team of speed freak hackers, appointed by Trump to lead the so-called Department of Government Efficiency or DOGE, got caught using a customized version of the Grok chatbot, without approval, to sift through sensitive government data inside the Department of Homeland Security and other agencies.
“They used a modified version in an attempt to hide the fact that they were doing it,” according to federal employees who were present when Musk and his team invaded first the Treasury Department on Monday, Feb. 3, where they gained access to the entire database containing personal information on every American who has ever obtained a Social Security card and number and worked in this country, and other agencies later. That means not just EVERYONE’S Social Security numbers, but addresses, phone numbers, email addresses and bank account numbers and information on EVERYONE.
They moved on to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and other agencies, demanding access to all the data. Anyone who stood in their way and tried to resist were fired with the approval of the president, who clearly thinks he should be the mob boss of the Executive Branch with no role for the courts or Congress in checking his power.
Federal employees raised serious questions about this in social media posts.
– Are they allowing A.I. systems to copy and store personal data from federal systems?
– Is Grok being trained on Americans’ sensitive or confidential information?
– Could this give Musk access to nonpublic federal contracts that benefit Tesla, SpaceX, xAI or other companies, as well as Musk’s Communist Party benefactors in China?
Related
They also listed some of the risks if Grok was fed all this data, in blatant violation of privacy laws.
– Data leaks: A.I. systems can retain and regurgitate sensitive information unless strictly sandboxed.
– Unauthorized training: If Grok is learning from this data, it could be embedding federal records into a private product.
– Surveillance without oversight: Americans’ data may be analyzed or flagged with no legal safeguards.
– Unfair advantage: Musk could gain inside knowledge to benefit his companies or outpace other A.I. providers.
– National security exposure: DHS systems handle high-risk, confidential material. This isn’t just personal data. It’s critical infrastructure.
We know it has already been used to track immigrants and their political activism, mainly pro-Palastian activism at Ivy League Universities and others, which has led to a number of arrests and deportations to jails in other countries, including Guantanamo, Cuba, El Salvador and Libya.
“This isn’t a technical hiccup,” according to social media posts. “Its unchecked A.I. use in government, especially by someone with financial and political stakes, puts democracy and privacy at risk.”
Using A.I. Chat to Analyze Grok Threats
This story is not getting much attention in the mainstream media, but it is being discussed in tech circles. I asked a friend who keeps up with this technology and experiments with using it to check into it.
So he started by asking competing A.I. program ChatGPT: “What is the worst thing that Elon Musk could do with the Social Security data?”
“If Elon Musk – or anyone else – gains access to your Social Security Number (SSN) and related personal information, the risks are the same no matter who has it. For someone with vast resources and influence, like Musk, the potential impact could be even more far-reaching, but the fundamental risks center on what anyone can do with SSN data.”
What Can Be Done With Your Social Security Information?
1. Identity Theft:
• Open credit cards, loans, or bank accounts in your name.
• Apply for government benefits (Social Security, unemployment, etc.).
• File fraudulent tax returns to get your refund.
2. Access to Medical Services:
• Obtain medical care under your identity, which could alter your medical records.
3. Employment Fraud:
• Someone could use your SSN to get a job, and you’d be responsible for the taxes.
4. Utilities/Phone Fraud:
• Open accounts for cell phones, utilities, or cable services.
5. Criminal Activities:
• Use your SSN to commit crimes, leading to warrants or legal issues in your name.
What Is the WORST Thing That Could Happen?
In theory, here’s the most extreme (and realistic) scenarios:
1, Complete Identity Takeover:
Someone could “become” you on paper, gaining access to all your financial, medical, and legal records. They could destroy your credit, drain your bank accounts, and create false criminal or tax records.
2. Large-Scale Manipulation:
Someone with immense resources (think: a billionaire, a government, or a major company) could aggregate millions of SSNs and cross-reference with other data (addresses, phone numbers, online activity) to:
• Influence or profile people for political or commercial purposes.
• Engage in social engineering or blackmail at scale.
• Manipulate credit markets, elections, or other large systems.
• Social Engineering/Blackmail:
Use private info (SSN, address, DOB) to trick you or companies you use (banks, insurance, phone companies) into giving up even more sensitive data or access.
Specifically – If Elon Musk Had Your SSN:
While legally he couldn’t do anything with it, if he were malicious or careless:
• He could, through companies like X (Twitter), Tesla, or SpaceX, cross-reference your SSN with other data he might have (user accounts, purchase histories, etc.) to build a highly detailed profile on you.
• If data were leaked, it could end up in the hands of criminals – leading to the risks listed above.
• If intentionally misused, he (or anyone) could theoretically ruin your financial and personal life – potentially on a massive scale if many people’s SSNs were accessed.
Bottom Line
“The worst-case scenario is total identity and data takeover leading to massive financial, legal, and personal harm – not just for you, but possibly for millions if done at scale. With the resources of someone like Musk, this could be more widespread, organized and harder to fight.”
If You’re Concerned:
• Freeze your credit with all three bureaus.
• Monitor your accounts for suspicious activity.
• Report identity theft immediately if you suspect it.
Could he Analyze a person’s social media posts for political partisanship?
“Yes, absolutely,” the programs says. “If someone like Elon Musk – or anyone with access to large datasets and advanced AI tools – had both your Social Security Number and your social media posts, they could easily analyze your posts for political partisanship and much more.”
Here’s how and what it means.
How Could This Be Done?
1. Linking Identity:
• With your SSN, they could find your full legal identity, address, age, and other identifiers.
• Using other public and private data (email addresses, phone numbers, purchase history, etc.), they could match your SSN to your social media profiles – even if you use different names online.
2. Automated Analysis:
• AI algorithms can scan your posts, tweets, likes, shares, hashtags, and groups you follow.
• Natural Language Processing (NLP) can detect keywords, phrases, and patterns linked to political beliefs, party affiliation, or even specific issues (abortion, guns, climate, etc.).
3. Sentiment and Network Analysis:
• AI can assess your sentiment (positive/negative/neutral) toward politicians, parties, or issues.
• By mapping your network (who you follow/interact with), they can further infer your views and influence.
What Can Be Learned?
• Political Leanings:
Whether you favor Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, Greens, or another party.
• Level of Engagement:
Are you politically active, passive, an influencer, or disengaged?
• Issue-Specific Views:
Your stance on key topics (gun rights, abortion, taxes, environment, etc.).
• Potential for Persuasion:
If you’re undecided or a “swing” voter, you might be targeted for ads or influence.
Why Is This a Big Deal?
• Targeted Advertising:
You could be shown political ads or even misinformation tailored to your beliefs or vulnerabilities.
• Voter Manipulation:
In aggregate, this type of analysis can be used to influence public opinion, voter turnout, or even “micro-target” misinformation.
• Employment or Insurance Risk:
Employers or insurers could (unethically or illegally) use this info to make decisions about you.
• Privacy Erosion:
Your political beliefs – supposed to be private – could be exposed, sold, or misused.
Is This Already Happening?
“Yes, to an extent,” the chatbot pointed out. “Cambridge Analytica (Facebook scandal) did this on a large scale in 2016. The difference is that someone with even more data (like government-level access or, theoretically, an influential tech owner) could make the analysis much more accurate, invasive, and dangerous.”
Bottom Line
“If someone has your SSN and your social media data, they can absolutely analyze your posts for political partisanship and use that information in ways that could impact you individually – or society at large.”
Can using Grok be an advantage over other AI programs?
“Great question!,” the bot said. “Let’s break it down.”
What Is Grok?
“Grok is Elon Musk’s A.I. chatbot, built by xAI and integrated with the X (formerly Twitter) platform. It claims to have real-time access to X’s public data, which makes it different from most other AI models (like ChatGPT or Gemini), which only have access to data up to their last training cutoff unless connected to the web.”
The only way any member of the public is allowed to use the program is to pay for a “verified” version of X dot com.
How Could Grok Be an Advantage Over Other AI Programs?
1. Real-Time Data Access
• Grok can “see” and analyze posts on X as they happen – minute by minute.
• Other AIs: Most do not have direct access to live social media feeds, unless specifically built with web access or connected to public APIs.
2. Deeper X Platform Integration
• Grok is designed specifically to interface with all public X data, which may include trends, hashtags, viral posts, and possibly user interactions in real time.
• Other AIs: While some can access Twitter via APIs, Grok is native to the platform, potentially making it faster and more comprehensive for X data.
3. Analysis and Targeting
• Grok: With full X data, it can perform extremely sophisticated analysis – spotting viral trends, sentiment shifts, coordinated campaigns, or partisan patterns faster and more accurately than AIs relying on older or less-complete data.
• Other AIs: Can analyze public data but are more limited by what they can “see” and how fast they can get it.
4. Possible Private Data Access
• If Grok is given access to private data (like DMs or user analytics) unavailable to other AIs, its power for profiling and targeting grows enormously. (This would depend on privacy policies and legal limitations.)
Example Use Cases Where Grok Would Have the Edge:
Political Analysis:
Instantly gauge the mood on X around an event, election, or news story, in real time.
Misinformation Detection:
Spot coordinated bot campaigns or viral misinformation much faster (or spread it much faster)..
Micro-Targeting:
Pinpoint groups based on their live interactions, hashtags, or following patterns.
Crisis Monitoring:
Detect and respond to trends or emergencies as they emerge, not hours or days later.
Caveats and Limits
Platform Bias:
Grok’s advantage is specific to X – its insights about other platforms (Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, etc.) are no better than any other AI’s. (Unless it is the only A.I. program to have all the government data on everybody).
Privacy & Ethics:
Real-time access can be abused if not managed transparently and legally (assuming we still have some honest courts that will stand up to Trump).
Data Quality:
X’s user base may not represent the broader population, which can skew analysis.
Bottom Line
“Grok’s advantage is its native, real-time, and deep access to X (Twitter) data. For anything involving X – analyzing trends, political partisanship, viral content, or user behaviors – Grok will likely outperform other AIs. For broader, cross-platform, or older data, other AIs may be equally or more capable.”
Can anyone use Grok?
No, not everyone can use Grok – at least, not for free or without certain requirements.
Here’s the current situation (as of May 2025)
Who Can Use Grok?
Grok is available to:
• X Premium+ subscribers:
You must pay for the highest subscription tier on X (formerly Twitter) called X Premium+ to access Grok. As of now, this costs around $16/month, but pricing may change.
• Users in select regions:
When Grok first launched, it was only available in the United States, but xAI and X are gradually rolling it out to more countries.
• Verified age:
You need to be over 18 and have a verified X account.
What About Developers and Custom Access?
• No public API:
As of now, xAI does not offer an open API for Grok, so you can’t directly integrate it into your own apps like you can with OpenAI’s GPT-4 or Google Gemini Pro.
• No free access:
There’s currently no free or trial version for the general public.
• Not open-source:
Grok’s model and training data are proprietary and not released to the public.
News Coverage
By April, disability rights groups and unions filed a lawsuit claiming the Trump administration and billionaire Elon Musk broke laws by firing thousands of workers and shuttering offices at the U.S. Social Security Administration and other agencies. Five groups and seven social security beneficiaries in the lawsuit filed in federal court in Washington, D.C. said the cuts at the SSA have disproportionately impacted beneficiaries with disabilities and violated their rights under the U.S. Constitution.
Musk and others at DOGE said they were using their access to the Social Security data not only to investigate claims of waste and fraud, but also to examine claims that immigrants are abusing the system — even though the overwhelming evidence is that undocumented immigrants contribute more to Social Security than they take from it.
During a rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin, Musk and Antonio Gracias, a longtime friend and DOGE employee, displayed a chart that purported to show over 5 million non-citizens who were issued Social Security numbers between 2021 and 2025.
Musk called it a “massive financial incentive” for people to come to the U.S. illegally and claimed (falsely) it was a large-scale Democratic “program” intended “to import as many illegals as possible.” Gracias claimed the number of immigrants with Social Security numbers was “totally uncontrolled” and blamed former President Joe Biden’s immigration laws for this, also false.
The U.S. may grant parole to certain migrants for humanitarian or other reasons, allowing them to live and work in the U.S. on a temporary basis, usually for a year or two. But it’s not a path to citizenship. The status allows some to obtain Social Security numbers, which makes it legal for them to find work, but they do not receive Social Security benefits.
DOGE’s chart represented immigrants with legal work authorizations who were given Social Security numbers through the Enumeration Beyond Entry program, known as EBE. Those here illegally, without any lawful immigration status, are not eligible for a Social Security number.
But then Gracias conflated the two groups and talked broadly about violent acts by undocumented immigrants as he stood in front of a chart showing data about immigrants with legal work permits.
The EBE program, created during President Trump’s first term, automatically processes Social Security cards for immigrants with temporary or permanent legal status, including those with green cards or work authorization from the Department of Homeland Security.
“A hundred percent of the people in the EBE program, all their paperwork and status has been validated by DHS. That’s where SSA gets all that information from,” said Kathleen Romig, a Director of Social Security and Disability Policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
Experts say the program, a partnership between SSA and DHS, was designed (again during Trump’s first term, not Biden’s) to improve efficiency and availability for the SSA’s frontline staff.
In mid-March, the EBE program was paused, according to an internal email shared with CBS News. No specific reason was given. CBS News reached out to SSA to ask about the data in the DOGE chart, as well as why the program was paused, but got no answers.
Asked about DOGE’s claims, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said she wasn’t familiar with the numbers but pointed to an inspector general’s report that found $72 billion worth of improper payments in the program from 2015 to 2022. Most were overpayments and made up less than 1% of the total benefits paid during that period.
“There are individuals who should not be receiving benefits on the Social Security rolls, and this administration is focused on cleaning out the waste, fraud and abuse in every agency, but particularly in Social Security,” Leavitt said.
Balderdash.
Gracias said DOGE received “a lot” of help from employees at SSA and immigration agencies in accessing data on immigrants, from alleged benefits they receive to their voting records. DOGE’s access to personal, sensitive data within agencies has been a fraught, highly litigated issue. Data sharing between agencies is subject to numerous privacy laws, though Trump issued an executive order on March 20 directing federal agency heads to grant “full and prompt access of unclassified” data to federal officials in order “to identify and eliminate waste, fraud and abuse.”
The Department of Justice under Trump loyalists said DOGE has been provided read-only access to the agency’s data, according to a court filing. But that flies in the face of why Elon Musk would be interested in the data in the first place. A.I. companies have been running out of data stolen from the web for years, and struggling to find sources of electric power to keep powering their data centers. Musk’s data center is in Memphis, Tennessee, and at last check, was being powered by hundreds of diesel generator trucks, since TVA does not have enough power to give it a permit and was planning on closing three coal-fired power plants, until Musk came along demanding more power for his A.I. machine.
In a court battle looking to limit DOGE’s access, DOGE argued that anonymizing the data would make it “impractical for those employees to conduct their work.” Nevermind the law, which provides that they remain separate archives specifically to protect the privacy of the public from corruption or malfeasance.
Gracias claimed that DOGE has found immigrants who have Social Security numbers on state voter rolls. Non-citizens are barred from voting in federal and state elections, and if caught, the penalty is deportation. He said they referred these cases to immigration agencies and said “they’ve committed to prosecute.” But he provided no evidence of this and did not say how many cases have been referred or how many would be prosecuted.
“That allowed us to connect all this data, to find these people across the system, across the benefit system, all the way to the voting records,” Gracias said of Trump’s executive order.
Some agency employees raised alarms over the rush to provide DOGE employees with access to this data. Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon said a former senior SSA official had written to him to report that DOGE employees and the nominee to lead the SSA, Frank Bisignano, worked to speed access to this data for DOGE employee Akash Bobba, a 22-year-old engineer with no government experience and no security clearance.
Tiffany Flick, a former SSA employee, wrote in an affidavit that Mike Russo, a DOGE senior adviser at SSA, did not give a “sufficiently detailed” reason why Bobba and DOGE employees needed access. Trump Justice Department lawyers claimed in a later filing that DOGE employees were working on projects cleaning up the death records at SSA or finding ways to identify fraud in new claims and wage reporting, but no evidence of this was provided.
The Internal Revenue Service has also been working on an agreement with immigration agencies to share individual taxpayer data about undocumented migrants, according to sources familiar with the discussions. DHS staff has been requesting access to data on individual taxpayer identification numbers, known as ITINs, which are given to non-citizens.
White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, one of the key architects of Trump’s immigration policy, supports allowing DOGE to utilize the data to help immigration officials. In February, Miller said if Internal Revenue Service investigators find “illegal aliens stealing taxpayer money, of course they’ll be referred to ICE. Of course they’ll be referred to Homeland Security investigations.”
Doris Meissner, a former commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service under former President Bill Clinton, said while agency data systems “do talk to each other” through systems like “E-Verify” for employees, the IRS has “always been completely hands off.”
Not anymore.
“IRS information has never been made available to enforcement agencies. That is entirely new, and anybody working in this field for a long time would never imagine that could happen,” Meissner said, noting that there have been “strong privacy protections” in law that are “carefully controlled.”
DOGE employees incorrectly claimed immigrants were receiving “maximum” Social Security benefits. Gracias also claimed the “defaults” in the Social Security system are set to “max inclusion, max pay for these people.”
But experts say there is no “maximum” benefit setting for non-citizen workers. SSA guidance says those who entered the U.S. after Aug. 22, 1996, are not eligible for Supplemental Security Income such as disability payments from taxes they’ve paid within their first five to seven years in the U.S.
There are cases where immigrants will make up a Social Security number on their employment forms, but this does not benefit the immigrants. It’s hardly ever corrected by the employer, and their paid taxes are labeled as “unattributed funds” and added to the Social Security trust fund.
Undocumented immigrants without work authorization play a sizable role in funding the Social Security system. Analysts estimate undocumented immigrants account for an additional $20 billion annually in payments into Social Security that they will never withdraw.
Romig said Musk “got it backwards” by saying “immigrants are somehow a drain on Social Security’s finances.”
“The more immigrants that we have coming into the United States, the stronger Social Security finances are because they contribute more to the trust funds than they take out,” she told CBS News.
Near the end of March, the lawsuit reached a federal court, where a judge issued a temporary restraining order barring the Social Security Administration from granting Elon Musk and members of his Department of Government Efficiency access to sensitive records stored in the agency’s systems, or from holding onto sensitive data they had already taken. The order, issued by Judge Ellen L. Hollander of the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, was the latest ruling aimed at preventing Musk’s team from sifting through an agency’s databases because of privacy concerns, according to reporting from The New York Times.
While Judge Hollander blocked Social Security’s top officials — Leland Dudek and Michael Russo — and the agency’s employees from granting Musk’s team of engineers entry to their systems, her order focused only on documents, such as tax records, that would allow Musk’s team to analyze people at an individual level. The order stated that the agency could provide Musk’s team with redacted or anonymized data that facilitated broader analysis without running afoul of federal privacy laws.
But that is all moot if the data were collected and immediately fed into Grok, where it is possibly being used now to build nefarious algorithms.
In other lawsuits challenging Musk’s aggressive incursions into the Treasury and Education Departments, judges have issued similar orders barring officials there from handing over sensitive data.
As President Trump has escalated efforts to deport students and other foreign nationals, including some with valid visas, lawyers have argued that agencies’ data systems could be used to aid a broader immigration crackdown.
In sworn statements, Treasury officials have insisted that they have not given sensitive tax data stored in their systems to the Department of Homeland Security.
As in other cases, lawyers for the government had argued that the risks of data being improperly disclosed were still speculative, since the groups that filed the suits had not shown clear evidence that Musk’s team’s access to Social Security data had led to identity theft or political retaliation. The lawyers also argued that letting Musk’s team audit the agency’s books did not amount to an unlawful “disclosure,” such as a leak that could result in identity theft.
But Judge Hollander said in a 137-page opinion accompanying the order that the intrusion into Social Security data was concerning enough to justify the two-week restraining order while the lawsuit continued. She said that retirees, when submitting their bank information and other financial data to the agency to receive common benefits, had a reasonable expectation that their records would not be used to inform a governmentwide effort to slash spending, or for anything else, certainly not for building algorithms and training bots.
“The unrestricted access to PII that SSA provided to the DOGE Team, without specified need, and/or without adequate training, detail agreements, and/or background investigations of all DOGE Team members,” she wrote, using abbreviations for personally identifiable information and the Social Security Administration, “would be highly offensive to an objectively reasonable person.”
“The expectation of privacy shared by plaintiffs’ members is objectively reasonable. It is almost self-evident that, in our society, PII, such as SSNs, medical information, and certain financial records, are regarded as private, sensitive, and confidential information,” she added.
Judge Hollander’s order came roughly a month after a coalition of labor unions sued to stop Musk, who has called Social Security a “Ponzi scheme,” from targeting the agency’s data. Musk has also backed cuts to the agency’s offices around the country, and other changes that critics have warned could make customer support less accessible, and even make it easier for fraudsters to impersonate Social Security beneficiaries.
The order was to expire in 14 days, but became permanent when an appeals court refused to hear the case. But no evidence has been provided by Musk or DOGE that they actually destroyed the information they collected, or that it was not fed into Grok, which it could be working on now to develop a customer service system to replace Social Security employees, for example, like the chat bots that populate the websites of many companies these days.
One of the agencies targeted by Trump, Musk and DOGE was the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, parent company of National Public Radio (NPR) and PBS.
The threat to defund NPR and PBS may have caused some local NPR stations to become very careful in their reporting on this administration, including Alabama Public Radio, which became a target for Trump about the time I did a civil rights story on photographer Spider Martin for APR, and then Trump invited himself to University of Alabama graduation commencement, and made a crazy partisan speech in Tuscaloosa inside Coleman Coliseum.
Spider Martin Photography Exhibit Opens on the 60th Anniversary of the Voting Rights Act of 1965
Trump Lies About Speaking at UA Commencement: His Appearance Will Face Protests
The station news director recruited me to work for them. But after this story came out, and Trump announced he was coming to Tuscaloosa, they stopped returning emails, phone calls or texts and offered no more work.
But it did not make National Public Radio stop reporting on the administration.
NPR: How DOGE may have improperly used Social Security data to push voter fraud narratives
“One of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency lieutenants working in the Social Security Administration has been pushing dubious claims about noncitizens voting, apparently using access to data that court records suggest DOGE isn’t supposed to have,” they reported.
The staffer, Antonio Gracias, made the claims as part of larger misleading statements about the SSA’s enumeration-beyond-entry, or EBE program, which streamlines the process for granting Social Security cards to certain categories of eligible immigrants.
Gracias said in an April 2 appearance on “Fox and Friends” that “5-plus million” noncitizens who “came to the country as illegals” received Social Security numbers “through an automatic system” and proceeded to “get into our benefit systems.”
“And just because we were curious, we then looked to see if they were on the voter rolls. And we found in a handful of cooperative states that there were thousands of them on the voter rolls and that many of them had voted,” Gracias said.
State-level audits of voter data have found few examples of noncitizens voting, which is a federal crime punishable with prison and deportation.
Later that week, Gracias furthered his claims on a podcast.
“I think this was a move to import voters,” he said, echoing a conspiracy theory that Trump and Musk elevated during the 2024 campaign season and Republican lawmakers are invoking to push for stricter voting policies.
While Musk and some Republican lawmakers are now amplifying Gracias’ claims online, experts familiar with Social Security say Gracias is mischaracterizing the program, and voter registration experts say they doubt the accuracy of his claims about noncitizens voting.
Using Social Security data to imply that noncitizens are breaking the law also could have violated a court order that prevents DOGE staffers from handling sensitive SSA systems.
“It’s the latest example of concerns among privacy activists that DOGE’s sweeping access to personal and financial information of millions of Americans may violate privacy laws and may be used for inappropriate purposes,” NPR reported.
Gracias, the billionaire chief executive officer and chief investment officer of Valor Equity Partners, is one of 10 DOGE staffers embedded in the Social Security Administration. That description matches “Employee 4” in court records filed in a case challenging DOGE access to sensitive SSA systems.
A description of Gracias’ scope of work in his role with DOGE notes that he is tasked with work on death data and reducing improper payments and that “security controls will be implemented to prevent detailee from accessing or viewing sensitive data” within the agency’s payment files and master Social Security databases.
It does not mention his analysis of how noncitizens are given Social Security numbers. Gracias is also not supposed to see or share personally identifiable information, or PII, within agency data, according to earlier court filings.
“Appointee shall not share any Personally Identifiable Information accessed or obtained through the use of SSA systems or work performed for SSA, with any external entity, organization, or agency federal or state,” an addendum to the appointment request reads.
In a March 12 declaration from the SSA’s then-Chief Information Officer Michael Russo, Gracias is one of two SSA DOGE employees listed as not having access to sensitive databases or PII.
“No SSA data or personally identifiable information access, or access to systems containing such information, has been granted to Employee 6 and Employee 4,” the document reads. Employee 6, listed in the record as a “Growth Equity Vice President,” appears to be Jon Koval, an associate of Gracias at his venture capital firm, who is also detailed to DOGE.
A third Valor employee, Payton Rehling, appears to be the “Senior Associate, Data Engineer” listed as Employee 9 in court records who was given access to a production copy of PII from several SSA databases starting March 4.
On March 20, a federal judge in Maryland issued a temporary restraining order blocking DOGE employees from accessing SSA data. Gracias first publicized his claims alongside Musk at a rally in Wisconsin on March 30, ahead of the state’s special Supreme Court election.
A federal appeals court dismissed the Trump administration’s effort to lift that temporary restraining order April 1.
A few days after his Fox News interview on April 2, Gracias joined the All-In podcast on April 4 and offered more details on the data he says he used and the conclusions he drew, which has been subsequently shared by conservative media outlets and amplified by Musk on his social media site X for several days.
In court documents, lawyers for the Trump administration reiterated the earlier claim that Gracias never had access to SSA data or personally identifiable information and did not list Gracias — or examination of the EBE program — in its explanation of which DOGE staffers it said needed access to sensitive data for proposed projects.
Neither Gracias nor a DOGE spokesperson responded to NPR’s questions about when and how any Social Security data was accessed and whether it complied with the court order.
NPR reached out to Social Security and initially spoke to acting press officer Nicole Tiggemann. In a subsequent email from a generic press account, the agency declined to answer detailed questions about DOGE’s data access. It did confirm that a chart Gracias publicized showing totals of noncitizens with Social Security numbers through EBE was taken from an SSA dashboard — but claimed that the restraining order prevented them from responding to NPR’s request for additional data from the program. The agency did not respond to inquiries asking to confirm who gave the emailed answer.
That leaves many questions still unanswered about the Social Security data behind DOGE’s claims. It’s possible the analysis was conducted before the March 20 TRO or that Gracias is not the DOGE employee who accessed any personal Social Security information. So far, there has been no evidence provided of any states sharing public or private voter data with the DOGE team at SSA either.
It’s also possible that the data about noncitizens comes from non-DOGE activities. The judge overseeing the case wrote on March 21 that the TRO only applies to “SSA employees working on the DOGE agenda. It has no bearing on ordinary operations at SSA.”
One clue about the data’s potential provenance comes from the court filing: a March 17 email exchange from someone identified as Employee 7 who copied Gracias and Koval on a request for access to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements program, which SSA uses to verify the immigration status of EBE applicants.
“This access is absolutely critical to get detailed immigration status for non-citizen SSNs to detect fraud and improper payments,” the email reads.
Employee 7 appears to be DOGE staffer Marko Elez, who resigned from his post at the Treasury Department over past racist tweets — and who shared a spreadsheet of personal information in violation of data-sharing policies, an audit found — before being rehired at multiple federal agencies.
That includes the Labor Department and Health and Human Services Department, where a different court case revealed Elez was granted access to new hire data through the Office of Child Support Services. The SSA lawsuit documents say Employee 7 is a Labor employee detailed to SSA who obtained access to new hire data through the Office of Child Support Services.
Gracias puts the EBE program at the center of his account about how his team decided to check voter rolls. The program started in 2017 during the first Trump administration but grew dramatically under the Biden administration, which allowed millions of asylum-seekers to enter the U.S. and expanded the categories of immigrants who could stay on a temporary basis.
Until recently, under the EBE program, noncitizens applying for work permits, green cards or naturalization with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services could apply for Social Security cards without visiting a field office. The Washington Post and other outlets reported that the EBE program was paused in mid-March, citing an internal email. NPR was not able to independently confirm the reporting.
Lawfully present immigrants who are authorized to work get Social Security numbers to ensure they are “paying their taxes into the Social Security trust funds as required by law,” said Kathleen Romig, director of Social Security and disability policy at the liberal-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
Since immigrants in the process of naturalizing could use the EBE program, those individuals could be expected to appear on voter rolls once they became U.S. citizens.
It remains unclear which state records the DOGE team checked for noncitizens. On the All-In podcast, Gracias described checking the public voter rolls of four “friendly” states to find noncitizens on the rolls. He then said “we went even further with those friendly states and found that many of those people had actually voted.”
Later in the program, he said “well over a thousand voted” in one state. He has said his team has referred those cases for federal prosecution. In the same unsigned email, the unnamed SSA spokesperson declined to respond to NPR’s questions about the inquiry into individuals who allegedly were identified as illegal voters using Social Security data, citing “ongoing criminal investigations on this matter.”
But voting experts say the data cross-checking Gracias describes raises legal questions and can be prone to many kinds of errors.
“There are huge accuracy questions here,” said Charles Stewart, the director of MIT’s Election Data and Science Lab.
Typically, states’ public voter rolls would not include Social Security numbers, which would make data matching far less precise. There are known issues with false matches when just using names and birthdays.
Furthermore, it is common for states to find voters who have since naturalized and become citizens when cross-checking databases of noncitizens against their voter rolls.
“DOGE has repeatedly made massive data errors,” said David Bier, the director of immigration studies at the libertarian Cato Institute. “I have some doubts that they’ve discovered anything more than maybe just some poor government data quality tracking or they don’t understand the data they’re looking at.”
It’s also not clear if the DOGE effort to combine Social Security data with other sources inside and outside the federal government runs afoul of data sharing and privacy laws that are designed to limit access to sensitive information to those who have a need to use it.
“The use has to be consistent with the reason that you’re asking for the records in the first place, which has to be consistent with your own agency’s mission,” said Justin Levitt, a law professor at Loyola Law School and a voting policy adviser in the Biden administration. “‘Because I’m curious’ is not a thing when the federal government comes to data.”
Gracias appeared to attribute some of his team’s access to an executive order signed by the president that directs agencies to facilitate “both the intra- and inter-agency sharing” of records.
“President Trump had the courage to allow us to go across databases, he signed an executive order,” he said on Fox News. “It’s never been done before where agencies could talk to each other and databases can talk to each other. That allowed us to connect all this data to find these people across the system, across the benefits system, all the way to the voting records.”
Another executive order, “Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections,” directs the Department of Homeland Security and DOGE to “review each State’s publicly available voter registration list” among other requests, similar to Gracias’ effort at SSA.
Both presidential actions include the caveat that any sharing must occur “consistent with law.” But this administration has shown little interest in complying with any laws, or listening to and complying with the orders of judges, including the United States Supreme Court.
Multiple federal judges have found the DOGE effort has likely broken the law in its effort to comb through agency data. Court records have also shown the Trump administration is unable to account for the scope of DOGE’s data access, or the need for a small number of staffers to have virtually unfettered access to sensitive, compartmentalized data across the government.
“The claims made by Gracias and Musk about Social Security data underscores growing questions around how DOGE is using the data it has gathered,” NPR reported.
In a ruling blocking DOGE access to Treasury systems, Judge Jeannette Vargas warned that “a real possibility exists that sensitive information has already been shared outside of the Treasury Department, in potential violation of federal law.”
Additionally, DOGE has at times overstated savings claims from canceling contracts, terminating federal office leases and the reshaping of the federal workforce and has not found evidence of fraud.
But Gracias’ latest claims about noncitizens voting continue to have an impact on policy in the Trump administration and with the Republican-controlled Congress. During the House debate over the SAVE Act, Rep. Aaron Bean, R-Fla., mentioned DOGE’s allegations and the claim that the Biden administration had “imported” noncitizens as a reason to pass the bill.
“We have evidence that they’re participating in our elections,” Bean said. “The DOGE team just announced millions of illegals now have Social Security numbers. It’s happening and it ends today when we vote on this SAVE Act.”
But it’s not true.
Other Reporting
ProPublica is also covering these issues. But it is yet to be reported by anyone the probability that all the data from all the agencies invaded is now part of Grok, and is being used to build algorithms to carry out the malicious, nefarious and “retribution” ambitions of both of Elon Musk and Donald Trump.
No matter what, we have all been Groked. At least now you know.
Anxiety Mounts Among Social Security Recipients as DOGE Troops Settle In
Add One
“Trump’s move to have Elon Musk step aside wasn’t a retreat,” according to federal government employees posting on social media. “It was a distraction. With Musk’s name out of the headlines, many assumed the controversial Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) had quietly ended. It hasn’t. It’s just changed hands.”
Enter Peter Thiel, the billionaire founder of Palantir and close ally of Musk.
“Thiel and his company are now central to Trump’s newest plan: building a massive government-run database on every American.”
Here’s what’s happening:
– Trump signed an executive order in March forcing government agencies to share data.
– Palantir, a company with deep ties to the far-right and known for building surveillance tools, has been tapped to lead the effort.
– DOGE has now been granted access to the U.S. Treasury Department.
– Palantir has already received over $113 million in government funds since Trump returned to office, and just secured a new $795 million contract with the Department of Defense. (Follow the money and see where it goes)
Palantir’s software is already being used inside the Department of Homeland Security, Health and Human Services, and more. The company is now in talks with the IRS and Social Security Administration to expand further. This means personal data, from tax returns to medical records, could soon be compiled in one place, under one administration, with little oversight.
“This push began under Musk’s leadership at DOGE. Now it’s Thiel’s turn. And make no mistake, this is about power. With a centralized, government-controlled data system, Trump gains new tools to target critics, intimidate dissenters, and go after immigrants.
“They want you to think the threat is gone. But it’s growing, and it’s being handed to people who have no business controlling our lives.
“Stay informed. Stay loud. This isn’t over. Stop the billionaire takeover!”
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