Privacy Please
Tune into "Privacy Please," where hosts Cam and Gabe engage with privacy and security professionals around the planet. They bring expert insights to the table and break down complicated tech stuff everyone can understand.
Privacy Please
S6, E234 - Doge Data Dilemma: Unpacking Federal Privacy Lawsuits
The episode delves into the ongoing lawsuits challenging the sharing of personal data by federal agencies with Doge, the Department of Government Efficiency. The hosts discuss the implications of these lawsuits, particularly regarding the lack of clarity surrounding Doge's operations and the dismantling of the CFPB, raising concerns about privacy and data protection.
• Overview of Doge data lawsuits and their significance
• Concerns about data sharing by federal agencies
• The troubling lack of transparency surrounding Doge
• The impact of CFPB restructuring on privacy oversight
• Risks of diminished regulatory powers over personal data
• Importance of citizen engagement in privacy advocacy
• Calls for transparency and accountability in data handling
• The evolving narrative of privacy in the digital age
• Encouragement for listeners to stay informed and proactive
All righty then. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another episode of Privacy. Please, cameron Ivey, here with Gabe Gumbs, we are hanging out chatting. You know this big thing that's going on. Well, first, first, gabe, how you living man.
Speaker 2:How you living, I'm living, I am living.
Speaker 1:I am living. Yeah, you got the hair down today. It's not tied up. I love that the hair's down today.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you got the hair down today. It's not tied up. I love that the hair's down today. Yeah, the hair is all kinds of down today. I love that it's hair day.
Speaker 1:I'm going to get her done today. Oh it's hair day it's, hair day it's hair day.
Speaker 2:I'm living well, my friend, how are you?
Speaker 1:I'm good. I'm good, always good when we get to yeah. Especially when there's lots going on. It's never a dull day?
Speaker 2:No, no, there's plenty going on, plenty going on. We get a lot of questions about all kinds of topics. What's on people's minds this week?
Speaker 1:Well, specifically, I mean we were looking at this thing on the Doge data lawsuits with the. Watergate era and privacy law. Specifically, it's an article from Bloomberg Law. It kind of touches on lawsuits challenging the sharing of personal data by federal agencies with Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency, and the lawsuits cite a Privacy Act of 1974, which was designed to protect Americans' personal information from unauthorized access and sharing. These lawsuits allege that agencies like the labor, treasury and education departments unlawfully disclose sensitive data, including tax returns and social security numbers, to Doge.
Speaker 2:Not like the coin either. Doge Department of Government Efficiency. I only have one question to kind of kick off this conversation, though, is are they going to look at the TSA? Because if they're not looking at TSA, I don't know how to take them seriously. That's the first Whoa, whoa, whoa whoa. I'm talking about all of it. That's the first place to check for inefficiencies. If you're looking for inefficiencies, that's a good point.
Speaker 1:That's because think about the information that they have on everyone that has TSA pre-check.
Speaker 2:That might be the reason why we don't want them looking there, because if data is being shared in ways that were explicitly told by the people that it was collected from, that it couldn't or wouldn't be shared by, that is problematic. That is problematic. And we don't know the complete breadth of who data has been shared with Doge. But we know, for example, that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau they've already shared sensitive consumer information, including confidential data from financial institutions. So we know at a bare minimum that kind of data is in the hands of Doge. We don't really know who Doge is either. I mean, I've seen all of the random spewings in the interwebs, complaining about the age of some of the members and so on and so forth, but that doesn't tell me who Doge is right Like, who exactly is getting access to that data?
Speaker 1:Maybe it's Le Fleur from Dodgeball and it's just a half name of Dodge, but they take the D out and they're called Doge. What do you mean? White Goodman, white Goodman, w-h-i-t-e. Okay, so let me ask you this so we don't know who Doge is.
Speaker 2:That's interesting. Around. There's some information about some of the individuals, but it's all very personalized information and I'm not really concerned with who that person necessarily is specifically, although that is very important if they're going to get their hands on sense information. I'm more concerned about who is Doge as a complete entity. Yes, elon Musk is the administrator, but that still doesn't really tell me. I don't know if I feel comfortable with the lack of information generally around an entity that is going to get that kind of access to citizen data. And then, on top of that, some of the actions that they've already taken aren't really clear as to how this is to benefit us.
Speaker 2:For example, steps have been already taken to dismantle the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. And so that I'm not just kind of spewing random sentences there, what do I mean by dismantling? Well, they completely overhauled the leadership, right? So Russell Vought, who was the former Office of Management and Budget Director, he already signaled that shift in leadership. That same gentleman Vought, he instructed all of the CFPB staff to halt all supervisory examination activities. So no longer looking into things which, by the way, what had they been looking into? Well, one of the things that CFPB has been looking into is investigating and cracking down on data brokers, a topic that we talk about a lot here. So this dismantling, oh other things that have happened, terminating any funding.
Speaker 2:To be fair, they have a lot of money in the bank, still air quotes a lot, but I don't really know how much money they need to do things like properly enforce and regulate data brokers, which, let's be honest, we've spoken about it ad nauseum. That is a very important function of our government. Quite frankly, they've closed down some of their offices, they've reduced staff, so all of these things will certainly hamper their ability to enforce and I'm just going to be very myopic about this privacy laws. Why am I being that myopic? Because that's what we talk about here on the show. I'm certain there's lots of other things that those are doing, but look, this is privacy, please. And so there's a number of privacy laws that the CFPB had oversight over GLBA right, financial privacy rules there, the Fair Credit Reporting Act, dodd-frank, copa, the Children's Online Privacy Act All of those are regulations. Fair Credit Reporting.
Speaker 1:Act. Yeah yeah, equal Credit Opportunity Act, electronic Fund Transfer Act. I didn't even know these existed, you probably knew of at least some of them.
Speaker 2:I know you're intimately familiar with COPA, for example. Well, I mean. I didn't realize that they were all under. I didn't realize which one entity had oversight over those myself, correct, you know I knew some of them to some degree, but yeah, that wasn't something I dug into until now because it became necessary to understand, like well, if that's getting impacted, like how is that being impacted? Hey, but at least.
Speaker 1:At least Trump signed an order to get rid of paper straws. Am I with that? Who's with me?
Speaker 2:With your paper.
Speaker 1:straws are useless and they suck, so I I know, I know, I'm just saying at least we're getting some good stuff done.
Speaker 2:I don't know. I don't know if I needed regulation for that. Like, my response to paper straws has simply been to complain about it to management management or not go back to those establishments that insist on paper straws.
Speaker 1:Off topic here, a squirrel moment, but I'll tell you what. If we care more about getting rid of paper straws, can we please do something about? I know that there's talks about it, but like, let's cut out all these like terrible ingredients and foods that Americans still use, that europe and other countries do not use. It's just insane what they're doing to the american people with all the dyes and the you know you're saying focus on health and not on cutting back paper straws yeah, I, I don't mean to go off topic here, but this is also important that's okay.
Speaker 2:Go off topic. Yeah, but this is also important, that's okay. Go off topic, yeah, you know what? Because this is our show, we can talk about whatever we want. Hey what's up? Don't at me.
Speaker 1:It's on my mind. Yeah, don't at us One thing that I mean come on now, let's think about this. You go to school to be a doctor. What do you think they teach you as a doctor? They don't mention anything about nutrition. All they do is talk about how you have to memorize all these different medicines and drugs. That's the only thing they care about. Is you understanding what all the drugs are on the market, so you know what to prescribe your patients to take care of a certain issue that you have, or health issue? They don't teach you anything about the nutritional things because they don't want us to be healthy. You wouldn't get me to argue with that. You wouldn't get me to argue with that. I think it's more powerful than people actually realize. It's powerful. Yeah, I mean spinning back to what we're talking about here with the control over our own personal information and all these issues. I mean we got to start.
Speaker 2:Where do we even begin to even help in this area, to be an outside voice, to be something that can help in the right direction, make a change For the average individuals like you and I. Maybe it begins with these conversations, it begins with sharing these conversations with others. Yeah, we get asked about a lot of these topics outside of the show and I'm reminded that someone left us at least one review that complained we get too quote preachy. That's okay. You don't have to certainly agree or align with our viewpoints. In fact, we welcome opposing viewpoints. So feel free to share those and not just complain that we're preaching. But I'm going to co-sign this one for you, brother. I'm going to completely agree with you that if we're looking to get rid of waste, then we can start certainly with not just within the government itself but within the non-government areas of our lives.
Speaker 1:Well, it sounds like there were what nine complaints filed, with plaintiffs seeking temporary restraining orders to prevent Doge from accessing personal data. Courts have been divided on these requests, so these are. I mean. That's really important to see what this decision is going to be, don't you think? I mean?
Speaker 2:I think so. I am beside myself that we are split on things like you know, enforcing GLBA, those kinds of restrictions are what were put in place to prevent further catastrophe in our financial markets. That's the whole reason things like that occur, and you know, it worries me that without that kind of oversight we can return to those kinds of risks being ever present.
Speaker 1:I mean the ones that are split on not wanting to protect personal information. What's their agenda?
Speaker 2:I don't understand we already don't have any federal laws around that. We talk about that on this show a lot. In fact, was it the last show, maybe the show before we someone on and and we talked about a lot of the state laws yeah we dug.
Speaker 2:We dug very heavily into the state laws, and that's that may be the place again for us to to begin with. Action collectively as citizens is to is to get back on that local level and really voice what we want to see come out of our administrations. It doesn't matter which one it is this one, the next one, the last one we've got to be a hell of a lot more vocal, a lot more vocal. I'm okay with taking it to the streets too. If that's the vocality that's necessary, you can do that. You ain't made for the streets.
Speaker 1:Nah, it's comfy inside, but if I have to go outside, I'll go outside. No, I'm not saying you, I just wanted to say that oh yeah, no, no.
Speaker 2:No, I'm not either. Let's be clear about this. I'm not really interested in that activity, but you know, that's where we're headed.
Speaker 1:I mean, yeah, that unprecedented access, having data being unprecedented is that's a huge concern, not knowing the implications or the whole circumference of what happens with that data, just like every other data that we talk about and that we're worried about in the wrong hands of, for example, data brokers?
Speaker 2:how is this data now being used? How is it being protected? How is it being shared? Those are all questions that we should ask. Those aren't political questions, those aren't even preachy questions. Those are basic privacy and security questions that should have been laid out for us before the first bit of access was granted.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you know what, if someone's using my personal information, I should be getting paid for it. Then there's that Every single thing that's been used with my name or it's attached to my name, now Doge is going to argue.
Speaker 2:We're using that information to reduce waste in the government. And I'm all about reducing waste, which I was being a little tongue in cheek but again, if we're genuine about reducing waste, I'm certain every American could, off the top of their head, think of three places where there's waste. We could start with our healthcare system. Mm, yeah, godly amount of waste in that system. Yeah, I don't know that there can be a more universally agreed upon fact among citizens. It's like no, there's a lot of waste in that. There's a lot of waste in a lot of systems.
Speaker 2:I'm poking fun at the T, tsa, but like real talk, that shit is all waste. It's, it's a hundred percent waste. And I don't want to hear about protecting from terror, like. Go look up the information in the data yourself. Look at their own, their own self-auditing, and and you ask yourself the question of if the money's being spent is having a positive impact, whether or not you think a lot of that is theater or not. I ask you only to look at the numbers and you tell me whether or not you think there's waste there. But if that's not even a place to start looking, it's hard for me to take what they're doing seriously beyond. I take it seriously that privacy seems to be a casualty of this exercise. That's a good point, that's interesting.
Speaker 1:It's just crazy. I don't even know what to think right now.
Speaker 2:I mean Well, the thing that was posed to us was what does the internet start looking like with fewer, less oversight and regulations of privacy brokers? Our friend, heidi posted earlier Shout out, shout out to Heidi. We love you. Heidi. I posted early on LinkedIn today that it was a position that she had gotten. I'm trying to remember the name of the agency. It was with DHS. It was DHS and she received an offer to form some work for her. And for those of you that don't keep up, heidi Sass, that's H-E-I-D-I-S-A-SS ID SAS. She's a privacy and technology attorney. So they rescinded her offer and quote privacy activities no longer align with the science and technology's mission. What's their new mission? I don't know, but in not hiring this extremely well-experienced privacy lawyer and telling them explicitly in that rescinding of their offer that privacy activities no longer align with science and technology, it begs the question how does one perform science and technology activities that include the collection and analysis of personal information and then also remove privacy activities from your mission? Those two things don't add up.
Speaker 1:It's concerning, to say the least. I don't know if I should be violated, scared, concerned, worried. Those are all kind of similar. Yeah, going back to the, let me see if I can find it here. Going back to the article, just give another shout out to Ron DeSouza, who, by the way, we're going to have on the show at some point Not sure when, but he was actually in this very article which I'll share in the show notes, but it's a quote by Ron was saying we can see potentially all government agencies being subject to unauthorized access to their other systems. He's a field chief privacy officer at Transcend and he's saying so. It's incredibly important that these lawsuits are coming, because it's going to force judges to make decisions about Americans and their privacy. It's I wonder. I wonder how long this is going to drag out. That's the question too. Is it going to? What else is this going to bring to surface as well? Yeah, what else is this?
Speaker 2:going to bring to surface as well. There's definitely a lot of to be seen to be known. That's left for us to ponder on this topic. For sure, yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, if anyone listening has any further information or thoughts on this, or questions or anything, we'd love to hear from you, as always. And is there anything else that you want to wrap up on this thought that comes to your mind, gabe, anything else you wanted to touch on?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think the number one thing is to again continue to challenge our listeners, to provoke us with some of those questions and ask us to dig into more of those kinds of topics. We'll definitely be keeping our eyes on these things. A lot of times we see these headlines in the news and we don't always think about how they necessarily affect things like privacy and security. So you know, it's Cam and I's job to bring those to the show here. But the challenge to the listeners is you know, after this show ends and you flick over to the next show or you get on the interwebs, dig in for a little bit yourselves, right, like, don't take our words for all of it. That should never be where it ends. But find out where you think that some of these behaviors require more attention and let's talk about it.
Speaker 1:It's the way to go. Well, thank you, Gabe.
Speaker 2:Always a pleasure.
Speaker 1:Thanks, listeners. We'll see you guys next week. Appreciate you.
