Musk now controls all US payments 🚨 | USDA freezes payments to farmers

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A 25-Year-Old With Elon Musk Ties Has Direct Access to the Federal Payment System​

The Bureau of the Fiscal Service is a sleepy part of the Treasury Department. It’s also where, sources say, a 25-year-old engineer tied to Elon Musk has admin privileges over the code that controls Social Security payments, tax returns, and more.

www.wired.com

A 25-Year-Old With Elon Musk Ties Has Direct Access to the Federal Payment System

The Bureau of the Fiscal Service is a sleepy part of the Treasury Department. It’s also where, sources say, a 25-year-old engineer tied to Elon Musk has admin privileges over the code that controls Social Security payments, tax returns, and more.
www.wired.com www.wired.com
 
“
A 25-year-old engineer named Marko Elez, who previously worked for two Elon Musk companies, has direct access to Treasury Department systems responsible for nearly all payments made by the US government, three sources tell WIRED.

Two of those sources say that Elez’s privileges include the ability not just to read but to write code on two of the most sensitive systems in the US government: The Payment Automation Manager (PAM) and Secure Payment System (SPS) at the Bureau of the Fiscal Service (BFS). Housed on a top-secret mainframe, these systems control, on a granular level, government payments that in their totality amount to more than a fifth of the US economy.

Despite reporting that suggests DOGE has access to these Treasury systems on a “read-only” level, sources say Elez, who has visited a Kansas City office housing BFS systems, has many administrator-level privileges. Typically, those admin privileges could give someone the power to log into servers through secure shell access, navigate the entire file system, change user permissions, and delete or modify critical files.

That could allow someone to bypass the security measures of, and potentially cause irreversible changes to, the very systems they have access to. …”
 
“… “You could do anything with these privileges,” says one source with knowledge of the system, who adds that they cannot conceive of a reason that anyone would need them for purposes of simply hunting down fraudulent payments or analyzing disbursement flow.

"Technically I don't see why this couldn't happen," a federal IT worker tells WIRED in a phone call late on Monday night, referring to the possibility of a DOGE employee being granted elevated access to a government server.

"If you would have asked me a week ago, I'd have told you that this kind of thing would never in a million years happen. But now, who the fuck knows."

A source says they are concerned that data could be passed from secure systems to DOGE operatives within the General Services Administration (GSA).

WIRED reporting has shown that Elon Musk’s associates—including Nicole Hollander, who slept in Twitter’s offices as Musk acquired the company, and Thomas Shedd, a former Tesla engineer who now runs a GSA agency, along with a host of extremely young and inexperienced engineers—have infiltrated the GSA, and have attempted to use White House security credentials to gain access to GSA tech, something experts have said is highly unusual and poses a huge security risk. …”
 

“… during a live audio chat on his X platform on Sunday night …Musk framed his vision of DOGE's work in ideological terms, disparaging the "tyranny of the bureaucracy" as unaccountable to American voters. Later in the conversation, he called for the "wholesale removal of regulations."

Musk has a long history of sparring with and outright defying federal regulators who oversee his sprawling array of businesses.

… "In terms of rule of law, we are losing it rapidly," said Eric Rubin, a retired ambassador who spent nearly 40 years in the foreign service.

"Musk and DOGE are intentionally creating hundreds of potential court cases that could take months or years to resolve," he said. "But who knows what kind of damage they can inflict before that happens." …”
 
(NPR continued)

“… Something else that has drawn scrutiny: what security clearances Musk and other DOGE staff hold.

Multiple reports indicated DOGE representatives sought access to a "secure compartmented information facility," or SCIF, at USAID, which is a room containing sensitive documents that only someone with a high-level security clearance is permitted to enter.

"No classified material was accessed without proper security clearances," Katie Miller, a DOGE official, wrote on X on Sunday. Leavitt said on Monday she did not immediately have information about Musk's security clearance to share with reporters.

Rubin, the retired foreign service officer, said the possibility of a government employee accessing SCIF material without the proper clearance is concerning, adding that "there are zero exceptions" to the restricted access, given these rooms contain sensitive material. …”
 
From a political comms standpoint….and maybe a better discussion for a different thread….but shouldn’t it be fairly easy for liberals in politics and the media to turn Musk into a big-time villain? Richest person in the world? Who was not born in USA? Assuming such control over viral government stuff and maybe over folks’ personal information?

How hard can it be??

I don’t claim to be a brilliant political strategist — though I do think billboards ALL OVER THE PLACE about the horrible things Trump/GOP/Musk are doing to people is also obvious…

But, dang. How’s about teeing off on this jerk??
 
ole howard1 said:
From a political comms standpoint….and maybe a better discussion for a different thread….but shouldn’t it be fairly easy for liberals in politics and the media to turn Musk into a big-time villain? Richest person in the world? Who was not born in USA? Assuming such control over viral government stuff and maybe over folks’ personal information?

How hard can it be??

I don’t claim to be a brilliant political strategist — though I do think billboards ALL OVER THE PLACE about the horrible things Trump/GOP/Musk are doing to people is also obvious…

But, dang. How’s about teeing off on this jerk??
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do you realize how far behind the curve liberals are here?

For several years, liberals embraced Musk. Electric vehicles instead of fossil fuels; space exploration; free speech—these are all liberal ideals that Rs have historically been against, but which musk seemingly embraced.

It’s only been the last ~5 years that Musk has revealed himself for the abhorrent asshole he is. And it’s understandable that Dems would have difficulty pivoting from “let’s make a deal with Musk to put more EV chargers in the US so we can expand EV use” to “fuck, never mind—he’s a Nazi.”
 
I do understand. I do.

It’s incredibly depressing.

I was just thinking of how overwhelming it is. Do you defend the general concept of USAID? Or get stuck debating aid to Ukraine in 2014 vs. RFK, Jr’s allegations about USAID paying for a coup?

So much insanity cutting in so many directions all at once in confusing ways, even for those who want to try and keep things legitimately straight.

But maybe that’s why simplifying things with Musk as catchall villain — and he seems intent on being pretty catch all, and villainous at this point — could cut through the craziness.
 
There's no reason for the DOGE criminals to have admin rights on these systems unless they want to control who does/doesn't have access as well as steal, manipulate, delete, or fabricate data so it's pretty easy to deduce what's happening here.
 
ole howard1 said:
But maybe that’s why simplifying things with Musk as catchall villain — and he seems intent on being pretty catch all, and villainous at this point — could cut through the craziness.
Click to expand...
I totally agree that it would be useful to vilify Musk as part of the push back campaign. Americans are easily spooked. And it would help to separate Musk from Trump. That combo has got to be separated.
 
EyeballKid said:
do you realize how far behind the curve liberals are here?

For several years, liberals embraced Musk. Electric vehicles instead of fossil fuels; space exploration; free speech—these are all liberal ideals that Rs have historically been against, but which musk seemingly embraced.

It’s only been the last ~5 years that Musk has revealed himself for the abhorrent asshole he is. And it’s understandable that Dems would have difficulty pivoting from “let’s make a deal with Musk to put more EV chargers in the US so we can expand EV use” to “fuck, never mind—he’s a Nazi.”
Click to expand...
The lesson they need to take away is that there are no good billionaires. It doesn’t matter if a certain billionaire is altruistic or giving to Dem causes; no one should have that amount of money and power. It is antithetical to democracy.
 
nycfan said:
That list excludes the primary holders of Federal debt - Americans.

IMG_4872.jpeg

usafacts.org

Which countries own the most US debt? | USAFacts

As of April 2024, foreign countries own approximately $7.9 trillion in Treasury securities — or 22.9% of total US debt.
usafacts.org usafacts.org
Click to expand...
Yes, I should have said foreign-owned debt.

Still, it's remarkable that Japan is number one. I would have thought China would number one.
 
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