A Federal Court Judge in Manhattan on Friday expanded the temporary restriction order that impedes staff members of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency to access US Treasury Department’s data-which is New York Attorneys-General and other blue states as an illegal threatening privacy-while considering whether she should impose a long-term order.
After hearing about two hours of arguments, Judge Jeannette A. Vargas told advocates to New York and Allied States, and their opponents of the Justice Department: “I find a good cause to expand the tro as modified . ” Vargas said she would soon issue her decision, but not today, to give the issues ‘time to consider the issues’.
While the process largely retained the status quo, it also lifted the veil on how little is known about Doge’s access to information – and where it went.
When Vargas Jeffrey Oestericher, the lawyer of the Justice Department representing Trump, on Friday asks if any information allowed by the Doge was shared outside the Treasury section, he said: “The short answer to this is that we are not currently don’t know. “
‘We do a forensic analysis. What we can see from the forensic analysis so far is that emails have been sent outside the Treasury, ”Oestericher said. “We don’t know [the] content. “
Vargas asked: Was it not problematic from a privacy point of view?
“The short answer is no,” Oestericher said.
“During this time that the Doge team members had access to this information, there were extensive mitigation efforts to prevent this exact damage.”
But Oestericher acknowledged at another point: “We openly acknowledge that there were some increased risks, but we have taken all appropriate mitigation measures to reduce the risk as much as possible.”
Vargas’ decision came six days after New York and Allied litigants received a temporary restriction order that eventually banned the Treasury division from giving the government rental and special employees of the government access to sensitive data and computer systems. Donald Trump created Elon Musk at the head of Doge, an agency created by the president under the protection of fraud and government wastage – despite a lack of evidence indicating fraud.
When issuing the temporary restriction order early on February 8, Judge Paul A. Engelmayer said that the states that Trump and Treasury Secretary Scott Besent will experience “irreparable damage in the absence of illegal relief.”
Engelmayer noted that the new Treasury policy, which was issued according to Trump’s direction, allegedly apparently “[expand] Access to the payment systems of the Bureau of Fiscal Services (BFS) to political appointments and ‘special government employees’. ‘
This, arguing Engelmayer, represents a ‘risk that the new policy provides the disclosure of sensitive and confidential information and the greater risk that the systems involved will be more vulnerable than before for hacking.’
Engelmayer also said in his written decision that the states that sue the Treasury’s policy change showed a probability of success on the merits of their claims, with the statutory demands of the states as particularly strong. “
The complaint against Trump and Besent repeatedly quoted that Wired’s reporting revealed how a 25-year-old engineer named Marko Elez, with ties to Musk, enjoyed reading access to two Treasury systems and write responsible for virtually all payments made by the federal government. Tom Krause – who is in the Doge team, despite being CEO of Cloud Software Group – has also provided access to these abilities.