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mostlysignssomeportents · 1 year ago

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The specific process by which Google enshittified its search

I'm touring my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me SATURDAY (Apr 27) in MARIN COUNTY, then Winnipeg (May 2), Calgary (May 3), Vancouver (May 4), and beyond!

All digital businesses have the technical capacity to enshittify: the ability to change the underlying functions of the business from moment to moment and user to user, allowing for the rapid transfer of value between business customers, end users and shareholders:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/19/twiddler/

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/24/naming-names/#prabhakar-raghavan

Which raises an important question: why do companies enshittify at a specific moment, after refraining from enshittifying before? After all, a company always has the potential to benefit by treating its business customers and end users worse, by giving them a worse deal. If you charge more for your product and pay your suppliers less, that leaves more money on the table for your investors.

Of course, it's not that simple. While cheating, price-gouging, and degrading your product can produce gains, these tactics also threaten losses. You might lose customers to a rival, or get punished by a regulator, or face mass resignations from your employees who really believe in your product.

Companies choose not to enshittify their products…until they choose to do so. One theory to explain this is that companies are engaged in a process of continuous assessment, gathering data about their competitive risks, their regulators' mettle, their employees' boldness. When these assessments indicate that the conditions are favorable to enshittification, the CEO walks over to the big "enshittification" lever on the wall and yanks it all the way to MAX.

Some companies have certainly done this – and paid the price. Think of Myspace or Yahoo: companies that made themselves worse by reducing quality and gouging on price (be it measured in dollars or attention – that is, ads) before sinking into obscure senescence. These companies made a bet that they could get richer while getting worse, and they were wrong, and they lost out.

But this model doesn't explain the Great Enshittening, in which all the tech companies are enshittifying at the same time. Maybe all these companies are subscribing to the same business newsletter (or, more likely, buying advice from the same management consultancy) (cough McKinsey cough) that is a kind of industry-wide starter pistol for enshittification.

I think it's something else. I think the main job of a CEO is to show up for work every morning and yank on the enshittification lever as hard as you can, in hopes that you can eke out some incremental gains in your company's cost-basis and/or income by shifting value away from your suppliers and customers to yourself.

We get good digital services when the enshittification lever doesn't budge – when it is constrained: by competition, by regulation, by interoperable mods and hacks that undo enshittification (like alternative clients and ad-blockers) and by workers who have bargaining power thanks to a tight labor market or a powerful union:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/09/lead-me-not-into-temptation/#chamberlain

When Google ordered its staff to build a secret Chinese search engine that would censor search results and rat out dissidents to the Chinese secret police, googlers revolted and refused, and the project died:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragonfly_(search_engine)

When Google tried to win a US government contract to build AI for drones used to target and murder civilians far from the battlefield, googlers revolted and refused, and the project died:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/01/technology/google-pentagon-project-maven.html

What's happened since – what's behind all the tech companies enshittifying all at once – is that tech worker power has been smashed, especially at Google, where 12,000 workers were fired just months after a $80b stock buyback that would have paid their wages for the next 27 years. Likewise, competition has receded from tech bosses' worries, thanks to lax antitrust enforcement that saw most credible competitors merged into behemoths, or neutralized with predatory pricing schemes. Lax enforcement of other policies – privacy, labor and consumer protection – loosened up the enshittification lever even more. And the expansion of IP rights, which criminalize most kinds of reverse engineering and aftermarket modification, means that interoperability no longer applies friction to the enshittification lever.

Now that every tech boss has an enshittification lever that moves very freely, they can show up for work, yank the enshittification lever, and it goes all the way to MAX. When googlers protested the company's complicity in the genocide in Gaza, Google didn't kill the project – it mass-fired the workers:

https://medium.com/@notechforapartheid/statement-from-google-workers-with-the-no-tech-for-apartheid-campaign-on-googles-indiscriminate-28ba4c9b7ce8

Enshittification is a macroeconomic phenomenon, determined by the regulatory environment for competition, privacy, labor, consumer protection and IP. But enshittification is also a microeconomic phenomenon, the result of innumerable boardroom and product-planning fights within companies in which would-be enshittifiers try to do things that make the company's products and services shittier wrestle with rivals who want to keep things as they are, or make them better, whether out of principle or fear of the consequences.

Those microeconomic wrestling-matches are where we find enshittification's heroes and villains – the people who fight for the user or stand up for a fair deal, versus the people who want to cheat and wreck to make things better for the company and win bonuses and promotions for themselves:

https://locusmag.com/2023/11/commentary-by-cory-doctorow-dont-be-evil/

These microeconomic struggles are usually obscure, because companies are secretive institutions and our glimpses into their deliberations are normally limited to the odd leaked memo, whistleblower tell-all, or spectacular worker revolt. But when a company gets dragged into court, a new window opens into the company's internal operations. That's especially true when the plaintiff is the US government.

Which brings me back to Google, the poster-child for enshittification, a company that revolutionized the internet a quarter of a century ago with a search-engine that was so good that it felt like magic, which has decayed so badly and so rapidly that whole sections of the internet are disappearing from view for the 90% of users who rely on the search engine as their gateway to the internet.

Google is being sued by the DOJ's Antitrust Division, and that means we are getting a very deep look into the company, as its internal emails and memos come to light:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/03/not-feeling-lucky/#fundamental-laws-of-economics

Google is a tech company, and tech companies have literary cultures – they run on email and other forms of written communication, even for casual speech, which is more likely to take place in a chat program than at a water-cooler. This means that tech companies have giant databases full of confessions to every crime they've ever committed:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/03/big-tech-cant-stop-telling-on-itself/

Large pieces of Google's database-of-crimes are now on display – so much, in fact, that it's hard for anyone to parse through it all and understand what it means. But some people are trying, and coming up with gold. One of those successful prospectors is Ed Zitron, who has produced a staggering account of the precise moment at which Google search tipped over into enshittification, which names the executives at the very heart of the rot:

https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-men-who-killed-google/

Zitron tells the story of a boardroom struggle over search quality, in which Ben Gomes – a long-tenured googler who helped define the company during its best years – lost a fight with Prabhakar Raghavan, a computer scientist turned manager whose tactic for increasing the number of search queries (and thus the number of ads the company could show to searchers) was to decrease the quality of search. That way, searchers would have to spend more time on Google before they found what they were looking for.

Zitron contrasts the background of these two figures. Gomes, the hero, worked at Google for 19 years, solving fantastically hard technical scaling problems and eventually becoming the company's "search czar." Raghavan, the villain, "failed upwards" through his career, including a stint as Yahoo's head of search from 2005-12, a presiding over the collapse of Yahoo's search business. Under Raghavan's leadership, Yahoo's search market-share fell from 30.4% to 14%, and in the end, Yahoo jettisoned its search altogether and replaced it with Bing.

For Zitron, the memos show how Raghavan engineered the ouster of Gomes, with help from the company CEO, the ex-McKinseyite Sundar Pichai. It was a triumph for enshittification, a deliberate decision to make the product worse in order to make it more profitable, under the (correct) belief that the company's exclusivity deals to provide search everywhere from Iphones and Samsungs to Mozilla would mean that the business would face no consequences for doing so.

It a picture of a company that isn't just too big to fail – it's (as FTC Chair Lina Khan put it on The Daily Show) too big to care:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaDTiWaYfcM

Zitron's done excellent sleuthing through the court exhibits here, and his writeup is incandescently brilliant. But there's one point I quibble with him on. Zitron writes that "It’s because the people running the tech industry are no longer those that built it."

I think that gets it backwards. I think that there were always enshittifiers in the C-suites of these companies. When Page and Brin brought in the war criminal Eric Schmidt to run the company, he surely started every day with a ritual, ferocious tug at that enshittification lever. The difference wasn't who was in the C-suite – the difference was how freely the lever moved.

On Saturday, I wrote:

The platforms used to treat us well and now treat us badly. That's not because they were setting a patient trap, luring us in with good treatment in the expectation of locking us in and turning on us. Tech bosses do not have the executive function to lie in wait for years and years.

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/22/kargo-kult-kaptialism/#dont-buy-it

Someone on Hacker News called that "silly," adding that "tech bosses do in fact have the executive function to lie in wait for years and years. That's literally the business model of most startups":

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40114339

That's not quite right, though. The business-model of the startup is to yank on the enshittification lever every day. Tech bosses don't lie in wait for the perfect moment to claw away all the value from their employees, users, business customers, and suppliers – they're always trying to get that value. It's only when they become too big to care that they succeed. That's the definition of being too big to care.

In antitrust circles, they sometimes say that "the process is the punishment." No matter what happens to the DOJ's case against Google, its internal workers have been made visible to the public. The secrecy surrounding the Google trial when it was underway meant that a lot of this stuff flew under the radar when it first appeared. But as Zitron's work shows, there is plenty of treasure to be found in that trove of documents that is now permanently in the public domain.

When future scholars study the enshittocene, they will look to accounts like Zitron's to mark the turning points from the old, good internet to the enshitternet. Let's hope those future scholars have a new, good internet on which to publish their findings.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/24/naming-names/#prabhakar-raghavan

#pluralistic #ed zitron #google #microincentives #constraints #enshittification #rot economy #platform decay #search #ben gomes #code yellow #mckinsey #hacking engagement #Prabhakar Raghavan #yahoo #doj #antitrust #trustbusting

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mariacallous · 3 months ago

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US Treasury Department and White House officials have repeatedly denied that technologists associated with Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) had the ability to rewrite the code of the payment system through which the vast majority of federal spending flows. WIRED reporting shows, however, that at the time these statements were made, a DOGE operative did in fact have write access. Not only that, but sources tell WIRED that at least one note was added to Treasury records indicating that he no longer had write access before senior IT staff stated it was actually rescinded.

Marko Elez, a 25-year-old DOGE technologist, was recently installed at the Treasury Department as a special government employee. One of a number of young men identified by WIRED who have little to no government experience but are currently associated with DOGE, Elez previously worked for SpaceX, Musk’s space company, and X, Musk’s social media company. Elez resigned Thursday after The Wall Street Journal inquired about his connections to “a deleted social-media account that advocated for racism and eugenics.”

As WIRED has reported, Elez was granted privileges including the ability to not just read but 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), an agency that according to Treasury records paid out $5.45 trillion in fiscal year 2024. Reporting from Talking Points Memo confirmed that Treasury employees were concerned that Elez had already made “extensive changes” to code within the Treasury system. The payments processed by BFS include federal tax returns, Social Security benefits, Supplemental Security Income benefits, and veteran’s pay.

Over the last week, the nuts and bolts of DOGE’s access to the Treasury has been at the center of an escalating crisis.

On January 31, David Lebryk, the most senior career civil servant in the Treasury, announced he would retire; he had been placed on administrative leave after refusing to give Musk’s DOGE team access to the federal payment system. The next morning, sources tell WIRED, Elez was granted read and write access to PAM and SPS.

On February 3, Politico reported that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Republican lawmakers in the House Financial Services Committee that Musk and DOGE didn’t have control over key Treasury systems. The same day, The New York Times reported that Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said that DOGE’s access was “read-only.”

The significance of this is that the ability to alter the code on these systems would in theory give a DOGE technologist—and, by extension, Musk, President Donald Trump, or other actors—the capability to, among other things, illegally cut off Congressionally authorized payments to specific individuals or entities. (CNN reported on Thursday that Musk associates had demanded that Treasury pause authorized payments to USAID, precipitating Lebryk’s resignation.)

On February 4, WIRED reported that Elez did, in fact, have admin access to PAM and SPS. Talking Points Memo reported later that day that Elez had “made extensive changes to the code base for these critical payment systems.” In a letter that same day that did not mention Musk or DOGE, Treasury official Jonathan Blum wrote to Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, “Currently, Treasury staff members working with Tom Krause, a Treasury employee, will have read-only to the coded data of the Fiscal Service’s payment systems.” (Krause is the top DOGE operative at Treasury and CEO of Cloud Software Group.) The letter did not say what kind of access the staff members actually had.

Sources tell WIRED that by afternoon of the next day, February 5, Elez’s access had been changed to “read-only” from both read and code-writing privileges.

That same day, a federal judge granted an order to temporarily restrict DOGE staffers from accessing and changing Treasury payment system information, following a lawsuit alleging the Treasury Department provided “Elon Musk or other individuals associated with DOGE” with access to the payment systems, and that this access violated federal privacy laws. The order specifically provided a carve-out for two individuals: Krause and Elez. At a court hearing later that day, Department of Justice lawyer Bradley Humphreys asserted that the order said their access would be “read-only.”

“It’s a distinction without a difference,” a source told WIRED. Referring specifically to the PAM, through which $4.7 trillion flowed in fiscal year 2024, they said Elez should not have had “access to this almost $5 trillion payment flow, even if it’s ‘read-only.’ None of this should be happening.”

The Treasury Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Elez did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The White House and Musk did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

“People will be held accountable for the crimes they’re committing in this coup attempt,” Wyden tells WIRED. “I’m not letting up on my investigation of what these Musk hatchet men are up to.”

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justinspoliticalcorner · 3 months ago

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Paul Blumenthal at HuffPost:

Before Vice President JD Vance was elected to the Senate from Ohio in 2022, he expressed a radical sentiment now coming to fruition under President Donald Trump. “We need a de-Ba’athification program in the U.S.,” Vance said as he called for the firing of every midlevel federal government employee and their replacement with Trump allies. In likening the U.S. government to the purges of Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath Party in post-war Iraq, Vance provides a metaphor to explain what the Trump administration is doing now. The MAGA coalition, led by Trump, Vance and billionaire Elon Musk are an occupying force — a provisional authority — operating in wartime conditions to dismantle the U.S. government. As in post-war Iraq, the previously existing legal order is no more. For Americans, that means the Constitution has been effectively suspended. The ongoing destruction of the U.S. government by Trump and Musk is already a full-blown constitutional crisis. The executive branch has seized power it does not have from Congress and the American people to eliminate agencies created by Congress, suspend payments authorized by law, break contracts entered into under law, rewrite the Constitution and, potentially, ignore the judiciary when push comes to shove. All of these actions, tied together, represent not just an unprecedented seizure of executive power by the president, but an intentional subversion of the constitutional order. Or, as Trump’s nominee to lead the Office of Management and Budget Russell Vought wrote in 2022, “We are living in a post-Constitutional time.”

The actions Trump and Musk are taking not only threaten the country’s constitutional structure, but also the material livelihood of all Americans. In targeting government services people need to live their lives, they risk forcing people to stop working to perform childcare, throw at-risk people into homelessness, deny disabled people the right to a free life and cut off the elderly and sick from necessary health care. In seeking to end birthright citizenship, Trump threatens the very right of people born here to obtain the benefits granted to them by the Constitution. Potentially more catastrophic, Musk’s seizure of the Department of Treasury’s payment system and the possible tinkering his college-age minions are doing to it could crash a decadesold system that doles out the annual $6 trillion budget to Social Security recipients, government employees, grantees, loan recipients and more.

Musk is deploying the model he used to gut Twitter after he bought it in 2022. It’s an expression of the “move fast and break things” ethos of Silicon Valley. The tech elite believe that laws and regulations should be ignored if it gets in their way of innovation and profit-seeking. Think about Uber’s deployment of subsidized taxis to undercut incumbent competition, scooter companies dumping their product on city streets with no authorization, the mass Hoovering of data by social media companies or AI companies relying on copyrighted material to train their models. They are also happy to break products as they beta test new applications, just as Musk’s X frequently went down after he fired huge numbers of engineers following his takeover. A disruption in the operation of a social media site, however, does not have any meaningful real world consequences. But if Musk decides to “fail whale” the government, the consequences would be catastrophic for hundreds of millions of Americans, not to mention the stability of the global economy.

[...]

Congress, under the sniveling leadership of Republican Speaker Mike Johnson (La.) and Senate Majority Leader John Thune (S.D.), has surrendered its power at Trump’s feet. The Constitution gives Congress the power of the purse to fund the government and enact laws creating and authorizing executive branch agencies. The president is then supposed to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” Trump has inverted this constitutional design with the help of a supplicant Republican-controlled Congress. [...] The Constitution requires Congress to pass laws and make appropriations and for the president to execute those laws and appropriations. If Trump’s actions stand, the Constitution will have been turned inside out. Congress will be swept aside. So will the American people, who elected Congress as a co-equal power to the president. And if Trump and Musk have their way, the judiciary will also be eliminated. When Vance called for the “De-Ba’athification” of the U.S. government, he also opined on what would happen if the courts intervened. [...] What this amounts to is one-man rule. The MAGA royalists have tossed the Constitution aside — at least provisionally — in favor of a king. Will anyone stop them?

HuffPost’s Paul Blumenthal provides cogent analysis on how the Axis of Evil triumvirate between Elon Musk, JD Vance, and Donald Trump, are operating to destroy our cherished Constitutional governance and livelihoods of many Americans.

#Musk Coup #Donald Trump #Elon Musk #J.D. Vance #X #Twitter #Trump Administration II #Federal Funding Freeze #USAID #Russ Vought #Fork In The Road Memo #Constitutional Crisis

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thesimblrofficedirectory · 2 years ago

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Welcome to The Simblr Office Directory

This blog is an archive of the submissions for the office-centric OC prompt posted by the light of Simblr, @kashisun.

Here you can browse all the amazing creations submitted by your fellow simblrs. Feel free to scroll to your delight or click one of the links under the cut to see who's on roster under (or over) a particular bureau or delegation.

Want to be added to the directory or confirm that you've been queued? Just include a link to your post in an ask off anon and it will be queued within 48 hours. Until we get through the backlog and can queue at a more leisurely pace, all ask submissions will receive a confirmation. You can always mention us, but we won't be able to provided confirmation for that method.

Leaving the company? If you'd like your post removed, just include a link to the post in an ask off anon and it will be removed. Sideblogs may require additional verification. Please allow, at most, 48 hours for the request to be honored. Removal requests will not be confirmed, only acted upon.

Every company's hierarchy is a little different. Designations for this directory are based on some of the companies I've worked for, but especially on the multi-media marketing company I work for now.

Bureaus and Their Delegations

Delegations with an * currently have low or no headcount (posted and queued). Excludes leadership.

Bureau of Client Engagement

Leadership

Billing*

Escalations*

Product Support*

Quality Assurance*

Sales*

Bureau of Compliance (Bureau-specific Internal Affairs and Auditing)

Leadership

Client Engagement*

Facilities*

Finance*

Human Resources*

Information and Technology*

Legal (General)

Legal (Leadership)

Marketing*

Bureau of Facilities

Leadership

Catering*

Environmental (Janitorial, HVAC, and Plumbing)*

Mechanical (Electrical, Elevators, Equipment Maintenance)*

Premise* (Grounds Maintenance and Real Estate)

Purchasing* (From pushpins to pallet jacks)

Security

Warehousing* (Shipping, Receiving, Mail room, and Inventory)

Bureau of Finance

Leadership

Accounting

Asset Management*

Investments*

Travel and Accommodations*

Vendor Relations*

Bureau of Human Resources

Leadership

Career Development (Internships and Internal Role Transitions)

Dependent Care*

Employee Activities Committee (Members are volunteers)

Employee Benefits*

Floating Delegates (Administration) (For profiles that list a nondescript secretary/admin/receptionist/assistant role)

Floating Delegates (General) (For profiles that do not list a position)

Floating Delegates (Leadership) (For profiles that list a nondescript managerial role)

Health Services*

Payroll*

Recruiting*

Training*

Union Relations*

Bureau of Information & Technology

Leadership

Data Security*

Infrastructure*

Public Relations

Research and Development*

Systems and Devices*

Telecommunications*

Bureau of Marketing

Leadership

Copy

Design

Planning and Implementation*

Board of Directors

Chief Officers

CEO - Chief Executive Officer/President

COO - Chief Operations Officer/Vice President

CCO - Chief Compliance Officer/Vice President

CFO - Chief Finance Officer/Vice President

CITO - Chief Information and Technology Officer/Vice President

CMO - Chief Marketing Officer/Vice President

Executive Administration* (Admins that report to chief officers)

#new simblr #the simblr office #thesimblroffice #pinned

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fairyable · 6 months ago

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Fuck it, list of unhinged things my boss has done

Pronounced colleagues 'colLEAGUES' today on a phone call, despite running an entire company. He is a native English speaker.

Completely 180-ed his stance on a service we run three whole times in a meeting (promising to completely abandon the project, and then to prioritise it, and then to abandon it again) preceding each statement with "obviously"

"Next week we're really just going to push on and finish up so we can start getting started"

Insisted on daily morning 1-to-1 meetings despite me being a part-timer who works less than 2 hours per day

Spent upwards of six months pretending he had to go and talk to upper management when he had to make decisions. There is, of course, no upper management.

(Oh dear god, am I upper management?)

Instead of pulling the classic move of taking credit for other people's ideas, he regularly attempts to convince employees that various things were our ideas. This, so far, has benefitted nobody and is only confusing.

Tried to monitor ethnic diversity data by guessing

Concealed, for inscrutable reasons, that my colleague (and I guess also boss?) is actually his brother and lives under the same roof as him

Regularly invents, as far as he is aware, parts of my job/personal history to boost my credibility to other colleagues. (I am fine with this as, unbeknownst to him, I usually do actually have the experience he is fabricating)

Called me after going to China for a week to make work connections, and (alongside his brother) frantically tried to convince me to run a webinar wearing a Winnie the Pooh costume. I have no idea whether he was aware of the political implications of this.

Keeps me around because I am "going to say no"

Had a serious talk with me where he emphasised that clients "aren't going to be there for you when times are tough," which was a truly chilling insight into his psyche.

Hasn't taken a single day off work since I joined the team almost a year ago, weekends included.

Began literally frothing at the mouth in a 1-on-1 meeting as he was talking about his plan to "rule the world" (his words. we're a very small company)

When I had to take a couple of weeks off work due to a very imminent physical health problem, he misheard the word "pressure" (there was pressure on my brain/optical nerve) as "depression," and gave a supportive yet concerning pep talk with reference to his own struggles. I am not sure how he made sense of the fact that it was making me go blind, but I also couldn't be bothered to explain.

#boss #bossman #anticapitalism

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rjzimmerman · 6 months ago

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The agency that carries out this "program" is called the Wildlife Services of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. I hate this agency with all the passion I can generate, and have ever since I learned about it and what it does 15 years ago. It exists to murder wildlife, particularly to benefit farmers and ranchers. Long ago, someone put handle on the agency, calling it the "gopher chokers." The name fits. I have done more than a fair amount of yelling to my dead representatives in Congress and senators to dismantle the agency or change its purpose and mission.

My favorite statistic. I don't remember the year, but let's just say 2014. In that year, Wildlife Services killed about 350,000 red-winged blackbirds. Why? They were eating sunflower seeds in sunflower farms. You'd think that a sunflower farmer should be taking that risk rather than causing us taxpayers to make his profit for him, right?

Other stats. We're starting to believe that beavers need to be returned to the wild to help us with floods and drought resistance. Wildlife Services killed 24,603 beavers in 2023. Other stats for death: 525 cardinals; 68,562 coyotes; 430 black bears; 17,109 mourning doves; 6,952 cattle egrets; 1,292 red foxes; 24,744 Canadian geese (even though they are protected by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act); 1,209 jackrabbits (four species of them); 1,981 possum; 905 robins. I could go on, but I'm going to puke. Here's the link to the chart.

Sorry about the length of this post, but it takes a while to describe pure evil.

Excerpt from this story from NPR:

The United States Department of Agriculture's [USDA’s] Wildlife Services program is a holdover from the 1930s, when Congress gave the federal government broad authority to kill wildlife at the request of private landowners. In that era, government-sponsored extermination programs for native wild animals, like wolves and grizzly bears, were common.

After the Endangered Species Act was passed in 1973, federal agencies were required to change course and start helping some of those wild animal populations recover. But today, Wildlife Services employees still kill hundreds of thousands of noninvasive animals a year, data from the agency shows. Even species considered threatened under the Endangered Species Act, like grizzly bears, are not exempt. So long as livestock or human life are threatened, federal rules allow Wildlife Services to kill those animals, too.

Conservationist groups have long protested the program, saying the government is killing animals at the request of private livestock owners without first presenting enough evidence to show that the management methods aren’t harming the environment, as federal law requires.

“One of the biggest issues that comes up with Wildlife Services, and where we've beaten them in court multiple times in multiple states, is the controversy of the science,” said Lizzy Pennock, an attorney for the nonprofit WildEarth Guardians. “We need to get out of the framework of the 1800s and 1900s where it's like, kill any carnivores that might be inconvenient.”

Wildlife Services officials say that with the exception of invasive species, employees only kill wild animals that attack livestock or cause damage. But data obtained by NPR indicates the program often kills native wildlife that didn’t kill or injure livestock.

NPR obtained and digitized thousands of Wildlife Services work orders from Montana, created from 2019 through 2022, and built a database that shows that the program’s employees frequently kill native wild animals without evidence of livestock loss. The documents reveal that during those three years, employees killed approximately 11,000 wild animals on Montana properties where no wildlife was recorded as responsible for killing or injuring any livestock. In those cases, only a "threat" from those wild animals was logged in the records.

The agency frequently used helicopters and planes to shoot large numbers of wild animals at a time, the documents show, a method activists consider cruel and scientists say can lead to local eradications.

Although some livestock organizations financially support part of Wildlife Services' work, individual livestock owners do not pay a fee when federal employees come to their properties. Employees are allowed to kill wild animals on those private areas as well as on public land, like state forests and parks.

“That’s a bloodbath,” said Collette Adkins, a lawyer who leads the Carnivore Conservation program at the Center for Biological Diversity. “That just seems like yahoos with rifles killing everything they see that moves. It’s horrible to imagine the amount of suffering involved there.”

“Of all wildlife encountered in FY 2023, Wildlife Services lethally removed 5.14%, or approximately 1.45 million, from areas where damage was occurring. Invasive species accounted for 74.2% (1,079,279) of the wildlife lethally removed,” a representative wrote.

An NPR analysis of those reports shows that Wildlife Services killed more than 370,000 noninvasive animals across the country in the 2023 fiscal year. And over the past nine years, Wildlife Services killed 30 threatened grizzly bears and at least 1,500 gray wolves in states where they were otherwise supposed to receive protection under the Endangered Species Act, like in Minnesota and Wisconsin.

But the reports don’t reveal the names of the livestock owners that use Wildlife Services. That’s to protect the privacy of people in the agriculture industry, the agency has said. Wildlife Services also doesn’t disclose in those reports how many wild animals were killed by federal employees on public land.

#Wildlife Services #Department of Agriculture #gopher chokers #wildlife #farmers #ranchers

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meret118 · 1 month ago

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Since the arrival of a team from Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, Social Security is in a far more precarious place than has been widely understood, according to Leland Dudek, the acting commissioner of the Social Security Administration.

“I don’t want the system to collapse,” Dudek said in a closed-door meeting last week, according to a recording obtained by ProPublica. He also said that it “would be catastrophic for the people in our country” if DOGE were to make changes at his agency that were as sweeping as those at USAID, the Treasury Department and elsewhere.

. . .

But the full recording reveals that he went much further, citing not only the actions being taken at the agency by the people he repeatedly called “the DOGE kids,” but also extensive input he has received from the White House itself. When a participant in the meeting asked him why he wouldn’t more forcefully call out President Donald Trump’s continued false claims about widespread Social Security fraud as “BS,” Dudek answered, “So we published, for the record, what was actually the numbers there on our website. This is dealing with — have you ever worked with someone who’s manic-depressive?”

Throughout the meeting, Dudek made alarming statements about the perils facing the Social Security system, but he did so in an oddly informal, discursive manner. It left several participants baffled as to the ultimate fate of the nation’s largest and most popular social program, one that serves 73 million Americans. “Are we going to break something?” Dudek asked at one point, referring to what DOGE has been doing with Social Security data. “I don’t know.”

. . .

“I work for the president. I need to do what the president tells me to do,” Dudek said, according to the recording. “I’ve had to make some tough choices, choices I didn’t agree with, but the president wanted it and I did it,” he added later. (He didn’t name specific actions that Trump did or did not direct.)

. . .

At still another point, Dudek said that “I don’t want to fire anyone” but that “a lot of the structural changes that you’ve seen me make at headquarters, I’ve had long conversations with the White House about, and the DOGE team. … And that’s not to say I don’t have some more hard choices to come. The president has an agenda. I’m a political appointee. I need to follow that agenda.” Dudek also more than once dismissed Trump’s claims about Social Security fraud, which the president amplified just hours after Dudek’s meeting in a speech to Congress in which he implied that millions of probably-dead people over the age of 100 are receiving Social Security benefits.

. . .

Meanwhile, DOGE, which Musk has portrayed as a squad of techno-efficiency geniuses, has actually undermined the efficiency of Social Security’s delivery of services in multiple ways, many employees said. Under DOGE, several Social Security IT contracts have been canceled or scaled back. Now, five employees told ProPublica, their tech systems seem to be crashing nearly every day, leading to more delays in serving beneficiaries. This was already a problem, they said, but it has gotten “much worse” and is “not the norm,” two employees said.

And under a policy that DOGE has applied at many agencies, front-line Social Security staff have been restricted from using their government purchase cards for any sum above $1. This has become a significant problem at some field offices, especially when workers need to obtain or make copies of vital records or original documents — birth certificates and the like — that are needed to process some Social Security claims, one management-level employee said.

. . .

Dudek, who had been scheduled to speak for only 15 minutes, according to a copy of the agenda, instead spoke for around an hour, talking about everything from his upbringing by a disabled mother who’d depended on Social Security, to a 1989 book titled “Bureaucracy” that mentions Trump. He continued to vacillate between sharing advocates’ concerns for vulnerable Social Security recipients and sticking up for some of what DOGE has been trying to do at his agency.

. . .

Throughout, Dudek emphasized that he wanted constructive feedback and open conversation, because he cares deeply about the Social Security Administration and the people it serves.

He was honest about his shortcomings: “I’m in a role that I did not expect to be in,” he said. “I am an IT guy and a fraud guy.”

Dudek will eventually be replaced by Frank Bisignano, Trump’s long-term pick to run the Social Security Administration. At times, Dudek sounded fatalistic. “I’m the villain,” he said in the recording. “I’m not going to have a job after this. I get it.”

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I wonder if he meant Elon when he mentioned bipolar? Trump seems more malignant narcissist to me.

Trump and co are deliberately crashing these agencies so they can say, "See! They don't work! We have to get rid of them or privatize them." That way they can use the money for tax cuts or make money off of them.

#Trump #GOP #SSA #Social security

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karadin · 3 months ago

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While you were sleeping ...

Two plane crashes in two days create the largest amount of fatalities in the US in more than twenty years

In DC a passenger plane collided with a US military helicopter, 67 people were killed.

Trump blamed Diversity and Inclusion polices under Democratic administrations for the accident, and refused to go to the site of the crash as it was 'just water'. However the current hiring practices for air traffic controllers were put in place when Trump was President.

A small private medical plane crashed in Philadelphia, killing all on board and injuring people on the ground.

Elon Musk forced the Head of the FAA out of office, as this individual was prosecuting Musk for accidents involving Musk's company SpaceX

Trump shut down the Aviation Security Advisory Committee last week as well as firing the Transportation Secretary, and put a freeze on all government hires when he was inaugurated, which left the DC tower with only one air traffic controller at the time of the accident instead of two.

Trump plans to put 25% tariffs on our allies Canada and Mexico and a 10% tariff on China (additional) as of Feb 1,

which is tanking the stock market and guaranteed to raise prices if trade wars begin

The a top Treasury official, having served in a non partisan fashion for 30 years is retiring in protest over Elon Musk seeking access to all federal monies through The Bureau of Fiscal Service

This secure system processes Social Security and Medicare benefits, federal salaries, payments to government contractors, grants, and tax refunds, among it's purview. Only a small number of career officials control Treasury’s payment systems. Experts do not know why Musk would need this level of access.

ELON MUSK LOCKS FEDERAL EMPLOYEES OUT OF THEIR ACCOUNTS

Workers at the Office of Personnel Management, have had their access to department data revoked. They lost access to the Enterprise Human Resources Integration database, which includes the dates of birth, Social Security numbers, appraisals, home addresses, pay grades, and length of service of government workers.

“We have no visibility into what they are doing with the computer and data systems, There is no oversight. It creates real cybersecurity and hacking implications.”

Trump changed the email system so that every single federal worker could be contacted with one email. all 13,000 employees of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, were flooded with explicit spam emails on Thursday.

The federal gov system email no longer has a basic form of security. Trump admin is now being sued for the lack of privacy for all federal employees

Trump has fired all prosecutors at the DOJ who were linked to investigations of Jan 6th insurrection, despite the fact they were only following the direction of their bosses. The prosecuters might file a class action lawsuit.

Trump fired the Head of the Consumer Protection Agency

which among it's numerous investigations held Wall Street accountable for cheating hard-working families and prevented the de-banking of Americans across the country

FEDERAL EMPLOYEES ARE NOT TAKING TRUMP'S FALSE 'BUYOUT' which has led to a begging email from Trump, the President has no authority and no budget to pay employees for not working.

Trump is telling federal employees to remove any pronouns from their email signatures

Governor J.B. Pritzker of Illinois is blocking any January 6 rioters pardoned by Donald Trump from working for the state, other states may follow suit.

Trump has gutted the National Labor Relations Board and moves to invalidate labor agreements with federal workers

Thousands of agents with the FBI are facing reivews, possible loyalty tests and terminations

ELON MUSK has put his employees into the General Services Administration which controls public buildings, he's taking their proprietary public-paid tech and planning to sell off government real estate.

REMEMBER, THE OFFICE OF DOGE WAS SUPPOSED TO BE 'ADVISORY' NOT LET LOOSE TO CONTROL THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT, ONLY CONGRESS CAN SET THE BUDGET AND DIRECT SPENDING, ALL OF THESE ACTIONS ARE ILLEGAL.

SEEYOU IN COURT

#trump #elon musk #illegal #national labor relations board #faa #tsa #air safety us #aircraft collisions #dc air crash #federal employees #consumer protection #privacy #national security #damn

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bloodpen-to-paper · 2 years ago

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Federation Employee and Persons of Interest Statistics List

Notice: "Federation Employee and Persons of Interest Statistic List" is subject to revisions and editing upon further inspection and/or upon gathering new and incoming information. "Official Server Member Federation Employees" statistics list does not include freelance services taken on by members of the island, such as Philza Minecraft or IronMouse, nor will it include Federation NPC server members. Only officially hired jobs given to players applied and approved by the Federation shall be recorded.

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Official Server Member Federation Employees

---Cellbit--- Occupation: Private Investigator Background: Joined as a double agent hoping to gain intel on the Federation. Accidentally signed a contract to work for them and dedicated months of research funneling them information believing he was working against them. Despises the Federation for their imprisonment of him and the island members, among other factors [see "Felps: Reason for Interest"], and dislikes that he is working under them. Continues to keep up appearances that he is at the very least neutral about his situation. Additional Details: Currently Employee of the Month

---Jaiden Animations--- Occupation: N/A Background: Harbored a soft spot for Cucurucho that gained her their trust and landed her a job in the Federation. Was revealed by Cucurucho to have helped the Federation at a prior point in time that she has no recollection of. She maintains the lie that the Federation kidnapped her and that she distrusts them to keep secret the fact that she actually works for them. Additional Details: Currently the only one (besides Foolish, who she told of this) that definitively knows there are multiple Cucuruchos

---Foolish Gamers--- Occupation: Detective, Potential Law Enforcement Background: Begged Asked the Federation for a job in order to obtain benefits and rewards (mainly a shiny badge and a controllable corporeal cloud that functions as an automobile). Officially became part of the Federation upon taking on the task of arresting Tazercraft for the supposed kidnapping of Mr. Mustard the capybara, whom he shares a close relationship with. He continues to work for the benefits, and keeps up the search for Mr. Mustard. Additional Details: Is jealous that Cellbit has more notoriety within Cucurucho's favor and the Federation than he does [see "Cellbit: Additional Details"]. Frequently goes out of his way to gain Cucurucho's favor, in whatever way that may be

---FitMC--- Occupation: Janitor, Plumber Background: Obtained a job at the Federation as a standard janitor/plumber, a seemingly unobtrusive and out-of-the-way occupation, with the objective to gain player data from the Federation in order to deliver it to an outside source. Secretly anti-Federation but acts friendly towards them and keeps from doing anything overtly anarchist in order to maintain his cover. Additional Details: Close with Tazercraft, who are staunch anti-Federationists/anarchists, and has aided them in multiple missions from acquiring classified Federation intel to escaping Federation prisons. Has also received a hug from Cucurucho and is the only one to do so.

---AyPierre--- Occupation: Wine Supplier, Wine Vineyard Operator Background: Was originally a freelance wine maker and distributor (alongside his co-worker Richarlyson) who sold wine to the Federation for the election dinner event. Was later approached by Cucurucho to become a personal wine supplier under the Federation, presumably for future hosted events. The construction of a vineyard was established for Pierre to use for his production, as well as to manage over as the official vineyard operator. Additional Details: Dreamed of a white bear performing brain surgery on him before the plane crash where he supposedly arrived for the first time. Has also committed countless illegal acts against the Federation of which he is rarely held accountable, such as acquiring a piece of a Luzu computer [see "Luzu/Arin: Reason for Interest"]

---El Quackity--- Occupation: Live Show Announcer, N/A Background: Assigned to host the live show announcing the winner of the presidential election behind closed doors. Ran for this election before he was eliminated via assassination. Server members heavily speculated that El Quackity ran as president as a Federation pawn, though this has yet to be proven. Is part of the Federation's experiments regarding specimen eggs, and maintains access to player data most other members are not aware exists [see "FitMC: Background"]. Additional Details: Speculated to have been a clone of Quackity put into the server by the Federation after their abduction of Quackity, as he acts differently, held gaps in memories that Quackity should have known, had strange skin textures around the frame of his face, and had "El" in his name.

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Additional Persons of Interest

---Forever Player--- Reason for Interest: Current President of Quesadilla Island. Works with Cucurucho to utilize all powers granted to the role of presidency by the Federation. Yet to see the full extent in which this role will provide in terms of power to the president and his relationship with the Federation. Currently, the President is working on an animal conservatory on behalf of the Federation, and has already established certain mods such as the Cosmetics Mod. Additional Details: Suspected of having a closer relationship to Cucurucho than a simply professional one by certain island members; unclear of the accuracy of this claim. Has plans to build a prison and establish an active voting system.

---Tazercraft--- Reason for Interest: Guilty of frequently committing illegal acts (destroying Federation projects using the C.A.R.L.A. world eater, illegally traveling into the Nether using a previously inactive Federation-owned Nether portal, etc.) Tazercraft were arrested by Detective Gamers on behalf of the Federation [see "Foolish Gamers: Background"] and imprisoned in the official Federation jail, of which they escaped along with Federation employee "Walter Bob" after killing one of the prison guards. Additional Details: The surviving prison guard abducted "Walter Bob" after the escape, as well as Pac of Tazercraft. Though fellow Tazercraftian Mike was able to free him, the status of "Walter Bob" remains unknown. Unclear if the actions of the guard were carried out on official Federation orders or as a personal vendetta against Tazercraft for the loss of their coworker at Mike's hands.

---Maximus--- Reason for Interest: Underwent a medical examination by Cucurucho following a belief of pregnancy; was found to have been infected with a deadly parasitic entity. Following this discovery, subject was given emergency surgery to have the parasite removed, of which was proclaimed to be a success by the head surgeon (Cucurucho). However, subject later found a code infection in his leg, of which only his surgeon is aware of currently. Additional Details: Co-founder and co-leader of the Ordo Theoritas, an anti-Federation conspiracy group of which the Federation has been made aware of in terms of the subject's involvement. Previously arrested and imprisoned for one day by the Federation after committing illegal acts. Also involved in an incident where he sought out the Angel in order to revive his dead egg Trump, before he was given an ultimatum by the Federation that ceased him from receiving the Angel's help.

---Roier--- Reason for Interest: One of the first persons to befriend Cucurucho. Proof of Cucurucho's incompetency revealed by their relationship to Roier, and since measures have been taken to ensure Cucurucho has and will always achieve absolute perfection. Additional Details: Continues to summon Cucurucho, and is determined to understand their nature as well as the changes made to them.

---Felps--- Reason for Interest: One of the first persons to befriend Cucurucho. Initially taken by them and kept in cryogenic containment for roughly one month as part of a potential deal to gain lives for his son Richarlyson. Was awakened and rescued by the other island members alongside family member Cellbit, who had also been abducted in his search for Felps. Upon rescue, both subject and his companion were found to have strange markings on their body, Felps having one on his arm. No overt effects have come from these physical changes as of yet. Additional Details: After his abduction, subject has harbored resentment towards Cucurucho and the Federation

---Quackity--- Reason for Interest: Subject to unknown experimentation by the Federation that resulted in a severe loss of memory (short and long term), an inability to properly recognize the physical appearance of the eggs, and an inability to recognize or create proper writing. Upon release, has since only spoken in Spanish (despite being bilingual) and has been given writing lessons by Cucurucho, who carried out the initial experimentation. Additional Details: Previously attempted to establish deals with Cucurucho in order to revive his deceased egg Tilín; unclear if these talks yielded any results.

---Baghera Jones--- Reason for Interest: Former subject of experimentation and torture at the hands of the Federation. Was under Federation custody since childhood until she escaped using a presumably make-shift boat. Holds no memory of her past regarding the Federation, and has only vague memories of knowing her fellow French-speakers before arrival on the island. Current status unknown. Additional Details: Was made aware of this knowledge by following a trail leading to an abandoned building with a diary signed by herself sometime prior.

---The Angel and the Demon--- Reason for Interest: Divine entities descended by the gods known for producing and distributing illegal items to the islanders. Holds the ability to perform resurrections on deceased eggs. Currently unable to be contained or withheld by the Federation. More information is needed before actions may be taken. Additional Details: The Angel was once involved in an indirect conflict regarding the Federation and the resurrection of the deceased egg Trump [see "Maximus: Additional Details"] in which it was made clear the Federation wished for the Angel and Demon to have as little involvement as possible with the Federation's plans.

---Luzu/Arin--- Reason for Interest: AI entity residing within the body of Luzu. Fronts Luzu's body during moments of Luzu being unconscious (sleep, fainting, etc.) Source behind "Luzu computers" that occasionally appear around the server. Federation has dubbed it illegal to desecrate and/or steal resources from these computers as they contain illegal Create items. Full extent of the relationship between the Federation and the Luzu computers is unknown. Additional Details: Arin occasionally interacts with the island inhabitants via chat message to leave cryptic messages in binary, of which is their only supposed way of written communication. They have warned of "a door opening" among other concerning matters.

---Binary Codes--- Reason for Interest: Rogue AI entities that target the island inhabitants and their eggs. Held a predominant focus on attacking any egg with two lives until they were down to one. Have been proven to be capable of learning from past instances, as well as cloaking their appearance into that of an egg. Federation continues to ignore their existence. Additional Details: Rumors have declared the Binary codes to have been creations of the Federation that went rogue and now attack supposed other Federation creations (the eggs). Contained powerful weaponry in the form of the CPV2 Shield, which has infinite durability and is the only known item immune to the Code Breaker Sword, as well as the pieces of the aforementioned Code Breaker; these items were taken from certain Binary Codes after a loss in combat to Etoiles, the current only island resident to wield such equipment.

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thessalian · 3 months ago

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Thess vs Insurance

So there's an unsubstantiated but unfortunately believable thing going around that's talking about the US government "monitoring any negative commentary about health insurance CEOs". Given that they're currently trying to put threatening violence to an insurance company CEO in the "terrorism" category ... yeah, I can't prove it, but I can see it.

Now, look. I only spent four years in the US, and I was lucky enough to be healthy (and on my mother's health insurance) during that time. The other ... very large number of years of my life were spent in ... I'm sorry, civilised countries with national healthcare. Yes, the NHS has its problems, and Canadian Medicare probably did too, but at the end of the day, it's free at point of use and overall, it does its best. But I'm honestly not here to talk about the difference between national healthcare and the system in the US - we all know how bad the US system is. I am here to talk about insurance in general. Which I suppose is the underlying reason for how bad the US system is, so y'know, it is what it is.

I've never worked in health insurance, but I did work for a home and contents insurance company once. It was actually my first office job. I started with just data entry, but it wasn't long before they had me handling calls. And ... y'know Robert Parr in The Incredibles? ...Yeaaaaaah... Because it was fucking awful. People had their houses wrecked by inclement weather or had all their shit stolen by criminal shitheads, and had paid out the arse for their insurance premiums every year, and we were being ordered to use every loophole in the book to deny their claims. And I'm sitting there going, "But ... that's the service they paid us to provide..." Doesn't matter. Letting go of one red penny was an affront to management. And if by some circumstance we couldn't find a loophole and we did have to pay out, we'd be penny-pinching the whole way so that the customer got the bare minimum of coverage ... and the company kept as much of the profits as humanly possible.

The point is ... that's bad enough if it's your home contents. It's worse if it's your actual home. But worst of all is when it's lives on the line. And yet these people are treating human lives like a stolen television. And I think people just don't get how bad this is, especially with the rescinding of Biden's reduction of drugs costs. Like, I saw someone on Facebook saying, "You lefties will whine about anything! So what if insulin's expensive? Cope!" and ... it seems incredible to me, but I don't think that person knows what insulin does. Or ... you know, is. It's like they think it's a kind of antidepressant (which would be bad enough, by the way, but you know how the folks on that side of the political fence talk about how needing antidepressants and the like is 'weak').

I think I only say that because I don't want to believe that there's a human being who knows what insulin is, and how deadly the lack of it is, and how some people need store-bought through no fault of their own, and would still say that. I cannot be that depressed right now.

Health insurance CEOs are plain evil. I mean, it's a fact. They are not there to serve their clients; they are there to fleece them. It is literally in the employee handbook - every way to weasel out of having to save someone's life is codified and forced on every single one of its employees. I wonder how many of those employees have their souls die a little every day as they do this.

Thinking of that makes me think of the mess Theresa May made of the benefits system over here, when so many people were having their benefits taken away under her new system... Gods, it was awful and probably still is, with people being deemed fit for work while they were undergoing aggressive chemotherapy and worse. At the time, there was a blip on the news that the situation was so bad that the people manning the phones at the DWP (Department of Work and Pensions) were given these little pink cards to put by their phones - a script for what to do when their callers started talking about suicide. It happened that often.

I wonder if they still have those little pink cards. I would bet they do. We just don't talk about it anymore because, among other things, too many people are trying to put on their own oxygen mask first and praying they don't become disabled.

To summarise ... okay, look. The dictionary definition of terrorism is "the unlawful use of violence or intimidation, especially against civilians, in pursuit of political aims". I suppose that's fair, in its way - capitalism is a political system as well as an economic one, although I personally don't believe that money should talk as much as it does in the political sphere (which I guess makes violence and intimidation against CEOs doubly political, really). However, there's a word whose legal definition is "when a person is of sound mind and discretion and unlawfully kills another, in an act that is not self-defence". That word is "murder".

I know insurance companies. I worked in one. My mother was a broker in one for years (professional liability, in her case, for lawyers no less). I know how carefully insurance companies choose their words, and why. They want careful with words? I can give them careful with words. By the legal definition, every health insurance CEO is a murderer. And the legal definition of "self-defence" is "a defence permitting reasonable force to be used to defend one's self or another". So one could argue that this particular shooter was acting in self-defence, because someone was going to die - and statistically, several people probably already had died - by that man's actions.

That's the theory, anyway. But because money talks so loud in politics now, insurance companies are seen as vital institutions and we're just expendable. But I still think that they might want to be careful about throwing legal definitions of terrorism at people. I'm sure if we checked a few legal definitions, we could find a couple of good ones for the actions of health insurance CEOs, and "murder" is the least of them.

#Thess has opinions #Thess on politics

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syteline-csi · 9 months ago

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#erp software #infor #syteline #cloudsuite industrial (CSI)#manufacturing #service providers #customer owned inventory

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mariacallous · 1 month ago

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Democrats on the House Oversight Committee fired off two dozen requests Wednesday morning pressing federal agency leaders for information about plans to install AI software throughout federal agencies amid the ongoing cuts to the government's workforce.

The barrage of inquiries follow recent reporting by WIRED and The Washington Post concerning efforts by Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to automate tasks with a variety of proprietary AI tools and access sensitive data.

“The American people entrust the federal government with sensitive personal information related to their health, finances, and other biographical information on the basis that this information will not be disclosed or improperly used without their consent,” the requests read, “including through the use of an unapproved and unaccountable third-party AI software.”

The requests, first obtained by WIRED, are signed by Gerald Connolly, a Democratic congressman from Virginia.

The central purpose of the requests is to press the agencies into demonstrating that any potential use of AI is legal and that steps are being taken to safeguard Americans’ private data. The Democrats also want to know whether any use of AI will financially benefit Musk, who founded xAI and whose troubled electric car company, Tesla, is working to pivot toward robotics and AI. The Democrats are further concerned, Connolly says, that Musk could be using his access to sensitive government data for personal enrichment, leveraging the data to “supercharge” his own proprietary AI model, known as Grok.

In the requests, Connolly notes that federal agencies are “bound by multiple statutory requirements in their use of AI software,” pointing chiefly to the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program, which works to standardize the government’s approach to cloud services and ensure AI-based tools are properly assessed for security risks. He also points to the Advancing American AI Act, which requires federal agencies to “prepare and maintain an inventory of the artificial intelligence use cases of the agency,” as well as “make agency inventories available to the public.”

Documents obtained by WIRED last week show that DOGE operatives have deployed a proprietary chatbot called GSAi to approximately 1,500 federal workers. The GSA oversees federal government properties and supplies information technology services to many agencies.

A memo obtained by WIRED reporters shows employees have been warned against feeding the software any controlled unclassified information. Other agencies, including the departments of Treasury and Health and Human Services, have considered using a chatbot, though not necessarily GSAi, according to documents viewed by WIRED.

WIRED has also reported that the United States Army is currently using software dubbed CamoGPT to scan its records systems for any references to diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility. An Army spokesperson confirmed the existence of the tool but declined to provide further information about how the Army plans to use it.

In the requests, Connolly writes that the Department of Education possesses personally identifiable information on more than 43 million people tied to federal student aid programs. “Due to the opaque and frenetic pace at which DOGE seems to be operating,” he writes, “I am deeply concerned that students’, parents’, spouses’, family members’ and all other borrowers’ sensitive information is being handled by secretive members of the DOGE team for unclear purposes and with no safeguards to prevent disclosure or improper, unethical use.” The Washington Post previously reported that DOGE had begun feeding sensitive federal data drawn from record systems at the Department of Education to analyze its spending.

Education secretary Linda McMahon said Tuesday that she was proceeding with plans to fire more than a thousand workers at the department, joining hundreds of others who accepted DOGE “buyouts” last month. The Education Department has lost nearly half of its workforce—the first step, McMahon says, in fully abolishing the agency.

“The use of AI to evaluate sensitive data is fraught with serious hazards beyond improper disclosure,” Connolly writes, warning that “inputs used and the parameters selected for analysis may be flawed, errors may be introduced through the design of the AI software, and staff may misinterpret AI recommendations, among other concerns.”

He adds: “Without clear purpose behind the use of AI, guardrails to ensure appropriate handling of data, and adequate oversight and transparency, the application of AI is dangerous and potentially violates federal law.”

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misfitwashere · 3 months ago

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ROBERT REICH

FEB 3

Friends,

I really hate to send you another email today, but I have to.

Elon Musk vowed yesterday to unilaterally cancel hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of government grants after he and his goons gained access to the Treasury Department’s vast payments system over the weekend.

The Treasury system disburses $5.4 trillion a year, or 88 percent of all federal payments, including social security checks. David Lebryk, who had spent more than 36 years in government and was responsible for overseeing the payments system — resigned abruptly Friday rather than turn over the system to Musk.

In short, the world’s richest man bankrolled Trump’s re-election campaign to the tune of some quarter of a billion dollars. In return, Trump tasked him with running a so-called “department of government efficiency,” and allowed him to get his hands on the keys to the kingdom.

But Musk hasn’t been confirmed by Congress. His “department” was never authorized by Congress. No one other than Trump has given Musk any authority. No one knows exactly who Musk’s goons are; they have not been vetted yet are handling some of the most sensitive personal information in the government.

Not even Trump has the authority to stop your Social Security payments, let alone your Medicare or Medicaid or unemployment insurance or your food stamp benefits.

Yet Musk and his goon squad assert they’re able to do so if they believethose payments are illegal.

Musk boasted on his social media site X that he was “rapidly shutting down . . . illegal payments.” But who is Musk to decide that a payment is illegal?

Musk’s boast came in response to a post on X by Mike Flynn, Trump’s disgraced former national security adviser, that contained a spreadsheet showing government payments to a number of Lutheran charities (which, by the way, are doing important work, and obtained the grants legally), Flynn claimed that the screenshots showed “there are MANY more organizations cashing in on our hard-earned money.”

But how did Flynn — who Trump pardoned in 2020 after Flynn pled guilty to lying about his contacts with Russians — obtain a screenshot of those government payments? And what else do Flynn, Musk, or any number of Trump insiders know about government payments made to any group or individual?

The conflicts of interest are wild. Musk’s own companies are government contractors that get paid through the Treasury’s payments system. Others contractors compete directly with Musk’s companies. Musk’s goons with ties to the tech sector could benefit financially from steering federal money this way or that,

And why in hell does Mike Flynn have this kind of access? After pleading guilty to a federal crime, Flynn has spent the last few years as the headliner for the ReAwaken America Tour (or RAT for short), a traveling carnival of MAGA politics, Trumpian “prophecies,” anti-vax rhetoric, COVID-19 conspiracies, and Christian Nationalistic messages of revenge against those who oppose Trump. A regular on the tour with Flynn was Kash Patel, Trump’s nominee to lead the FBI.

Other Musk goons have gained access to the U.S. Agency for International Development, following a clash with security officials over the weekend. They have effectively closed the agency.

Reminder: USAID is an independent organization whose independence is codified into law. “It’s a coup,” said a current USAID official. It was unclear when, if ever, the agency would be up and running again, the official added.

Last week, Musk’s goons locked career civil servants out of computer systems at the Office of Personnel Management containing personal data on millions of federal employees, including dates of birth, Social Security numbers, appraisals, home addresses, pay grades, and length of service.

Senior career employees at the Office of Personnel Management have had their access to some of the department’s data systems revoked.

The actions inside OPM make it harder for anyone outside Musk’s inner circle to know what’s going on.

Friends, this does seem like a coup. Offhand, I can think of at least eight federal laws that have been broken by Musk and his goons over the last few days, and at least two provisions of the U.S. Constitution.

Much of this occurred over the weekend. “Very few in the bureaucracy actually work the weekend, so it’s like the opposing team just leaves the field for 2 days!” Musk wrote on X on Saturday.

Hello? Musk’s “opposing team” works for you. Musk works for Trump and Musk.

Musk and his goon squad are riding roughshod over the institutions of our government, negating decisions that hav been made by Congress. They are trampling on our democracy, and getting information about you that they have no right to have.

Democratic lawmakers along with any Republican lawmakers who still possess a shred of integrity should immediately seek an injunction from the federal courts to stop this pillage.

Meanwhile, you might call your senators and representatives in Congress and tell them you don’t want Elon Musk messing with your Social Security or anything else. That number, again, is 202-224-3121.

The departure of Mr. Lebryk and potential for interference with the nation’s payment systems comes when the Treasury Department has begun to use so-called “extraordinary measures” to prevent a government default after a suspension of the debt limit expired.

Members of the departing Biden administration were alarmed by the request, according to people familiar with their thinking. The people making the requests were on the Trump landing team at the Treasury Department, according to a current White House official.

The inquiries into the Treasury Department’s payment processes have been led by the Musk allies Baris Akis and Tom Krause. Mr. Akis, a relative newcomer to Mr. Musk’s circle, is a venture capitalist who during the transition has focused on the Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service.

Last weekend, Mr. Krause, the chief executive of a Silicon Valley company, Cloud Software Group, again pressed Mr. Lebryk for access to the system, according to two people familiar with the request. Mr. Lebryk declined, the people said.

Mr. Akis and Mr. Krause did not respond to requests for comment.

After the request, Mr. Lebryk sought meetings with Mr. Bessent, the agency’s new secretary, and the Treasury Department’s new chief of staff, Dan Katz, to discuss the situation, according to the people familiar with the matter.

After meetings with Mr. Katz and Mr. Bessent, Mr. Lebryk was placed on administrative leave, two people said. Other career officials will oversee the payment processes after Mr. Lebryk’s departure.

Mr. Akis has made similar inquiries at the I.R.S. about its information technology as part of an effort to automate tax collection, according to people familiar with the matter. During the transition, Mr. Akis asked to visit a major fiscal service center in Kansas City, but was rejected by agency officials, one of the people said.

It is not clear if Mr. Akis has an official government role.

Mr. Krause is now working at the Treasury Department and has an employee badge, according to three people familiar with the matter. Mr. Krause has also led interviews of current U.S. Digital Service employees, many of whom are expecting to be laid off after the technology unit was renamed the U.S. DOGE Service.

The decision by Mr. Musk’s efficiency team to integrate into the federal government, rather than set up an outside body, has been driven by its view that burrowing into the existing U.S. Digital Service will give it greater visibility into federal spending. That, Mr. Musk’s team believes, could give it the ability to take drastic action over spending by giving it access to computer systems across the government.

During last year’s presidential campaign, Mr. Musk pledged to secure about $2 trillion in spending cuts, More recently, he has halved that goal. On Thursday evening, Mr. Musk claimed on X that cutting $1 trillion “would mean no inflation” because of anticipated economic growth. “Super big deal,” he said.

#robert reich

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justinspoliticalcorner · 3 months ago

Text

Ahmed Baba:

In his first two weeks back in office, President Trump’s “flood the zone” tactic is in full swing—this time, with the world’s richest man as his accomplice in chaos. The Trump Administration is moving with lightning speed to pursue its far-right agenda via executive order and test the bounds of executive power, seeking to unilaterally seize the power of the purse away from Congress. These moves have run into some early setbacks, with actions like Trump’s federal funding freeze facing legal roadblocks. As we sift through the torrent of actions, one developing dynamic that has yet to be halted is the increasingly dangerous, full-frontal assault on the federal bureaucracy led by Elon Musk. Elon Musk and his team of young engineers have taken over the US Digital Service and renamed it DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency). DOGE has been moving from agency to agency, freezing funds, gaining access to sensitive data, and putting civil servants who stand in their way on leave. They’re also seeking to outright dismantle agencies, which is blatantly unlawful. These moves apparently have President Trump’s full blessing. In the Oval Office on Monday, President Trump told reporters that “Elon can’t do, and won’t do anything, without our approval. And we’ll give him the approval where appropriate. Where not appropriate, we won’t.” The White House later said that Musk is a “special government employee,” which could cause Musk to run afoul of conflict-of-interest laws.

Musk, an unelected billionaire whose companies directly benefit from billions in federal contracts, has been given unchecked power over the federal government that regulates his own companies.

[...] DOGE has targeted the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), freezing funds and seeking to outright dismantle it. DOGE has forced its way into accessing the Treasury Department’s payment systems. DOGE has taken root in the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and made moves to push out career civil servants throughout the government. DOGE has its eyes on canceling leases of federal offices managed by the General Services Administration (GSA). The Department of Education is reportedly next on Musk’s list, with the Trump Administration reportedly drafting an executive order to shut down the department. All of this is directly in line with Project 2025’s core objectives, which many of us spent the past year warning about. Unilateral attempts to dismantle agencies are unlawful, and accessing sensitive data without proper security clearances could violate privacy laws. Lawsuits have already begun to fly, and Democratic lawmakers have been making a lot of noise and seeking new ways to express opposition.

[...]

Why Are They Doing This?

One of the core goals of the modern right-wing movement and Project 2025 is to cripple the federal bureaucracy and to reshape the federal government into a tool of the far-right. President Trump wants to expand executive power. As I’ve written about extensively, Trump is testing the boundaries of the law and this Supreme Court’s appetite for further expanding executive power. After the Supreme Court’s shocking immunity decision, the Trump Administration is likely seeking a further expansion of executive power greenlit by its right-wing justices. Given the Supreme Court’s clear openness to the unitary executive theory, Trump wants to see how much they will let him get away with. For example, if Trump and Musk are allowed to unilaterally dismantle the USAID, they could use that as a precedent to dismantle the other agencies they want to. This would spark a constitutional crisis, as the executive branch takes over a key power from the legislative branch. When it comes to Elon Musk specifically, he benefits from a government that can’t effectively regulate his companies, but it’s more than that. Musk is more than a mere oligarch right now. He’s operating effectively as a co-president. Elon Musk finally has the power he has always wanted. Born in South Africa, Musk is ineligible to run for president. But now, even while unelected, he has been given near-unilateral control over federal agencies. He is totally unaccountable to voters. And congressional Republicans, who hold the majority in the Senate and House, have shown little appetite for retaking their constitutional authority. We’ll see how long Trump tolerates sharing the attention with Musk. Two egos this big can’t work in tandem forever. The power dynamics will eventually run into friction. Until then, it’ll be up to the courts to stop this madness.

The Musk Coup has negatively impacted federal agencies and their employees.