Through lawsuits and painstaking reporting, reporters and public interest organizations are trying to pierce the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)’s veil of secrecy to inform America about what the service is actually doing.
The group, led by billionaire Elon Musk, has said publicly that their records are under presidential immunity and are not subject to the Freedom of Information Act, which has led to numerous lawsuits to get the agency to disclose their records. This is in contrast to Musk’s own comment that “all government data should be default public for maximum transparency.”
On Friday, MuckRock hosted an online discussion to talk to experts about what they have discovered about DOGE and give their insights on what comes next for the fight for transparency.
WIRED reporter Vittoria Elliot has been covering how the group is building a massive database for the federal government by combining immigration data from the Department of Homeland Security, Social Security Administration and IRS.
Since DOGE is a reorganization from the U.S. Digital Service and not its own agency, it is able to use ambiguity to its advantage in avoiding public accountability, according to Elliot.
“The official channels of what constitutes DOGE has been fuzzy at best and non-existent at worst,” Elliot said.
Meanwhile, litigators on our MuckRock panel are working in the courts. Kel McClanahan is currently litigating a FOIA request with DOGE for emails between Elon Musk and DOGE staff.Jon Maier, Senior Litigation Counsel for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, spoke on the legal aspects of dealing with the group in disclosing records.
In the academic sphere, Mason Kortz, clinical instructor at the Harvard Cyberlaw Clinic at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, spoke on how DOGE uses its “wall of receipts” to skirt any type of “meaningful” transparency.
“That wall of receipts is not published pursuant to any outside auditing or authority that gives us any sense of completeness,” Kortz said.
To learn more about the efforts to uncover DOGE’s activities, watch the full discussion below or watch it on YouTube. You can also follow MuckRock’s DOGE page to see the requests are being made towards the organization.
