5mo ago

Treasury watchdog launches audit of DOGE access to federal government's payment system

www.pbs.org

Summary

The Treasury Department’s Office of Inspector General is launching an audit of the federal government’s payment system due to concerns about access granted to Elon Musk’s DOGE team.

Treasury officials gave conflicting accounts of DOGE’s access, raising fears of improper data use.

The audit will also review security controls and transactions related to Musk’s claims of fraudulent payments.

The audit, expected to conclude in August, may issue interim reports if critical issues emerge.

19 comments

“Expected to conclude in August”
Government needs to be MUCH faster if they have any hope of prevailing here. Slow rolling ain’t gonna do shit.
- It's apparent you all haven't been auditors. These systems are massive, and a real audit (not the bullshit faux-audits that DOGE is supposedly doing) takes thousands and thousands of man-hours on massive systems. Yes, DOGE has only been around for less than a month, but they've setup unauthorized systems and servers all over the fucking government. I can imagine what they've done at the Treasury Dept is going to take a lot of careful work and study to trace everything and generate a full report with actual artifacts.
  That being said, at my job, we've had to comply with spontaneous audits on our network of over 100,000 devices (servers, workstations, appliances, etc) and have had it all completed within 2 months with around ~50 people working full-time. August is a tad extreme, but I'm guessing with such a sensitive system, they're going to want it to be extremely thorough.
  
  I don't care. Six months is an insane time frame relative to the impacts and is honestly feeding into Musk et al's narrative about government inefficiency. I understand a thorough audit takes time, but set a goal to release a preliminary report by end of March with an overview of major findings and then release the full report by June. But then they might have to work overtime...
  Otherwise they might as well throw their report directly in the trash because it'll end up being the Mueller and Smith investigations all over again: too late to matter.
- This is the problem. It is much faster and easier to destroy than it is to create (or preserve).
- it is a joke that they require six months to audit an organization which has been around for a month and mainly ran by a bunch of kids
  
  They are auditing the security of the payment system, not DOGE directly.
Monday's headline: Treasury Inspector General locked out of their offices office and fired by Trump administration
Yeah, an audit. That'll teach 'em
- I mean... you can really fuck an operation up with an audit. If you have enough backing that the organization being audited can't get rid of you, then you can basically grind everything to a halt and get dirt on everyone involved. They better be prepared for all the retaliatory shit they're gonna be targeted with though.
  This is the first step of just freezing everything that Musk's group of cronies is trying to do. It's a good first step because it has some official authority. I just hope the Democrats start throwing out "if you're not doing anything wrong then you have nothing to hide!" when the shit hits the fan.
  
  I mean, in theory yes... but what of an organization that apparently doesn't listen to courts?
  
  not if the audit is expected to conclude at the end of fucking August. Doge has been around for a month and you want half a year to audit them? do a mock audit while you are at it too?
Goodbye treasury department lol
Well, look at that. Musky’s lil coup department just found fraud at the Inspector General’s office.

19 comments