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privacy
After More Private Social Security Data Exposed by Team Trump, Where Will GOP 'Draw the Line'?
"Over and over again, the Trump administration is exposing private Social Security data," said one watchdog group who called the leak of personal information "a goldmine for identity thieves" and other fraudsters.
May 03, 2026
A newly reported failure of the Trump administration's ability to handle sensitive private information in the social programs it is tasked with operating triggered a fresh wave of anger over the weekend after it was revealed that healthcare providers' Social Security numbers were made public as part of a faulty Medicare portal rollout.
The Washington Post discovered the compromised database and alerted the administration last week, before publishing a story about it on Friday, after efforts had been made to protect the sensitive information from further compromise.
According to the Post:
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) last year created a directory to help seniors look up which doctors and medical providers accept which insurance plans, framing it as an overdue improvement and part of the Trump administration’s initiative to modernize health care technology.
But a publicly accessible database used to populate the directory contains some of the providers’ Social Security numbers, linked to their names and other identifying information. For at least several weeks, CMS made the database available for public use as part of its data transparency efforts.
While the reporting noted that the files were "not immediately visible to users who [visited] the provider directory," lawmakers and experts said the compromised information would be a treasure trove for fraudsters.
“The more we learn about how the Trump Administration handles the people’s most sensitive data, the clearer their incompetence becomes."
Critics pounced on the new reporting, calling it "yet another mess-up by the Team Trump" and only the latest evidence that the administration cannot and should not be trusted to protect the nation's most successful anti-poverty programs or the sensitive personal data of the American people who entrust the government with that information.
"Over and over again, the Trump administration is exposing private Social Security data," said Social Security Works, an advocacy group that serves as a public watchdog for the nation's social programs.
The compromised database, said the group, "is a goldmine for identity thieves, scammers, and foreign governments. And it is undermining the very foundation of our Social Security system."
"This is a failure by this administration," said Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) in response to the reporting. "Exposing Social Security numbers, whether patients or providers, is unacceptable."
Rep. Richard Neal (D-Mass.), the ranking member of the House committee that oversees the Medicare program, put the onus on his Republican colleagues in Congress.
“The more we learn about how the Trump Administration handles the people’s most sensitive data, the clearer their incompetence becomes,” Neal told the Post in a statement. “Do House Republicans need to see their own data exposed before they do right by their constituents and act?”
In March, as Common Dreams reported at the time, a whistleblower filed a complaint with the Social Security Administration accusing a former staffer with Trump's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), run for a time by right-wing billionaire Elon Musk, of trying to share information from SSA databases with his private employer.
Since the outset of Trump's second term, DOGE's meddling with Social Security and Trump's undermining of the program have been the source of deep anger and concerns among the program's defenders.
In a social media post on Saturday citing the whistleblower allegations from March, Rep. John Larson (D-Conn.) said, "For more than a year, 'DOGE' has been combing through the American people's records. They want to use your data to overturn elections and profit in the private sector. Enough! This administration must be held accountable for this massive data breach!
On Friday, responding to the Post's new reporting about the compromised database of physicians' private information, Larsen condemned Republicans for their ongoing and pervasive failures in the face of Trump's malfeasance and incompetence.
DOGE, said Larsen, "has been in your data for more than a year. We just learned that physicians' Social Security numbers were publicly exposed in an online portal launched by ‘DOGE’ officials."
"If this isn't enough for Republicans to act," he asked, "where will they draw the line?"
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Privacy Advocates Relieved Trump Allies 'Can't Get Their Warrantless FISA Reauthorization Across the Finish Line'
"Our bipartisan movement in defense of civil liberties is holding strong," a Demand Progress campaigner said after Congress passed a short-term extension to continue talks on a longer renewal.
Apr 30, 2026
Just a day after Democrats in the GOP-controlled US House of Representatives helped Republicans send a major spying bill to the Senate, despite warnings that it was dead on arrival there, both chambers on Thursday passed a 45-day extension to continue negotiations.
The Senate approved the stopgap bill for Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA)—which allows the federal government to spy on electronic communications of noncitizens located outside the United States without a warrant—by a voice vote. The House signed off with a 261-11 vote, just hours before a previous short-term extension was set to expire.
President Donald Trump and his homeland security adviser, Stephen Miller, have been demanding a "clean" extension of the program, while critical lawmakers from both parties and over 100 civil society groups have called for privacy reforms to protect Americans whose data is swept up in federal surveillance efforts.
Hajar Hammado, senior policy adviser at Demand Progress, one of the organizations leading reform calls, said in a Thursday statement that "intelligence agencies, the White House, and their allies in Congress have tried every trick in the book from fearmongering to misinformation, but they still can't get their warrantless FISA reauthorization across the finish line."
"The reason we keep ending up at this point is congressional leaders' refusal to allow votes on overwhelmingly popular, bipartisan reforms," she continued. "This 'my way or the highway' approach needs to stop."
According to Politico, US Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) told reporters on Thursday that he and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) discussed the short-term extension during a closed-door meeting the previous day.
"I think there's already a pretty substantial dialog going on" between key Democrats and Republicans in both chambers, Thune added. "We're interested in looking at some ways in which it can be reformed... So we're entertaining those ideas at the moment."
Hammado declared that "when Congress returns, Speaker Johnson and Leader Thune must allow votes on amendments for real privacy protections or we'll keep repeating this farce over and over again. Our bipartisan movement in defense of civil liberties is holding strong, and we won't accept anything less."
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), a longtime defender of privacy rights who had threatened to block the extension, highlighted on social media Thursday that he "secured a commitment that the FISA court opinion revealing abuses of Americans' rights will be DECLASSIFIED before Congress votes on reauthorization."
"The more Americans know about these abuses," he said, "the more they'll demand real reforms."
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Key Democrats Under Pressure to Reject House GOP's New 3-Year FISA Extension
"Donald Trump and Stephen Miller want unfettered surveillance powers without any chance to enact protections, and Democrats must not give it to them," one campaigner warned.
Apr 23, 2026
A week after four Democrats helped Republicans pass a short-term extension of a controversial spying power with a dead-of-night vote in the US House of Representatives, Speaker Mike Johnson on Thursday released a bill that would renew the authority for three years—double the amount of time the Louisiana Republican and President Donald Trump were previously pushing.
As that bill text circulated, Demand Progress—one of the scores of civil society groups calling for privacy reforms to be included in any renewal of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA)—took aim at those Democrats: Reps. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (Wash.), Jared Golden (Maine), Josh Gottheimer (NJ), and Tom Suozzi (NY).
"Just like last time, Speaker Johnson's latest proposal lacks any meaningful privacy reforms, but this time, they're trying to renew FISA for three more years—twice as long as the Trump administration asked for," said Demand Progress senior policy adviser Hajar Hammado in a statement.
"Donald Trump and Stephen Miller want unfettered surveillance powers without any chance to enact protections, and Democrats must not give it to them," Hammado argued, referring to Trump's deputy chief of staff for policy and homeland security adviser.
"We need Reps. Gottheimer, Suozzi, Golden, and Gluesenkamp Perez to stand with the rest of Democrats and hold Donald Trump accountable," the campaigner emphasized. "A vote in support of this FISA bill, especially procedural votes to advance it, is both a vote to allow Donald Trump to continue invasive, warrantless surveillance of private American citizens, and to sabotage even the chance of protecting privacy."
FISA's Section 702 allows the US government to surveil electronic communications of noncitizens located outside the United States to acquire foreign intelligence information, without a warrant. However, it's been abused at least hundreds of thousands of times by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) alone—which has fueled calls for reforms, including closing the data broker loophole that agencies use to buy their way around the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution.
"Speaker Johnson wants to pretend this bill is reform, but it's the same type of empty-calorie proposal that failed last week," warned Jake Laperruque, deputy director of Center for Democracy and Technology's Security and Surveillance Project. "There is nothing in this bill that would have prevented the abuses of FISA 702 we've already seen—snooping on lawmakers, protesters, and campaign donors—and there is nothing that would stop even worse abuses in the future."
"Members of Congress have a clear choice: They can support this proposal and give the FBI and other intelligence agencies a three-year blank check, or they can stand strong and demand real reforms to protect the American people," he said.
Elizabeth Goitein, co-director of the Brennan Center for Justice's Liberty and National Security Program, similarly stressed how the latest bill is "almost identical to the one that failed last week," explaining on social media that "the main 'reform' in Johnson's first proposal was a provision that merely restated existing law, under which the government may not 'target' Americans under Section 702 but may do so with a warrant or FISA Title I order."
"That provision was titled 'warrant requirement,' even though it imposed no new warrant requirement whatsoever. And it had zero relevance to the issue at the heart of the debate over Section 702, namely, backdoor searches," she noted. "Backdoor searches are not considered to be 'targeting' Americans for surveillance. Rather, they are searches of collected communications of foreign targets outside the United States for Americans' communications that were 'incidentally' swept in."
"Astonishingly, Johnson has chosen to feature this same do-nothing provision in his new proposal. This time, the drafters have dropped any pretense of creating new law and titled the provision 'Fourth Amendment Requirement for Targeting United States Persons,'" Goitein continued. "This is not a reform bill, and it's not a compromise. It's a straight reauthorization with eight pages of words that serve no serious purpose other than to try to convince members that it's NOT a straight reauthorization."
According to her: "House members didn't fall for it last week, and they shouldn't fall for it now. Speaker Johnson must allow the House to vote on the reforms that members and the American people are demanding, including a warrant requirement to access Americans' communications."
The GOP narrowly has the numbers to pass legislation with a party-line vote in the House, but some of the chamber's Republicans have joined in the calls for privacy reforms. Libertarian leaders, including Justin Amash, a former Republican congressman from Michigan, have forcefully spoken out against Johnson's efforts.
"House Republicans are spitting on the Constitution and spitting in all our faces," Amash said of the bill unveiled Thursday.
Calling out the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and vast US Intelligence Community, Patrick Eddington, a senior fellow in homeland security and civil liberties at the libertarian Cato Institute, declared that "this is an HPSCI, SSCI, IC Trojan horse bill masquerading as something Fourth Amendment-compliant."
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) "is threatening to take over negotiations if the House GOP can’t resolve differences quickly," according to Politico. In the upper chamber, Republicans need at least some Democratic support to pass a reauthorization bill.
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