The DOGE team included several convicted teenage hackers, one known as 'big balls', messing around in government systems and copying data to random laptops.
Fantastic.
I'll be interested to browse this sensitive data at some point when it inevitably becomes public in the next few years as a result of this kakistocracy.
No this is the DOGE team that was demanding that none of their access be logged while also requesting access with no limits from any device at any time.
All jokes aside I’m confused why some people are responding to valid criticisms of this team by saying that we only care because they’re young.
I don't know anyone who has worked with young 20 somethings and thought that they should have unrestricted access to sensitive data. This is not a comment on these people specifically, it's a comment on all people of that age. I include myself in that group. Under no circumstances should I have been allowed that kind of access at 22.
Snowdon, in his biography, recalls working with other 20-somethings in his work at the NSA. They abused their access egregiously. They were looking at people’s nudes and stuff.
I had access to nuclear emergency / war operations information and systems at 16-18. But it was far from unrestricted. I was working through a school program on a hazardous release modeling software system and needed access and everything was logged and reviewed. As it should be anywhere; and all my access to sensitive data over the following 30 years also was highly surveilled and I never had a problem with it because it’s sensitive data. This protects not just everyone else but me as well - I can demonstrate what I did with it was justified. It’s not about age it’s about accountability and judgement and these guys show neither.
It was some program between the federal programs in town and the school that provided for essentially internships. After mine was over I was offered a part time job. I had to go through a security clearance but being a kid I didn’t have much history to research. It’s not like I had a top secret clearance or anything, just enough for building access and basic non-prod development.
Right, but that's a comment on yourself, even if you meant that for everyone else. Society absolutely trusts 20 somethings for sensitive data all the time.
Don't give me the bullshit about "this situation". Go to your nearest hospital and notices a sea of young nurses handling you and your family's medical data on a clipboard, paper, and a very poorly secured 20 year old workstation.
You are inconsistent, and you will continue to be inconsistent. In fact, your bank account info is known by the teller who has similar qualifications, your purchases and address is known by the customer service representative hired straight out of high school or in a call center in Egypt, and so much more.
This talking point is entirely a political cudgel that only makes sense to the kind of folk that do not think past their favorite politician's tweets. On that fact, wanna know who's been managing your letters/calls that you've been sending your politician? These ones know your phone number, and any modern filter will be looking for your address.
> Go to your nearest hospital and notices a sea of young nurses handling you and your family's medical data on a clipboard, paper, and a very poorly secured 20 year old workstation.
If you ignore the core difference - scale - you won't be able to see the difference. Young nurse won't be able to leak all data on all people even if those local papers and workstation are left on the sidewalk for anyone to see
But what’s different is the lack of security review, clearance, oversight, monitoring, and review. It’s actually less about age and more about accountability and oversight of access, with transparency to all use and access to every oversight function now and in the future. The fact they’re young correlates well with poor judgement, but that’s irrelevant. Everyone can demonstrate poor judgement, or malicious action. The demand their activity be unrecorded and unreviewable creates the perception of malicious intent and the fact of their youth makes their judgement impeachable without review.
No, the joke is your naive statement. Unless you've been under a rock the last ten or so years, you'd understand how incredibly stupid the whole DOGE debacle is.
All the collected info will soon either be used against us or sold to the highest bidder. (No, that's not paranoia, that's how the current administration acts.)
It's amusing to me how so many people want to believe technical workers within the government are apparently all crusty, old, 50-something's instead of young "kids" in their twenties and thirties.
NSA, every branch of the military, and more are bursting at the seams with twenty-somethings that have access to some of the most sensitive information on the planet... yet nobody bats an eye.
Then we can consider the technical staff at places such as Experian, Capital One, and more... they're all fairly young too.
This has turned into quite the political narrative... "twenty-somethings have access to your data - be afraid, very afraid!"
I'm not sure what what op meant. At least two people there were teenage hackers, but not in a positive sense. They were part of crime organisations.
But even concentrating on the age part - people in their 20s are working NSA and others. They're extremely unlikely to have access to the most sensitive information unsupervised since they're not senior enough. And definitely don't have a Yolo level decision making responsibilities. The restrictions, reporting, clearances and rules following in some of those places are unlike anything Doge ever did.
Not sure what you meant by that. Even if you get the clearance of some level, it doesn't mean you get immediate access to everything you want. There are still limits on what work you're actually given.
> Neither do the people we're talking about.
In theory they don't. But then you get the recent story about the terrible AI document review that resulted in real actions. There's so little control that by stupid actions they ended up effectively making decisions. They literally got banned from working on some information without a supervisor because they were so reckless.
> Even if you get the clearance of some level, it doesn't mean you get immediate access to everything you want. There are still limits on what work you're actually given.
Right, and that's the case here too. They are receiving access to systems and data relevant to the tasks they have been assigned to do. There are consequences if any individual acts maliciously or abusing the access and data they have been granted - just like any other government department/agency/employee.
There's so much fearmongering going on regarding this story it's seriously amusing. Just a few years ago Equifax leaked every adult's financial information, including social security numbers and more - and yet the mere possibility of a potential leak (of the exact same information, by the way) is being treated like armageddon.
> They are receiving access to systems and data relevant to the tasks they have been assigned to do.
No, they're forcefully entering buildings, adding unapproved infrastructure with no oversight and get rubberstamped access to everything, with people in the way being threatened firing.
> There are consequences if any individual acts maliciously or abusing the access
No, there have been no consequences. The only ones we've seen were: 1. they have to stop, 2. they can continue but with supervision of someone. There's been access abuse already and it will not be prosecuted.
> yet the mere possibility of a potential leak
There were effectively leaks already. Where Doge was told no they can't access some data they already looked through, those were leaks.
I'm not sure why you bring up Equifax - yes, they're both bad ¯ \ _ ( ツ ) _ / ¯
> No, they're forcefully entering buildings, adding unapproved infrastructure with no oversight and get rubberstamped access to everything, with people in the way being threatened firing.
That's not what the court was ruling on. Nor is there any evidence that the subject were specifically responsible for these crimes.
>> There are consequences if any individual acts maliciously or abusing the access
> No, there have been no consequences.
That's how consequences work. First the violation, then the consequence. When is based on a number of factors. IN THIS CASE, we're talking about potential acts and consequences. Ofc they have not yet been assigned.
This is not a discussion when the responses are in the form of hypotheticals being assigned to the subjects out of frustration (I'm frustrated by the feckless courts too). None of us are directly involved. Assume good faith. Be kind.
There's so much reporting around the DOGE folks that is just off the wall bonkers. Locking themselves into CFPB and other agencies, after demanding not just admin level accounts but root access too systems that no one should access except in emergency cases.
These folks have seemingly unmitigated access to systems, in completely unhinged wild ways.
They also are executioners for the civil service. The recent reports on how NSF grants were all ran by a disinterested non communicative DOGE child seem to be all to common, just one of what this legion of state-ociding invaders are up to. https://www.techdirt.com/2025/06/02/a-23-year-old-crypto-bro...
Any attempt to dismiss the extreme panic & freak out that should be happening here is wild.
It's not wild. If anything, the abuse of anonymity on shared internet spaces is to be expected. There is no way under any normal circumstances that someone with the background of a script kiddie like BB would be hired to sweep the halls of Congress, let alone to have any kind of clearance to any private data of note.
Teenagers, as you say, are entrusted by the government with weapons that can destroy and cause untold amount of damage on personnel and property and nobody has complained about that. There even 17-year-olds with such responsibility. Also, plenty of people in their early 20s either have access to sensitive data or have access to code accessing such data.
> Are you suggesting there are no consequences for government employees who willfully steal and/or leak confidential data?
Depends on who your friends in government are.
> The Espionage Act of 1917, Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, and Economic Espionage Act, among others, beg to differ.
Assaulting police officers and trying to overthrow the government is also illegal. People have been convicted of it. And yet if you know the right people you won't suffer any consequences:
Prosecuting crimes under those acts requires an AG who's qualified and isn't kowtowing to a President more than willing to pardon traitors and a judiciary that isn't blindly following a conservative agenda.
with this administration, nobody is suggesting that at all. there is no doubt there are no consequences if you're taking orders directly from the supreme leader or his immediate staff. that's a certainty.
The one with a convicted criminal at the head of it who's been having a ball abusing his office because of an "immunity" that the Supreme Court invented specifically for him.
> It's amusing to me how so many people want to believe technical workers within the government are apparently all crusty, old, 50-something's instead of young "kids" in their twenties and thirties.
Wow, and here I thought it's because the guy calls himself "Big Balls" and has a career in .. Discord crypto scams? You know, hacker as in "criminal", just too stupid to appear on Brian Krebs.
Am I talking to GPT? Is your knowledge cutoff 2 years ago? Invoke the web tool, do the research. Bizarre redirect into statute reading, tremendously boring.
I’m thinking this is just one of those that’s become emotionally invested in defending a certain group for some reason and he’s going to make an argument against anything he perceives as a slight towards them.
The whole 'big balls' thing is a silly ad-hominem that weakens your argument.
I've worked with payment processing and some of the guys I saw makes 'big balls' look like an experienced and reliable custodian. Not to mention the high turnover, bargain priced overseas software outsourcing sweatshops.
"Ad-hominem" translates as "to the person" and means an argument that attacks the person they're arguing against rather than actually addressing the topic being discussed.
Here, the topic is a person. It's not an ad-hominem to describe facts about a person when your argument is explicitly about that person.
You're claiming that it's a logical fallacy to consider the conduct of people running an organization in order to evaluate its trustworthiness. That's absurd. Next time, take context into account when copy-pasting other people's arguments.
The US IC uses convicted hackers all the time. I was shocked when I learned that certain felons can still get a TS clearance, as long as they stay clean.
I don't mean to sound like a broken record, but we prove time-and-time-again that the GOP proudly elects puppets and lets them do whatever they want, and they barely care about governing, as long as they get the tax breaks in for the rich ASAP.
'Normie' takes are what's needed when dealing with sensitive data of this scale.
"Move fast and break things" is fine for startups risking their own life savings or venture capital. It's not ok for governments that are meant to be looking after the health and welfare of their population.
The Clinton / Gore approach seemed to work. Unfortunately it wasn't glamorously headline-making, it was just hard work, so it hasn't been replicated since.
"Understanding this culture" is understanding it needs serious adult supervision to work on things that support society itself.
Okay, yeah, but you kinda want people in your government to (a) not be defined by their history of trolling, (b) not be associated with crypto scams, and (c) maybe be marginally trained and competent at what they do, no?
Fantastic.
I'll be interested to browse this sensitive data at some point when it inevitably becomes public in the next few years as a result of this kakistocracy.