Social Security whistleblower quits after saying Americans’ data was compromised

The agency’s chief data officer said the U.S. DOGE Service had uploaded personal information for more than 300 million people to the digital cloud.

August 29, 2025 at 9:18 p.m. EDTYesterday at 9:18 p.m. EDT
4 min


The Social Security Administration's main campus, in Woodlawn, Maryland. (Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images)

By Maegan Vazquez and Meryl Kornfield

A Social Security Administration official responsible for overseeing the agency’s data access resigned from his role on Friday, days after submitting a whistleblower complaint alleging that U.S. DOGE Service staffers uploaded critical personal information for more than 300 million people to the digital cloud.

The SSA’s chief data officer, Charles Borges, wrote in a resignation letter to Commissioner Frank Bisignano that he was “involuntarily leaving” his position. The new leadership in the technology and executive offices “created a culture of panic and dread, with minimal information sharing, frequent discussions on employee termination, and general organizational dysfunction,” he wrote in the letter, obtained by The Washington Post.

In the whistleblower disclosure, which was sent to the Office of Special Counsel as well as several congressional committees, Borges raised concerns that DOGE staffers bypassed safeguards, circumvented a court order, and created a copy of the SSA’s entire collection of data that was put onto the cloud, or a network of remote servers on the internet. Borges said the agency had no oversight of who had access to the file.

Borges also said that his requests for visibility into the potential federal violations of the agency’s data handling “have been rebuffed or ignored by agency leadership, with some employees directed not to reply to my queries.” … Borges’ attorney, Andrea Meza, said in a statement that her client “no longer felt that he could continue to work for the Social Security Administration in good conscience given what he had witnessed. He will continue to work with the proper oversight bodies and will refrain from making any further comments at this time.”

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By Maegan Vazquez
Maegan Vazquez is a politics breaking news reporter. She joined The Washington Post in 2023.follow on X@maeganvaz

By Meryl Kornfield
Meryl Kornfield is a staff writer on the Politics desk of The Washington Post.follow on Xmerylkornfield