Katie Drummond: charming. Well, we’ll have a short break. When we come back, we will be hosting where we leave, talking about how Americans should actually focus on their privacy and Doge access to their data. Welcome back to Uncanny Valley, I am Katie Drummond, Global Editorial Director for Wired. I’m here with Andrew Couts, our senior editor in security and investigations. Thank you again, Andrew.
Andrew Couts: Thank you for having me.
Katie Drummond: Let’s talk more broadly about Doge and American privacy. So, as we know very well, over the past few weeks, there has been a lot of coverage about Doge and what they do within the federal government. A lot of vortex, a lot of chaos and a lot of worries, right? Doge is more widely concerned between journalists and Americans, with access to various government systems, accessing data, and obtaining sensitive information about Americans. Can you explain what information might be accessed based on the agencies they currently work within the federal government?
Andrew Couts: So they will be able to use everything in nature and they will be able to make exactly how much money you live anywhere you live, no matter where you are, probably what your tax return knows. They will have access to your medical history, the appearance of your network, the appearance of your social network, wherever you work, and possible travel history.
Katie Drummond: There is a story I posted yesterday that I thought was really great and attended in just a few weeks, Doge employees visited federal employee records in the Office of Personnel Management, Treasury data on government payments data on the Ministry of Education student loans Recipients, information about the victims of the disaster at FEMA and the large amount of employment and workplace-related data from the Department of Labor. Then continue from there. I mean, it’s a tough effort to access and present a lot of really sensitive information about Americans. Can you take us through some different hypothetical scenarios? If Presidents Doge, Musk and Trump and the White House get all this data, get all these visits, what should they do?
Andrew Couts: One thing we consider internally within the wired is threat modeling, basically like the chance you will be targeted by any type of attack target? In this case, we must completely redefine the appearance of the threat model. This is especially true if you are a vulnerable person. So if you are trans, if you are immigrant, if you are seeking an abortion, just to throw out the most obvious example. This information can be used to locate you in one way or another, and we just don’t know how to use that information. Historically, you wouldn’t think a government employee with a high position (such as Elon Musk) would now tweet your banking record or your health record, which we can see if you’re publicly critical situations The Trump administration happened. Obviously, law enforcement, if the FBI will be able to use the vast amount of information they have to target the people they are targeting, we just don’t know. We have only been in this government for a month. We have seen a complete repression of immigration, which will evolve. We will go through at least four years of experience and it is really impossible for anyone to know if they will be targeted. So we just don’t know what the threat pattern looks like in an environment where anyone might be a political target. And, if we look at the authoritarian regime, it will use it in various types of ways. The data may be manipulated to compensate for allegations against people to charge crimes that people did not commit. For years, Wired has covered the best privacy practices, the best security practices and a lot of people just say, “If you have nothing to hide, don’t worry.” But now we don’t know what you’re going to worry about, we Not sure what you should hide and what you are trying to hide or what the government system protects may now be exposed. So, there are actually speculations about what might happen and what consequences will happen.
