There may be an error in Schneier's reasoning here:
`They are also reportedly training AI software on all of this sensitive data.`
Running inference isn't the same as training.
That said, I don't think this should be flagged, that seems counter free-speech. He's got plenty of other well voted articles here on HN, a lot of HN clearly value his insights. Disagreement would be better expressed as a comment rather than trying to make it go away.
Yeah I think the articles make it sound like it's just inference.
However my theory is the goal is to actually train on what is essentially the output of all of these departments.
I honestly think what we are seeing in terms of the tech execution side basically boils down to BigBalls and co. asking an LLM what they should do next. If they ever get prosecuted I'd bet you good money that will be the defense...ROFL.
The premise of the article is that DOGE are "the attackers" and preventing them from accessing the data is something "career officials" in the government ought to be doing. That's obviously a partisan framing. The other party's position is that they've just been elected to audit and reduce government waste and direct access to data is necessary to prevent the principal-agent problem in which government officials shape their reports to protect their budgets and activities from undesired scrutiny and oversight.
The problem with framing it that way is that it's a request to get flagged by the opposing partisans even if there is some point to be made about maintaining change control etc.
There is nothing partisan about resistance to Trump. Resisting illegal acts causing damage yo the nation is not in any way partisan. I'm sure there are Republicans pushing for this as well.
Blindly following Trump is partisan.
Pretending Trump cares about waste isn't just silly its ridiculous and should be dismissed out of hand.
> There is nothing partisan about resistance to Trump.
Trying to characterize undifferentiated resistance to the leader of a party as non-partisan seems like a stretch.
> Resisting illegal acts causing damage yo the nation is not in any way partisan.
There are so many laws that basically everything is now illegal. If you want "illegal" to mean something you'd first need a legal system in which a non-zero number of people exist who follow the laws.
Choosing which laws to care about in a partisan way is partisan.
> Pretending Trump cares about waste isn't just silly its ridiculous and should be dismissed out of hand.
> Trying to characterize undifferentiated resistance to the leader of a party
Has nothing to do with party, has a lot to do with authoritarianism and opposing destruction of the government. many people resisting Trump have been Republicans far longer then he has and have more invested in it then he does. See former Republican Colorado head of state senate and head of state house https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norma_Anderson
I personally am a democrat and a mildly to moderately partisan one buy opposition to Trump isn't partisan.
> Choosing which laws to care about in a partisan way is partisan.
Trying to compare laws against
Jaywalking or pot to those against government malfeasance and corruption is ridiculous.
> This is your non-partisan argument?
Yes. Its based on facts not on partisanship. Trump is the most corrupt president we've ever had.
He welcomes the government spending stuff on him or his buddies. He sold access ay Margo Largo and not jusy for campaign contributions.
Also the closest he got to compromise was on the stupid and wasteful wall debacle, which was not stopped by democrats or concerns about waste but by resistance to even minor concessions wrt Dreamers.
I also don't find this part necessarily bad but Trump is less opposed to spending wasteful or not wasteful then previous Republican politicians.
The core of the problem might go to his "redefinition" of waste. Where a could of million specifically going towards minority groups or the environment (even when i5 has obvious value) is the swamp, while billions going towards corrupt implementation of a stupid and pointless thing like the wall are not waste.
> Has nothing to do with party, has a lot to do with authoritarianism and opposing destruction of the government.
Destruction of the government would be something like suspending elections or the executive using the military to disappear judges who make unfavorable rulings.
Destruction of the federal administrative state is fairly well inside the Republican platform at this point. It's what they said they were going to do and then people voted for them so now they're trying to do it.
> See former Republican Colorado head of state senate and head of state house
Parties change and then people change parties. "Former Republican opposes Republican" is the thing you'd expect them to do as implied by the word "former".
> Trying to compare laws against Jaywalking or pot to those against government malfeasance and corruption is ridiculous.
The laws against jaywalking or pot don't even scratch the surface. They're just the ones people know they're violating.
People have this problem where the law is supposed to specify ahead of time what is and isn't illegal, but doing that is hard and people also hate it when somebody is doing something they don't like but it turns out that thing isn't illegal. So what they've been doing, for a long time, is passing a lot of laws broad enough to encompass common behavior and then only enforcing them when somebody offends them, or rocks the boat.
There is also a variant of this for politicians where they pass a law that sounds good, and should be enforced against everyone, but is set up in such a way that enforcement is hard without the cooperation of insiders. So a politician is not allowed to solicit a bribe, but if someone pays them and then they pass a law that the someone likes, that's just fine, and if the bribe was solicited off-camera then neither of them have any incentive to report it because they both want the arrangement to continue. Which is how you get this:
> Trump is the most corrupt president we've ever had.
The amount of corruption in Washington is staggering. The place runs on it. The primary difference with Trump is that he has no shame.
It would be great if something was done about this, but nobody wants to throw the first stone because of all the glass houses, and targeting only Trump while ignoring all the rest of it is evidence of not liking Trump rather than not liking corruption.
> I also don't find this part necessarily bad but Trump is less opposed to spending wasteful or not wasteful then previous Republican politicians.
The true measure of this is whether government spending goes up or down during their administration, and by this measure every President of every party has been failing for generations.
But this is also the first time in a while that anything like DOGE has even been seriously attempted, and it's plausible that at least Musk wants it to actually do the thing. The real test is what they remove from the budget in a few months.
>There are so many laws that basically everything is now illegal
this is really your best retort? Just dismissing 250 years of the constitution, interpretations of the constitution, case studies, and various federal laws passed along the way?
Fine, let's throw away everything except the good old constitution... it's still illegal in 1790.
>Under Article I, Section 8, Clause 1 of the Constitution , Congress is granted the power to lay and collect taxes in order “ to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States. ”
These aren't some niche pockets of local law being defied here.
The clause you're referring to is the one granting Congress the power to collect taxes, and then limiting how that tax money can be spent. You can tell that it's a limitation rather than a grant because "provide for the common defense" would otherwise make the subsequent clauses redundant:
> To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;
> To provide and maintain a Navy;
Which wouldn't make much sense given that they're in the same article and were passed at the same time.
But let's suppose we're talking about a law where Congress is allocating tax money to something within their enumerated powers. Then that money goes to the executive. It would be pretty hard to argue that the executive could then spend the money on something else, but what if they don't spend it at all? Congress gave them money with the condition that they do a particular thing with it, and they don't want the money? It's not obviously true that they're required to take it, and would be consistent with the notion of checks and balances that they could turn it down.
This would make a lot more sense if there was a way to benchmark the effectiveness of a department. There are lots of edge cases in both directions that get ridiculous, but there must be a workable middle ground.
That said, I don't think this should be flagged, that seems counter free-speech. He's got plenty of other well voted articles here on HN, a lot of HN clearly value his insights. Disagreement would be better expressed as a comment rather than trying to make it go away.