Explosive whistleblower report alleges DOGE data grab at labor agency

According to a new whistleblower filing, private labor data suspiciously left the National Labor Relations Board servers after DOGE took over.

There’s a chance that Elon Musk’s deputy with the nickname “Big Balls”—or at least several other of his colleagues at the “cost-cutting” DOGE—have been sniffing around confidential data held by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). That is, according to a new disclosure from a whistleblower who worked in IT at the NLRB.

Daniel Berulis, the whistleblower, claims that ever since DOGE’s arrival, data suspiciously left the NLRB network. This NPR article explains in-depth how they are facilitating it.

The whistleblower could not attest to what exactly DOGE is doing with the data. But the data leaving NLRB servers could include: sensitive discrimination or harassment cases with personal details about employees, proprietary business information or company financial documentation, or confidential information on union organizing efforts in industries from manufacturing to power plants. And the potential for usage of this data could be boundless: it could be scanned to train Musk’s AI companies, exploited in order to blackmail people, or used to identify proponents of “DEI.”

While DOGE likes to position itself as a band of misunderstood geniuses reimagining a bloated government, they are actually just repeating history. In the late 1950s, a little-known program pioneered by the FBI and called COINTELPRO was launched to “expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize” civil rights and Black rights through surveillance. Individuals were smeared and phones were tapped, and the FBI was building a target list of activists who were allegedly “threatening national security.”

Tapping phones and planting false reports in the news was bad then; now it seems quaint. According to Berulis’ lawyer at the non-profit Whistleblower Aid, when Berulis reported concerns to the NLRB, he was treated in a threatening way. NPR reported that:

A printed letter in an envelope [was] taped to [Berulis’] door, which included threatening language, sensitive personal information and overhead pictures of him walking his dog, according to the cover letter attached to his official disclosure. It's unclear who sent it, but the letter made specific reference to his decision to report the breach. Law enforcement is investigating the letter.

Berulis decided to file a whistleblower claim with Congress and the Office of Special Counsel. His lawyer Andrew Bakaj believes that the alleged intimidation tactics might have had “the opposite effect” of intimidation, in that it “empowered him to come forward.”

“The tactics used to try and silence whistleblowers may actually backfire against the government,” Bakaj continued. “And that’s because with Dan coming forward—in spite of the threat—contacts are reaching out to him and to us.”

The NLRB has been significantly handicapped and going through internal turmoil for months now. When Donald Trump took office, Trump fired one of the NLRB’s board members, leaving the regulatory body without the simple majority it needs to vote and make decisions. And Musk has long had the NLRB in his crosshairs. A group of SpaceX employees who were fired for submitting a letter about Musk’s “harmful” social media behavior submitted a retaliation complaint to the NLRB.

The NLRB has held other big tech companies to account as well. In the past they found that Amazon violated workers’ rights to a fair and free union elections. And beyond unions, the NLRB made waves for white-collar workers when they announced a plan to try and void non-disparagement clauses in severance agreements. It never came to fruition, but if it had, it would have allow employees to write or speak freely about former employers, even if they signed an agreement as part of a severance package.

DOGE’s apparent interest in its data demonstrates just how much Musk and Trump understand that weakening labor is critical to their desire for more control and chaos.

Anyway, here’s what we’re reading:

ZUCK DIRECTING PEDESTRIAN TRAFFIC? No, he hasn’t become a crossing guard—but Crosswalk systems in the Bay Area were hacked to feature the AI-generated voices of Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk. One of them said: “Hi, this is Mark Zuckerberg, but real ones call me the Zuck. You know, it's normal to feel uncomfortable or even violated as we forcibly insert AI into every facet of your conscious experience.”

NO MORE IP LAW. Or at least that’s what Jack Dorsey and Elon Musk seem to be pushing for. Dorsey wrote on X that we should “delete all IP law,” with Musk concurring—Dorsey then elaborated that creators should be getting a much bigger sum of money for their creations. Groups that represent artists are skeptical that chipping away at IP protections would benefit anyone other than the tech elite.

MASCULINE WORKPLACES = KIDS SCREAMING RACIAL SLURS. Just kidding, but in a statement submitted to the FTC about Meta, whistleblower Kelly Stonelake alleges that Meta knew about kids gaining access where they weren’t supposed to. Some executives were testing Horizon Worlds in 2022, but struggled to communicate because "very young" children's voices were "screaming at us from behind adult accounts."

EFFICIENCY OR INCOMPETENCE? While DOGE continues bulldozing the federal government, some carry the belief that such a scorched-earth approach was necessary, believing it is coming from a no-nonsense technologist with a “high IQ.” But according to this MIT Tech Review op-ed, moving fast and breaking convoluted technological systems is a naive behavior that could shatter services that humans depend on in real-life.

A WONKY SOLVE TO INCREASE HOMEOWNERSHIP. In an op-ed for the Washington Post, entrepreneur Ben Bear writes about a tax code change that could flow capital towards projects that could create new paths to homeownership—not just rental projects. This change, he argues, could address the “missing middle housing” that has evaded middle-income couples and families.