Billionaire Elon Musk and his band of young Silicon Valley engineers have gained access to IT systems controlling critical functions of the federal government, from the Treasury Department to the Small Business Administration.

The problem is no one outside of the Trump administration really knows what Musk and his team at the newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) are planning to do with that access.

In the name of uncovering fat to trim, they now have the personal information of millions of Americans stored in government databases at their fingertips and newfound influence over key parts of the federal bureaucracy long controlled by nonpartisan career officials. It’s clear Musk has exceptional access to government data, but it’s still not clear how much he can do with it. Most saliently, watchdogs and Democratic lawmakers suspect that Musk’s endgame is not just visibility into the payments the government is making, but also control over them.

This is all part of the cloud of confusion surrounding DOGE.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed Monday that Musk is operating in his capacity as a non-Senate-confirmed “special government employee,” a category of employee that is typically brought on for a period of less than a year, hired for their expertise, and subject to less stringent conflicts-of-interest rules than other federal officials. Leavitt offered no further details on what Musk working on, though she claimed he is “abiding by all applicable federal laws.”

That claim will be subject to legal scrutiny.

The litigation arm of Public Citizen, a left-leaning consumer rights advocacy group, sued the Trump administration Monday on behalf of workers whose personal information is stored in Treasury Department databases, alleging that officials broke privacy laws in giving DOGE access. Other groups have raised similar privacy concerns about databases at other federal agencies to which Musk’s team has sought access.

Adam Schwartz, privacy litigation director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights advocacy group, said that........

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