PAF
Member
- Joined
- Feb 26, 2012
- Messages
- 13,965
by Edward Hasbrouck
Apr 17, 2025
The Selective Service System has confirmed that, as of this week, personnel from the so-called Department Of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have arrived at the SSS and have been given access to the SSS database of men registered for a possible military draft.
Today an SSS spokesperson provided me with this official response to my questions about DOGE and SSS records:
“A DOGE representative visited our Agency this week. We’ve established a great working relationship. They asked us about our data and requested access, which we gave in compliance with the President’s Executive Order on Establishing and Implementing the Department of Government Efficiency.”
The SSS spokesperson also told me that no new computer matching programs involving SSS registration records have been carried out (yet) by DOGE. But it’s not clear whether the SSS would even know what DOGE has done with SSS data, once DOGE has gotten access to it and possibly exfiltrated it. DOGE and the SSS have operated computer matching programs that appear to violate the Computer Matching Act, so there’s little reason to expect that either would provide the required advance notice of new uses of SSS data.
The SSS registration database contains information on all those male U.S. citizens or residents born on or after 1 January 1960 who have registered with the SSS or have been registered by state driver’s license agencies. Compliance is low, many men in these cohorts never registered, and few of the addresses, even for draft-age men, are up to date. But the database is still huge and vulnerable to abuse. Because SSS registration records are so inaccurate and incomplete, matching them against other databases would produce large numbers of mis-matches, with unknown consequences.
Data matching is DOGE’s stock-in-trade. A Heritage Foundation project had indicated earlier this year that it wanted SSS registration to be used by the Trump 2.0 Administration as a weapon against immigrants, but it’s not clear if that’s the current DOGE plan or how SSS data might be used or abused by DOGE.
That DOGE has now obtained access to SSS data should be a wake-up call to anyone who has trusted SSS assurances as to how information provided to the SSS might be used. Once information is provided in the SSS, registrants have no control as to what new uses might be made of it, even decades later.
It’s important to recognize, and to get out the word to those who are less familiar with the SSS, that:
Yes, the SSS is preparing for a draft. Yes, this threat is real. The SSS functions as a threat of U.S. aggression, even when a draft isn’t activated, and threats of coercion are Trump’s stock-in-trade. Trump could activate a draft and order inductions without needing to get approval from Congress.
Full article:
www.antiwar.com
Apr 17, 2025
The Selective Service System has confirmed that, as of this week, personnel from the so-called Department Of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have arrived at the SSS and have been given access to the SSS database of men registered for a possible military draft.
Today an SSS spokesperson provided me with this official response to my questions about DOGE and SSS records:
“A DOGE representative visited our Agency this week. We’ve established a great working relationship. They asked us about our data and requested access, which we gave in compliance with the President’s Executive Order on Establishing and Implementing the Department of Government Efficiency.”
The SSS spokesperson also told me that no new computer matching programs involving SSS registration records have been carried out (yet) by DOGE. But it’s not clear whether the SSS would even know what DOGE has done with SSS data, once DOGE has gotten access to it and possibly exfiltrated it. DOGE and the SSS have operated computer matching programs that appear to violate the Computer Matching Act, so there’s little reason to expect that either would provide the required advance notice of new uses of SSS data.
The SSS registration database contains information on all those male U.S. citizens or residents born on or after 1 January 1960 who have registered with the SSS or have been registered by state driver’s license agencies. Compliance is low, many men in these cohorts never registered, and few of the addresses, even for draft-age men, are up to date. But the database is still huge and vulnerable to abuse. Because SSS registration records are so inaccurate and incomplete, matching them against other databases would produce large numbers of mis-matches, with unknown consequences.
Data matching is DOGE’s stock-in-trade. A Heritage Foundation project had indicated earlier this year that it wanted SSS registration to be used by the Trump 2.0 Administration as a weapon against immigrants, but it’s not clear if that’s the current DOGE plan or how SSS data might be used or abused by DOGE.
That DOGE has now obtained access to SSS data should be a wake-up call to anyone who has trusted SSS assurances as to how information provided to the SSS might be used. Once information is provided in the SSS, registrants have no control as to what new uses might be made of it, even decades later.
It’s important to recognize, and to get out the word to those who are less familiar with the SSS, that:
Yes, the SSS is preparing for a draft. Yes, this threat is real. The SSS functions as a threat of U.S. aggression, even when a draft isn’t activated, and threats of coercion are Trump’s stock-in-trade. Trump could activate a draft and order inductions without needing to get approval from Congress.
Full article:
DOGE Gets Access to Selective Service Registration Database - Antiwar.com Blog
The Selective Service System has confirmed that, as of this week, personnel from the so-called Department Of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have arrived at the SSS and have been given access to the SSS database of men registered for a possible military draft. Today an SSS spokesperson provided me...
www.antiwar.com
