Charles Borges, the Social Security Administration’s chief data officer, resigned from his post on August 29, 2025, igniting a firestorm over data security and whistleblower protections inside one of America’s most sensitive agencies. His departure, marked by a scathing resignation letter and a formal whistleblower complaint, has shone a glaring spotlight on the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a controversial federal entity led by Elon Musk and tasked with rooting out government fraud.
Borges, a Navy veteran and seasoned data expert who joined SSA in January 2025 after stints at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and as a White House Presidential Innovation Fellow, alleged that DOGE had uploaded the personal data of hundreds of millions of Americans to a vulnerable cloud server. According to his complaint, this trove included names, birth dates, Social Security numbers, citizenship status, addresses, phone numbers, and even parents’ information—essentially everything needed to steal someone’s identity or wreak havoc on their financial and medical lives.
“This vulnerable cloud environment,” Borges wrote, “contains all data submitted in an application for a United States Social Security card, including the name of the applicant, place and date of birth, citizenship, race and ethnicity, parents’ names and social security numbers, phone number, address and other personal information.” The complaint, which was filed on August 26, 2025, painted a picture of systemic lapses: “Should bad actors gain access to this cloud environment, Americans may be susceptible to widespread identity theft, may lose vital healthcare and food benefits, and the government may be responsible for re-issuing every American a new Social Security Number at great cost.”
Borges’s resignation letter, addressed to SSA Commissioner Frank Bisignano, pulled no punches. He described his departure as “involuntary,” citing what he called a “culture of fear” and a “hostile work environment.” He claimed that after raising internal and external alarms about the data transfer, he was met with exclusion, isolation, and “internal strife.” He went on: “I am put [in] the intolerable situation of not having visibility or oversight into activities that potentially violate statutes and regulations that I, as the CDO, may legally or otherwise be held accountable for should I continue in this position.”
According to reporting by Straight Arrow News and The Independent, Borges collected more than two dozen pages of internal emails, memos, and other records to back up his claims. Despite his executive role, he said DOGE did not include him in any discussions regarding the transfer of data to the cloud. An internal security assessment, cited in his complaint, described DOGE’s actions as “high risk” with “catastrophic impact” should the data be exposed.
The roots of this dispute go deeper. DOGE was created under President Donald Trump’s administration to combat fraud, waste, and abuse in the federal government. Elon Musk, brought in to lead the initiative, insisted that access to Social Security data was necessary due to what he characterized as overwhelming fraud. Yet, as Straight Arrow News reports, government experts have challenged these claims, noting that only 0.3% of Social Security benefits are considered improper payments, typically due to clerical errors or delays rather than outright fraud.
The legal drama escalated earlier this summer when two unions and an advocacy group challenged DOGE’s access to Social Security data, arguing that it violated privacy laws. Lower courts sided with the challengers, but Solicitor General D. John Sauer appealed, and in June, the Supreme Court temporarily lifted the injunction, allowing DOGE employees to access the sensitive database. It was in this climate that Borges filed his complaint and, shortly after, resigned.
SSA’s leadership has pushed back hard against Borges’s allegations. A spokesperson told ABC News and CBS that “the data referenced in the complaint is stored in a long-standing environment used by SSA and walled off from the internet. High-level career SSA officials have administrative access to this system with oversight by SSA’s Information Security team. We are not aware of any compromise to this environment and remain dedicated to protecting sensitive personal data.” The agency also emphasized that it “takes all whistleblower complaints seriously.”
Still, Borges’s resignation letter and the events surrounding it have raised eyebrows. According to WIRED, less than 30 minutes after Borges sent his resignation letter, it vanished from employee inboxes, adding another layer of intrigue and concern about transparency within the agency.
Borges’s experience since raising his concerns appears to have been harrowing. He described suffering “serious attendant mental, physical, and emotional distress,” and said the “escalating and relentless daily stress of lack of visibility and exclusion from decision-making on these activities, silence from leadership, and anxiety and fear over potential illegal actions resulting in the loss of citizen data, is more than a reasonable employee could bear.” In his words, “SSA’s actions against me… make my duties impossible to perform legally and ethically.”
His attorney, Andrea Meza, told The Washington Post that Borges “no longer felt he could continue to work for the Social Security Administration in good conscience given what he had witnessed.” Meza, who also serves as director of campaigns for the Government Accountability Project, said Borges had uncovered a “disturbing pattern of questionable and risky security access and administrative misconduct that impacts some of the public’s most sensitive data.”
In the days since the resignation, debate has raged over both the substance of Borges’s claims and the treatment of whistleblowers inside government. Borges, for his part, posted on LinkedIn: “It is never wrong to be morally and ethically right with yourself.”
Meanwhile, the story has prompted renewed calls for transparency and accountability at the SSA and within DOGE. Borges alleged that SSA’s new IT and executive leadership had created “a culture of panic and dread, with minimal information sharing, frequent discussions on employee termination, and general organizational dysfunction.” His critics inside the agency have denied any wrongdoing, but the episode has left many observers questioning whether the systems in place are truly sufficient to protect the personal information of millions—or whether, as Borges alleges, the culture of fear and secrecy is putting everyone at risk.
With Congress and the Office of Special Counsel now reportedly reviewing Borges’s documentation, the coming months could bring further revelations. For now, Americans are left to wonder just how safe their most sensitive data really is, and what happens when those charged with protecting it feel forced to walk away.
