Now, I'm more concerned about people receiving Social Security Benefits for whom the SSA has no date of birth. How do they know they're eligible for benefits if they are age-dependent?
A couple of other things, the databases the "hacker" linked appear to be for organizational information, "org-data-7cd300eb-cf3f-47f5-90f1-9e66a8bc8d07" and "org-data-1." I downloaded both .csv files and they're empty with a file size of 0bytes. either they've been pulled or they never had any information in them. I don't know.
Also, you'll not the caveat at the bottom of the DOGE website specifically states, "All workforce data from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management as of March 2024 →" and "Workforce data excludes Military, Postal Service, White House, intelligence agencies, and others →". Both statements are linked to OPM where even you can view the data DOGE used to create the website. Winehouse, you too can create a DOGE-like website, using publicly available information, just like Big Balls.
I hope the hackers committed a federal crime and are thrown in jail for their stupidity.
Now, I'm more concerned about people receiving Social Security Benefits for whom the SSA has no date of birth. How do they know they're eligible for benefits if they are age-dependent?
But Elon said they're over 150 years old.
Was he wrong?
Unknown, if DOB is unknown
Did you not understand that whole COBOL explanation? You don't need a birthday you just need a year. SS won't change and your birthday only matters when you originally sign up for it which is done by an office that will check your birthday.
"So, if you don't know the date of something, it will be a 0 value, which in COBOL will default to 1875"
And you do need an exact date to determine age
Serious question. Are you a COBOL programmer because, I'm not. The way I read that was dates are recorded by COBOL in serial format with the EPOCH (which I assume means floor, earliest limit, whatever you want to call it) being 1875 or 150 years ago.
Microsoft records date serially and I don't know their EPOCH but, it occurs to me, if the ISO 8601 standard is applied, month, day, year, hour, minute, second, and millisecond can be recorded in a serial format.
Do you really think they're not entering exact birthdays?
No, but I've worked with enough databases to know why they'd use less inputs. Yes they could do that but made the decision that's it's not worth the resources, because it's not worth the resources. The verification for DOB is done on the front end so putting in the back end when it doesn't matter is a needless redundancy. And probably wasn't worth the memory at the time. I'd argue, it still isn't now.
Where is that explained in the post about COBOL?
The post said "the year is reported" . And then I went on to explain why you only need the year. Do you understand why you only need the year?
I understand your explanation, I just don't read it the same way. You said, in quotes, 'the year is reported.' I don't find that quote in the post unless it's contained in the broader post (not linked). What I see is that COBOL doesn't use the Date Time type but stores the date according to the ISO8601 standard...which can store date/time in serialized form, down to to the millisecond. I don't see anywhere where it states only the year is recorded.
I may be missing it but, I've read Winehole's post a few times now and don't find where the serialized date is stored by year only.
In any case, no date [or year], returning a 0 or 1875, is as bad as a full birthdate showing a 150 year-old recipient.
Actually, I do think they enter exact dates. Which is why I don't buy the COBOL "gotcha".
For example: Feb 14, 1875 would be 18750214
They wouldn't see 4 digits as a valid date.
"Earlier this week, inexperienced officials from Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) gained administrative access to the core payment systems at the US Treasury’s Bureau of the Fiscal Service (BFS). Like many Americans, I was shocked. Unlike most Americans, I am in a professional position to understand the potential for catastrophic macroeconomic consequences far beyond the privacy and security concerns suggested in the media and by our elected representatives.
One of the officials with admin access to the Bureau of the Fiscal Service was 25-year-old engineer, Marko Elez, who is unlikely to have experience in the arcane, aging COBOL programming language (dating back to 1959) of the bureau’s payment system, and who meets DOGE’s recruitment criteria of having the hunger to make change. Unfortunately, the line between impatience and recklessness is not clear-cut, and any missteps could upend the entirety of public expenditure in the United States.
Elez resigned from DOGE today over allegations of racism, rather than professional competence. His replacement is just as unlikely to have the kind of experience and temperament required to work with the most mission-critical systems in the United States government. DOGE has stated that it wants to recruit risk-takers who want to “fundamentally remake the federal government” at all costs....."
https://thebulletin.org/2025/02/why-...he-us-economy/
COBOL programmers UNITE!
If you don't know why are you making any assumptions that it's ed up and Elon's crew is fixing it?
It's always a war huh
whoopsie
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/techn...te/ar-AA1z4LWLThe website states in tiny print at the bottom that its database excludes information from U.S. intelligence agencies.
But an easy search shows that DOGE’s database provides details on the National Reconnaissance Office, the federal agency that designs, builds and maintains U.S. intelligence satellites. Not only are NRO’s budgets and head counts classified, but the prospect of Musk’s tech team meddling in sensitive personnel information is setting off alarms for some in the intelligence community.
“DOGE just posted secret NOFURN info on their website about [intelligence community] headcount, so currently people are scrambling to check if their info has been accessed,” said one Defense Intelligence Agency employee, who requested anonymity to avoid retaliation from senior leaders.
NOFURN stands for “Not Releasable to Foreign Nationals,” meaning information in this category can’t be shared with any foreign governments, international organizations or foreign nationals without specific authorization.
NRO appears to be the only intelligence agency with its data publicly available on DOGE’s website.
I imagine the failure here is thinking this is the one and only place where a birth date is recorded and validated.
Not that I don't trust the stellar journalist integrity of HuffPost but, I don't. As it stands now, HuffPost (or news organs that get their content from HuffPost [shocked face]) are the only places reporting the "reported" breech of NRO data.
This statement is suspect: "But an easy search shows that DOGE’s database provides details on the National Reconnaissance Office, the federal agency that designs, builds and maintains U.S. intelligence satellites."
The DOGE website doesn't have a search function. And, when you navigate through through the site, following both the Department of Defense (who oversees the NRO) node and follow other agency nodes, under the Executive Branch (where the Director of National Intelligence would be found - under which the NRO is organizationally located), it's not there. Neither is DNI. Only the Security Council is mentioned and it's data isn't there.
I would think CBS, NBC, Politico, CNN, and the other Leftist mouthpieces would have been all over this but, I can't find it on their sites, using Google.
Perhaps Ms. Bendery should have done some screen captures or, at the very least, described how she conducted her "easy search."
What sources do you trust?
ANONYMOUS BLOGS
the story is like two hours old. Give someone a chance to check it out.
You don't have any trouble amplifying whatever bull Elon or Trump spews without checking.
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