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Three Doors, One Database: The Quiet Merger of Federal Records

Three Doors, One Database: The Quiet Merger of Federal Records

On October 9, the Electronic Frontier Foundation published a plain accounting of something the federal government has not announced as a single project: the combination of Americans' personal records, across agencies that were built to keep them apart. EFF says it happened in three overlapping waves over roughly two years. The legal fights are now reaching the Supreme Court, where, on at least two occasions, the government has been allowed to proceed while the cases are still pending.

The first wave: DOGE gets the keys

Starting January 20, 2025, the Department of Government Efficiency obtained high-level access to databases at the Office of Personnel Management, the Social Security Administration and the Treasury Department, according to EFF. The stated goal in the founding orders was "prompt access to all unclassified agency records," along with their "sharing and consolidation."

EFF argues that this runs straight into the Privacy Act of 1974, a statute written after Watergate-era revelations to stop exactly this: the quiet stitching together of federal files on citizens. The group notes that the people given access often had limited government or cybersecurity experience, and sometimes conflicts of interest. One example it cites: a DOGE-affiliated individual at the Social Security Administration signed an agreement with an advocacy group to use SSA data to hunt for alleged voter fraud, with the stated aim of overturning election results in certain states.

EFF and co-counsel are suing OPM on behalf of two federal employee unions. The government's response, as EFF describes it, was to fire many DOGE agents and strip their access. EFF's position is that firing the people does not undo the disclosure.

The second wave: tax records, Medicaid and a shopping list

The second wave, per EFF, was about immigration enforcement. Agencies tried to share, compare and obtain large datasets to locate immigrants, and some of those attempts succeeded: IRS tax records, Medicaid data from HHS, and public housing data from HUD. The Department of Agriculture reportedly sought state SNAP databases. States have also gone to court to stop an attempt to obtain commercial driver's license data held by a nonprofit, the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators.

The part that sidesteps the courts entirely is commercial data. EFF reports that ICE has bought location data without a warrant and has expressed interest in "Big Data and Ad Tech providers." The legal theory is simple and old: if a broker will sell it, the Fourth Amendment's warrant requirement is treated as not applying. ICE's contracts with Palantir, EFF says, help organize all the datasets the agency collects. Tax data, benefits data and ad-tech location data are different things collected for different reasons. In one system, they become a single picture of a person.

The third wave: the voter file

This is where the stakes shift from enforcement to elections. EFF describes three moves. First, a program called SAVE, which since 1986 has let agencies verify immigration status for benefits, was repurposed in 2025 to check voter eligibility, with new database access and bulk searching. EFF reports that more than 60 million voters were run through it and 21,000 were flagged as potential noncitizens. EFF cites at least one documented case of a lawful citizen losing his registration to a federal database error.

Second, the Justice Department has demanded voter information from at least 48 states, according to EFF. At least 16 complied. The department sued 30 states that refused, and courts have dismissed 25 of those suits. Third, a March 2026 executive order directs DHS to build a federal list of citizens aged 18 or older in each state, and directs the Justice Department to prosecute officials who issue ballots to ineligible people.

What the courts have done

A federal judge held the SAVE expansion unlawful and set it aside. An appeals court declined to pause that ruling. The Supreme Court then granted DHS a stay by a 6–3 vote on its emergency docket, per EFF. The pattern repeated with the voter-eligibility list: 24 states sued, a federal judge enjoined the program, an appeals court refused a stay, and the Supreme Court granted one by 6–3. In the same executive order, a separate injunction concerning mail-in ballots survived a stay request, 7–2.

A whistleblower account, released by two Democratic senators and summarized by EFF, alleges that DHS fraud-detection staff were reassigned to voter checks and told to enter voters' personal details into state election websites to reach more data. That would potentially violate state laws requiring users to attest to their identity or authorization. EFF presents this as an allegation. It has not been adjudicated.

It is worth keeping the source in view. EFF is an advocacy organization with a clear position, and several of the facts above are its characterization of ongoing litigation. But the court rulings, the state counts and the executive order are all documented in the filings it links, and none of them depend on a reading of anyone's motives.

What remains is a structural question that no single case answers. Each of these programs has a stated, narrow purpose: efficiency, immigration enforcement, election integrity. The Privacy Act was designed on the premise that the purposes would change and the files would not be easy to unmerge. Nobody has said what the combined system is for. It is just being assembled, one agency agreement at a time, while the courts decide case by case whether each piece may stay.

Sources

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