Summary
Elon Musk’s DOGE received approval to use PuTTY, a file-transfer software, at the Labor Department, raising alarm among employees over data security.
DOGE has sought access to various federal databases, prompting lawsuits from labor unions and privacy advocates.
A federal judge issued a restraining order against DOGE’s access to Treasury data, though not Labor’s. Critics fear AI analysis and unauthorized data sharing.
The case is now before U.S. District Judge John Bates, who expressed concerns but denied an immediate injunction.
To be clear, PuTTY is a common tool for accessing networked computers. There’s nothing wrong with the tool itself. The problem here is the access being granted (via the tool) to sensitive data that should not be accessible by these people.
I guarantee I’ll get even more pushback from Windows admins when I tell them to install Putty.
And, yes, ssh is in windows shell but many of the windows sysadmins I work with still refuse to use it. Some will even VNC to a Linux server to use the terminal there.
I’m currently looking for work because my “very much not Amazon” company just decided to pretend it’s Amazon, and things like this give me hope.
That’s madness. Simple, unwieldy madness.
Now imagine I have to take over for them because they don’t know their ls from their cp and it’s all laggy.
Talking to the customers so the engineers don’t have to is an important job.