'Intolerable': SSA chief data officer and whistleblower resigns in blistering email

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Social Security Administration chief information officer Charles Borges resigned in an email sent to select offices within the agency on Friday. Borges has been in the news this week for filing a whistleblower complaint that alleges DOGE members recklessly uploaded a copy of an SSA database containing Americans’ highly-sensitive personal information to a vulnerable cloud server. And because of the fallout from his whistle blowing, it seems, Borges has departed the agency.

“After reporting internally to management and externally to regulators serious data security and integrity concerns impacting our citizens' most sensitive personal data, I have suffered exclusion, isolation, internal strife, and a culture of fear, creating a hostile work environment and making work conditions intolerable,” Borges writes in his resignation email, a copy of which was obtained moments after it was sent by The Handbasket. He voices concerns about the handling of data resulting in violations of federal statutes or regulations, and calls the situation in which he’s been put “more than a reasonable employee could bear.”

Multiple SSA employees who received the email confirmed to me that the email curiously disappeared from their inboxes shortly after they received it, only for it to reappear a short while later.

According to Borges’ whistle-blower complaint to the Office of Special Counsel and congressional lawmakers that was first reported Tuesday by the New York Times, “Should bad actors gain access to this cloud environment, Americans may be susceptible to widespread identity theft, may lose vital health care and food benefits, and the government may be responsible for reissuing every American a new Social Security number at great cost.”

Current SSA employees I spoke to Friday were impressed by Borges’ bravery and agree with his characterizations of the agency. “His description of fear and intimidation is accurate,” one told me. “Everyone is afraid to get fired at any moment. Everyone is afraid of political appointees.” They also said Borges is “revered by staff and is seen as super ethical.”

SSA has been in the spotlight at multiple points since Trump was inaugurated in January, with a lowly loyalist being installed as acting director, to the time Elon Musk was seeking unfettered access to data while baselessly alleging fraud, and again in June when DOGE’s 19-year-old “Big Balls” Edward Coristine began working there. At the time, SSA spokesperson Stephen McGraw told WIRED: “His work will be focused on improving the functionality of the Social Security website and advancing our mission of delivering more efficient service to the American people.”

Now as August comes to a close, not only has service not been made more efficient, but according to Borges, data is now compromised as well.

Borges is not the first SSA whistleblower to allege concerns. In a statement sent to Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) back in March, a person who identified themselves as a senior SSA employee who recently left the agency expressed similar worries. They said then-nominee and now current SSA commissioner Frank Bisignano “was aware of concerns related to broad data access being requested by [former Chief Information Officer] Russo for DOGE employees and that the request did not comport with privacy laws, disclosure policies, and agency internal controls.”

The email from Borges also echoes the testimony of Tiffany Flick, a former SSA official who retired earlier this year. In a March lawsuit filing, Flick wrote “I am not confident that DOGE associates have the requisite knowledge and training to prevent sensitive information from being inadvertently transferred to bad actors.”

Here is the text of the email Borges sent to colleagues on Friday, shared in full because of its powerful message:

Borges’ blistering email comes on the heels of other high-profile public resignations, like that of multiple directors at Centers for Disease Control (CDC) after the attempted firing of Susan Monarez by HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Demetre Daskalakis, Director of the National Center on Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, Daniel Jernigan, Director of the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, and Debra Houry, Deputy Director and Chief Medical Officer, all submitted letters of resignation this week. 

“The recent shooting at CDC is not why I am resigning,” Daskalakis wrote in his resignation letter that he also shared on X. “My grandfather, who I am named after, stood up to fascist forces in Greece and lost his life doing so. I am resigning to make him and his legacy proud. I am resigning because of the cowardice of a leader that cannot admit that HIS and his minions' words over decades created an environment where violence like this can occur. I reject his and his colleagues' thoughts and prayers, and advise they direct those to people that they have not actively harmed.”

These public acts of bravery are admirable. But the fact that many of the people with any integrity left in federal leadership are being forced out does not bode well for hopes of further opposition from within.