Lauren Harper is Freedom of the Press Foundation’s first Daniel Ellsberg Chair on Government Secrecy.
The Trump administration is on its way to creating every authoritarian’s dream: a centralized database containing intimate details about every resident of this country, fully searchable by artificial intelligence. This powerful tool would empower the government to conduct previously unimagined levels of surveillance and harassment against its own people.
Freedom of the Press Foundation is suing the administration for documents behind the database. We know that this isn’t just something that the Trump administration would exploit; once built, it’s unlikely any administration could resist the urge to weaponize our personal information.
This nightmare privacy scenario began one year ago, when President Donald Trump issued an executive order that expanded data sharing across the federal government. The administration touted the order, “Stopping Waste, Fraud, and Abuse by Eliminating Information Silos,” as a way to target fraud within a supposedly bloated government.
The order was no such thing.
Instead, it took a machete to long-standing privacy protections that mandate agencies can only share our data when absolutely necessary, to install a massive data-mining operation in their place.
To do so, Trump’s executive order required agency heads to submit reports to the Office of Management and Budget on the following:
- Which agency regulations governing unclassified data access should be eliminated or modified.
- Which policies governing the sharing of classified information need to be scrapped to meet the administration’s goals.
The public has never seen the reports agencies submitted by OMB, despite their impact on our privacy. However, thanks to intrepid reporting and litigation, we do have glimpses of how this is starting to play out:
- The Central Intelligence Agency has been granted increased access to domestic law enforcement databases, further blurring the line between foreign intelligence and domestic policing.
- The so-called Department of Government Efficiency got direct access to Treasury Department payment systems, including Social Security numbers, names, and birthdays, according to a whistleblower.
- Immigration and Customs Enforcement got access to Medicaid recipients’ data and banking information.
- The Transportation Security Administration is now sharing biometric passenger info with immigration enforcement, turning every airport check-in into a potential trap.
But these incursions are only the tip of the iceberg.
Reports indicate the administration’s goal for dismantling privacy protections is to build a centralized national database, which would allow the administration to create detailed reports on every American, potentially for political purposes, including retaliation, harassment, and imprisonment.
At the same time this database is becoming a reality, the Department of Homeland Security is rapidly expanding its surveillance capabilities, and the administration is unleashing AI across federal systems to analyze the data points they are harvesting from our private lives.
Perhaps worst of all, by “eliminating information silos,” the administration is creating a single point of failure for the privacy of every American. A centralized database that compiles our most intimate information, from our health to our finances, doesn’t just make us vulnerable to government abuse; it creates a massive, singular target for hackers and foreign adversaries.
“‘Information silos’ aren’t an inefficiency. They are a bulwark against the exact kind of abuses and negligence the Trump administration has engaged in,” said Ginger Quintero-McCall, a public records attorney with the Free Information Group. “Preventing easy, frictionless, unaccountable access to troves of sensitive data isn’t a bug — it’s a feature.”
And while the Trump administration recklessly seeks and compiles our data, it has simultaneously stopped sharing its data with the public. Vital information about the climate, immigration, federal spending, and the economy has been pulled from public view.
The government is turning into a one-way mirror: They see everything, while we see nothing.
This is an untenable and anti-democratic information imbalance. To fight back, we need to fully understand just how badly our data and our privacy has been compromised. The agency reports submitted to the OMB are essential for this investigation — which is why Freedom of the Press Foundation is filing a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against OMB for these records.
This suit will not only force the disclosure of these important documents, but it will also serve to remind the administration that the federal government is required to safeguard the personal data we entrust to it. It is not allowed to become a data-mining firm that leverages our information for political gain while hiding its work from the public.
As Kevin Bell, one of our counselors at Free Information Group, said, “This threat to Americans’ very right to an individual identity has never been so dire. The Trump administration is correlating each of its citizens’ with their transactions, emails, location tracking, missed car payments, online views or posts, and entire personal histories; the President has ordered the collection and free dissemination of every bit of data about every one of us held anywhere for any reason.”
The public deserves to see these documents. We intend to compel them to show us — and all Americans.
IT’S EVEN WORSE THAN WE THOUGHT.
What we’re seeing right now from Donald Trump is a full-on authoritarian takeover of the U.S. government.
This is not hyperbole.
Court orders are being ignored. MAGA loyalists have been put in charge of the military and federal law enforcement agencies. The Department of Government Efficiency has stripped Congress of its power of the purse. News outlets that challenge Trump have been banished or put under investigation.
Yet far too many are still covering Trump’s assault on democracy like politics as usual, with flattering headlines describing Trump as “unconventional,” “testing the boundaries,” and “aggressively flexing power.”
The Intercept has long covered authoritarian governments, billionaire oligarchs, and backsliding democracies around the world. We understand the challenge we face in Trump and the vital importance of press freedom in defending democracy.
We’re independent of corporate interests. Will you help us?
IT’S BEEN A DEVASTATING year for journalism — the worst in modern U.S. history.
We have a president with utter contempt for truth aggressively using the government’s full powers to dismantle the free press. Corporate news outlets have cowered, becoming accessories in Trump’s project to create a post-truth America. Right-wing billionaires have pounced, buying up media organizations and rebuilding the information environment to their liking.
In this most perilous moment for democracy, The Intercept is fighting back. But to do so effectively, we need to grow.
That’s where you come in. Will you help us expand our reporting capacity in time to hit the ground running in 2026?
We’re independent of corporate interests. Will you help us?
I’M BEN MUESSIG, The Intercept’s editor-in-chief. It’s been a devastating year for journalism — the worst in modern U.S. history.
We have a president with utter contempt for truth aggressively using the government’s full powers to dismantle the free press. Corporate news outlets have cowered, becoming accessories in Trump’s project to create a post-truth America. Right-wing billionaires have pounced, buying up media organizations and rebuilding the information environment to their liking.
In this most perilous moment for democracy, The Intercept is fighting back. But to do so effectively, we need to grow.
That’s where you come in. Will you help us expand our reporting capacity in time to hit the ground running in 2026?
We’re independent of corporate interests. Will you help us?
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Facts Only
Lauren Harper is the first Daniel Ellsberg Chair on Government Secrecy at Freedom of the Press Foundation.
The Trump administration issued an executive order in 2023 titled "Stopping Waste, Fraud, and Abuse by Eliminating Information Silos."
The order required federal agency heads to submit reports to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) on data-sharing regulations.
Agencies were directed to identify which unclassified and classified data access rules should be eliminated or modified.
The CIA gained increased access to domestic law enforcement databases.
The Department of Government Efficiency obtained direct access to Treasury Department payment systems, including Social Security numbers and birthdays.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) accessed Medicaid recipients' data and banking information.
The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) began sharing biometric passenger data with immigration enforcement.
Freedom of the Press Foundation is suing the OMB for the agency reports, citing FOIA violations.
The administration has reduced public access to government data on climate, immigration, federal spending, and the economy.
The Intercept is soliciting donations to expand its reporting capacity amid what it describes as a crisis in journalism.
Executive Summary
Full Take
The strongest version of this narrative highlights a legitimate and urgent concern: the erosion of privacy protections under the guise of efficiency, with tangible evidence of expanded data-sharing between agencies. The article effectively documents specific instances where sensitive information has been accessed by entities like ICE and the CIA, raising valid questions about surveillance overreach. The call for transparency via FOIA litigation is a principled stance, reinforcing the role of watchdog organizations in holding power accountable.
However, the framing leans heavily into emotional exploitation (ARC-0012 Fear Appeals) and moral panic (ARC-0021 Weaponized Anger), particularly in the latter sections where the administration’s actions are described as an "authoritarian takeover" without equivalent counter-evidence or nuance. The shift from reporting on data-sharing to broader claims about democracy’s collapse—while not necessarily false—lacks the same factual grounding, risking distortion through exaggeration (ARC-0034 Exaggeration to Absurdity). The repeated fundraising appeals from The Intercept, while understandable, introduce a potential conflict of interest, as the urgency of the narrative aligns with the organization’s financial needs.
Root cause: The paradigm here is the tension between national security and civil liberties, a recurring historical pattern where crises (real or manufactured) justify expanded state power. The unstated assumption is that centralized data systems inherently lead to abuse, which is plausible but not inevitable—context matters, such as oversight mechanisms or legal safeguards, which the article does not explore.
Implications: The second-order consequences of a centralized database are profound. Beyond government abuse, it creates a single point of failure for cyberattacks, as noted. The information asymmetry—where the government knows everything while citizens know little—undermines democratic accountability. Yet, the article does not engage with potential counterarguments, such as whether some data-sharing could improve service delivery or fraud detection without overreach.
Bridge questions: What safeguards, if any, exist to prevent misuse of this data? How do other democracies balance efficiency and privacy in their data policies? Would the same concerns arise under a different administration, or is this uniquely tied to Trump’s leadership style?
Counterstrike scan: A coordinated influence campaign would amplify fear of surveillance while suppressing discussion of trade-offs or alternative perspectives. The article’s latter half mirrors this pattern, with hyperbolic language ("full-on authoritarian takeover") and a binary framing (democracy vs. tyranny). However, the core reporting on data-sharing is substantiated and does not align with a manipulative playbook. The concern arises in the transition from facts to advocacy, where emotional triggers dominate.
Patterns detected: ARC-0012 Fear Appeals, ARC-0021 Weaponized Anger, ARC-0034 Exaggeration to Absurdity
Sentinel — Human
The article exhibits strong human stylistic markers, including emotional urgency, direct advocacy, and idiosyncratic phrasing, with no significant signs of AI generation.