There's a pulse ...

Representatives of government employees and retirees have sued to stop sensitive data from the Treasury being shared with Elon Musk and others at Doge © AP

There's a pulse after all as Elon Musk barred from accessing US Treasury payments data is in place. It's temporary but maybe it may be the tiny spark needed to save our democracy.

Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly put the temporary order in place after Musk boasted that his team at the Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) was “rapidly shutting down” Treasury remittances, having apparently gained access to the system that disburses trillions of dollars, including social security payments and Medicare, each year.

Representatives of government employees and retirees have sued to stop the sensitive data being shared with Musk and others at Doge, arguing that such moves were “depriving them of privacy protections guaranteed to them by federal law”.

Although the US government reassured the court that only two of Doge’s emissaries, Cloud Software group chief executive Tom Krause and 25-year-old coder Marko Elez, had access to the sensitive system, Kollar-Kotelly pushed for an order preventing any information being shared outside the Treasury, while she considers a more permanent injunction. 

As a result, Musk himself will not be able to review data pulled from the payments system. 

Hopefully ... forever.