Two recently fired members of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission are sounding the alarm over what they describe as an unprecedented threat to corporate confidentiality and public data integrity—all tied to Elon Musk’s controversial Department of Government Efficiency, also known as DOGE.
Rebecca Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya, both Democrats, say the team parachuted into the FTC under orders from President Donald Trump is quietly burrowing access into sensitive federal systems. And they’re not keeping quiet about it.
The former commissioners say they’re urging FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson to come clean: Who exactly are these DOGE operatives? Who do they report to? And what doors have they been allowed to open within one of Washington’s most sensitive agencies?
Their concern isn’t hypothetical. Every year, the FTC receives more than a thousand filings from companies across sectors—documents filled with unreleased merger plans, financials, trade secrets. As Slaughter and Bedoya put it, “This data can move markets. It can certainly change the competitive dynamics in any industry. Under no circumstances should DOGE be able to access this data. We are deeply concerned that they may do it anyway.”
They fear the reach of DOGE could extend into areas that were previously untouchable—confidential investigative files, internal legal analyses, and even communications involving FTC administrative judges. With DOGE’s presence still largely in the shadows, they warn that the watchdog’s bite may be getting blunted from the inside.
The issue stretches into the AI arena, too. The FTC has been gathering information from firms like OpenAI and Anthropic as part of its probe into AI collaborations—companies that just so happen to compete with Musk’s xAI.
Slaughter and Bedoya are calling for strict limitations: no copying, no deleting, no editing of files by DOGE staff. And absolutely no installing new software. They want full transparency on DOGE’s permissions and pathways, and they’re not alone.
Musk, for his part, has defended the integrity of his agency’s staff. Speaking in a February interview, he claimed that DOGE employees undergo the same clearance procedures as traditional federal workers. “If there is a security clearance needed, the DOGE person has to have that same security clearance. There is no reduction in security,” he said.
Still, Slaughter and Bedoya aren’t just shouting from the sidelines. They’ve taken their dismissal to court, arguing that the White House broke legal precedent when it booted them without cause. According to long-standing legal doctrine, FTC commissioners can only be removed for clear misconduct or neglect.
The White House, in its terse email dismissing them, brushed off that argument entirely—claiming the old rules simply don’t apply to today’s FTC.
Now, with the commission’s inner workings under the microscope and DOGE operatives moving through digital hallways once considered off-limits, the two former regulators are betting the courts—and the public—still care who’s holding the keys.
