Katie Drummond: And ironically, as you mentioned earlier, that's part of what makes these lawsuits so challenging to see through because a judge is assessing risk based on hypothetical harms to American citizens as opposed to actual harm or actual injury. Is that right?
Andrew Couts: I mean it depends on exactly what the lawsuit is alleging or what it's attempting to achieve, what kind of legal standards they're going to apply. But typically judges, if they're looking for actual or potential imminent harm, they're going to be looking at past precedent to say, is it likely that this worst case scenario that is laid out in a hypothetical lawsuit is going to happen? And if they can't find any evidence that has happened in the past, it's entirely plausible that the judge isn't going to rule in favor of the plaintiffs. We can't necessarily rely on history to tell us what's going to happen next, at least not US history. We can look to dictatorships elsewhere in the world potentially, but US history is not going to give us all the information we need to make those calls.
Katie Drummond: That's right. And we're also still up against this very real possibility, I would argue that a judge rules in one way and that ruling may not actually be adhered to within a federal agency. We've certainly seen a degree of lawlessness and impunity with DOGE's behavior thus far. So I think that sort of adds this extra element of uncertainty where I have been telling people for the last several weeks who are concerned about DOGE, concerned about what Musk is doing. Well, yes, they're moving very quickly. The courts will catch up, the legal system will catch up. That only gets you so far if the administration decides not to adhere to what a judge is saying on a given issue.
Andrew Couts: Absolutely, and I think the fact that we're even talking about that possibility of the government just ignoring judicial branch rulings, that is an example of how little we can rely on past precedent to show us where the guardrails are here. The guardrails may not exist anymore because they've plowed over them with a cyber truck. It's not a good situation to be in when you're trying to figure out how to operate in this moment and feel safe and secure that your data is protected or you're not going to be targeted for political reasons.
Katie Drummond: Absolutely. Well, Andrew, there's so much uncertainty right now. In the next few weeks, what would you tell our listeners to pay attention to in the context of DOGE and privacy? Are there certain lawsuits that are particularly salient or particularly interesting? What should they be watching for in the headlines as all of this unfolds?
Andrew Couts: Well, one, I think we're going to be looking for other instances where we know that specific records have been accessed or we know specifically how they've used the records that they've accessed. WIRED is certainly going to be keeping a close watch on that and doing the reporting to find answers to those questions. But the more we know about what they're actually doing or what the consequences of what they're doing are, the more we're going to be able to assess what the actual risks are. In terms of the lawsuits, I would be paying attention to essentially all of the Privacy Act lawsuits and seeing where those succeed and fail. And those are going to give us specific instances of potentially blocking access to specific records. So the Treasury Department is a good example of one we've already seen, and we're going to want to be getting reassurances that that access actually has been cut off in the instances where there's orders telling them to do so. Because the Privacy Act is really our primary legal blockade against these kinds of abuses that are being alleged in these lawsuits, we really need to know how strong that law actually is. We're also going to be wanting to see whether there are members of Congress attempting to amend change, scrap the Privacy Act, or any other legislation that might be the basis for lawsuits against what the Trump administration is doing. And so paying attention to legislation that's introduced, how that legislation proceeds through Congress is going to be really important as well, because we have to know what the safeguards are, whether they're abided by or not, they have to exist in the first place for us to have any sense of reliance on them.