If you can keep it

05/12/2025

For the first time in American history, the federal government appears to be assembling a single, unified database on all its citizens.

As reported by Wired, The Washington Post, and The Atlantic, DOGE is building an unprecedented database on all Americans — a “panopticon” of data. By combining records on everything from Social Security to tax records to biometric data in a singular, AI-enabled hub, the government is creating a sophisticated tool for domestic surveillance, something that previously both parties would have considered unacceptable and illegal.

Still, this massive threat to privacy pales in comparison to what may be coming next.

While federal agencies hold a wide spectrum of information on citizens, state governments are the keepers of even more granular, specific data on Americans, including sensitive personal information. Data on everything from students’ education records to DMV files to voter history to sexual orientation and gender identity to data on abortion and other medical history — all of that is collected and managed at the state level, not in DC.

And now the White House aims to coerce states into handing over their data with the undeniable potential that it too will be added to DOGE’s growing, centralized database.

If states acquiesce to this pressure, there is almost no telling what this information about their citizens could eventually be used for. But once states hand over this information about their residents, there is no taking it back.

Why and how the federal government is demanding state data

In a March 20 executive order, the president demanded that:

Agency Heads shall take all necessary steps, to the maximum extent consistent with law, to ensure the Federal Government has unfettered access to comprehensive data from all State programs that receive Federal funding, including, as appropriate, data generated by those programs but maintained in third-party databases.

A huge proportion of state programs receive federal funding in some way. The White House wants states to hand over basically all such data or risk losing access to taxpayer funds.

This is already in motion as federal agencies act on the executive order’s sweeping mandate. For example, USDA is demanding access to state datasets on SNAP beneficiaries — including sensitive personal information such as dates of birth, personal addresses used, and Social Security numbers.

The worst-case scenarios are dystopian

If states decide to acquiesce and share personally identifiable information about citizens with the federal government, they could eventually feed into some very plausible civil liberties abuses:

A registry to track people with autism or other disabilities. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. intends to create a national autism registry. The granularity of states’ medical data would certainly be an asset in making this plan a reality.

School-based targeting on political grounds. Other than some high school access for military recruitment, the federal government does not know where your kids go to school — but your state government does. In fact, it may even know details such as their classroom, their schedule, their disciplinary records, and their test scores. That information could easily be abused if politicized.

Location tracking data based on real-time license plate locations. Many states use automatic license plate readers (ALPRs) in law enforcement. Data pooling with the federal government would give the White House reliable information on specific real-time driver locations — not to mention all the other localized and individualized data held by local law enforcement.

Gender identity or sexual orientation lists. Currently, at least 10 states and the District of Columbia allow school districts to report a third gender category, and some school districts, like Denver Public Schools, collect that information on their own. If that data, which largely is collected on Americans under the age of 18, is added to federal government aggregation, it could be used to target specific communities.

Much more sophisticated voter suppression efforts. Because states, not the government, hold voter data, centralized or coordinated voter targeting and suppression efforts at the federal level would be difficult. That’s likely why getting access to state voter data has long been (and continues to be) a priority for President Trump.