Through the Trump administration’s countless erratic attempts to cripple, remake, or simply take more direct control of every part of the government, one theme has emerged: a fixation on data . Aside from the mass firings, getting access to government databases was one of the Department of Government Efficiency’s primary tasks; under the guise of “eliminating bureaucratic duplication and inefficiency” and “the identification and elimination of waste, fraud, and abuse,” a March executive order demanded that agency heads “rescind or modify all agency guidance that serves as a barrier to the inter- or intra-agency sharing of unclassified information.” Putting aside the enforceability of such an order, the intent was clear: Whatever the reason, Americans’ personal data would now be made

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