Emptying our conversation with a former employee in Dog
Vitoria Elliot: She stated that everything is more than a sign. It is clear that there are rules about keeping records about government work if you are a government worker. Does anyone talk about you ever, “Hey, you have to archive these messages. Hey, you have to save these emails. Hey, you cannot delete it.” Did anyone discuss … any legal obligations about that with you for your work in Duj?
Sahil Lavia: no. no. There was no duches or on board, right. Therefore, there is no contact with talking to the press, not speaking to the press, taking pictures, not taking pictures, and revealing anything you did with anyone. And yes, nothing about archiving, and keeping records. It has just been on the signal, and it has never been connected like, “This is why we use the signal, for example.” That was, “Stephen will contact you,” and this is related to it.
Vitoria Elliot: Many Doge engineers have been appointed in multiple agencies. Have you ever appointed another agency outside the Ministry of Old Warriors Affairs, and did you have a feeling why there was a lot of Doge engineers through multiple agencies at the same time?
Sahil Lavia: Yes, I was not. I was appointed in VA, and I was never detailed, as I think, is the detailed term for any other agencies. My feeling is that there were less engineers in Dog more than people who believe. There was 10 or less. Thus I think they were madly limited in the number of people who can actually … if they had 500 engineers, they will not have to do this, but I think they had very few, specifically, they trust, right. I think there is likely to be this split and a kind of feeling that if you join after the dimensions, you are considered more than an external volunteer. And if you join the pre -conversion, you were taken seriously, it is my guess, and I had more time to build confidence with Steve, Elon, etc. So I think they only trust a very small group of people, so they needed the same group of people to run a lot and move from one agency to another.
Vitoria Elliot: I understood it. Given that you were really touching sensitive data, were there any controls that were placed in place? Have anyone sat for you and say: “You will touch a set of sensitive things. You are not allowed to do so.” Have you felt that there was any kind of conversation in Dog on how to deal with these data, and how to make sure to protect it safely, and how to ensure that people return to the private sector, and that it is not used in their own interest?
Sahil Lavia: Yes. There was nothing specific about it, but there was. I think this depends on the agency, and that all agencies have their own protocols. In our case in VA, there was some data that they said: “If you want to reach this, you must go through this type of work for two hours online as you pass a set of tests and you should say that you are able to … you understand the risks.” But with regard to human resource data, I managed to reach all human resources data, and all contracts without … I had no had to sign anything or say anything that I agreed not to share it with the public or do anything like that. It is a kind of implicit. I was surprised, though. I mean, you … I asked them once. You like, “I love how many people can access human resource data?” They are like, “every person in human resources”. I am like, “You know that these data have social security numbers for everyone in them. There are 473,000 social security numbers.” They are like, “Yes, thousands of people can reach that.” You are like, “this is a kind of strange”. And I think the government can improve these controls and make them better. There was once as I managed to reach this thing called CDW, where … I think I mean that the corporate data depot, which all data in VA was in VA was at CDW at some point, and canceled my arrival a few hours after they realized that someone gave me access to this, and they were like a dressing, “Why did I give him access to this?” They were like, “Well, he is a great adviser to the Chief of Staff. This … and our protocol is to give you all the data when I asked for it.” I think there was this feeling at first, Duji had a much greater power than people thought, so everyone was just a kind of doing what we asked of them to do and without reason, “No. By the way, follow your process. I am not asking you to do anything different.”