Happy Tuesday. Here’s your Tuesday Tech Drop, the past week’s top stories from the intersection of technology and politics.

Treasury insecurity

The Trump administration’s choice to deepen the Treasury Department’s involvement in its racist anti-immigrant crackdown may have exposed taxpayers’ personal information, according to a new report from the Treasury’s inspector general. 

The IG’s report “raises concerns about Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s ability to safeguard taxpayer information,” The Associated Press reported Monday. The IG report found the administration’s arrangement for the IRS to share data with ICE was error-prone and unreliable.

Under this arrangement, ICE can submit the names and addresses of people the agency says are in the United States illegally, and the IRS cross-references that information with tax records. 

The arrangement has been challenged by lawsuits and led former acting IRS Commissioner Melanie Krause to resign from her role in February.

Any errors that result from this information sharing are important to spotlight, as the Trump administration increasingly looks to the Treasury for help with its immigration crackdown. 

According to the AP: 

The report states that after the agreement was signed, ICE requested address information on more than 1.2 million people, and the IRS ultimately provided last-known addresses for about 47,000 people. [The inspector general] concluded that the IRS’s automated matching process was flawed. Inconsistent formatting in ICE’s data led to questionable matches, including in cases where incomplete or inaccurate addresses were labeled as valid, the report says. Representatives from Treasury and the IRS did not respond to an Associated Press request for comment.

Read more in the AP. 

New York turns to AI for help with food aid

New York City is using an artificial intelligence tool developed with help from consulting firm McKinsey & Company to administer SNAP benefits. The tool will reportedly be used to identify payment errors, as the Trump administration has vowed to withhold vital food aid funding from states with higher error rates. Given AI ethicists’ concerns about algorithms meting out discrimination, this tool certainly requires oversight to ensure it doesn’t facilitate harm. 

Read more in the New York Daily News. 

Miller’s spy fantasies spook conservatives

Some prominent conservative influencers and lawmakers had a conniption after White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller publicly objected to efforts to limit the Trump administration’s spy powers. 

Read my report on the backlash to Miller on MS NOW. 

Trump’s AI orders for the military

President Donald Trump, who’s reportedly made investments in AI companies and whose sons are linked to drone companies, issued an executive order Friday calling on the military to accelerate its use of AI. 

Read more in the AP. 

Ja’han Jones

Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog.