A quiet regulatory update by the Social Security Administration (SSA) could raise new concerns about the government’s growing use of surveillance tools to monitor ordinary Americans.
In early January, SSA updated its Evidence of Foreign Travel – Foreign Travel Data application to increase scrutiny of foreign travel by Americans receiving benefits. This change allows the agency to use travel data collected by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.
The update affects millions of Social Security recipients as well as people who receive support from the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program (1).
In other words, Americans who receive retirement benefits or support based on need, life circumstances or disability could be affected by this increased oversight. And it comes at a time when government data-handling practices are under increased scrutiny.
If you’re concerned about the government’s ability to monitor individual activity, this update is worth a closer look.
The recent changes affect many beneficiaries in the SSA sphere. In December 2025, SSA paid benefits to about 75 million people, of whom about 11 million were under age 65 and collecting disability benefits, and nearly 5 million were collecting only SSI (2).
Under the longstanding rules, SSI and Social Security recipients must self-report foreign travel lasting 30 days or more. If you are a citizen, you may be able to collect Social Security while living abroad, but SSI is strictly limited to residents of the US and certain US territories (3).
SSA’s revised rules update this reporting requirement to rely less on self-reporting and more on data collected by DHS. The agency says the move is about compliance and part of an effort to “reduce improper payments” (1).
However, the change could reflect a wider shift towards automatic monitoring of benefit recipients, with limited transparency about how travel data is collected, stored and shared between agencies.
This comes at a time when government surveillance and data management are under increasing scrutiny.
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The agency’s changes come at a time of growing unease about the government’s data management and oversight operations.
Recently released court filings from the Department of Justice revealed that two members of a team affiliated with Elon Musk’s so-called “Department for Government Efficiency” initiative early last year were working at the SSA while secretly communicating with a political advocacy group. That group sought to overturn election results in certain states, Politico reports. One person reportedly signed an agreement that would have involved using Social Security data to help match state voter rolls (4).
And as Wired reported in May, the Trump administration has allowed the SSA and other agencies to share sensitive personal data with DHS for months. The data is to be used to target immigrants for visa enforcement or even deportation. The federal government recently formalized this data exchange through a public notice (5).
Analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), a progressive US think tank, suggests that the agreement to share Social Security data with immigration authorities could give the agency access to sensitive data on more than 500 million people who have ever applied for a Social Security number. Some of this data could be outdated and full of errors, according to the CBPP, which extends the risk that some voters will be disenfranchised before the November 2026 midterm elections (6).
To be clear, this latest DHS travel tracking update — which is about surveillance of Social Security recipients, not specifically immigrants — is separate from that, as far as we know. But all these incidents, taken together, add weight to fears that sensitive data in the SSA could be misused, improperly accessed or reused beyond its original intent.
Simply put, workers and retirees are increasingly being monitored by error-prone automated systems. If you are uneasy about these developments, there are ways to protect yourself.
If you receive Social Security and travel abroad for an extended period of time or expect a change in your situation that could affect your benefits, be sure to document and report this carefully to avoid any errors. Many different changes in circumstances, such as income, employment status, or medical conditions, are all reportable to the SSA and can affect your benefits (7).
Second, check your SSA records regularly. Errors can and do occur, and automated systems are not immune to them. Regularly checking your Social Security information helps you spot these discrepancies and resolve them before they affect your benefits or, more specifically, your voting rights.
For some Americans, the new SSA rule and data sharing policy blurs the line between eligibility enforcement and personal surveillance.
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Social Security Administration (1); Social Security Administration (2); Social Security Administration (3); Politics (4); Wired (5); Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (6); Social Security Administration (7)
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