A quiet regulatory update from the Social Security Administration (SSA) may raise new concerns about the government’s increasing use of surveillance tools to monitor ordinary Americans.
In early January, SSA updated the Foreign Travel Evidence – 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 beneficiaries, 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 needs, life circumstances or disabilities may be affected by this tighter oversight. And it comes at a time when government data handling practices are under increased scrutiny.
If you’re worried about the government’s ability to monitor individual activity, this update deserves a closer look.
The recent changes impact many beneficiaries under SSA’s purview. As of December 2025, SSA paid benefits to approximately 75 million people, of whom approximately 11 million were under the age of 65 and were collecting disability benefits, and nearly 5 million were collecting SSI alone (2).
Under long-standing rules, SSI and Social Security recipients must self-report foreign trips lasting 30 days or more. If you are a citizen, you may still be able to collect Social Security while living abroad, but SSI is strictly limited to residents of the United States and certain US territories (3).
The revised SSA rules update this reporting requirement to rely less on self-reporting and more on data collected by DHS. The agency argues that this move is about compliance and part of an effort to “curb inappropriate payments” (1).
However, the change may reflect a wider shift towards automated 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 handling are increasingly scrutinized.
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The agency’s changes come at a time of growing concern about the government’s data handling and surveillance operations.
Court filings recently released by the Department of Justice revealed that two members of a team affiliated with Elon Musk’s so-called “Department of Government Efficiency” initiative early last year were working inside the SSA while secretly communicating with a political advocacy group. That group was seeking to overturn election results in certain states, Politico reports. One individual allegedly signed an agreement that may have involved the use of Social Security data to help compare state voter rolls (4).
And, as Wired reported back in May, the Trump administration has been allowing the SSA, and other agencies, to share sensitive personal data with DHS for months. The data would be used to target immigrants for visa enforcement or even deportation. The federal government recently made that data sharing official through a public notice (5).
An analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), a progressive American think tank, suggests that an agreement to share Social Security data with immigration enforcement could give the agency access to sensitive data about more than 500 million people who have ever applied for a Social Security number. Some of this data may be out of date and full of errors, according to the CBPP, which expands the risk that some voters may be disenfranchised before the midterm elections in November 2026 (6).
To be clear, this latest DHS update on travel tracking — which is about tracking Social Security recipients, not immigrants specifically — is separate from that, as far as we know. But all these incidents, taken together, give weight to fears that the SSA’s sensitive data could be misused, accessed inappropriately, or reused beyond its original intent.
Simply put, workers and retirees are increasingly being monitored by error-prone automated systems. If you are worried about these developments, there are ways to protect yourself.
If you receive Social Security and are traveling abroad for an extended period or expect a change in your situation that could impact your benefits, be sure to document and report this carefully to avoid any mistakes. Many different changes in circumstances, such as your earnings, employment status, or medical conditions, are all reportable to the SSA and can affect your benefits (7).
Second, review your SSA records regularly. Errors can and do happen, and automated systems are not immune to them. Regularly checking your Social Security information will help you discover these discrepancies and resolve them before they impact your benefits or, for that matter, voting rights.
For some Americans, the new SSA rule and data sharing policy has blurred the line between eligibility enforcement and personal surveillance.
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Social Security Administration (1); Social Security Administration (2); Social Security Administration (3); Politician (4); Wires (5); Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (6); Social Security Administration (7)
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