When Sovereignty Becomes Theater: The Operational Cost of Unproven Data Custody

Data sovereignty isn’t about where your servers live, it’s about who can prove the right to see, move, or delete your data.

An Analysis of Trust Failure in Federal Data Management

The Custody Problem

In September 2025, a Senate oversight team documented (PDF) something that should be impossible in a functioning data governance system: individuals with questionable backgrounds and minimal training had been granted administrative access to databases containing the personal information of every American—including Social Security numbers, employment histories, security clearances, and health records—without standard oversight controls, often in cloud environments where agency officials couldn’t monitor their activities.

This wasn’t a breach by foreign actors. It was sanctioned internally, accelerated through what one internal email called a “911-esque call” requesting urgent access for a “political team.” The result: a cascading trust failure across multiple federal agencies, documented in meticulous detail by the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.

The episode validates a proposition t…