US government passes surprising tracking rule for millions of Social Security recipients. Will your movement be monitored?

The update impacts millions of Social Security beneficiaries, as well as people receiving 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 could be impacted by this tightened surveillance. And it arrives at a time when the government’s data handling practices are under increased scrutiny.

If you’re uneasy about the government’s ability to monitor individual activity, this update deserves a closer look.

What does this change mean?

The recent changes impact numerous beneficiaries under the SSA’s purview. As of December 2025, the SSA paid benefits to roughly 75 million people, of whom about 11 million were under the age of 65 and collecting disability benefits, and nearly 5 million collecting SSI only (2).

Under long-standing rules, SSI and Social Security recipients must self-report foreign travel that lasts 30 days or more. If you are a citizen, you may still be able to collect Social Security while residing abroad, but SSI is strictly limited to residents of the U.S. and certain U.S. territories (3).

The SSA’s revised rules update this reporting requirement to lean less on self-reporting and more on data collected by the DHS. The agency argues this move is about compliance and part of an effort to “curb improper payments” (1).

However, the change could reflect a broader shift toward automated monitoring of benefit recipients, with limited transparency around how travel data is collected, stored, and shared across agencies.

This comes at a time when government surveillance and data handling are increasingly scrutinized.

Why data privacy concerns are growing

The agency’s changes come at a time when there’s growing unease about the government’s data handling and surveillance operations.

Recently disclosed court filings from the Justice Department 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 SSA while secretly communicating with a political advocacy group. That group was seeking to overturn election results in certain states, Politico reports. One individual reportedly signed an agreement that may have involved using Social Security data to help match 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 is to be used for targeting immigrants for visa enforcement or even deportation. The federal government recently made that data sharing official through a public notice (5).

Analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), a progressive American think tank, suggests that 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 could be outdated and riddled with errors, according to the CBPP, which expands the risk that some voters may be disenfranchised before the midterm elections in November 2026 (6).