FC: Privacy villain of the week: It's -- surprise! -- the IRS

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

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Date: Thu, 11 Apr 2002 22:46:37 -0400
From: J Plummer <jplummer () consumeralert org>
Subject: Re: NCP: Privacy Villain of the Week: The IRS
To: Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>

http://www.nccprivacy.org/handv/020411villain.htm

                     Privacy Villain of the Week: The IRS

It's that time of year -- midnight rush hour at post offices, the bouncing 
joy of the "refund idiots," 
<http://www.jewishworldreview.com/strips/mallard/2000/mallard041102.jpg> 
snarky press releases 
<http://www.lp.org/press/archive.php?function=view&record=195> from the 
Libertarian Party. Yes, it's tax time, when Americans are required to turn 
over a wealth of personal data, not to mention a chunk of their wealth, to 
the Internal Revenue Service under penalty of law.

What better time to examine how well the IRS guards your private data? 
After all, you're required to tell them how much you make, who paid you, 
your Social Security number, your address, what bank accounts or stocks 
yielded you interest, dividends or capital gains. Should you wish to 
forfeit a bit less of your money, they also will know the nature of your 
charitable giving, where you go to school, and medical expenses from 
abortions to drug rehab to the new obesity 
deduction  <http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,49402,00.html> and any 
"approved" expense in between.

Here are just a few recent examples of the IRS' lax vigilance over, and 
aggressive pursuit of, sensitive taxpayer information:

The IRS is launching a new push to dig through credit card records in 
foreign banks 
<http://www.nationalreview.com/nrof_comment/comment-mitchell040902.asp>looking 
for American accounts.

Last year, the General Accounting Office of the Congress found IRS computer 
systems to be ludicrously insecure and vulnerable 
<http://www.computerworld.com/cwi/story/0,1199,NAV47_STO59540,00.html> to 
hackers.

In 2000, Privacy Journal caught the IRS signing taxpayers up for junk mail. 
<http://www.politechbot.com/p-01563.html>

You may still be in danger of a "lifestyle 
audit"  <http://www.nysscpa.org/cpajournal/1999/0699/features/f46699.html> 
if a bureaucrat or anonymous tipster decides you seem to be living beyond 
your means; though this practice was somewhat curtailed by legislation 
passed in 1998.

Another GAO study  <http://freedom.house.gov/library/technology/gaoirs.pdf> 
found the IRS did not live up to the privacy criteria for government 
websites set by the Federal Trade Commission, bombarding users with 
third-party cookies.

Congress closed a loophole in 1997 that let thousands of IRS employees 
"legally" "browse" <http://www.privacilla.org/government/irsbrowsing.html> 
through taxpayer records at will, subject to the occasional administrative 
slap on the wrist, 
<http://www.epic.org/privacy/databases/irs/disposition.html> but no 
criminal sanction. If you believe the practice stopped in 1997, we have 
swampland in Florida for sale you might be interested in.

For all this and, no doubt, much more, the Internal Revenue Service and its 
income tax are collectively the Privacy Villain of the Week.

The Privacy Villain of the Week and Privacy Hero of the Month are projects 
of the National Consumer Coalition's Privacy Group. For more information on 
the NCC Privacy Group, see www.nccprivacy.org or contact James Plummer at 
202-467-5809 or jplummer () consumeralert org . This release can be accessed 
directly at http://www.nccprivacy.org/handv/020411villain.htm 




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