Another YGTBSM!!!

Posted on by April 11, 2013

Heard this on the way in this morning… Sigh…

New information received by the ACLU regarding the Internal Revenue Service after a Freedom of Information Act request filed last year indicates that the agency does not feel it is necessary to obtain a warrant before reading Americans’ emails.

The ACLU sought to obtain disclosure from the IRS about the practices of its Criminal Tax Division, which, as its name implies, essentially oversees the initiation of criminal and civil litigation on tax-related charges.

Though the IRS complied within a reasonable amount of time, divulging 247 pages of documentation in response to the ACLU’s FOIA request, the civil rights group says it avoided directly answering whether it considers warrants necessary before reading private email communications. The agency did, however, essentially disclose that it did not think Internet users had “any privacy expectations” when using email. A 2009 IRS Search Warrant Handbook stated as much:

“The Fourth Amendment does not protect communications held in electronic storage, such as email messages stored on a server, because internet users do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in such communications.”

Full article HERE at RT…

I’m sorry, but this crap is just getting TOTALLY out of hand… I’m beginning to think there is not a SINGLE Amendment that is safe from this administration…  Dammit…

Comments

Another YGTBSM!!! — 25 Comments

  3. Unfortunately, it’s not just this admin. We’ve been going this way for a long time. It’s just that now they are more open about it. The question is how do we stop them. There are a whole lot of “them”. And many if not most of the people being send to Congress are turning a blind eye.

  5. We need to be as rabid about protecting our rights no matter who is in office. Email IS papers and effects! It is digital papers and should be protected against government search and seizure.

  6. E-mail should be protected by the Fourth Amendment the same way that snail mail is.

  7. Rev/WSF- Yeah…

    PH- I don’t remember hearing about this before…

    Opus/LL- Agreed, to my tiny ass mind, it’s STILL a 4th Amendment protection! sigh…

  8. The thing to remember about email is, and always has been, do not put anything in email that you aren’t prepared to shout in a crowded room. Anyone who understands the way email works also understands that there never has been privacy in email. It just doesn’t work that way.

    And, if there were privacy in email, the entire PGP scenario would have never happened.

  11. Let me fix that for you:

    I’m sorry, but this crap is just getting TOTALLY out of hand… I’m beginning to realize that there is no SINGLE Amendment that is safe from *GOVERNMENT*… Dammit…

    -THOUGHT POLICE
    Have you turned in a thought criminal today?

  14. Please turn, face the camera and open your briefcase.

    MikeyB

  16. Thot/Mikey- my only comment is 😛

    SoCal- yeah, saw that pissed me right off. And yes they ARE out of control

  18. Yeah you should check out the story of Charlie Engle. Basically he did a film about running across the Sahara and Mr. Super IRS Agent saw the film and wanted to know how he could train for that while holding down a regular job, so he started and investigation on him and even went thru his trash. In the end he didn’t find any tax fraud but did discover that Charlie had lied about his income on a mortgage form. Even though there is no evidence I can find that he defaulted on the loans in question he was convicted of mortgage fraud.

    The agent also said that he would see people driving expensive cars on the street and would write down the tag so he could find out if the people could afford those cars on the income claimed.