Is Identity Theft Overwhelming the IRS?

coondoggie writes "The number of tax-related identity theft incidents is exploding, and nowhere is that more obvious than at the Internal Revenue Service, which has seen reports rise from 51,702 in 2008 to 248,357 in 2010. While it has programs in place to fight the identity theft issue, it is also hamstrung in many other areas, according to a report out this week (PDF) from the Government Accountability Office. For example, the GAO says the IRS's ability to address identity theft issues is constrained by privacy laws that limit IRS' ability to share identity theft information with other agencies."

Comments

That's too bad =P

[Daetrin]

You know, perhaps if the government had a better track record of handling privacy issues then we would be willing to grant them exceptions in cases like this, where it actually benefits both the government and the individuals the information concerns. But we all know that if we let them share the information in this one case, no matter how specifically we worded the laws and regulations about it, it wouldn't be a week before the FBI and other agencies were trying to get secret search warrants or some other trickery to access the data for evidence of criminal behaviour.

Vernor Vinge's "Rainbows End" presented a world in which the government had "grown up" and was given unprecedented access to information in order to fight terrorism and regulate and maintain the internet, but didn't actually use that power to persecute people for minor stuff like drug offenses or to try and control what people said. I actually thought that was the most unreasonable part of the book. The tech was all more or less reasonable, but the idea that the government could actually get that much of a clue seems totally outside of reality.

It's clear

[Anonymous Coward]

the solution to identity theft is to bring back REAL ID.