Slashdot Mirror
IRS Can Read Your Email Without Warrant
kodiaktau writes "The ACLU has issued a FOIA request to determine whether the IRS gets warrants before reading taxpayers' email. The request is based on the antiquated Electronic Communication Protection Act — federal agencies can and do request and read email that is over 180 days old. The IRS response can be found at the ACLU's website. The IRS asserts that it can and will continue to make warrantless requests to ISPs to track down tax evasion. Quoting: 'The documents the ACLU obtained make clear that, before Warshak, it was the policy of the IRS to read people’s email without getting a warrant. Not only that, but the IRS believed that the Fourth Amendment did not apply to email at all. A 2009 "Search Warrant Handbook" from the IRS Criminal Tax Division’s Office of Chief Counsel baldly asserts that "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." Again in 2010, a presentation by the IRS Office of Chief Counsel asserts that the "4th Amendment Does Not Protect Emails Stored on Server" and there is "No Privacy Expectation" in those emails.'"
If postal mail passes through an IRS person's hands for some legal reason, I believe they are legally entitled to read all the postcards in your mail, as there is no expectation of privacy on them, given that they're postcards. Email is the same way: the contents are naked, written on the side of the packets for anyone on a given network segment to view if the traffic comes their way. Just as we put mail in envelopes, we should encrypt our email if it's not for anyone and everyone to read if they happen to be standing "near" it when it goes by.