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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.'"
I certainly expect my email to be private. Okay, I expect it SHOULD be private. But the bottom line is if you are storing your data on other people's equipment, you have no guarantee of anything.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
The IRS has a secret legal opinion that they CAN use lethal drone operations on a citizen noncombatant living in the United States.
We don't have reasonable expectation of privacy to our electronic communications, but apparently the govt does. On top of that we pay for it.
With this kind of "No Expectation of Privacy" thing that comes up (re: emails, phones messages, etc.) -- Hypothetically, what if someone did a scientific survey of U.S. residents and asked: "Do you expect that your stored email messages are private from the government? Do expect that the text messages stored in your phone are private from the government?". Then would there be any possibility that the results of such a survey would be usable in a future court case to knock down such foolishness?
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
Really, if you're not encrypting your email, you have no reasonable expectation of privacy. If your communications are in plaintext, being passed around from server to server in plaintext, it would be absolutely stupid to expect that would be in any way private. It's about as private as a postcard: no envelope, all information plainly visible to anyone that handles it..
The US tax code needs a massive overhaul and simplification, and the IRS simply needs to be dismantled.
Maybe I should send that as an email so the IRS will read it.
You must gather your party before venturing forth.
By default, email is plaintext. It isn't sent in an envelope, it's more of an electronic postcard. You aren't guaranteed a particular routing, so email may pass through any number of ISPs of varying nationality, legality, and morals. You want privacy? Use encryption.
In snailmail, enveloped mail has an expectation of privacy, postcards less so (if at all). Email is not snailmail. All it takes is a packet sniffer in the right place to read your mail, not even much of a cracking package. So there is no de facto privacy. The only expectation of privacy comes from people who keep expecting email to behave like snailmail, and it's a false expectation.
The case that the fourth amendment applies to unencrypted data sent across arbitrary connections is weak. I'm no fan of the IRS, and they are often above the law and a law unto themselves, but I don't think that applies here.
People who live in glass houses shouldn't walk and text.
If I didn't have an expectation of privacy, I wouldn't password protect it.
a new renewable energy source. All we have to do is put some magnets on our founding father and the amount of energy they exert spinning in their graves over this and things like this would power the whole united states with some to spare.
Relocate.
Citizenship?
Renounce.
Bug out now, Mr. and Mrs. America. Before they lock the gate.
Or? You didn't think all that TSA and "no fly list" was to keep people out, did you?
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
If the IRS can read email without a warrant, then it should be EASY to convict nearly every overpaid CEO in the USA who hides their money via creative accounting and tax dodges. Why have there been no convictions then for the 2008 Economic Crash where the fatcat bankers stole trillions and then got free billions to cover their losses? Surely that money can be traced and found and certain wall street types convicted if the IRS is reading *their* emails.
Oh, but they aren't -- because those people own the government. Because those people are "too big to fail". Because those people have friends in high places and lots of lawyers to defend them. They aren't easy targets, even though they are big targets.
No no, prosecutors want easy convictions from people with no means to defend themselves, using the same tactics as high school bullies -- pick on the weak.
The IRS reading your mail? Pfft. It's to keep the proles in line. The elite have their own laws and their own justice that flows from power. The rest of us just try to survive under the heel of their boot.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Do I get privacy if my mail is stored on a mail server in my house that I own? What if it is a colocated server that I own? What if it is a rented server? What if it is a VPS?
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
The Sarah Palin email hacker should have used that line! "Mrs. Palin has no privacy expectation". Might have saved him from his misdemeanor conviction of "unauthorized access to a computer".
Have you ever rented a home? By your logic, you have no expectation of privacy in a rented property or hotel room. You might be interested to know that it's already well established that (outside of television) your landlord can't even consent to a police search of your property, unless they meet the normal requirements for such consent such as if they also live there. Your email being stored on a server is like that, you're renting the space from the server owner, according to the terms they set forth when you signed up for the account. Unless those terms say they can go through your email or grant permission for others to go through your email, this is still illegal. I'll admit, laws regarding the physical world and the internet don't line up 1:1, but suggesting that there should be no privacy at all on the internet because of the way the internet works is a bit nuts.
Shit, I bet even rot13 is considered an encryption technology.
Yes, it is. Ask Dmitri Sklyarov.
IIRC, Adobe used ROT13 and claimed it as an "Effective Access Control" method under the DMCA.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Especially after you trolled us 100's of times last month http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3581857&cid=43276741 in March 2013, but you forgot to submit that one as anonymous coward like you did all the others idiot, and instead you used your registered username here. You got played: You played yourself, moron.
Biden says the chance of the U.S. Gov becoming oppressive is virtually nil.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Factually, *EVERYBODY* has something to hide... not because they are necessarily doing anything wrong, but because some things are simply private.
To anyone who would say that they agree with such a notion, consider asking them why ordinary people wear clothes daily. Clothes, after all, cover up one's body, and therefore hide it from view. If the only reason to hide something is because something is wrong, is someone who is wearing clothes necessarily saying that there is something necessarily wrong with their body?
Unless the person you are talking to is a nudist who also happens to firmly believes that other people should openly practice nudity as well (sort of like an evangelical nudist, I guess), or else thinks for some reason that everybody *does* have something wrong with their body, they should realize the inherent flaw in their previously held assumption once this is pointed out to them.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
The 180-day limit is based on an antiquated legal standard, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, which was signed into law in 1986 - more than 25 years ago. At the time, email was still in its infancy, and "cloud"-based email providers like Yahoo, GMail, etc. simply didn't exist.
Efforts are underway to update the act so that, among other things, law enforcement will need to obtain a warrant anytime they want to access email. But those updates aren't law yet, so the old statute still applies.
Warrants, as defined in the constitution, must cite specific papers, and specific places. You can't get a constitutionally aboveboard warrant to go "fishing".
Since the government is looking for unidentified persons who may be infringing, so that can then identify and prosecute, they really can't get a warrant.
This is intentional. The limitations on how warrants work were *intended* to frustrate magistrates and government agents.
Making it "easier" for them is how you lose your freedoms.
I have no expectation of privacy at all. If I want something held private I'll be sure not to put it in a damn e-mail. Not just the government but all kinds of people can look at e-mail, it's less secure than frigging snail mail. Face it, you must be crazy to mention criminal shit in an e-mail or on any kind of phone. There are ways of getting secure messages around but those aren't included.
"obviously you have nothing to hide..."
Have you ever needed to pee or poop when you were in a group of people? Did you just do it on the spot or what?
Ezekiel 23:20
For years us folks who run networks have been telling users not to write anything in an email that they would not put on the back of a postcard.
Problem is these days the kids don't know what a postcard is.
People not so warned, however, may have a "reasonable expectation of privacy" based on what they have and have not been told about email and their ISP service, the same way a person walking around in the nude in their apartment does as long as they aren't standing in front of an open window. And no, fine print in the terms of use doesn't cut it in today's busy world, no more than a landlord busting in with a camera rolling on our nudist would be able to get over on pointing to the part of the lease that says they can enter to check the fire alarms. The IRS might lose this one if it gets taken to court.
Someone had to do it.
"obviously you have nothing to hide..."
Have you ever needed to pee or poop when you were in a group of people? Did you just do it on the spot or what?
Doesn't everyone?
Huh, that may explain all the odd looks...
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
When David Kernell accessed Sarah Palin's email without permission he received a year in prison, when the IRS does it, it's not a crime. I think there may be a communication issue on what constitutes a crime.
Disagreeing with you does not make me a troll.
Yes, but it's the government, so they'll probably find some way to screw up redacting it. For instance, by putting it in a Word doc, selecting highlight with black as the color, and then they send you the doc.
It seems that a key tenet of authoritarianism is the assumption that privacy is not legitimate.
Without the information provided by putting that into practice, it would be much more difficult to micromanage daily life. An income tax in particular is a control freak's wet dream: it provides both carrots and sticks that can be used to manipulate behavior. Unlike impersonal excise taxes or sales taxes, where the only relevant information is a dollar amount, an income tax inherently requires getting to know the mundane details of a person's life. You have to know who they are, what they do, what they've been up to lately, and you need invasive powers to make sure they aren't cheating or otherwise lying to you.
There is a reason why the Constitution had to be amended to allow for an income tax. As far as I know, that reason wasn't because the Founding Fathers never heard of such a concept.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Huh, that may explain all the odd looks...
Are you sure the even ones were any better?
Ezekiel 23:20
Just a little googling and I found: IMAPCrypt
Looks like a decent utility to automate running daily... it will go through and encrypt (via PGP), emails over any age you specify.
Then when they go in, tada. Encrypted! Now they have to go request the backups, if there were any going that far back.
Another option would be a script or filter that moves everything to your local folders at home.
This sig intentionally left blank.
There is a reason why the Constitution had to be amended to allow for an income tax. As far as I know, that reason wasn't because the Founding Fathers never heard of such a concept.
The reason why the Constitution had to be amended is that the Fuller court (incorrectly) decided that whether income was from property or not determined whether it was a direct tax or duty. Prior to this ruling it was understood that an income tax was always a duty and not a direct tax, so did not have to be apportioned. The 16th amendment doesn't create the income tax, it just says that the income tax doesn't have to be apportioned even if under the Fuller interpretation it would be a direct tax.
He effected a bored affect.
The real question is do you blame the IRS for doing what it legally can to function as an entity, or the people for allowing it?
Both. The IRS is more culpable because they actually have their hand in the cookie jar. Legislators who know about this are also guilty, but that's harder to prove.
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
It seems then, as I said, that a key tenet of such authoritarianism is the assumption that everyone ought to be a practicing nudist.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
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.
It started with the "no reasonable expectation of privacy" doctrine, handed down by courts in years past, that actually made some kind of sense at the time. You can't (easily) stop someone from seeing you in public or who you might be with, etc.
All well and good, except that the doctrine has been abused beyond belief where technology is concerned, and the Supreme Court is too cowardly or too intimidated to fix it.
If I see you walking down the street but we've never met, unless you do something to call attention to yourself, I'm probably not going to remember much about you after too long except in very general terms. It is possible for me to record my observations, but there is a lot of effort in that. It is possible for the police to follow me around when I'm in public, but that is a lot of effort and it is an insurmountable effort to try to do that to large groups of people. Even taking pictures or video, where the abuse of this doctrine started, still requires a lot of effort to make information out of hours of video or thousands of pictures.
Until we get things like GPS bugs, cell phone location data, facial and automatic license plate recognition, etc. Here is the abuse writ large. It is now possible to have a searchable record of the whereabouts of people you didn't know you were looking for at the time. So....you may not be invisible in public, but do you have a right to not be thoroughly identified, tracked, and data mined? I think so. A lot of people do. The law is still very backwards in this and stubbornly avoids the question of whether the original doctrine is fatally flawed because we are humans in a human world being stalked by non humans with unknown and unannounced abilities.
The email problem is that the text of an unencrypted email can be read by anybody in the line of transmission. Postcards are similar. If I'm holding it I could read it. There isn't an expectation of privacy or secrecy there, though I at least would argue that I have reason to believe the US mail isn't constantly being spied on. It is not, or was not, practical to image every postcard in the mail system though. It is totally possible to capture every single email that goes by. Again, abuse of doctrine which was written before these things were practical at any scale.
Something's got to give, and it's got to give in favor of humans and against the subhumans and their machines who want to violate our privacy at every turn.