Medical Firm Sues IRS For 4th Amendment Violation In Records Seizure

cold fjord writes "A healthcare provider has sued the Internal Revenue Service and 15 of its agents, charging they wrongfully seized 60 million medical records from 10 million Americans ... [The unnamed company alleges] the agency violated the Fourth Amendment in 2011, when agents executed a search warrant for financial data on one employee – and that led to the seizure of information on 10 million, including state judges. The search warrant did not specify that the IRS could take medical information, UPI said. And information technology officials warned the IRS about the potential to violate medical privacy laws before agents executed the warrant, the complaint said." Also at Nextgov.com.

Comments

Re:New IRS dress code

[Mitreya]

When will the IRS start issuing jack boots to all agents?

I'd be more curious who gets the money if they win? From TFA:

The suit seeks $25,000 in compensatory damages, per violation. The recordsâ(TM) seizure could impact up to one in 25 Americans, UPI said.

I assume they will be passing that money to affected Americans?

Re:IRS+scientology / fighting the IRS = no winners

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Scientology has been the only group that has fought the IRS and won

Huh? The IRS loses all the time. Even if you just narrow the list down to religious groups pushing the boundaries of what qualifies for the religious tax-exempt status, the IRS lost to a church that was endorsing political candidates.

Re:End the IRS

[squiggleslash]

I'm not scared of the IRS and I'm pretty sure, FWIW, that if I did make a single mistake on a tax return they would (a) be unlikely to notice, and (b) if they did notice they'd refund me the difference (or if the error means I owe more taxes, require I pay the difference, with interest. Either way, I end up paying what I should have done to begin with.)

I seriously doubt that the number of people terrified of the IRS is particularly large. I know there are a lot of irresponsible tax evaders who want all the benefits of civilization with none of the duties it entails who hate the IRS, but that's rather different.

Re:They're just getting a head start on Obamacare.

[hedwards]

This isn't necessarily over the line.

The article doesn't state it, but it looks like they probably imaged the entire HDD, which is normal, and that resulted in them having copies of all those medical records. And because the records themselves were not properly stored the IRS now has access to them.

Sounds to me more like the firm is concerned with covering their own asses for not having properly secured the data in the first place. Laptops have a tendency to be stolen or otherwise walk off, and if they lost the records that easily, I'd want to change insurers.

Re:It's SO WEIRD to read stuff like this.

[Anarchduke]

I'm not sure how this piece of crap got modded "Insightful" The 47% of people paying no taxes is complete crap. Its true that 47% of people don't pay one particular form of tax but most of them pay a bigger percentage of their income in taxes then Mitt Romney does.

Not about the 80%

[dutchwhizzman]

This was not about the 80% spending rule. This was about the financial data on one individual, that just happened to be an employee at this company. If he worked at McDonalds, they'd have been pulling records on 60 million hamburgers.