Slashdot Mirror
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.
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?
Oh, it's more than that. The IRS is the key enforcer for the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.
Your Next IRS Political Audit - The tax agency is getting vast new power in health care
The IRS Is Accessing Your Health Records. You Trust Them?
The US Government needs to get the problems at that agency fixed, now. Between this and the suppression of political groups going on, this is intollerable and undemocratic. What did Franklin say? A Republic, if you can keep it?
The IRS’s Curious Immunity - It’s worse than the PATRIOT Act.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
When everyone kept their mouths shut when the Warrantless Wiretapping was approved, did you expect it to stop there? Benjamin Franklin's quote about temporary safety fell upon deaf ears in the U.S. We are now the police state plutocracy we've always wanted. Good luck getting your privacy back.
They had a search warrant for financial data regarding one former employee, and they took tens of millions of medical records too, which they weren't entitled to.
Warrant said they could take A, they took A and B.....ZZZZZZZZ. Everything from B on was unrelated information to the investigation proper, and not covered by the warrant. They stepped over the line, despite being warned. How is this confusing to you?
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Sadly, the guys who idolize President Obama don't care about this story, or the many others. To them, it's just the conservatives/GOP showing their hatred of the first black president, nothing more.
So, I've given up hope that they will see the light of what this administration is like. They'll keep voting for guys like him, who will bring this country down very soon. There is no avoiding that fate. I'm not clamoring for revolution, but I think a civil war is coming.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
If you weren't making it up, you could link to the exact part of the law.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
You clearly have no idea how such systems work. My guess is that the IRS served their warrant and then demanded read only ODBC/API access to the companies systems. The company's DBAs likely balked at the idea... I know I would... and said "listen, if you have that sort of access, you could violate Hipaa if you submit the wrong query. We're very stringent on what we allow to be run against our tables" But the IRS being the IRS said "Fuck you, we're the IRS" and went right ahead. Once you have a legit login and password the data is no longer encrypted for you.
Knowing the ramifications of what the IRS were doing, the company likely logged their queries. The IRS's DBAs likely were worried the company in question could potentially get a court injunction to stop their access so their first query was likely "Select * from customers;" and dumped the entire table to a local table. Then company in question likely saw this, freaked out, but realized any lawsuit they filed would likely be quashed by "We have an ongoing investigation" yada yada... so they kept quiet about it until the original case was over.
I'm just guessing but I've been in similar situations and the governments admins are pricks and usually don't have a clue what they are doing. Violating hipaa is VERY easy to do if you don't know what you're doing. So much so that many people don't even want to work in departments that have access to such information. Make a typo in your query and you're getting walked out the door.
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.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
The IRS is the one that is charged with ensuring that everyone has insurance, not with keeping and maintaining medical records.
Lets use the ever popular car analogy. The Department of Motor Vehicles checks to make sure that you have car insurance. The Department of Motor Vehicles doesn't keep copies of the maintenance records, oil changes, refueling, car washes, and tune-ups. The IRS is like the DMV - they will check to make sure that you have insurance, they shouldn't have your health records. This is over the line.
I would hope your wouldn't actually want that. The most charitable thing you can say at the moment is that they apparently have more power than they can manage is a responsible way, let along legal way.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
After all those years of the current anti-Obama crowd desperately defending the shamefully illegal shenanigans of GWB's administration, I just don't quite know how to react to seeing them implode over this Obama-related stuff.
Why couldn't you get this angry at Bush Corp when it was doing similar or worse stuff? Why did you try so hard to dismiss any criticism of the unlawful (and almost always far worse) behavior of people such as GWB, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rove, et al?
I'm not suggesting it is wrong for you to be critical of current events, because we should all be crying foul. But it would be nice if you objected when everyone does it, and not just when it's the other team.
The most charitable thing you can say at the moment is that they apparently have more power than they can manage is a responsible way, let along legal way.
It may be more accurate to say that certain IRS agents think they have far more power than they actually do and have let their mistake go to their heads.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
It certainly appears that the Obama administration went after political opponents with the IRS. Can you point out when the Bush administration did that with either the IRS or FBI against political opponents? I don't recall that happening.
You may recall the Obama administration going after Fox News repeatedly. What comparable thing happened under the Bush administration? I don't recall that happening.
Nixon was actually right about the war in Vietnam, and extracted the US from it. There isn't much doubt that the US was correct about going to war in Afghanistan, and all of the causes of action against Iraq were correct (banned long range missiles, obstruction, crimes against humanity, etc.) except the active WMD programs. The WMD programs were in stasis, just waiting for Saddam to complete his breakout of sanctions using the Oil for Food money to bribe UN members and politicians around the world. If Iraq was able to break out of the sanctions regime, there is no doubt those WMD programs would restart. Oh, and don't forget, Saddam had the government mime as if they still had WMD material to fool the Iranians. He didn't think the West in general, and the US specifically, would act. He guessed wrong.
Since the IRS under the Obama administration was asking extremely intrusive questions of conservative political groups, and then forwarding that information to liberal groups, I guess that counts as spying too. You think the Bush administration did that? Not so much.
Other than working in the White House, I don't recall that either Cheney or Rumsfeld were ever implicated in any part of the Watergate scandal. So unless you have something, you have nothing as the basis for a smear.
I don't think you nailed this one other than successfully identifying where two people worked for a short period.
If you read it, you would know.
Nancy said we had to "pass it to find out what was in it". When you are a jillionaire insider trader, like her, you don't care what it says. You can buy your own hospital if you don't like ObamaCare.
That's because the House and Senate were each debating and amending the bill(s) simultaneously, IIRC. This was done on both sides to speed up the process I guess. If either one or both passed it would go to the other side and a joint committee work out something both sides agree to, and since it was so big, there was a lot of room for differences between what they pass and what the committee pooped out. I'm pretty sure that's what she meant.
Where in the legislation does it say they could seize the 60 million records they are accused of taking, "despite knowing that these medical records were not within the scope of the warrant?"
Where in the legislation does it say they can target specific political affiliations to deny/delay tax exempt status or use special scrutiny as a bullying tactic?
If these aren't bright enough red flags for you:
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act
Where 'Secretary' refers to the Secretary of the Treasury. This section describes what is to be reported to the IRS. Sections (i) through (iii) specify name, address, tax id number and policy information. Section (iv) is completely open ended.
This wasn't a laptop, this was servers. Probably a pretty substantial setup too. I wouldn't be surprised if it was a cluster of big RISC boxes with a substantial SAN. Where you are thinking, "HDD," think disk storage array, a big one.
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.
It is clearly indicated the agents went outside what was in the warrant, were warned about it, and took the data anyway - just to get some financial data on one former employee. I would normally expect you to be outraged about this sort of thing, violated warrant, government overreach and all.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
You missed the joke. Last I've read, IRS regulations are added at a rate greater than a human can read. Ignorance of the law is no excuse, even when the law is unknowable. So go read the the laws and let us know which one causes the problem. By the time you finish reading it, you'll be dead, and have violated many of them before you managed to read them (or interpreted them differently than some random judge)
Learn to love Alaska
You'll probably find that just knowing some of those laws violates another law...
'Don't worry' said the trees when they saw the axe coming, 'The handle is one of us.'