IRS Left Taxpayer Data Vulnerable and Lied About It

Bruce66423 writes with news that the IRS hasn't made much progress improving its poor IT security. From the article: "The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration found that the IRS had only partially implemented 42 percent of the corrective plans it checked off as completed in recent years. ... The review (PDF) showed that the IRS failed to properly track its progress toward completing many of the fixes auditors had recommended in recent years. The agency closed most of the cases without adequate documentation and did not always upload the necessary information into a database that helps ensure compliance."

Comments

Say it ain't so!

[amiga3D]

A Federal agency lying? Surely not.

Re:Say it ain't so!

[Joining Yet Again]

Gentlemen, engage your confirmation biases.

Re:Say it ain't so!

[Joining Yet Again]

The US government - which in its current form has led the world's leading/only superpower for over a century - is "incompetent"? No, my friend. It might be miles from perfect. It might be partly corrupted by power and the powerful (though it experiences nothing like the corruption of some governments). It might fuck up royally from time to time. But, as an organisation, as a whole over time, it is as far from "incompetent" as any large organisation can hope to be.

And I say this as someone who doesn't think of the US government as particularly moral. I just think it's fucking good at what it does, which is why it's where it is, and my country is not.

Re: Say it ain't so!

[Mashiki]

For 99.7% of Americans, what he said was correct. For the 0.3% of Americans that were paying for inadequate coverage, he was wrong.

Wow talk about spinning, I'm sure you can explain that to the 20-30m or so who've already lost their insurance, and if the estimates are accurate upto another 85m are going to lose theirs in the next 6 months.

And Barack never made the claim absolute the way you have spun it.

Really? "If you like your insurance you can keep it. Period." "If you like your doctor you can keep them. Period" Odd, those seem to be absolutes. Perhaps you should get away from the Media Matters and DNC talking points.

From the article

[BringsApples]

The IRS said in its response to the findings that it issued a new manual this year to help improve its monitoring practices and that the agency would audit completed actions in the future.

So, if I file the wrong kind of taxes, can I take the same sort of stance? "Yeah yeah, I know I filled out the form totally with the wrong numbers, and made it look like I needed a huge return, but I've purchased a new pen, and I've trained myself to better understand the form. So in the future, I will do better."

I'm tired of hearing so much wrong done by our governing body, and never hear of any repercussions.

Consequences?

[JBMcB]

So the punishment for not securing taxpayer data is... nothing? So why bother fixing anything?

Re:Consequences?

[jmac_the_man]

"Punishing" the IRS would be moving money from one part of government to another, and wouldn't fix anything.

You work, right? Unless you work for the government, there will be some kind of expectations set out for you. If you don't do your job properly, you can lose bonuses, get demoted, have to take paycuts, or eventually be dismissed for cause. That's how most jobs are. The parent poster is arguing for firing whoever made poor security decisions.

Values, not regulations.

The IRS is an organization that decided it didn't like a Supreme Court decision that limited its power and benefited people that its employees didn't like, so they used their powers as the nation's tax collectors to harass their political enemies. They have pretty shitty values, and heads should be rolling until we get people in there with better values. "Should" is the operative word here, as no one has actually been punished for this.

Re:Consequences?

[smpoole7]

> So the punishment for not securing taxpayer data is... nothing? So why bother fixing anything?

Exactly. It is very, very difficult to fire someone who works for the Federal Government. One case that I knew of: there was this woman in a wheelchair who pinched butts, stole things from the cafeteria (in plain sight, right in front of everyone) and did so little work they had to search for it with microscopes. True story. They had to apply to the regional office in Atlanta, have several hearings, go through several "counseling sessions," and finally, after about A YEAR ... this worthless piece of flotsam was terminated.

Then she sued them for discrimination and they were tied up for another year in court. She lost, of course, but it cost time and money.

Ergo: the strong inclination, when you have incompetents, is just to leave them in place. If they're doing too much damage, you try to transfer them to where they can't do as much harm. Barring that, if you think it'll work at all, you PROMOTE them. (Again: true stories. I'm not kidding.)

So ... now you end up with incompetents in middle management. The problem gets worse.

Rinse. Repeat until the entire building is like a M.A.S.H. episode, with a few who will actually do their jobs, and who can only stay sane by either taking drugs or joking about it incessantly.

(And in real life, by the way, if you're not careful, such "joking" will actually result in counseling and a reprimand.)

I am not kidding. There is no hyperbole in the above. Re-read it and let it nourish your brain. There's at least part of your answer.

(The other parts are so unpalatable -- such as outright nepotism and granting favors to friends and supporters -- that I shall spare you.)

That word, "lying", stop using it

[davide marney]

If you read the specifics, you'll find that there is plenty of leeway between what the auditors asked for (things like scanning for empty/default admin passwords, filing security audit reports in a central location, documenting that managers approved admin accounts, etc.) and what the IRS believed it had done to implement them.

If you ask me to implement something, I think I did so, and so I check that off as "completed", that is not lying.

This is more like a failed test case. The auditors are complaining that the IRS' implementation of their recommendations are insufficient.

Re:That word, "lying", stop using it

[Joining Yet Again]

Yeah but that sort of logic won't allow people to add a poorly understood event to their "LIST OF REASONS WHY IRS (AND GOV IN GENERAL) IS EVIL AND SHUD BE ELIMINATED".

We could be happy that government is so open that even the tax collectors are audited, and a public announcement is made when they are judged to have not complied sufficiently. If only everything was so well overseen. (and, no, I don't have a hard on for tax collectors, but half my family was brought under a dictatorship, so I know what it looks like when a government is not accountable.)

That settles it

[frovingslosh]

If they are going to be that way with my private data, I'm going to stop using their service.