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Congressman Asks NSA To Provide Metadata For "Lost" IRS Emails
An anonymous reader writes in with news that the IRS lost email scandal is far from over. Representative Steve Stockman (R-TX) has sent a formal letter to the National Security Agency asking it to hand over "all its metadata" on the e-mail accounts of a former division director at the Internal Revenue Service. "Your prompt cooperation in this matter will be greatly appreciated and will help establish how IRS and other personnel violated rights protected by the First Amendment," Stockman wrote on Friday. The request came hours after the IRS told a congressional committee that it had "lost" all of the former IRS Exempt Organizations division director's e-mails between January 2009 and April 2011.
Quickly! Use your fourth amendment violation to help us with this first amendment violation! No, that's not a joke. Why are you laughing?!
That's going to be a long wait for a train that never comes - the NSA will simply not comply. Its a nice 'in your face' gesture though, real cute. Should get some political points during election time, I'm sure.
It is very difficult not to reach this conclusion, unless you believe that the IRS just lost all relevant information by accident...
I was under the impression that one of the requirements for being a non-profit was the agreement that you wouldn't be an actionable organization. Seems to me that most of the organizations, both conservative and liberal, were rightly under the microscope.
"Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right" - Salvor Hardin
Earlier testimony by the IRS indicated that it would take years to fulfil the current request to get the emails from the email server. Now they are saying a workstation crashed so the emails were lost....... Time to start charging people with obstruction of congress/justice.
There's nothing "stupid" about naming a political party with a political name.
It's a real scandal when the party in power can leverage tax exempt status, or any other "treatment" from the IRS. You can agree or disagree with the political opinions or positions of these parties, but you must never use political power to prevent another party from gaining traction.
That's more than a scandal, it's pure simple corruption.
You'll probably reply with something political now, such as that you don't like the tea party or Romney or something. Totally irrelevant, save it for a real political discussion.
For all their mouth-breathing bullshit, nobody should make the mistake of thinking that the GOP is stupid. This is a lose-lose for the President on its face: if the NSA doesn't come back with the data that it's asserted they have, then they're in cahoots with Obama; if they somehow do come back with it, then it proves the GOP right. Either way, they win. It's a slimy, empty, political victory, but a victory all the same.
NSA is the National Backup Service
NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.
"Take a real scandal (NSA) and link it to a fake one (IRS)"
Translation: "Take government malfeasance that I imagine affects me personally and link it government malfeasance that I don't think impacts me personally...yet"
You (and so many others) fail to appreciate what's obvious to others of us: that while the NSA behavior is egregious, it's now out in the open, and you can take steps to protect yourself. And if you already assume the worst--that the NSA is scanning/saving *everything*, then that can't get any worse.
But the extent of the IRS behavior *isn't* out in the open. It *can* get much worse. If there's *any* politically motivated behavior going on the the IRS, then that is tacit approval and groundwork for more. And you won't think it's a "fake" scandal in a decade when, left unchecked, you find yourself the subject of a tax audit because you donated to the political party not in power. They can put a lien on your house. They can garnish your wages. In terms of practically achievable damage to the average citizen's life, the IRS is far more dangerous. The power to tax is the power to destroy.
You can stymie the NSA. You can't stymie the IRS.
This is hilarious. If they CAN get the info, it makes everyone in government VERY nervous, if they can't get it, then the next thing this congressman should bring up is "why the heck are we funding the NSA if they don't actually seem to do anything?" Ok, the NSA's answer to that is "we do lots of stuff, but we can't tell you about it, it's secret".
Waiting for an amusing sig.
National Storage Archives.
signature is pants
The laws appear to be vague such that somebody has to make a judgment call over what suspicious activity to inspect further. If anybody has an idea for making those judgements more objective and/or fair, please speak up.
And it may require more staff and resources. You can't have good & fair auditing on the cheap; pony up the taxes or stop complaining when one low-level person has "too much power" to make such decisions.
There is no free lunch.
Table-ized A.I.
We've got politically motivated BOLO lists, a political appointee hatchet-person taking the fifth, a government agency bullshitting the nation about "crashed" computers and "lost" emails....
There is a turd in here somewhere. Let a special prosecutor to sift through the IRS back up tapes, and subpoena all the other agencies for Lerner's mail. Let's find out why all these motherfuckers are stonewalling and lying.
It's personally offensive to me; to be told they can't recover the mail. I know that's bullshit. It's not even vaguely plausible. It's an insult to my intelligence and it deserves to be persecuted if only to expose and humiliate the fuckwits that have the temerity to make such a stupid claim. Letting that one slide just isn't tolerable. Let's kick open the door and find out what in the hell is going on here.
lost the emails............ I know that's bullshit and so do you.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
Amazing how you have made this into the GOP being slimy when the whole issue is due to the Democrat controlled IRS (during that time-period) losing all relevant emails from a large period of time. That is what is slimy here.
I keep telling everyone, the NSA blew it - had they advertised their services as the ultimate backup, folks would have paid them to spy on everyone.
Sometimes you do need some help from marketing.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Do you have ANY comprehension of what you seem to be supporting????? Consider:
Person A pays his taxes. Person B pays his taxes. Person C pays his taxes.
Persons A,B, and C form a club, and each tosses-in a few dollars to fund club activities.
WHY ON EARTH is the government automatically entitled to apply a new tax to the already taxed money the three people chipped-in????
Now let's extend this a bit...
The club has functions of general benefit to society. Anything from providing medicine to needy kids, or food to hungry families, or teaching English to immigrants, helping drunks get sober, you name it ... and wealthy person D decides to donate to the cause. For a wide variety of historical and cultural reasons, in the US it has long been policy to not tax the money that person D donates to help the club. The general reason is that the US was never intended to be socialist - it had a small government and left "social welfare" to a huge array of voluntary and charitable organizations. Money already flowing to such organizations was already deemed to be in the public good, and it was therefore redundant and counter-productive to tax it "for the public good".
do-gooders on the left long-ago declared that actions in the political realm were in this very nature of being "beneficial to society" and in that vein, the labor unions were enabled to become hugely involved in politics by disguising their Democrat-aligned election activities as "voter outreach", "volunteer training" and so-on and were able to do it under the 501(c4) section of the US code (which covers labor unions). For DECADES all the people on the left DEPENDED on this and defended it with lofty rhetoric about "civic responsibility" and so on. Only recently, as people on the right started to try using the same parts of US law in a similar way, have Democrats become critics - and ALL their proposals to remove the tax exemption have included the 501(c3) section of IRS code (which is where the non-union charities all are) while carefully and deliberately letting the 501(c4) section (which conveniently only applies to labor unions) stand. Any proposal to kill-off tax exemption for the 501(c3) groups in a partisan attempt to "get" the Koch Brothers or the TEA Party, will also hit things like the Shriners, Alcoholics Anon, Food Banks, etc while protecting the thugs at the UAW and the SEIU - an obnoxious result for something pretending to be "reform".
IF you are going to remove ABSOLUTELY ALL tax exemptions from US Law, you'd at least be more fair than any proposal the Democrats have ever supported BUT you are still stuck with the problem of a group where all the members are contributing after-tax dollars: Should THAT money be re-taxed? I ask because many such proposals remove that tax exemption by declareing a gathering of people to be a new entity and the money chipped-in to be "income". Under that scheme there is no such thing as "freedom of assembly" because nearly every gathering costs money and as such would be taxed and regulated and subject to harassment and arbitrary suppression.
Oh they are all stored both in the server and in my own backups, but then again neither I not my company are a governmental entity who has the duty and the legal obligation to store and preserve this kind of information, what should I know.
The sad thing about this political firestorm is that not one person in a hundred can actually explain what it is about. It's amazing how many people think that the IRS was seeking to prevent the Tea Party from getting tax exempt status; that was never the issue, their tax exempt status was never in doubt. The issue was they were applying for 501(c)(4) status which is reserved for social welfare groups like civic leagues and volunteer fire departments. Social welfare groups are allowed to engage in political activity but it cannot be their primary activity. Wondering why the Tea Party wanted that 501(c)(4) designation? Such groups do not have to reveal who is donating money to them. There has been a large run up in the number of groups applying for the 501(c)(4) designation.
I happen to know for a fact that all of my email sent & received is backed up for 7 years, because those are the retention requirements imposed on my company by the federal government.
So my emails from 2009 - 2011 are archived happily along with all of the other email from the 2nd half of 2007 through the present day. If a private corporation can be held to this level of competency (and it's really not THAT hard), why shouldn't the motherfucking IRS, which literally owns the fucking finances of the government?
Not surprising. That seems to happen a lot. As such, would someone please explain to me why the IRS allows anyone (let alone the IRS' top administrator) to download their emails to their desktops and delete them from their servers? And even if they did, why don't server backups exist which contain those emails?
Are the IRS' IT staff that incompetent?
As for demanding that the NSA turn over email metadata for Lois Lerner's IRS email address, that assumes they even have such information. Emails internal to the IRS shouldn't go across the Internet. I assume (maybe incorrectly) that the NSA isn't actively capturing packets on the IRS' internal networks, so what is to be gained here, except highlighting the incompetence of the IRS and using the "NSA is capturing everything" meme to make the Obama administration look bad.
So. It's just business as usual. Nothing to see here, just political wrangling to distract us from the fact that our government is being run for the benefit of the monied interests and not its citizens. Move along.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
All they needed was some marketing. If only they had called themselves SkyDrive, or OneDrive, or iCloud...
John
This sounds like the action of a Congressman trying to discredit the NSA. The NSA obviously is not going to respond to this - if they did, they'd be inundated with requests from every small-town prosecutor wanting some more evidence (ironically, some might even get warrants for it). That would be worse than what will happen instead, which is that an anti-NSA legislator gets a talking point about how the NSA isn't using its data and isn't cooperating with the rest of the government (namely Congress).
Yes, it's just a political point being scored. But it's a point hopefully in our favor - or at the very least, one against our common enemy.
The more I think about it, the more I think this is the best way to get the NSA shut down. The general public has no control over it; trying to get them angry about it is pointless. The only way the general public could shut it down is by a revolution, and we're too well-fed and content to do that. But Congress could shut it down, so let's find every way to get Congressmen upset about the NSA. I wonder what a FOIA request for some congressional metadata would do...
These people are just trying to avoid paying taxes. Kill this 501(c) bullshit now.
The problem isn't that the Tea Party folks wanted to avoid paying taxes. The problem is that the IRS, which has vast powers so that it can extract tax revenue from the people, abused those powers for political ends. And what is worse, it abused those powers unequally, harassing one group while leaving another group alone.
For 27 months, not one single Tea Party group was approved for 501(c) status, while dozens of liberal groups were approved. And since you will automatically call me a liar if I link Fox News, here's a USA Today story about this.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2013/05/14/irs-tea-party-progressive-groups/2158831/
I view this as tampering with an election, and it is very much NOT OKAY. I'm pissed about this and you should be.
Or are you going to try to tell me that would violates everybody's "rights"?
Are you going to try to tell me that nobody's rights have been violated? Or is it just that you think it's okay to violate the rights of "Tea Party" groups since you don't approve of them?
If you think it's okay to violate the rights of those with whom you disagree, just be honest about it and say so.
If you think it's not okay for the IRS to abuse its powers for political ends, regardless of whom they were abusing, then wake up and start reading the news.
I want to see dozens of people from the IRS fired, tried in court, and go to jail if convicted. But if I can't have that, then I will look forward to the day when some conservative President gets elected and the IRS starts doing this stuff to liberal groups. Perhaps then you will take it seriously.
He walked out of the State of the Union Address saying "I could not bear to watch as he continued to cross the clearly-defined boundaries of the Constitutional separation of powers". Really adult.
He's running for Senate in Texas against Senator Corwyn, the Senate Minority Whip, and he just dropped off the map. He missed 17 House votes in a row. It also seems that even though he is a official candidate, he is doing zero campaigning. http://www.cbsnews.com/news/texas-senate-candidate-steve-stockman-goes-awol/
He has also been cited by the Office of Congressional Ethics (I know, I laughed too). He accepted campaign contributions from his own staff members, which is a big no no. He is also accused of using his full time House staff members to work on his Congressional campaign. They all pull this trick, but there is a legal way and a stupid way to do this. He chose stupid. http://oce.house.gov/2014/06/june-11-2014---oce-referral-regarding-rep-steve-stockman.html
So it's not surprising that he would be the one to further complicate the snake pit of uncontrolled domestic surveillance by injecting it into a congressional investigation. Considering his quote about Obama breaking the constitution, his appeal to use unconstitutionally collected data to get at the IRS is mind boggling. His brain is clearly an irony free zone.
Why is Snark Required?
Wrong. What we've been seeing lately is that they'll just tell you they don't have it. They'll confirm they don't have it. Especially if they do actually have it.
They're on record lying to congress already. So they're not going to have any trouble looking you right in the eye and saying "nope"...
Keep in mind, we're talking about investigating an IRS scandal in which the IRS is now claiming the requested emails were lost in a hard drive crash.
They expect us to believe that the emails were only stored on an end user laptop and that there were no back ups and that the server retained no records... of official IRS email.
Do you believe that? No one does. Even the people saying they believe it don't actually believe it... its just part of the political game going on right now.
Apparently the IRS was taken over by some political factions that wanted to limit speech... and when they got caught at it the whole IRS is now trying to cover it up.
None of which is being made easier by the white house which wants everyone to believe their shit doesn't stink... and the "justice" department which so far as I've seen has made a point of not investigating anything.
I could respect the "neither confirm nor deny" line because it wasn't a lie. It was a refusal to answer. But they're not doing that anymore. They're just lying now. And they're not just doing it to casual requests for information. They're lying on court documents, lying in response to FOIA orders, and they're lying directly to congress.
Which means they're lying to everyone we have access to... they could be lying to the president as well for all we know.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
"It's a slimy, empty, political victory,"
Remember what this was about - the IRS actively impeding a particular political organization. That's not an "empty" matter.
I'm just telling you the reality of the situation. It's never going to happen where everyone plays fairly. Each side will find workarounds. Liberal groups like Unions and MoveOn.org get around campaign finance laws.
Eventually the Republicans/Tea Party Groups wizened up and started their own groups to get around tax exempt laws, but when they did so, the Liberals didn't like it. The Liberals tried to squash the conservatives in the courts, but were defeated by the Supreme Court, so the liberal senators and federal officials in the IRS and other federal agencies put pressure on conservative groups in order to minimize the conservatives' community organizing effectiveness. This is not right and it's hypocritical.
So one way to solve this is to revoke tax exempt status to any group that is political which would include Unions, Media Matters, MoveOn.Org - as well as Tea Party and conservative groups. However, as I stated before, that's never going to happen in this political environment.
So another solution is to allow tax exempt groups to say what ever they want politically. Why should the federal government be able to squash a group's 1st amendment rights? Heck, let's abolish the IRS and make April 15th just another day of the year. Let's get rid of the income tax and just have use/sales tax: i.e. Fair Tax. The IRS is way too powerful.
But of course, that's never going to happen either, but we can only dream.
No Secrets Anywhere else
The e is silent
Take a real scandal (NSA) and link it to a fake one (IRS)
Can we please stop referring to this as a "fake scandal"? It's real.
Richard Nixon could only dream of using the IRS like this. By now, only the willfully blind can consider this a "fake" scandal.
Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot
No, they did not target one single organization. Instead they targeted multiple organizations, according to a popular viewpoint.
From a different point of view, meaning from other news stations, they were asked to apply extra scrutiny to the rash of new requests for tax exempt status which was then performed overzealously by some staffers.
The problem here is that rather than deciding which of these viewpoints are closer to the truth that guilt has been decided a-priori.
They cannot explain OFA getting status, seeing how the supposed 501(4)(c) uses the Presidents Twitter account to make announcements.
There is no way that the Tea Party applicants can be scrutinized when OFA was not, given the regulations. OFA is the proverbial camel that passed through the eye of a needle, while conservative organizations are being examined in detail.
501(c)(4) organizations may inform the public on controversial subjects and attempt to influence legislation relevant to its program[44] and, unlike 501(c)(3) organizations, they may also participate in political campaigns and elections, as long as their primary activity is the promotion of social welfare.[45] The tax exemption for 501(c)(4) organizations applies to most of their operations, but contributions may be subject to gift tax, and income spent on political activities – generally the advocacy of a particular candidate in an election – is taxable.[46] An "action" organization generally qualifies as a 501(c)(4) organization.[47] An "action" organization is one whose activities substantially include, or are exclusively,[48] direct lobbying or grass roots lobbying related to advocacy for or against legislation or proposing, supporting, or opposing legislation that is related to its purpose.[49] A 501(c)(4) organization may directly or indirectly support or oppose a candidate for public office as long as such activities are not a substantial amount of its activities.[37][50]
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
well lets see... the IRS admitted it did wrong, so its not a witch hunt by any means.
anyone who knows anything about government systems knows about retention laws. If somehow all her emails were on a single device, with no backups, someone needs to be held accountable for that. To make it even worse
as for the NSA why not use this issue to bring to light some more NSA BS??? we get info regardless of their response. I commend this congressman for thinking outside the box
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
The level of discourse is very low on both sides.
I have to suffer through way more "libtards" than "knuckle-dragger" (rare) or a "mouth breather" (never?) or a "religious nut" (now this one is common).
And it's Limbaugh who is calling women "sluts" (and worse.)
After Romney lost- it was my conservative friends who were defriending all my liberal friends. I couldn't believe they were shocked he lost. It was *clear* from August that he was going to lose- he was unelectable.
I *used* to be a conservative independent (Voted for Reagan- twice... and for Bush Sr). But the republican party has been running so hard to the right, I'm finding myself unable to vote for any republican candidate that gets through the primary. They are all religious extremists who are neither fiscally conservative nor socially liberal.
In my conservative mailing list, Eric Cantor ( A "grade A" conservative according to the NRA and the anti-abortion groups) was called a "Rino". As far to the right as he was, he was still considered a liberal.
It is *literally* reached the point that it is crazy. Especially now that the Tea party has been taken over by the christian right who has basically forced out the original libertarian base.
I don't think your view of reality is very realistic. I've seen that increasingly in both the left and the right wings becoming extremists. The right seems to also be losing touch with reality. I really am starting to think we are going to see the disintegration of the republican party into a wealthy/corporate party, a religious party, and a libertarian party. And none of them will be electable so that should be impossible.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Actually, it isn't so much where the bodies are burried and more the civil service act. It limits the ability of administrations to rid non cabinet level positions and stack government with incompetent friends and donars. Of course the latest craze is to create a new position, call it a czar which has absolutely no power outside of recomending something to the administration and the gaft runs rich again.
But this civil service act limits an administration's abilitty to clean house and makes sure somewhat competent people fill most of the positions.
As for Learner being a bush appointee, it doesn't matter. We already have confirmation that she was working with someone in the white house. The extent and degree of legitimacy in that is what is trying to be determined.