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IRS Taxpayer Data Theft Seven Times Larger Than Originally Thought (cnn.com)
An anonymous reader writes: For the second time, the IRS has revised the estimated damage of a criminal syndicate's massive theft of American taxpayer data. In May 2015, the government agency said criminals used a tool on the IRS website to steal the tax forms of 104,000 people. Then in August, it revised that number up to 330,000. On Friday, the tax-collection agency revealed that number is now closer to 720,000. This is a result of a "Get Transcript" tool which was available on the IRS website up until the spring of last year. It was used to help taxpayers easily download years worth of tax forms in the event that they lost their old tax documents. Unfortunately, an unidentified cybermafia was able to dupe the "Get Transcript" tool and download millions of tax documents related to the 720,000 people whose tax forms had been stolen.
Last time I checked, we already did.
Sign Up at irs.gov Before Crooks Do It For You
Neat trick, huh? *Come and get tattooed 'voluntarily'*
Since the IRS doesn't really know what was stolen, or not telling, it would mean that all of it was taken. All those rich bastards are smart to keep their money hidden offshore.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Because private companies are so much better at keeping their data safe.
http://www.zdnet.com/article/a...
Your government will not tell you the truth until it absolutely must, and not even then.
Just operate on the following assumptions, and you should be just fine:
1. ALL of your personal data has been compromised. The reason maybe your identity hasn't been misused is that either it isn't valuable enough, or they just haven't gotten around to it. With so many stolen identities to choose from, the sheer volume of stolen data almost works FOR the people whose data was stolen.
2. Your government is full of incompetent, corrupt, stupid, assholes at best, with the occasional competent, compassionate, caring individual, but they're the outliers, the exceptions. Then, there are a few truly evil, malicious ones who make you happy when you come up against one of the merely incompetent, and just so glad when the interaction is over that you forget how much you wanted to do something to fix it, because hey, it's not your problem anymore.
3. The people mentioned in 2, above, are most likely spying on you, legally or otherwise.
4. 99+% of the time, the information gathered in 3, above, will never be used against you, in a civil or criminal court; you're just not that damned interesting, therefore...
5. You should go about your life, because there isn't Jack shit you can do about any of this anyway. Your data has been stolen and is in the hands of, as a minimum, the Chinese, if not others. You're NOT going to go "off-grid," and "disappear," it's simply not worth the effort, and besides, they'll still know where you are anyway, so that it will turn out to be pointless, and an ineffective way to protect your "privacy" anyway. You can't fire people in the bureaucracy, and you'll never get others to agree to throw all the bought-and-paid-for jerks out of office at the ballot box. The people spying on you are mostly bored to fucking tears because most of us are, and you probably too, are boring as shit. You'll keep an eye periodically on your credit report(s) to deal with any spurious new loans or borrowing you didn't authorize, and otherwise just continue to live your life.
Live it.
Private company loses your data, you stop doing business with them. IRS loses your data, fuck you.
Private company negligent with your data, private company gets sued and maybe criminally charged. IRS negligent with your data, fuck you. IRS workers keep their jobs, no one faces any consequences. Except you. Because fuck you.
Yeah, like I can realistically stop doing business with my health-insurance company or the company that invests my pension fund.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
If we give them a back door to all iPhones that won't get stolen from government servers, you have their word on it.
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
... the IRS can't put anyone in prison when the IRS loses their data.
If you decide to stop doing business with them because they're criminally irresponsible with your data, they send you to prison. That's the major difference between government and private interactions: private interactions are voluntary -- if you don't like a company or a person you don't have to do business with them. Government interactions are forced -- obey your government masters or go to prison.
In my case I don't really have a choice of either unless I quit my job, since my employer chooses them. The pension fund is particularly problematic because even if I quit my job, I couldn't move my investments to another manager for at least 5 years, when everything vests, so I'm stuck with this one for a while (and they aren't good at data protection). So yes, there is a sequence of choices that could lead to avoiding them, but they're a lot of choices awkwardly tied together with cross-linked contracts and various constraints. Which is also a little bit like how government works: I can avoid governments by not living in their jurisdiction, but there are a lot of cross-linked complications. With both, the difficulty gets higher as the entity gets bigger, with small businesses and municipal governments the easiest to say no to.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
"Death panels"? You mean like when private insurance finds any dirty trick it can to not pay for life saving treatment?
Beyond that though, taxes are not inherently wrongful. Taxes (as the man said) are the price we pay for civilization. The overwhelming majority of people benefit from fewer fires and less disease, regardless of whether or not they have the foresight to voluntarily pay for a fire department or subsidized hospital. What's more, if they are engaged in any sort of commerce, they benefit from the security, and stability, and technology that civilization makes generally available.
For almost everyone, civilization gives more than it takes, so it is strange when people characterize taxes as wrong or immoral (stupid or too high is another matter).