IRS claims it can read your e-mail without a warrant

[bubbafrombama]

http://m.cnet.com/news/irs-claims-it-can-read-your-e-mail-without-a-warrant/57578839

The ACLU has obtained internal IRS documents that say Americans enjoy "generally no privacy" in their e-mail messages, Facebook chats, and other electronic communications.

The IRS continued to insist on warrantless e-mail access, internal documents obtained by the ACLU show, even after a federal appeals court said the Fourth Amendment applied.

The Internal Revenue Service doesn't believe it needs a search warrant to read your e-mail.

Newly disclosed documents prepared by IRS lawyers says that Americans enjoy "generally no privacy" in their e-mail, Facebook chats, Twitter direct messages, and similar online communications -- meaning that they can be perused without obtaining a search warrant signed by a judge.

That places the IRS at odds with a growing sentiment among many judges and legislators who believe that Americans' e-mail messages should be protected from warrantless search and seizure. They say e-mail should be protected by the same Fourth Amendment privacy standards that require search warrants for hard drives in someone's home, or a physical letter in a filing cabinet.

An IRS 2009 Search Warrant Handbook obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union argues that "emails and other transmissions generally lose their reasonable expectation of privacy and thus their Fourth Amendment protection once they have been sent from an individual's computer." The handbook was prepared by the Office of Chief Counsel for the Criminal Tax Division and obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.

Nathan Wessler, a staff attorney at the ACLU's Speech, Privacy & Technology Project, said in a blog post that the IRS's view of privacy rights violates the Fourth Amendment:

Let's hope you never end up on the wrong end of an IRS criminal tax investigation. But if you do, you should be able to trust that the IRS will obey the Fourth Amendment when it seeks the contents of your private emails. Until now, that hasn't been the case. The IRS should let the American public know whether it obtains warrants across the board when accessing people's email. And even more important, the IRS should formally amend its policies to require its agents to obtain warrants when seeking the contents of emails, without regard to their age.

The IRS continued to take the same position, the documents indicate, even after a federal appeals court ruled in the 2010 case U.S. v. Warshak that Americans have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their e-mail. A few e-mail providers, including Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Facebook, but not all, have taken the position that Warshak mandates warrants for e-mail.

The IRS did not immediately respond to a request from CNET asking whether it is the agency's position that a search warrant is required for e-mail and similar communications.

Before the Warshak decision, the general rule since 1986 had been that police could obtain Americans' e-mail messages that were more than 180 days old with an administrative subpoena or what's known as a 2703(d) order, both of which lack a warrant's probable cause requirement.

The rule was adopted in the era of telephone modems, BBSs, and UUCP links, long before gigabytes of e-mail stored in the cloud was ever envisioned. Since then, the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in Warshak, technology had changed dramatically: "Since the advent of e-mail, the telephone call and the letter have waned in importance, and an explosion of Internet-based communication has taken place. People are now able to send sensitive and intimate information, instantaneously, to friends, family, and colleagues half a world away... By obtaining access to someone's e-mail, government agents gain the ability to peer deeply into his activities."

A March 2011 update to the IRS manual, published four months after the Warshak decision, says that nothing has changed and that "investigators can obtain everything in an account except for unopened e-mail or voice mail stored with a provider for 180 days or less" without a warrant. An October 2011 memorandum (PDF) from IRS senior counsel William Spatz took a similar position.

A phalanx of companies, including Amazon, Apple, AT&T, eBay, Google, Intel, Microsoft, and Twitter, as well as liberal, conservative, and libertarian advocacy groups, have asked Congress to update the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act to make it clear that law enforcement needs warrants to access private communications and the locations of mobile devices.

In November, a Senate panel approved the e-mail warrant requirement, and last month Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a Democrat whose district includes the heart of Silicon Valley, introduced similar legislation in the House of Representatives. The Justice Department indicated last month it will drop its opposition to an e-mail warrant requirement.

 

[Stayinfit]

Doesn't surprise me...they seem to do what they want anyway...whos gonna stop em. Not such a free America after all.

 

[Sir Anabolic]

No income tax please :naughty:

 

[maldorf]

No income tax please :naughty:

Are you Willie Nelson?

 

[Simpllyhuge]

They are shady fucks

 

[Aliendogstar]

Are you Willie Nelson?

Or Wesley Snipes?

 

[LEX]

FLAT TAX!!

 

[rock75]

Doesn't surprise me...they seem to do what they want anyway...whos gonna stop em. Not such a free America after all.

Not sure when people will come to the realization that our govt can do whatever the fuck they want - judge, jury and executioner!!!

 

[rmbX66t1]

So much for civil rights and liberties...

 

[desibaba]

America really isnt as "Free" as most Americans think it is. The government controls what you can or cannot put in your own body. Pretty soon you can forget about owning a gun. I wouldnt be surprised if in the next 50 years every baby that is born will have a GPS device planted inside at the time for birth so it can be tracked for the rest of its life.

 

[DrThick]

Yeah we've been conditioned to believe we are fre but alas, we are not. The whole history of the way the federal reserve system was created and what had happen since is shady as fuck

 

[lax23576]

Yeah we've been conditioned to believe we are fre but alas, we are not. The whole history of the way the federal reserve system was created and what had happen since is shady as fuck

You def got that right bro. All of these ppl are being conditioned every single day and don't even know it! Ya try to explain something to someone and you're either a racist, a terrorist, or a "conspiracy theorist" - a word the press now uses to basically call people who are "insane" (exposing truths)


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

 

[rock75]

Yeah we've been conditioned to believe we are fre but alas, we are not. The whole history of the way the federal reserve system was created and what had happen since is shady as fuck

Those that were apart of the inception of that are those who control this are the ones behind who and what controls our country. The NWO isn't the future, it's just the way The World is Now...

 

[rock75]

America really isnt as "Free" as most Americans think it is. The government controls what you can or cannot put in your own body. Pretty soon you can forget about owning a gun. I wouldnt be surprised if in the next 50 years every baby that is born will have a GPS device planted inside at the time for birth so it can be tracked for the rest of its life.

You wouldn't be talking about the very same chip that people are putting in their pets to make sure if they ever get lost they can be easily found, that chip? It's been talked about for quite a few years now but they are just crazy theorist, but what's scary is shit is happening the way they say and then it just a coincidence and the rest is still considered a conspiracy theory