Reply #21: And let's not forget that they were collecting party affiliations(!)

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

This is a dupe of a reply that I just posted onthe thread in Editorials about this.

http://www.thenewstribune.com/news/local/story/5440902p...

IRS tracked taxpayers’ political affiliation

The News Tribune
Published: January 6th, 2006 02:30 AM

WASHINGTON – As it hunted down tax scofflaws, the Internal Revenue Service collected information on the political party affiliations of taxpayers in 20 states.

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“The bottom line is that we have never used this information,” said John Lipold, an IRS spokesman. “There are strict laws in place that forbid it.”

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Murray and Kelly, however, remained skeptical. Kelly said the collection of such data was even more troubling because the IRS intends to start using private collection agencies later this year to go after back taxes.

“We think Congress should suspend IRS plans to use private collections agencies until these questions have been resolved,” she said.

Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., and the president of the National Treasury Employees Union, Colleen Kelly are the Murray and Kelly referred to in the quoted text above.

Lipold says that "we"(the IRS) never used this information. Well, why was it collected in the first place? I'm sorry, but I have no confidence that private outside (possibly crony, connected Republican) vendors would not use this information for political advantage and to harrass those with differing political viewpoints.

IN my opinion, this is one of the MOST outrageous instances of privatizing and outsourcing what is CLEARLY a governmental function - taxation and collection. Secondly, how are these vendors paid? On a percentage of taxes collected? How accoutable are they and what protections are inplace for the private citizen if one of these "contractors" goes after them?


More, from the Electronic Privacy Information Center

http://www.epic.org/privacy/surveillance/spotlight/0306 /

Spotlight on Surveillance
March 2006:
IRS's Inadequate Security Leaves Taxpayer Data Largely Unprotected


Another problem concerning IRS arose when one of its contractors spent several months improperly collecting information about taxpayers' political party affiliations.26 Washington Sen. Patty Murray, Ranking Member of the Transportation, Treasury, Housing and Urban Development and Judiciary Appropriations Subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee, called the practice an "outrageous violation of the public trust."27 The law forbids IRS from collecting such data. Because IRS did not properly supervise its contractor, this sensitive taxpayer information was improperly gathered. IRS ordered the contractor to discontinue the political party data collection when the agency learned of it from a complaint.28

IRS, in some ways the largest and most powerful of all federal enforcement agencies, also has failed to operate with the transparency necessary for open government. In January, for example, the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse filed a suit against IRS, stating that since the middle of 2004 the agency had ceased disclosing data about its operations. 29 The agency's withholding violated a permanent court order that required it to disclose to Susan Long, the co-director of TRAC, "statistical data on an ongoing basis about its audit, collection and other enforcement activities." 30 While the agency had generally complied with this 1976 order for several decades, in 2004 it stopped providing the basic enforcement data "even while acknowledging the existence of the court order and its current collection of statistical material that is covered by the order." 31

The agency's poor physical and electronic security systems and lack of oversight of contractors have placed sensitive taxpayer information at risk. IRS has said that it has limited resources to conduct such oversight. In light of this, the agency's refusal to
operate with transparency makes it all the more difficult for citizens to hold the agency and its contractors accountable for their actions.