IRS & Emails

[PepperElf]

Interesting topic, no?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/0...n_3055988.html

The files were released to the American Civil Liberties Union under a Freedom of Information Act request. The organization is working to determine just how broadly federal law enforcement agencies like the FBI or the IRS' Criminal Tax Division interpret their authority to snoop through inboxes.

The IRS apparently interprets that authority very broadly, the documents show: as long as you've stored your email in a cloud service like Google Mail, and as long as those emails haven't been deleted after a few months, the agency thinks it doesn't need a warrant to read them.

According to the article, the 6th circuit said that "expectation of privacy" doesn't go bye-bye just cos you use a 3rd party source. But that it's just a circuit court not the supreme court, and the IRS manuals still "continues to claim" that it doesn't need a warrant.

http://www.irs.gov/irm/part9/irm_09-004-006.html#d0e319 (link is left cold)
Look for section 9.4.6.7.3.3 (09-05-2008)

I'm not going to copy/paste the rules but it does specify that they consider "contents of a wire or electronic communication" to be open game WITHOUT a warrant after 180 days of storage. And that they can get a warrant, but they can also just use court order or subpoena.

[mikoyan29]

The IRS has interpreted many things pretty broadly.

[Panacea]

The IRS has interpreted many things pretty broadly.

Sure. Why go to the trouble of explaining to a judge why you need access to emails when you can just say the law gives you the right to them and to hell with due process?

I'm sorry, but as far as I'm concerned email, no matter how old, is no different from physical letters. You don't lose your right to due process for letters you write 20 years ago, why should email be different?

[Greenday]

It's no different than going into someone's physical mailbox and reading their mail. Should be a federal offense.

[s_stabeler]

I read about it before, and their justification is slightly more nuanced. before webmail, e-mails were downloaded from the server into an e-mail client. the messages were then deleted from the server. After a certain amount of time, the e-mail is considered "abandoned" if it has not been downloaded. The rough anology is of a letter that was thrown unopened in the trash. Legally, if an unopened letter was thrown into the trash, you can open it.

As it happens, I disagree with the IRS, though.