IRS and snooping: Finding a loophole

Unless they decided to file for extensions, most people have put the 2013 income-tax filing deadline behind them.

Of course, there’s probably some sting remaining. This isn’t the Internal Revenue Service’s most popular time of the year.

And this year, the IRS gave the public new reason for frustration and suspicion.

Agency lawyers have claimed they don’t need a search warrant to read email and social media messages from citizens.

Newly released documents show that the IRS has taken the position that Americans enjoy “generally no privacy” in electronic communications including email, Facebook chats and Twitter direct messages, Cnet.com reported.

The documents, obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union, show the IRS position is that those messages lose Fourth Amendment protections once they’ve been sent from an individual’s computer. That means the IRS can obtain them in tax investigations without needing a search warrant signed by a judge.

Part of the problem is that the federal law that governs law enforcement access to email, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986, is hopelessly outdated. The law requires a warrant if email is stored on a provider’s server for 180 days or less, but there is no such requirement for older messages.

A federal appeals court ruled in 2010 that the government must obtain a probable cause warrant before compelling email providers to turn over messages, but some providers aren’t following the ruling.

Some lawmakers have criticized the IRS for its position on email searches, but the public would be better served if Congress concentrated on updating the privacy act.

Despite the suggestion of the IRS, people do believe that they’re protected from government snooping on their electronic communications. It’s time that privacy laws catch up with rapidly changing technology and assure Americans of those protections.

— From the New Bern Sun Journal