The IRS Is Being Investigated For Using Location Data Without a Warrant (vice.com) 57
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: The body tasked with oversight of the IRS announced in a letter that it will investigate the agency's use of location data harvested from ordinary apps installed on peoples' phones, according to a copy of the letter obtained by Motherboard. The move comes after Senators Ron Wyden and Elizabeth Warren demanded a formal investigation into how the IRS used the location data to track Americans without a warrant. "We are going to conduct a review of this matter, and we are in the process of contacting the CI [Criminal Investigation] division about this review," the letter, signed by J. Russell George, the Inspector General, and addressed to the Senators, reads. CI has a broad mandate to investigate abusive tax schemes, bankruptcy fraud, identity theft, and many more similar crimes. Wyden's office provided Motherboard with a copy of the letter on Tuesday.
In June, officials from the IRS Criminal Investigation unit told Wyden's office that it had purchased location data from a contractor called Venntel, and that the IRS had tried to use it to identify individual criminal suspects. Venntel obtains location data from innocuous looking apps such as games, weather, or e-commerce apps, and then sells access to the data to government clients. [...] The IRS' attempts were not successful though, as the people the IRS was looking for weren't included in the particular Venntel data set, the aide added. But the IRS still obtained this data without a warrant, and the legal justification for doing so remains unclear. The aide said that the IRS received verbal approval to use the data, but stopped responding to their office's inquiries.
In June, officials from the IRS Criminal Investigation unit told Wyden's office that it had purchased location data from a contractor called Venntel, and that the IRS had tried to use it to identify individual criminal suspects. Venntel obtains location data from innocuous looking apps such as games, weather, or e-commerce apps, and then sells access to the data to government clients. [...] The IRS' attempts were not successful though, as the people the IRS was looking for weren't included in the particular Venntel data set, the aide added. But the IRS still obtained this data without a warrant, and the legal justification for doing so remains unclear. The aide said that the IRS received verbal approval to use the data, but stopped responding to their office's inquiries.
The IRS can't do it, but free-to-play games can? (Score:4, Funny)
I get that the IRS needs a warrant, but what about Venntel and those thousands of games and applications?
Look the other way or face an IRS AUDIT (Score:2)
Look the other way or face an IRS AUDIT
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Ah! Good luck with that, IRS assholes! I'm Canadian!
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I get that the IRS needs a warrant, but what about Venntel and those thousands of games and applications?
While I find the practices of almost everyone involved in this to be reprehensible, I'm actually not exactly clear why the IRS would need a warrant.
A warrant is used to authorize activities that would otherwise be illegal or disallowed, such as permitting you to arrest someone, compelling companies to hand over data on your target or tap their lines, forcing someone to let you search their home without their permission, or, in the extreme, permitting executions. But law enforcements officers don't need warr
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That ULA you clicked though and didn't read usually allows them to do what they want with your data. It may sound secure, but they always leave loopholes big enough to drive a 747 though blindfolded.
In short, you let them.
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So if you "let them" (those 5000 pages EULA should be illegal in the first place) sell your data, why does it become illegal for the IRS to buy that data?
You see what I'm asking here? If the EULA really is legally binding, then why is the IRS being accused of using that location data? One of those two things have to be wrong otherwise it makes no sense.
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I've got to admit that I'm struggling to see the distinction here myself.
Can the government use commercially available data to track subjects of criminal investigations without a warrant? Why or why not?
I suppose that the argument for needing to have a warrant, means that they have probable cause to be tracking your, or at least enough evidence to convince a Judge. If they don't have at least probable cause, they cannot just go fishing for criminal activity by buying data from commercial sources. So tha
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The Constitution applies to the IRS. It constrains their actions.
Consider, it's legal to sell alcohol. It's legal to buy alcohol. People under 21 may not buy or posses alcohol. A minor may not hire an agent to go buy alcohol for them to get around the law. They may not hire someone to "misplace" alcohol somewhere where they might "just happen" to find it.
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How is it different than police departments buying access to license plate scanner / location data?
I'm not justifying that either. But it is already in common use. Seems if one's legal, both should be. And vice versa, can this be used as the basis to challenge the legality of police departments hoovering up all the data they already do?
I hate to say it, but I smell politics here, but I'll take it if it might reverse bad policies. But I'm not optimistic it will be pursued to any meaningful result.
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Currently, the courts are busy bending over backwards trying to avoid ruling on the Constitutionality of license plate readers. That usually means the judges suspect they would be forced to rule something unconstitutional if they actually took the issue on directly.
One distinction though, license plate readers read your plates when you are in public spaces with a diminished expectation of privacy, but phone location data might be grabbed at a time when you have a strong reasonable expectation of privacy.
I s
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I've got to admit that I'm struggling to see the distinction here myself.
Can the government use commercially available data to track subjects of criminal investigations without a warrant? Why or why not?
So, to start with, in the United States we have a written Constitution that restricts the Government in various ways, so those restrictions, like protections against illegal search and seizure, only apply to the government. If a regular person did an illegal search, that is handled through the local burglary laws, etc.
And they have to have probable cause to be investigating you in the first place. The government is not allowed to just say, "that random person there, I'm going to investigate them." Not allow
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And, on the other hand, a police officer can stand on a street corner and observe traffic violations
Seeing it happen gives them cause to investigate it.
Uhm... are you sure you possess words?
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If the click through agreement allows the IRS to scan the data the game company Hoovers from you, then that legally puts the game company as some kind of private investigative agent for the IRS, which violates the 4th Amendment. The government can't get around that by hiring a private contractor.
In short, a company stumbling across illegality who reports it is fine, even if there is a bounty. A company with some kind of deal, even unofficial, with the government to report such is not.
Re:The IRS can't do it, but free-to-play games can (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: The IRS can't do it, but free-to-play games ca (Score:2)
"Agency. That which is illegal doesn't become legal just because you paid someone else to do it for you."
I don't think that sums up the situation accurately. They aren't paying someone to do something illegal, they paid someone to do something completely legal.
I can't legally do XYZ without a state license, but I can hire someone else to do it for me.
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They are paying someone to do something that is illegal for them to do. There is no license that allows them to do it.
You can legally do XYZ with an XYZ license, so if you pay someone with the license to do it, legally speaking, you are doing XYZ with a license.
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"That which is illegal doesn't become legal just because you paid someone else to do it for you."
Don't we do that all the time? You can't legally remove your wife's appendix, but you can pay a doctor to do it.
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You can't legally remove an appendix without a license to practice medicine. By hiring a surgeon, the license comes with. You CAN legally remove an appendix with a license to practice medicine.
There is no license the IRS can get that allows it to ignore the Constitution.
They "bought" the data (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a dangerous and terrifying precedent. I'm glad the IRS did this. Everybody hates them, so they're gonna get slapped down setting a precedent. The regular police have done this for ages and it's been ignored. On a couple of threads I had to specifically point out the risk since TFA didn't put 2 and 2 together.
Waste of money too (Score:3)
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Anyway, it's not like they could know whether the data set contained information on the people they were looking for until they had access to the data. It's likely that they just bought Venntel's location information for a given region and then combed through it to see if they could find something. This location information might not have even had any names
I keep track. (Score:3, Insightful)
See, right now I am getting flyers from politicians that not only have done nothing for me, but have actually done things to harm me and take away my healthcare - but their propaganda says they ARE doing things.
Now, little people conservatives LOVE the packing of our courts because they hate gays and abortion. What they do not understand is that all those Heritage Foundation stooges do not give a rats ass one way or another about those issues. However, a lawsuit about the abuses of us little people and our privacy will be ruled against us. Why? Because they work for big business - their interests align with the oligarchs of this country.
You think you live in a free country?
Think again. And Trump and the sycophantic Republican party is making it worse. And they also want to make this country into a theocratic Hellhole. Religion has NO business in government - absolutely none. Amy Cony Barret is a religious kook who is too irrational to be on the SCOTUS. The SCOTUS has lost more of its legitimacy thanks to Mitch McConnell.
We have freedom to worship how we please. However, some theocratic fascists take that as being allowed to force their beliefs onto the rest of us.
I think history will look back on the Trump years and say that this is starting point of the USA's collapse.
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Is your list available to everyone, including links to prove your claims?
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Is your list available to everyone, including links to prove your claims?
Yep. Here ya go! [senate.gov] All the ones with 'R' by their name are fucking us over.
All the ones with 'R' by their name. [house.gov]
David Perdue (R) of Georgia says he is protecting healthcare. [americanindependent.com]
And that's just healthcare. It is exactly the same for consumer protections, worker protections, poisoning the environment ... you name it: Republicans HATE people. The proof is in their actions!
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Boy. I was hoping you weren't full of it. What about all the ones who were against warrant-less wiretaps and other such abuses until their guy was in the White House defending it?
You would have done better to stop after the first link. Still a broad brush, but you wouldn't have earned that troll mod.
BULL FUCKING SHIT!! (Score:3)
If you think the Democrat party is innocent in all this, you're vastly mistaken. It was under the Obama Administration that the IRS was weaponized against American, the DOJ was weaponized against journalists, and the whole intelligence community weaponized against a duly elected executive officer.
The fascists today are theocratic, unfortunately it is the cult of Political Correctness that has become "Cancel Culture" for every slight offense. The fact that they dress up in black and call themselves "ANTIFA" is just the irony dripping from my sarcasm.
Take your faux NPC outrage and go somewhere else.
If you think the Democrat party is innocent in all this, you're vastly mistaken. It was under the Obama Administration that the IRS was weaponized against American, the DOJ was weaponized against journalists, and the whole intelligence community weaponized against a duly elected executive officer.
The fascists today are theocratic, unfortunately it is the cult of Political Correctness that has become "Cancel Culture" for every slight offense. The fact that they dress up in black and call themselves "ANTIFA" is just the irony dripping from my sarcasm.
Take your faux NPC outrage and go somewhere else.
You are a liar. A total fucking liar. See, the IRS has to investigate 501(c)(3) charities. They are not allowed to campaign - at all.
The IRS job is to investigate an audit those charities. So they did - ALL of them across the political spectrum.
Now, some troll CHERRY picked conservative firms who were being audited and said , ", the Obama administration is PERSECUTING conservatives!!! !!" See, conservatives have this persecution complex even though they control most of our governments from local all the way
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See, the IRS works for Congress. So, what those morons were saying that a REPUBLICAN controlled Congress at the time was persecuting conservatives. Now, your gonna post a link to the IRS settling the lawsuits against them. (look it up yourself). See, because the IRS works for Congress and Congress was controlled by the Republicans and a few Republican Senators ORDERED the IRS to settle.
The United States Internal Revenue Service https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_Revenue_Service [wikipedia.org] is part of the Department of the Treasury. The Department of the Treasury is part of the executive branch of the US federal government, with the Secretary of the Treasury being a cabinet-level position appointed by the President. The Commissioner of Internal Revenue is also a Presidential appointee.
US tax law is part of the US Code, which is created by the legislative branch of the US federal government and
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You are exactly the kind of sucker that is the intended audience for this virtue signaling. Long-standing Supreme Court precedent says that this kind of data purchase is not a search by government, and so not governed by the Fourth Amendment. The Supreme Court ruled more than 50 years ago that when you freely give data like this to third parties, you give up any reasonable expectation of privacy in that data. The IRS wouldn't have gotten a warrant because the US judicial system says they don't need it.
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What budget authority and line items authorized spending tax payer money on non-warrant and unverified authenticity and unverified chain-of-authenticity and hence not-legal-in-court data ?
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The IRS was trying to locate criminal tax fugitives so they could be brought to court, not evidence that would convict those fugitives in court. The IRS already had the evidence they would use in court against these suspects.
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Lets Rein In All IRS Abuses Forever (Score:1)
...by totally repealing all income taxes, abolishing the IRS forever, and tax only luxuries - new merchandise for sale at retail and services above a person's personal poverty level spending. Things bought above the "poverty level" are all "nice to haves but you don't really need 'em" are luxuries, and used stuff is never a "luxury."
So, there's instantly no organization that chases citizens to pay taxes. Citizens do that at the cash register. There's no tax on things used for making money, because thos
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...by totally repealing all income taxes, abolishing the IRS forever, and tax only luxuries - new merchandise for sale at retail and services above a person's personal poverty level spending. Things bought above the "poverty level" are all "nice to haves but you don't really need 'em" are luxuries, and used stuff is never a "luxury."
This has been tried before [wikipedia.org] but it turns out to be extremely hard to get right. People stopped buying luxuries (a tax avoidance strategy you recommended in your third paragraph) and hardly any revenue was brought in.
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Bush's luxury tax had a different definition of luxuries, as well as NOT repealing all the income taxes. Repealing all the income taxes is the key, as they poison prosperity. They are a tax on prosperity. "If you want less of something, tax it" is a truism that has probably been know since before ancient Rome. Getting rid of income taxes would dramatically boost the economy.
So, no, this has never been tried before. Luxuries being defined as new items for sale at retail and services in excess of one
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Bush's luxury tax had a different definition of luxuries, as well as NOT repealing all the income taxes.
Blah blah blah, it's as if you don't understand what you read. How could you write so many words and still not respond to my post? I didn't say that Bush's luxury tax was exactly the same, I sad that the loophole you proposed using would doom the entire system. Learn to read.
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I didn't have to read it, I knew what you were going to say. So, I just went back and looked, and you said exactly what I thought you were going to say. "People stop buying luxuries."
And then YOU did not read what _I_ said. The luxuries are simply things bought above a person's poverty level spending that are new items for sale at retail and services.
1) How are they going to stop buying those? Never buy a new anything again? Yeah, you could do that, but your life would be diminished.
2) Why would they
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"Never buy new things or services for sale above the poverty level"
If people follow your advice, the government will have $0 revenue under your plan.
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True, but virtually no one will do that, its much too fun to spend the same way we do now. New exercycle from Amazon being delivered tomorrow ($630), along with a gearmotor to power my fold-over antenna tower (ham radio) - $1209. Between them, a pretty good pile of change to the gov't, but both items, since they wee made in the USA, would have their prices fall, so I would probably end up making out a bit better than with just the income taxes.
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True, but virtually no one will do that,
No one will follow your advice? Imagine that. I gave you an example of very many people doing that.
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Didn't. Tell me what you would not buy simply because it was taxed. Gasoline? A new car? A new TV? What? And everything would cost about the same as it did before, its just that you would pay it by buying things rather than having it stolen from you by the gov't.
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Good luck with that (Score:2)
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you need a warrant to track? (Score:2)
Well what did you expect (Score:1)
I have never owned one of these, ohh so smartphone.
I knew what the purpose was and I told alot of friends and people.
But most friends and people don't want truth, they want a convinient lie from a team of social-psychologist in a PR firm.
Smart"whatever-electronic" and intelligent"whatever-electronic" - There are miles oh these social-psychological coined terms. Watch out, oh you'll lose.
oh no, now i told the truth again.
Well take it or l
The IRS? (Score:2)
The IRS did something shady? This is the organization that can take your property, block your accounts, and then dare you to prove that you are innocent. In an IRS-run court. I'm not in the US, but I have read the stories, and talked to some people who have been affected.
One example: A guy who came to the IRS's attention, because he failed to file taxes for a couple of years. That was a stupid error, but it put him on some sort of "black list" of the local IRS office. For years afterwards he would randomly
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Do you honestly believe there are career employees at the IRS who risk getting fired or put in prison to maintain a "grudge" that some rando citizen didn't pay taxes for a couple of years?
I'd buy that that are wasteful, lazy, or have other issues. But to think them or other government entities are sitting up at night scheming against average Joes is ludicrous (not the rapper).
Read the EULA (Score:1)
More than likely, these people signed away their rights by using these apps to begin with. It's not that complicated.