IRS to Strip Political Info From Databases (wtf?)

[NVMojo]

Like, ummmm, is this related to the Bush spying efforts on Americans?????

WASHINGTON - The Internal Revenue Service said Thursday it had told a contractor to stop sending the agency information about political party affiliation in databases used to track down delinquent taxpayers.

The National Treasury Employees Union told tax officials last month that, in some cases, political affiliation appeared in data that the IRS uses for tax collection. A private contractor provided the data.

The union's president, Colleen Kelley, wrote the IRS about her concern that such information "in material routinely consulted in the tax collection process raises an appearance of possible impropriety that could erode taxpayer confidence in the independence of our voluntary compliance system."

IRS employees are prohibited from using political party affiliation when enforcing tax laws.

more...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060105/ap_on_go_ot/irs_political_data

[MrMonk]

1. If the IRS is prohibited from using the info, why was it in the database?

[Posteritatis]

2. "prohibited ... when enforcing tax laws." (n/t)

[JuniperLea]

3. Then why was it there?

What is its purpose and use?

[Posteritatis]

4. At least up here

tax agencies are often used to complement census/statistical agencies, since they're in more regular contact with citizens. Canadian voter registration is linked to Revenue Canada, our equivalent to the IRS; if you're old enough to exist to them (i.e., as an adult of taxpaying age), then Elections Canada gets individuals' contact information from them in order to register people for elections.

Obviously that doesn't happen in the US, but I can see how the IRS would be useful - in both alarming and wholly innocuous ways - as a stats-gathering body.

I've got a few friends who work in the IRS; I might try to ask them later.

[aquart]

6. To discriminate against Democrats.

What other POSSIBLE reason is there?

[Turbineguy]

52. That's probbably correct but.....

I'll bet the data showed that republicans were the scofflaws, hence the change.

None the less it's wrong to track.

[aquart]

68. That's an adorable conclusion. I'll cherish it.

[cyberpj]

5. so who hired the "contractor" to send the info in the first place? nt.

[struggle4progress]

7. Oops! Shred, erase, delete, expunge! Before the special counsel comes!

[Lars39]

8. Good one!

I miss nostamj. Can you imagine the fun he would have had adding to those lyrics?

[The Straight Story]

9. voluntary compliance system?

that's a new one...

[Moderator]

10. kick

[Pirate Smile]

11. IRS tracked taxpayers’ political affiliation

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.

Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., a member of an appropriations subcommittee with jurisdiction over the IRS, said the practice was an “outrageous violation of the public trust” that could undermine the agency’s credibility.

IRS officials acknowledged that party affiliation information was routinely collected by a vendor for several months. They told the vendor last month to screen the information out.

“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.”

http://www.thenewstribune.com/news/local/story/5440902p-4912739c.html

The twenty states: Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Texas, Utah and Wisconsin.

[MADem]

12. HOLY SWEET SHIT--that is EGREGIOUS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Never USED the information???? Then WHY COLLECT IT???

Hell in a handbasket......

[Pirate Smile]

15. It does remind you of Bush's repeated proclamations that you

have to get a warrant to eavesdrop on Americans and, whoops, not true.

Are we supposed to believe that since something is illegal, this administration won't do it? Aren't they above the law?

[ncrainbowgrrl]

13. oh, great.

:eyes:

Glad I live in one of those 20 states. :sarcasm:

[Pirate Smile]

14. more

“This agency should not have that type of information,” Murray said in a telephone interview from Seattle. "No one should question whether they are being audited because of party affiliation."

Kelly said Thursday that several IRS employees had complained to the union about the practice. She said IRS officials weren’t even aware of it until she wrote them in late December."

I just noticed this on Daily Kos and hadn't seen it posted yet on DU.

[Norquist Nemesis]

16. Ohio???? Hmmm

How many of those states went red or had some pretty serious election irregularities in 2004?

[Mend]

17. Florida....they got me then. I await the audit...eom

[WhereThereIsFire]

40. Now I know why ...

the IRS started hounding me (and is still like a rat terrier ripping on my shoe) in early 2004. At first I'd just thought it was because my LTE's in local paper were getting the attention of the fat boooosh bro who lives in my town, and runs my state into the ground, and I'd been personally picked as a target. Maybe it was a little wider and embraced my starting the "Impeach Bush" meetup for my town at www.meetup.com, being a member of Howard Dean's various groups, and campaigning heavily for John R. Edwards. Hmmmm? Guess they could have focused on me for lots of reasons. Amazing they'd go after a little ol librarian for under $10K. It wouldn't pay more than a fraction of one of the bombs for Iraq.

[Mend]

42. that's awful for you....maybe we will back Congress in 2006. eom

[WhereThereIsFire]

49. We can certainly try ...

There needs to be a LOT of redistricting and adding of new congressional seats to more appropriately address the population as it now stands. It has been decades since we've (nationwide) had proper representation in the House - there need to be many, many congressional seats added. I wonder if anyone has a thread going on THAT topic?

[berni_mccoy]

18. “The bottom line is that we have never used this information,”

THEN WHY THE HELL ARE YOU COLLECTING THIS INFORMATION!?!?!?!?

THIS IS ABSOLUTELY CRIMINAL!

THAT'S IT. THE GOV'T SHOULD NOT COLLECT ANOTHER PENNY UNTIL THE CURRENT ADMINISTRATION IS REMOVED FROM POWER!

[Trevelyan]

25. Help Rep. Conyers to remove these * * * * He has asked us to sign his

letter in support of his call for the beginning of IMPEACHMENT Inquiry and he uses the word IMPEACH a number of times in his hard hitting articles on his blogsite and description of what and why he and several co-sponsors are trying to BEGIN THE IMPEACHMENT NOW.

PLEASE SIGN AND SHOW YOUR SOLDIARITY WITH THIS BRAVE ACTION BY CONGRESSMAN CONYERS:

http://www.johnconyers.com/

http://www.conyersblog.us/

Please sign and support while there is still a chance to impeach, everyone has been calling for so please sign and get the Impeachment ball rolling NOW!!

[gratuitous]

27. We collected it, we just never used the information

Uh huh, right. Does that mean I don't have to declare the capital gains on my sale of the Brooklyn Bridge?

[MindPilot]

19. Well then, it's only fair that we should be able to deduct

political contributions. :sarcasm:

Like the IRS was previously an agency brimming with credibility.

[BR_Parkway]

20. K&R - and writing my state AG office, if they violated the laws in

20 states, maybe someone can take them to task.

[ncrainbowgrrl]

21. Good idea. I'll write Cooper's office also.

:hi:

[berni_mccoy]

24. Most of those states are run by GOP

I think only four (Connecticut, Louisiana, New York and Rhode Island) have Democratic Administrations.

I would Expect NY would be able to have some power in doing something about it though.

[flyarm]

36. NJ IS DEM STATE.. N/T

[mmonk]

61. NC has a democratic administration

[Catrina]

67. NY has a Republican Governor

Glad to know that ~ if Congress was told about this, they must know who the treasonous contractor was.

Good for the IRS employees who complained. At least we know there are some patriots watching the watchers ~

[Lochloosa]

29. I would write mine...but

I'm in FLORIDA. Lot of good that's going to do. Bastards!

[HuffleClaw]

22. someone care to note which of these are BLUE states ?

one more example of blatant illegality by the bush administration.

[EFerrari]

38. How many Blue, and how many Swing?

I really don't know. Anyone?

[flyarm]

43. MAP OF BLUE AND RED STATES..CHECK IT OUT..

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/

THIS IS A MAP OF THE STATES AND HOW THEY VOTED IN 2004

FLY

[flyarm]

44. BLUE STATES ON LIST...ARE...

Connecticut, Delaware,New Jersey, New York,Rhode Island,Wisconsin,Michigan,Massachusetts

AND I WOULD ADD OHIO IF IT HADN'T BEEN STOLEN...

THE LIST OF 20 STATES IS.:

The twenty states: Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Texas, Utah and Wisconsin.

[cyberpj]

23. So who hired the "vendor" to report the info in the first place? WHO?

And who told them to?

When will we be able to count on the media to ask the right questions again?

[HereSince1628]

31. Yes, that's an excellent question, with a known, if hidden, answer

[Norquist Nemesis]

51. If we learn who the "vendor" is, we'll learn who hired them. n/t

[salin]

57. Do we know WHO the vendor is?

follow the money... er contract...

[DBoon]

26. In CA, this would be illegal

voter registration information can only be used within the context of electoral campaigns.

I think at one point UCLA got into trouble for targetting fundraising letters to "Bruin Democrats" or "Bruin Republicans" - they were not supposed to use voter reg info for this purpose, even if it is publicly available.

I cannot see a private collection agency obtaining this information - it is illegal in some places to use it for this purpose, and it has no legitimate purpose for credit ranking or collection services.

I think the argument the subcontractor "did this on their own" is therefore bogus.

[berni_mccoy]

35. It's ILLEGAL in the U.S.

It violates the 24th Ammendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Section 1.
The right of citizens of the United States to vote in any primary or other election for President or Vice President, for electors for President or Vice President, or for Senator or Representative in Congress, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State by reason of failure to pay poll tax or other tax.


By tracking political affiliation, they are threatening those whose party is NOT IN POWER. The IRS is part of the Republican Controlled Administration.

Just tracking this information is THREATENING to the minority party, abridging their right to vote.

[SmokingJacket]

28. Not only that...

"IRS intends to start using private collection agencies later this year to go after back taxes."

Horrifying.

[Straight Shooter]

32. Which of course will spawn phony collection agencies, too.

I'm sure they'll go after the "big guys" first. :eyes:

[deminks]

30. I want to recommend this post 25 times. Maybe 30 times.

Alas, I can only recommend once.

[lpbk2713]

33. What the hell are "strict laws" to this administration?

They only recognize the law when it works in their favor. Otherwise they do whatever the hell they want to do.

[leftchick]

34. Thank God for the Union or we may never have found out!

<snip>

“This agency should not have that type of information,” Murray said in a telephone interview from Seattle. “No one should question whether they are being audited because of party affiliation.”

Kelly said Thursday that several IRS employees had complained to the union about the practice. She said IRS officials weren’t even aware of it until she wrote them in late December.

In a letter to Kelly, Deputy IRS Commissioner John Dalrymple said the party identification information was automatically collected through a “database platform” supplied by an outside contractor that targeted voter registration rolls among other things as it searched for people who aren’t paying their taxes.

“This information is appropriately used to locate information on taxpayers whose accounts are delinquent,” he said.


:grr:

[texpatriot2004]

37. A big thank you to the Union and to whomever brought this

issue to light.

[stop the bleeding]

39. my favorite part of the article here:

IRS officials acknowledged that party affiliation information was routinely collected by a vendor for several months. They told the vendor last month to screen the information out.

“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.”


I guess these "strict rules" do not apply to the collecting part of it???

[EVDebs]

41. Combine the IRS and background check abuse and you have TERROR

Total Surveillance
http://www.motherjones.com/interview/2005/12/albrecht.h ...

Couple this insidious technology with purposely erroneous background checks

Who is checking the background checkers?
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1128/p13s02-wmgn.html

They've offshored, outsourced, and privatized TIA. Now all they have to do is fire you for being 'of the wrong political party' and put false information in your background data...and voila ! You've just created the most insidious terror project in the US ever.

[NVMojo]

66. This is totally right on target!! We are being terrorized!!!

[McCamy Taylor]

46. WTF!?!

[benburch]

48. I just sent this to the Libertarian Party's press secretary

I think they will have a field day with this story!

[mmonk]

60. Wow,

I reside in one of the twenty states.

[Auntie Bush]

45. This method should be called ..."Listen... Scrub... Repeat"...to anyone

who wants the information. How do we know they didn't record the information in some way before they scrubbed it?

[AzDar]

47. I'd say "WTF??"..but, I swear to jeebus, I'm prepared to believe

just about ANYTHING about this effing cabal.

[BR_Parkway]

50. Voter registration is STATE info, IRS if Federal - there is no way to

accidentlly merge the 2.

Someone would have had to look at the state databases to match you up. This wasn't one of those "oh, someone screwed up" things, the voter info wasn't even there for them to look at - they had to make an extra effort to find out how you were registered.

[electropop]

53. Contractors don't perform extra services for free.

They were specifically paid to perform the state-fed cross-correlation and extract party info.

[donkeyotay]

54. So is the war on terror actually a political war against the left?

Osama been forgotten, but not spying on Americans and probably rigging elections. The enemy isn't al-Qaeda, it's us. The unionists and civil rights activists, those that want corporations and financial institution regulated... the kind of people who are a real threat to "our" way of life.

I'm thinking of the defense contractors like Brent Wilkes who rose from nothing and got 10s of millions of dollars in defense contracts (including document conversion), who aside from protecting our national security, are good rightwingers who want Abramoff and Gingrich's war to end leftist politics to succeed. No more unionist, environmentalists, civil rights activists... won't the world be a sooo much better place with Pat Robertson running it? Prepare for abject poverty and martial law, while the Haves and the Have Mores skip off to a better nation or hide out in their enclaves protected by their private security.

[electropop]

69. The reason Bush had to bypass FISA is WHO HE IS TARGETING.

The FISA court is, according to an NSA guy on the radio, "a monkey with a rubber stamp." It's super-fast, even retroactive. It's completely secure. There is only one reason to bypass it: you are targeting people who should not be targeted. The FISA court said "hell no" and one judge even resigned over how egregiously wrong the demands were. The targets are all of us, particularly on the left. It has absolutely nothing to do with terrorism. It's about political repression. The NSA guy calls it "the vacuum cleaner approach."

[Rainscents]

55. Anything Republicans does, always involve MONEY!!!

[salin]

56. Name the private contractor, will ya?

dollars to donuts it is a GOP politically tied firm.

[salin]

58. contractor or contractors... looks like a single entity

on a quick search of the different stories (looking for a name) several stories mentioned "private contractors" - as if many were employed - and some may just have gotten the extra information (unsolicited, of course)...

Here is an item tracking the story and developments - note the update at the bottom.

Update: US Politics and Current Events Guide Kathy Gill reports here that a Detroit News story confirms the data collection and indicates that the IRS asked the vendor to stop collecting political data in December.

from: http://usgovinfo.about.com/b/a/217000.htm

[salin]

59. Choice Point has a data base contract with the IRS

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8393722/ No idea if this is the contractor in question or not.

[salin]

62. a number of stories about major delays in contract to update

IRS data base used for tax collection. The issue was converting data from tapes to more easily accesible data base. Many stories - though sounds more like a software product rather than entering data as would be part of the contract per the current political affiliation field of the IRS story. The product = Customer Account Data Engine, or CADE.

Anyhow - this link from '03 talks of the delays the effort to update the data bases and names the primary contractor: http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=12808079

Lead contractor CSC, which declined to be interviewed, told the IRS it couldn't meet this month's deadline to transfer tax data on 6 million 1040EZ filers, the first phase of the project originally slated for December 2001 and now rescheduled for early next year. "This most recent setback is a serious matter," Everson says.

[salin]

63. one of the original IRS /polit. party items included this snippet:

In a letter to Kelly, Deputy IRS Commissioner John Dalrymple said the party identification information was automatically collected through a "database platform" supplied by an outside contractor that among other places searched voter registration rolls. The IRS is trying to track down people who aren't paying their taxes.


So - CSC data base software creator? Or the use of outside vendors to identify potential folks to audit which might read like the first of my series of links per Choice Point.

[Clara T]

64. kick for info

[antonialee839]

65. Now that they've been caught red handed, they are demanding

the contractor stop sending the data. I'm surprised Chimpy doesn't demand that the IRS keep up with the political snooping for the safety of our country.