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IRS accidentally releases taxpayers’ private data again

news.bloombergtax.com

21–30 of 69 posts

Re: IRS accidentally releases taxpayers’ private data again

#21
post #6

> "The agency is reconsidering its relationship with the contractor Accenture on this project, according to a person familiar." Any time I start to feel that Impostor Syndrome creeping in, I need to remind myself that there's someone who's working at Accenture probably earning 2x or 3x what I am, who gets to fuck up big not once but _twice_ doing the same wrong thing.

Everyone I've met at accenture actually was paid below market, and usually billed at 5x their cost, or more.

Re: IRS accidentally releases taxpayers’ private data again

#22

Accenture is the contractor responsible.

IMO the resposibility is entirely on IRS. They chose the contractor, they wrote the legal terms and conditions, they vetted them out and they presumably did the due diligence for security.

Re: IRS accidentally releases taxpayers’ private data again

#23
post #17
post #6

> "The agency is reconsidering its relationship with the contractor Accenture on this project, according to a person familiar." Any time I start to feel that Impostor Syndrome creeping in, I need to remind myself that there's someone who's working at Accenture probably earning 2x or 3x what I am, who gets to fuck up big not once but _twice_ doing the same wrong thing.

Doesn't Accenture offshore a lot of its work to India and other third-world countries? So the Accenture engineer probably gets paid a lot less than you. Edit: According to Wikipedia, yes: > In 2015, the company had about 150,000 employees in India,[31] 48,000 in the US,[32] and 50,000 in the Philippines.[33] Edit2: s/outsource/offshore, thanks. What I intended was: companies hire Accenture to outsource their developm…

No post body was provided.

Re: IRS accidentally releases taxpayers’ private data again

#24
post #17
post #6

> "The agency is reconsidering its relationship with the contractor Accenture on this project, according to a person familiar." Any time I start to feel that Impostor Syndrome creeping in, I need to remind myself that there's someone who's working at Accenture probably earning 2x or 3x what I am, who gets to fuck up big not once but _twice_ doing the same wrong thing.

Doesn't Accenture offshore a lot of its work to India and other third-world countries? So the Accenture engineer probably gets paid a lot less than you. Edit: According to Wikipedia, yes: > In 2015, the company had about 150,000 employees in India,[31] 48,000 in the US,[32] and 50,000 in the Philippines.[33] Edit2: s/outsource/offshore, thanks. What I intended was: companies hire Accenture to outsource their developm…

And is far less qualified too.

I’ve crossed paths with these “consulting” types twice in my career. I don’t mean to generalize, but these so called “engineers” didn’t understand source control or versioning, didn’t understand basic programming concepts, and lacked any sort of communication skills.

It seemed like you were working with someone who watched a couple YouTube videos (and no more than a couple videos) on some framework, with no former programming, design, or critical thinking skills, and they were now given a job title.

Re: IRS accidentally releases taxpayers’ private data again

#25
post #16

I'm less concerned about the occasional unintentional f'up, and much more concerned about the targeted and politically motivated intentional leaking of information.

Are you saying “I’m not concerned about data leaks that I could potentially be affected by and have my own personal information leaked through as much as I am about a celebrity billionaire getting their tax records released after years of litigation and after lawsuits going all the way to the Supreme Court (or others like him)?”

I would say I find government corruption to be more concerning than government incompetence. For the same reason that I would find a crime committed with intent to be more concerning than a crime committed with negligence. Neither are unconcerning though.

Re: IRS accidentally releases taxpayers’ private data again

#26

Accenture is the contractor responsible.

IMO the resposibility is entirely on IRS. They chose the contractor, they wrote the legal terms and conditions, they vetted them out and they presumably did the due diligence for security.

They also provided them with training, access rights, and general governance over the data.

I'd personally blame 70% of the blame on the IRS, 30% on the contractor. Organizations should not be able to skirt blame by way of contractor IMO. Hope the IRS gets fined for gross negligence and breach of data. (lol)

Re: IRS accidentally releases taxpayers’ private data again

#30
post #8

the forms in question are US non-profit declarations 990-T. The same data was released a second time, minus less than 2% of them. There are a lot of dark corners in the USA non-profit world, in case you don't know it. The vast majority (a million?) of USA 990 non-profits are the sort of small time operation you might expect, but there is a tiger of a long-tail on that one. Many major hospitals and the US Football lea…

The US Football league NFL also has an antitrust exemption so is deserving of public scrutiny.

I don't believe this is correct, which is why competing leagues pop up every few years.

You might be thinking of Major League Baseball?

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