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The IRS has upgraded its technology to track virtually everything you do online

money.msn.com

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Re: The IRS has upgraded its technology to track virtually everything you do online

#81
This article makes reference to a 38-page manual uncovered by EFF, in the context of a story about broad claimed authority by the IRS to examine online data to defend tax challenges. What the article doesn't say is that the manual was praised by EFF: it instructs IRS employees only to use public information, never to misrepresent themselves or attempt to gain access to people's social networks by posing as "friends", and never to use confidential information as search terms.

At one point, the manual explains to examiners how to use DomainTools to search for domain names, but cautions examiners that the site may ask for email addresses sometimes, at which point the examiner is no longer allowed to use the service and must instead revert to asking the taxpayer questions.

It's this kind of writing that drives me crazy. IRS may be overreaching, or they may not be; who knows? We get all our information through a game of telephone by media organizations that incentivized to write the most lurid stories possible.

Re: The IRS has upgraded its technology to track virtually everything you do online

#82
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand what you mean by "kludge". Either people who form legal entities retain their individual rights regardless of what laws are passed or they don't. That's all "corporate personhood" is. It doesn't mean their corporation gets a vote or can collect food stamps. And I'll put U.S. free speech absolutism over most of Western Europe any day.

> Either people who form legal entities retain their individual rights regardless of what laws are passed or they don't. That's not what corporate personhood is. Before corporate personhood became the law of the land, people retained all their individual rights despite forming legal entities. Neither does losing those rights happen in any other western country that does not recognize corporate personhood, btw. > It d…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech_by_country

Count the "hate speech" laws and provisions against insulting the government or religion.

Re: The IRS has upgraded its technology to track virtually everything you do online

#83
post #81

This article makes reference to a 38-page manual uncovered by EFF, in the context of a story about broad claimed authority by the IRS to examine online data to defend tax challenges. What the article doesn't say is that the manual was praised by EFF: it instructs IRS employees only to use public information, never to misrepresent themselves or attempt to gain access to people's social networks by posing as "friends",…

> It's this kind of writing that drives me crazy. IRS may be overreaching, or they may not be; who knows?

Yes, that's the point. Breathless speculation is obnoxious, but that's all we're left with when our government hides its activities from us.

Re: The IRS has upgraded its technology to track virtually everything you do online

#84
post #83
post #81

This article makes reference to a 38-page manual uncovered by EFF, in the context of a story about broad claimed authority by the IRS to examine online data to defend tax challenges. What the article doesn't say is that the manual was praised by EFF: it instructs IRS employees only to use public information, never to misrepresent themselves or attempt to gain access to people's social networks by posing as "friends",…

> It's this kind of writing that drives me crazy. IRS may be overreaching, or they may not be; who knows? Yes, that's the point. Breathless speculation is obnoxious, but that's all we're left with when our government hides its activities from us.

Nobody needed to speculate about what the IRS manual said; it was right there for them to read.

Re: The IRS has upgraded its technology to track virtually everything you do online

#85
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Either people who form legal entities retain their individual rights regardless of what laws are passed or they don't. That's not what corporate personhood is. Before corporate personhood became the law of the land, people retained all their individual rights despite forming legal entities. Neither does losing those rights happen in any other western country that does not recognize corporate personhood, btw. > It d…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech_by_country Count the "hate speech" laws and provisions against insulting the government or religion.

That's sort of like estimating the tax rates from the length of the tax code (71000 pages in the us just for the federal tax code, less than 10000 in almost every other country on earth, most around 5000).

The number and content of laws is irrelevant. The way they are practiced is. E.g., if you read the 4th amendment you'd think the us government would need reasonable suspicion and a warrant before border search, wire tapping, stop and frisk, etc.

Re: The IRS has upgraded its technology to track virtually everything you do online

#86
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That recaptured loss of revenue will only be used to fund the military and further oppress the people. There are entire families on the streets and cities like Detroit are crumbling, yet tax payer money is siphoned into more prisons and spy technology.

Isn't the logical conclusion of this (factually unsupported) argument that we should just stop paying and collecting taxes? You might as well give up on having an organized society if your criteria are things like 'no tax cent should be spent on something I don't like'.

No, that isn't the logical conclusion at all.

The logical conclusion is that we need to cut the military in half expenditure wise (saving $340+ billion per year instantly, and cutting our budget deficit in half instantly, while still leaving a massive budget for the military). We need to close 9 out of 10 military bases around the world, perhaps more. End Homeland Security and the TSA. Strictly enforce privacy laws, including the 4th amendment, such that anybody in the government that violates them does hard prison time. Cut the espionage budget ($80+ billion) substantially, including all of the budget allocated to illegal domestic spying. Pass new restrictions on the ability of the executive branch to wage undeclared war (ie without congressional approval), both in the style of what we're doing now in Syria and the more traditional war in Iraq. We should also simplify the tax code, simultaneously wiping out a lot of tax fraud by ending 99% of all loopholes and deductions, and slashing the IRS in half, saving tens of billions per year in tax compliance costs.

We should also, obviously, end the failed war on drugs, and end the mass prison system. The policy of holding in prison millions of political prisoners should be immediately stopped, bringing the extremely violent 'war on drugs' assault on liberty by the government from 1980 until now, to an end. This war of power and greed, costs hundreds of billions of dollars per year in government expenditures, lost lives, lost productivity, prison costs, and the destroyed futures of those held captive as political prisoners (many to be enslaved for labor in corporate prisoners). Not to mention the tens of thousands of lives it ends around the world every year. We currently spend over $100 billion just to keep 2.2 million people in prison.

Your conclusion at the end presents a false choice. Simple black and white example: if you don't like violent gestapo politics, you might as well give up on all organized society (you can actually insert any government action, which proves your position to be filled with holes). The parent never said "no cent should be spent on something I don't like."

Re: The IRS has upgraded its technology to track virtually everything you do online

#87

This is an older article. One of the key takeaways is that Congress in 2008 gave the IRS the capability to dive into your personal affairs online in ways that even the justice department can't (without a warrant). They only need to view you as somebody of interest. Better still, the exact nature of all this -- wait for it -- is a secret. The long-term trend here is pretty clear. Congress has the Big Data hammer out,…

Who do you hate America? What do you have to hide? It's all to protect the chilrun /sarcasm Sadly, the train has left, even courts are neutered. They can and are supposed to nip it in the but they will not do it. Journos are harassed at airports for doing investigative works, and no one wants to do anything about it

JUST SHUT THE FUCK UP WITH THIS TYPE OF "HUMOR".

Re: The IRS has upgraded its technology to track virtually everything you do online

#88
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No simplified tax code proposal I've read would eliminate the problem of people doing cash transactions under the table, or "loaning" themselves a house and treating that as a business asset.

The Fair Tax would take care of most of that. Any transaction with a business would have sales tax. There are no write offs, so the business asset would not fly, neither would be buying Ferraris. http://www.fairtax.org/site/PageServer?pagename=HowFairTaxWo...

Every time I've looked at the Fair Tax proposal, I've been underwhelmed and thought the name was the same sort of anti-nomer as the Patriot Act. But maybe you can change my mind.

It's a tax on buying. Think about that for a moment. Fair Tax proponents claim that the current tax system causes disincentives for things like exports and U.S. manufacturing. Why would the Fair Tax proposal then not cause a disincentive on the demand side of the economy? ("How will the plan affect economic growth" in the FAQ clearly espouses a particular economic ideology that has yet to be supported by any of the facts of history.)

It also places the entire tax burden on the consumer. Annual pre-tax corporate profits are somewhere between $800 billion and $2 trillion, depending on which data you decide to believe. Why is all that money being left on the table in favor of drawing the entire national budget from consumers?

Re: The IRS has upgraded its technology to track virtually everything you do online

#89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who do you hate America? What do you have to hide? It's all to protect the chilrun /sarcasm Sadly, the train has left, even courts are neutered. They can and are supposed to nip it in the but they will not do it. Journos are harassed at airports for doing investigative works, and no one wants to do anything about it

JUST SHUT THE FUCK UP WITH THIS TYPE OF "HUMOR".

All caps are great! They make your message more compelling.

Please keep defending America with your caps lock key on the internet.

Re: The IRS has upgraded its technology to track virtually everything you do online

#90
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't the logical conclusion of this (factually unsupported) argument that we should just stop paying and collecting taxes? You might as well give up on having an organized society if your criteria are things like 'no tax cent should be spent on something I don't like'.

No, that isn't the logical conclusion at all. The logical conclusion is that we need to cut the military in half expenditure wise (saving $340+ billion per year instantly, and cutting our budget deficit in half instantly, while still leaving a massive budget for the military). We need to close 9 out of 10 military bases around the world, perhaps more. End Homeland Security and the TSA. Strictly enforce privacy laws,…

The parent said that any additional revenue recovered from uncollected taxes will necessarily be spent on oppressing people implied there is no point collecting it.

I wasn't starting a debate on how we should spend tax revenue, just a comment that this sort of statement is inherently silly.

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