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IRS accidentally releases taxpayers’ private data again

news.bloombergtax.com

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Re: IRS accidentally releases taxpayers’ private data again

#41

Post by gumby »

yucky wrote: post #30
gumby wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

A trust or monopoly doesn't prevent competitive companies forming, just makes it very hard for them to succeed.

Baseball has an exemption due to a court case, though their hiring cartel was broken in the courts, resulting in free agency (same for NFL, with the Roselle(?) case).

But the important one is all about the money: monopoly control over monetization of broadcast. I direct you to 15 U.S. Code § 1291 which you can read for yourself at https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/15/1291

Re: IRS accidentally releases taxpayers’ private data again

#42

Post by usosmat »

ipsum2 wrote: post #17
dossy wrote: 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, government contractors do not staff foreign nationals to US projects.

US contractor labor rates are typically below market, and typically auditable as GSA labor rates (T&M).

It’s possible there was “outsourcing” to some lower-income area in the US. Most large firms setup large dev factories in the Midwest/south-Midwest.

Re: IRS accidentally releases taxpayers’ private data again

#43

Post by giantg2 »

ipsum2 wrote: post #17
dossy wrote: 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…

One caveat to your logic... some sensitive pieces of financial information cannot be offshore. We've had to use onshore contractors because regulations wouldn't allow us to use offshore for some of our sensitive financial data in the system, and I think it also covered SSNs.

Although I would still guess that for reasons other than being offshore, they are earning market or less (or overworked to reduce any higher comp to lower effective hourly rates).

Re: IRS accidentally releases taxpayers’ private data again

#45

Post by ComputerGuru »

AmericanChopper wrote: post #25
ComputerGuru wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Corruption is a very serious allegation and typically involves some form of quid-pro-quo (direct or indirect, tangible or non-tangible). There are contexts it likely applies, such as lobbyists and PACs getting favorable laws passed, wealthy donors getting ambassadorships, etc, but I can’t see how it applies in this case.

Are you suggesting that everyone involved from attorney generals to congressmen, senators, federal judges, and Supreme Court justices (not a one of which - including the two Trump appointees - formally registered their disagreement with the unanimous decisions/reviews or lack thereof) were, somehow, making decisions and getting something out of deciding/acting contrary to how they would have otherwise?

Re: IRS accidentally releases taxpayers’ private data again

#46

Post by toomuchtodo »

TechBro8615 wrote: post #38
latency-guy2 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

How many non-background-checked foreign employees work at Accenture on this project and have access to all these files anyway?

I strongly encourage you, without a hint of sarcasm or glib, to file a FOIA request to find out.

https://muckrock.com is my weapon of choice for data liberation, but a letter or email works equally well.

Re: IRS accidentally releases taxpayers’ private data again

#47

Post by _ea1k »

dossy wrote: 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.

To be fair, they probably have hours of meetings telling them about the importance of compliance and the dozens of onerous security related administrative burdens that go with it.

It can be hard to do the real important security stuff when burdened by the administrative security and audit requirements requisite with government work.

A lot of smart people leave in frustration.

Re: IRS accidentally releases taxpayers’ private data again

#48

Post by throwaway-blaze »

ComputerGuru wrote: post #45
AmericanChopper wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Corruption is a very serious allegation and typically involves some form of quid-pro-quo (direct or indirect, tangible or non-tangible). There are contexts it likely applies, such as lobbyists and PACs getting favorable laws passed, wealthy donors getting ambassadorships, etc, but I can’t see how it applies in this case. Are you suggesting that everyone involved from attorney generals to congressmen, senators, federa…

Look up Lois Lerner and all of the "oops we deleted those hard drives you subpoenaed from the IRS" during the Obama Administration. While some corruption involves a quid pro quo, the most damaging kind of corruption in our government today is ideological corruption.

When an unelected person has an opinion (which they're certainly entitled to have in their private life) and uses their government position to put their thumb on the scale of how people / organizations are treated to match their ideological beliefs, that's a different kind of corruption.

Re: IRS accidentally releases taxpayers’ private data again

#49

Post by yieldcrv »

mistrial9 wrote: post #3

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…

Fortunately my opaque non profit files a different 990

Re: IRS accidentally releases taxpayers’ private data again

#50

Post by slt2021 »

cscurmudgeon wrote: post #37
ipsum2 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> So the Accenture engineer probably gets paid a lot less than you. Given that roughly 1/3 of Accenture employees are in the US, is there any evidence for you to believe that this was someone outside the US?

even in the US accenture's IT is not known for high wages. The only reason people stay there is being enslaved by US work visa like L-1, which allows Accenture to pay below market wage and keep employees on a short leash.

You won't be able to find a single american software engineer in Accenture, because of work conditions and wages, all engineers are foreigners on visas. The only americans there are salesmen and admin staff.

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