IRS believes the 4th Amendment doesnt apply to them reads emails without a warrant
Contributed by: Email on 04/11/2013 08:41 AM [ Comments ]
Last year, the ACLU sent a FOIA request to the IRS seeking records regarding whether it gets a warrant before reading peoples email, text messages and other private electronic communications. The IRS has now responded by sending us 247 pages of records describing the policies and practices of its criminal investigative arm when seeking the contents of emails and other electronic communications.
Thats right. The IRS responded with 247 pages. Not a yes, not a no, not even a sometimes, but an obvious stonewall. Too bad for the IRS, as the ACLU mentioned above, they too the time to read it.
The documents the ACLU obtained make clear that, before Warshak, it was the policy of the IRS to read peoples email without getting a warrant. Not only that, but the IRS believed that the Fourth Amendment did not apply to email at all. A 2009 Search Warrant Handbook from the IRS Criminal Tax Divisions Office of Chief Counsel baldly asserts that the Fourth Amendment does not protect communications held in electronic storage, such as email messages stored on a server, because internet users do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in such communications. Again in 2010, a presentation by the IRS Office of Chief Counsel asserts that the 4th Amendment Does Not Protect Emails Stored on Server and there is No Privacy Expectation in those emails.
We covered the main points here but you can read it all at http://www.aclu.org/blog/technology-and-liberty-national-security/new-documents-suggest-irs-reads-emails-without-warrant
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