IRS Read Your Emails Without Warrants … Also, IRS Conducting Audits Based on FACEBOOK and TWITTER Info

Let this be a warning to “We the People” … be very careful what you put in emails, on Facebook or Twitter.

Badges, we don’t need no stinking badges, or in this case it is the IRS who claim they Don’t Need No Stinking Warrants.  According to a FOIA from the ACLU, the IRS does not need a warrant to read your private emails. Isn’t that special that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) claims that their agents do not need warrants to read people’s emails, text messages and other private electronic communications. What every happened to privacy and freedoms and the following of the US Constitution in America?  In a word, TYRANNY.

Everyone knows the IRS is our nation’s tax collector, but it is also a law enforcement organization tasked with investigating criminal violations of the tax laws. New documents released to the ACLU under the Freedom of Information Act reveal that the IRS Criminal Tax Division has long taken the position that the IRS can read your emails without a warrant—a practice that one appeals court has said violates the Fourth Amendment (and we think most Americans would agree).

Last year, the ACLU sent a FOIA request to the IRS seeking records regarding whether it gets a warrant before reading people’s 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.

So does the IRS always get a warrant? Unfortunately, while the documents we have obtained do not answer this question point blank, they suggest otherwise. This question is too important for the IRS not to be completely forthright with the American public. The IRS should tell the public whether it always gets a warrant to access email and other private communications in the course of criminal investigations. And if the agency does not get a warrant, it should change its policy to always require one.

But emails are not enough, the IRS is looking at Facebook and Twitter too.