Author Topic: Privacy, Big Brother (State and Corporate) and the 4th & 9th Amendments  (Read 541132 times)


Crafty_Dog

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SCOTUS gives IRS broad new power
« Reply #1201 on: May 21, 2023, 06:56:34 AM »
Supreme Court Rules IRS Can Secretly Grab Bank Records of Outside Parties
The IRS building is seen in Washington on Sept. 28, 2020. (Erin Scott/Reuters)
The IRS building is seen in Washington on Sept. 28, 2020. (Erin Scott/Reuters)
Matthew Vadum
By Matthew Vadum
May 19, 2023Updated: May 20, 2023
biggersmaller Print

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The Supreme Court has ruled unanimously in a delinquent taxpayer case that it is lawful for the IRS to secretly summons the bank records of third parties.

In other words, the nation’s highest court recognized that the Internal Revenue Service is not required to notify third parties who are not under investigation when seeking a summons for banking records thought to be relevant to the tax delinquency of another person.

One lawyer who briefed the Supreme Court said the new ruling gives the IRS “startlingly broad authority to pry into the financial records of people who may be only remotely connected to a delinquent taxpayer.”

The ruling, a victory for the Biden administration, came after the administration’s attempts to strengthen IRS enforcement efforts became an issue in the midterm congressional elections. The Inflation Reduction Act, which President Joe Biden signed into law in August 2022, allocated almost $80 billion to the IRS to hire an extra 87,000 agents. Democrats say the IRS has long been underfunded, but Republicans say the extra money will be used to harass taxpayers.

At oral arguments on March 29 the justices had seemed sympathetic to the claim of the wife of a man who owed substantial taxes that the IRS went too far in pursuing her bank records without prior notice. At the same time, they acknowledged the agency needs effective tools to attempt to collect delinquent accounts.

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the court’s opinion (pdf) in Polselli v. IRS, court file 21-1599, which was issued on May 18.

The IRS claims Remo Polselli owes $2 million in assessed taxes and penalties and issued summonses without notice seeking financial records from banks. His bank records as well as those of his wife, Hanna Polselli, and law firms that performed work for them were sought.

The Biden administration said the IRS does not need to provide notice to third parties and that having to do so would give delinquent taxpayers “a head start in hiding assets.” Besides, the administration argued, persons involved in the process have access to the courts to combat alleged abuses.

Petitioner Hanna Polselli and the law firms argued that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit departed from a 2000 ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, creating a circuit split the Supreme Court needed to resolve.

The 6th Circuit held that the disputed summonses were lawful because they were covered by an exception in the tax code pertaining to third-party record keepers. The 6th Circuit rejected the 9th Circuit’s holding that the exception applies only when the targeted taxpayer has a recognized legal interest in the records.

But the Supreme Court disagreed with Polselli and affirmed the 6th Circuit ruling.

“Congress has given the IRS considerable power to go after unpaid taxes,” Roberts wrote.

“One tool at the Service’s disposal is the authority to summon people with information concerning a delinquent taxpayer. But to safeguard privacy, the IRS is generally required to provide notice to anyone named in a summons, who can then sue to quash it. Today’s case concerns an exception to that general rule.”

The IRS is allowed to request the production of “books, papers, records, or other data” from “any person” who possesses information concerning a delinquent taxpayer, Roberts wrote.

“Given the breadth of this power, Congress has imposed certain safeguards” and generally has to give notice of the summons to any person identified in the summons, who is then entitled to bring a motion to quash the summons. But notice does not have to be provided if the summons is issued in aid of the collection of an assessment made or judgment rendered.

“In other words, the IRS may issue summonses both to determine whether a taxpayer owes money and later to collect any outstanding liability. When the IRS conducts an investigation for the purpose of ‘determining the liability’ of a taxpayer … it must provide notice … But once the Service has reached the stage of ‘collecting any such liability,’ … —which is a distinct activity—notice may not be required.”

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson filed a separate opinion concurring with the Supreme Court’s judgment. Justice Neil Gorsuch joined her concurring opinion.

Congress has “recognized that there might be situations, particularly in the collection context, where providing notice could frustrate the IRS’s ability to effectively administer the tax laws,” Jackson wrote.

“For instance, upon receiving notice that the IRS has served a summons, interested persons might move or hide collectable assets, making the agency’s collection efforts substantially harder.”

But when writing the tax code, Congress balanced the interests of the IRS and the taxpayer and “did not give the IRS a blank check, so to speak, to do with as it will in the collection arena,” Jackson wrote.

The Epoch Times reached out to Shay Dvoretzky, counsel for Polselli, and the U.S. Department of Justice, which represented the IRS, but had not received a reply from either as of press time.

Paul Sherman, counsel for the Institute for Justice, a nonprofit public interest law firm, expressed alarm at the new ruling. The group filed a friend-of-the-court brief in support of Polselli.

“The Supreme Court’s ruling grants the IRS startlingly broad authority to pry into the financial records of people who may be only remotely connected to a delinquent taxpayer.

“That ruling raises serious Fourth Amendment concerns. Thankfully, the Court stressed that its ruling was narrowly focused on the statutory question before it. In a future case, the Court should address the constitutional limits on the government’s power to demand access to people’s most sensitive financial information.”

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which also filed a friend-of-the-court brief in support of Polselli, declined to comment.

Crafty_Dog

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DougMacG

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Lost Privacy, 23 and me info for sale
« Reply #1203 on: October 09, 2023, 10:12:11 AM »
https://arstechnica.com/security/2023/10/private-23andme-user-data-is-up-for-sale-after-online-scraping-spree/

A quarter of a million pages of federal regulations alone - all the way down to what light bulb can you read under - and nothing that even warns about this.
« Last Edit: October 09, 2023, 10:30:49 AM by DougMacG »

Crafty_Dog

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WT: Curtaily Big Tech's privacy abuses
« Reply #1204 on: November 07, 2023, 04:25:42 AM »
Curtailing Big Tech’s privacy abuses

Just how far companies can go to use AI to track our every move

By Joseph R. Pitts and Ed Towns

The House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Innovation, Data and Commerce subcommittee recently held a hearing on the need to better protect Americans’ data privacy rights in the new artificial intelligence era, particularly from the Big Tech behemoths.

The committee is right: Artificial intelligence, while poised to bolster efficiency, innovation, and economic growth, should be allowed to grow only if Americans can maintain their rights and retain control of their sensitive information.

AI is pulling their data — including their sensitive information — from all corners of the web in an attempt to build and refine large corporations’ business models and user profiling algorithms.

Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal highlighted this point well. The social media giant allowed Cambridge to collect millions of users’ data without their consent so the company could perfect its political digital advertising modeling. It used AI to make its digital campaigning tools even more targeted and powerful.

Less known but equally problematic is the example of Clearview AI, a U.S. company that collected photographs of children and adults for mass surveillance, facial recognition, and personal sale. This case study demonstrates just how far companies can go in using AI to track our every move.

While AI has become the technology whipping boy of the past few years, one of the testimonies Congress heard last month made a compelling point: The problem isn’t AI. It’s the lack of a comprehensive federal data privacy standard.

Even absent AI, for the past decade, unscrupulous companies have used and abused the fact that Congress has yet to define, enact and enforce privacy protections for today’s smart technology. Americans’ personal information is being continuously seized and monetized on too many digital channels as a result.

Drivers are victimized the second they get in their cars, especially their autonomous vehicles. These cars’ built-in sensors, cameras, microphones and GPS trackers are capturing unprecedented data about each user in what could become a $2 trillion revenue stream for the automotive industry. That’s a problem on its own, but it’s especially a concern when many of these car manufacturers have been found to have significant data security vulnerabilities.

Teenagers and families are often affected when they log in to social media websites and apps, where their information has sometimes been found to be tracked and mined without their consent.

Because minor privacy rules and statutes have not been updated meaningfully since 2013, even children are seemingly harmed by the absence of a federal privacy standard. We may have seen this when SchoolCare, a technology company used by over 3,000 schools nationally to connect students with health care services, sold itself to Findhelp, a social care company. A 2022 data breach that affected the information of 2 million minors followed. The Fourth Amendment protects Americans’ persons, homes and property from undue searches and seizures. But in this digital age, shouldn’t the same protections be extended to their digital presence and property? Shouldn’t we have property rights over our data and have the authority to say who can (or can’t) use it, and under what terms? The answer, of course, is yes, and the takeaway from Wednesday’s hearing was that Congress needs to create a federal privacy standard. While some pending bills, such as Sens. Marsha Blackburn and Richard Blumenthal’s Kids Online Safety Act, appear poised to pass and remedy small portions of this growing problem, a more comprehensive solution should also be considered. Some hearing participants spoke fondly of the framework presented in the American Data Privacy Protection Act, a bill that had resounding bipartisan support (and an impressive number of Democratic and Republican co-sponsors) last year but never received a rollcall vote. Perhaps Congress should consider resurrecting and reconsidering this framework in the upcoming lame-duck session. Truthfully, however, it doesn’t matter which solution members choose. All that matters is that it’s comprehensive enough to tackle the data privacy challenges that Americans have faced over the last decade — with not only AI but also the fast-moving digital economy more generally. The fate of their rights, their peace of mind, and their data security depend on it.

Joseph Pitts, a Republican who represented Pennsylvania in Congress from 1997 to 2017, and Ed Towns, a Democrat who represented New York in Congress from 1983 to 2013, served together on the House Energy and Commerce Committee

Body-by-Guinness

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CVS Customers (Among Others) Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Privacy
« Reply #1205 on: December 17, 2023, 09:05:34 AM »
One of the outcomes of my various medical travails is that I now use the pharmacy in the hospital a couple miles from home, for several reasons:

• They appear to have a more direct track to obtaining drugs. During the various Covid etc. supply chain “interruptions” I had no trouble snagging the sundry drugs I take such as Creon, which allows my pancreas-free bod digest protein, among others, while my wife who uses a national chain (freaking CVS, more on them in a bit) had difficulties.

• They are nicer. Think I mentioned I can’t take NSAIDs any more unless I want to part ways with my kidneys, too, and so am take various pain meds, which it seems like causes the chain pharmacists to assume I’m shady or something as I always get an off vibe. Well my chart is attached to my meds at the hospital so no explanations needed, and no askance glances received.

• No ‘effin’ robocalls. CVS in particular has a system in place that not only endlessly pesters you about refills and such, but which they also make quite difficult to opt out of. I don’t like doing business with companies that seem to assume out the gate I belong in a memory ward, if not being an outright candidate for protective restraint. The latter would also make it easier for ‘em to force feed me their nostrums.

And now:

• They are constrained by HIPPA and have lawsuit averse beancounters working for ‘em providing impetus NOT to release my medical records without a modicum of concern over my privacy, unlike the companies, including freaking CVS, noted below. 

https://science.slashdot.org/story/23/12/16/0549247/us-pharmacies-share-medical-data-with-police-without-a-warrant-inquiry-finds?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed

Body-by-Guinness

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Cato Seeks 702/FISA Data
« Reply #1206 on: February 22, 2024, 05:14:21 PM »
We were founded under principles of federal checks and balances. Where FISA is concerned, there are none:

Cato Seeks Injunction To Obtain DOJ Internal FISA Audits
Cato @ Liberty / by Patrick G. Eddington / Feb 22, 2024 at 11:49 AM
Patrick G. Eddington

Maximum public transparency has never been achieved during prior congressional debates over the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Section 702 electronic surveillance program. In an effort to break that pattern, the Cato Institute today filed a motion for a preliminary injunction (along with my declaration) against the Department of Justice (DOJ) over a long‐​standing Cato Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request seeking internal DOJ audits of the Section 702 program.

As I’ve noted previously, throughout its 15‐​year history, the Section 702 program has been responsible for violations of Americans’ Fourth Amendment rights at scale. Executive branch officials claim that the number of US‐​person‐​related queries of the Section 702 database have dropped from almost 3.4 million in 2021 to a mere several hundred thousand in 2022—still a radically high number of queries that generally appear to have had little if any connection to a genuine national security threat.

And there is one additional critical fact about the Section 702 program’s abuses that has never received significant press coverage or congressional attention.

The actual internal DOJ audits of the Section 702 program remain secret; only summaries of them have ever been made public. Accordingly, American citizens and Congress have no way of comparing DOJ claims about alleged reductions in violations with what the original audits themselves reveal about those violations.

In an effort to remedy that problem, in June 2023 Cato filed a FOIA request seeking the release of the Section 702 database audits available as of the date of the request. Instead of promptly processing Cato’s request, the DOJ sat on it for months.

Mindful of the looming April 19, 2024, expiration of the Section 702 authority, on February 8, Cato filed suit in federal district court in DC to compel disclosure of those records. With the DOJ still having failed to respond to Cato’s request, today Cato filed a preliminary injunction in the DC circuit court seeking expedited processing and release of the Section 702 query audits on or before March 29. We expect a decision from the court sometime next month.

Had the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) done its job—i.e., actually pushed the DOJ to make the full audits public—Cato would never have been forced to file the FOIA request and the subsequent legal actions in this case.

Instead, HPSCI chair Mike Turner (R‑OH) has been at war publicly and privately with other House GOP and Democratic members on the Judiciary Committee over their efforts to renew the Section 702 program only if it has a warrant requirement for the search of stored US persons data and a ban on the purchase of such information from data brokers. Turner’s actions should cause all House members to reevaluate whether or not the HPSCI should have any jurisdiction over surveillance programs that put Americans’ Fourth Amendment rights at risk.

https://www.cato.org/blog/cato-seeks-injunction-obtain-doj-internal-fisa-audits