Posted on 04/10/2013 2:29:12 PM PDT by tobyhill
The Internal Revenue Service doesn't believe it needs a search warrant to read your e-mail.
Newly disclosed documents prepared by IRS lawyers says that Americans enjoy "generally no privacy" in their e-mail, Facebook chats, Twitter direct messages, and similar online communications -- meaning that they can be perused without obtaining a search warrant signed by a judge.
That places the IRS at odds with a growing sentiment among many judges and legislators who believe that Americans' e-mail messages should be protected from warrantless search and seizure. They say e-mail should be protected by the same Fourth Amendment privacy standards that require search warrants for hard drives in someone's home, or a physical letter in a filing cabinet.
An IRS 2009 Search Warrant Handbook obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union argues that "emails and other transmissions generally lose their reasonable expectation of privacy and thus their Fourth Amendment protection once they have been sent from an individual's computer." The handbook was prepared by the Office of Chief Counsel for the Criminal Tax Division and obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.cnet.com ...
Look. Take a walk thru any IRS office and tell us what you see. They’re fat, useless, tub-o-lards who wouldn’t last two seconds on a battlefield. If you want to submit to a bowl of jell-o, that’s your choice.
Waiting to hear their pathetic argument used for the Second Amendment...”well, the founders never envisioned this kind of technology...”
It's not like a patriotic Chief Justice could look at this and say, "it's permissible because the IRS is doing it, and that makes it a tax" . . . oh, wait, we're stuck with Roberts, and he would say that.
You're right to be concerned. Freedom died on November 4, 2008. All that's left is to determine which of the many potentially fatal wounds inflicted by the far left will prove to be the death blow.
November 2007: Spying on wife's e-mails lands man in prison
Excerpt:
Shawn Macleod wanted to know where his estranged wife was going on the Internet and what she was writing in e-mails, investigators said, so he secretly installed a program called SpyRecon on her computer that sent him electronic logs with the sites she had visited and messages she had sent.His spying resulted in a four-year prison sentence.
[snip]
Austin police considered Macleod's actions tantamount to illegal wiretapping and charged him with unlawful interception of electronic communication, a second-degree felony that can carry a 20-year sentence. Macleod pleaded guilty in May.
[snip]
In New York this year, a sheriff's deputy was found guilty of eavesdropping after investigators said he spied on the computer activity of a neighbor he thought posed a threat to young girls in their neighborhood.
The deputy was sentenced to five years of probation.
December 2010: Is Snooping in Your Spouse’s e-mail a Crime?
Excerpt:The difference with the second case is that the email itself is not stored on the computer, it's at the Google servers. The computer is only the viewing mechanism.
A Michigan man who accessed his wife’s e-mail account while she was allegedly carrying on an affair faces up to five years in prison when he goes on trial Feb. 7 on a charge he violated a state law typically used against hackers intent on making money or mayhem.The question for the judge or jurors who will hear the case isn’t whether Clara Walker gave Leon Walker, 33, permission to inspect her Google e-mail; he admits she didn’t know what he was up to until her e-mail messages became an issue in their divorce and child custody battle.
But Leon Walker claims that he had every right to poke around in the computer because he was concerned that his wife’s lover — the second of her two former husbands — might be abusive to her around their young children. Walker also contends that he had the right to go on the computer because he bought it, it was in his home, and she left the password lying around.
-PJ
Please add me to your ping list. Thank you.
Makes sense to me as it is the same government which cannot be constrained by “SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED” so why would anyone expect them to honor the 4th Amendment?
The 1st, 2nd, 4th, 5th Amendments are all under direct and daily attack and once they are gone the 3rd will follow.
Thank YOU onyx!
(I am waiving to the IRS at my ‘puter screen...)
LOLOLOL.
we have a winner
but that protection is only pretty good. heh.
They might be able to read mine, but can they UNDERSTAND them?
I think they are right. The HOA I used to be in got in some trouble because they were writing vicious emails back and forth as part of their Board of Director & Architectural Guideline duties, and had to turn those over to the members of the HOA for review.
Also, if someone forwards an email from you, you have no cause for complaint.
Right which makes no sense at all.
Right now I can totally envision laser guns and pulse rifles and all sorts of crazy crap, and I would want it all protected under those rules.
I’m sure the founders were capable of the same basic level future projectional thought.
I can see someone try to argue that buying the stamp and putting it on the envelope buys you the protection, but that email is free and therefore has no protection. That's a false argument because it is not free. You are still paying a monthly fee to the ISP for the email service, and free emails from Google or Yahoo make up the cost in ad revenue, which would disappear if people felt that their email was not secure.
-PJ
Clearly in violation of the Fourth Amendment. We are guaranteed the right to be secure in our “persons, papers, and effects.”
Obtain a valid search warrant for the original email.
To obtain the warrent, explain the probable cause for the request.
Do you grasp the danger of allowing any element of government to freely access unsecured Internet communications?
Take an axe to your hard drive, or simply leave an obvious example of someone else potentially fraudulently accessing/spoofing your “ private account”.
Damn those hackers...
Thanks tobyhill.
LOL!!!
Oh Jeeze!!!
I don’t care who you are, that there’s funny.
Yet another reason to replace the income tax with the FairTax and abolish the IRS!
We will never be a FRee people so long as we have an income tax and the IRS!
Check out the FairTax at http://www.fairtax.org.
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