whembly wrote:

Yep. I can't imagine that they don't.

 whembly wrote:

Kan, it's not uncommon for 3rd party vendors to house archived data.

 dogma wrote:

 whembly wrote:

Yep. I can't imagine that they don't.

You're mixing arguments. What should be done is not what actually was done, and what should be done now has no relevance to policy which existed at the time an action was taken in the past.

This has been explained to you by several people.

 whembly wrote:

Kan, it's not uncommon for 3rd party vendors to house archived data.

It isn't uncommon, but it doesn't necessarily happen either. That is a conclusion you, and numerous bloggers, reached due to a political agenda.

 whembly wrote:

 dogma wrote:

 whembly wrote:

FWIW, I just found out that I can retrieve an email, if I desired, that I deleted from my inbox back in 2002. The only thing required from me is a timeframe, and money as its stored offsite by 3rd party vendor.

Are you suggesting that the IRS should store emails (records or not), which would necessarily include things like SSNs and tax deductions, on the servers of a third-party vendor?

Yep. I can't imagine that they don't.

 streamdragon wrote:

 whembly wrote:

 dogma wrote:

 whembly wrote:

FWIW, I just found out that I can retrieve an email, if I desired, that I deleted from my inbox back in 2002. The only thing required from me is a timeframe, and money as its stored offsite by 3rd party vendor.

Are you suggesting that the IRS should store emails (records or not), which would necessarily include things like SSNs and tax deductions, on the servers of a third-party vendor?

Yep. I can't imagine that they don't.

I have worked for 2 different federal agencies now that handle sensitive PII information. For DOJ, I worked in two different Divisions: Antitrust (for almost 10 years) and Civil (for barely 1 year). I work at the FTC now.

I can tell you that DOJ, due to the sensitive nature of the data it handles, does all its archiving in-house. I know this, because I have personally walked through the racks and racks of shelves holding external hard drives containing case data going back 5 years. The same email policy I described before (employee responsibility, archive to a .PST file because the servers auto-delete old email and we have a <1GB network limit for server email[I want to say we got about 500MB of email on the server]) applied when I worked at ATR and Civil. I didn't work at Civil long enough to need to visit the archives (I wasn't around for any cases to complete their life cycle like I did repeatedly at ATR), but I was under the impression we had an entire wing of a building dedicated to data archive. ATR archived case data (including discovery, data productions, staff email, databases, etc. etc. etc.) for a period of 5 years, after which it was destroyed. And I mean destroyed. We're talking hard drives going into an industrial grinder, rather than being wiped and risking data being remotely recoverable.

I really, really can't stress enough how futile it is to try to compare private enterprise to the federal government. Getting things changed in private enterprise is practically lightning speed compared to the federal government, where some changes require a literal act of Congress to go through. Even something as simple as updating a machine, ordering replacement parts, or getting someone cleared to even LOG IN can take months going through channels. At ATR once, it took 2 months to get replacement power supplies for machines who had supplies from a bad batch. We had probably a dozen work stations down for 2 entire months, because we couldn't get the PO approved.

he mischief of the Nixon administration was specific to it, to its personnel. When Chuck Colson left, he left. All the figures in that drama failed to permanently disfigure the edifice of government. They got caught, and their particular brand of mischief ended.
But the IRS scandal is different, because if it isn't stopped-if it isn't fully uncovered, exposed, and its instigators held accountable-it will suggest an acceptance of the politicization of the IRS, and an expected and assumed partisanship within its future actions. That will be terrible not only for citizens but for the government itself.

And the IRS scandal will also have disfigured government in a new and killing way. IRS scandals in the past were about the powerful (Richard Nixon) abusing the powerful (Edward Bennett Williams). This scandal is about the powerful (Lois Lerner, et a.) abusing the not-powerful (normal, on-the-ground Americans such as rural tea-party groups). If it comes to be understood that this kind of thing is how the government now does business, it will be terrible for the spirit and reality of the country.

So many of those who decide what is news cannot, on this issue, see the good faith and honest concern of the many who make this warning. And really, that is tragic.

 whembly wrote:

So what?

 whembly wrote:

These days do you have a fething point other than to try discredit me.

 whembly wrote:

It's nice that I'm in your head.

 dogma wrote:

 whembly wrote:

So what?

I was under the impression that political agendas were bad, I was informed of this by many conservatives and liberals in several different contexts.

 whembly wrote:

These days do you have a fething point other than to try discredit me.

Yes? I've clearly made points, in this very thread, that extend beyond "Whembly is wrong!"

 whembly wrote:

It's nice that I'm in your head.

Nope, you're just a guy who posts things on a message board I frequent.

 whembly wrote:

Kidding aside... as Frazzled would say... I've been "ghazi'ed" well enough that I'm resigned that nothing will be done to address what really happened in Benghazi. It's simply because it's a concept that foreign policy is a realm of mystery for most Americans, a place where governmental policy & schemes will never be fully revealed. 'Tis why you see "whembly" awfully muted lately on this subject.

 whembly wrote:

However, the possibility of being abused by the IRS, however unlikely, requires no such paranoia.

 whembly wrote:

The fear to the general idea that the IRS treats us unequally, in part for political reasons has struck a chord in the mainstream distrust of "government".

 whembly wrote:

No... you're guessing just as much as I am.

 dogma wrote:

 whembly wrote:

Kidding aside... as Frazzled would say... I've been "ghazi'ed" well enough that I'm resigned that nothing will be done to address what really happened in Benghazi. It's simply because it's a concept that foreign policy is a realm of mystery for most Americans, a place where governmental policy & schemes will never be fully revealed. 'Tis why you see "whembly" awfully muted lately on this subject.

I never mentioned Benghazi in any of my comments in this thread, so I'm not sure how that's relevant.

 whembly wrote:

However, the possibility of being abused by the IRS, however unlikely, requires no such paranoia.

If it is unlikely, then it requires paranoia in order for fear to set in.

 whembly wrote:

The fear to the general idea that the IRS treats us unequally, in part for political reasons has struck a chord in the mainstream distrust of "government".

Of course it does, that's why different tax classifications exist.

 whembly wrote:
I know... I'm just trying to impress upon you that the IRS scandal is a "bigger issue" because everyone can relate to a fear of the Tax Man™ compared to some nebulous foreign policy.

 whembly wrote:

I think it's good to be paranoid of any possible abuses.

 whembly wrote:

But that doesn't give the IRS carte blanche to treat different groups differently for political purposes.

 dogma wrote:

 whembly wrote:
I know... I'm just trying to impress upon you that the IRS scandal is a "bigger issue" because everyone can relate to a fear of the Tax Man™ compared to some nebulous foreign policy.

I'm a US citizen and I'm not afraid of the tax man

 whembly wrote:

I think it's good to be paranoid of any possible abuses.

Paranoia necessarily involves an unreasonable fear. You essentially just said that it is good to be unreasonable.

 whembly wrote:

But that doesn't give the IRS carte blanche to treat different groups differently for political purposes.

The only reason why 501(c)3, 501(c)4, 501(c)5, 501(c)6, and 527 are different tax classifications is "politics".

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:
Perhaps saying that he had "in depth knowledge" was overstating the relevance of his statement. That being said, on face value the IRS's statement about losing emails seems somewhat flimsy and almost too convenient. Yes, it could all just be a series of legitimate and unfortunate events that caused the IRS to lose emails from people involved in this affair over the time that it was occurring, but when the IRS has already been caught lying about their actions before Lerner went public there is a certain credibility gap that needs addressed.

And this is not just conservative v liberal. Had it been liberal groups being targeted I would be equally outraged. Anyone who values liberty should be gravely concerned over these accusations that anyone could be investigated apparently on the basis of exercising their right to freedom of speech.

"Everyone is up in arms because they don't like it" Lerner replied, adding "Federal Election Commission can't do anything about it; they want the IRS to fix the problem."

"So everybody is screaming at us right now 'Fix it now before the election. Can't you see how much these people are spending?'"

 whembly wrote:
That's what was going on.

I'm a US citizen and I'm not afraid of the tax man, and I still don't know how Benghazi is relevant to the IRS.

Paranoia necessarily involves an unreasonable fear. You essentially just said that it is good to be unreasonable.

 sebster wrote:
It is certainly very convenient. Which makes me think that more needs to be done to investigate this, look in to way to recover more of the emails, and learn if what the IRS claimed could actually have happened. But making a political deal out of it before that work has been done is political grandstanding.

 sebster wrote:
When I first read about the issue I was outraged. But then I learnt more about what actually happened (and that it wasn't just conservative groups targeted, it only appeared that way due to the very dodgy terms put up in the original ROI), I started to think it was just run of the mill bad policy, and not actually an attempt to target political enemies. By that point the Republican machine was in full force, making all kinds of ridiculous claims and substantiating nothing of real meaning.

 whembly wrote:

 whembly wrote:

When it's weaponized... absolutely.

This isn't the DMV dogma...

 whembly wrote:

We are talking about an agency whose lifeblood is all about documentation and email.

 dogma wrote:

 whembly wrote:

Maybe you should try adding to the conversation, as what you posted is not illustrative of anything,

 whembly wrote:

When it's weaponized... absolutely.

This isn't the DMV dogma...

When did I mention the DMV? Or the notion that an IRS policy was weaponized?

Moreover, how was IRS policy "weaponized" illegally?

 whembly wrote:

We are talking about an agency whose lifeblood is all about documentation and email.

Documentation designated as records, but not necessarily email. This distinction is one that I, and several others, pointed out to you up-thread.

You are are deliberately choosing to ignore it.

1.15.2.2 (08-30-2013)
Definition of Records

According to 44 United States Code (USC) Section 3301, the term “record” includes all books, papers, maps, photographs, machine readable materials, or other documentary materials, regardless of physical form or characteristics, made or received by an agency of the U.S. Government under Federal law or in connection with the transaction of public business and preserved or appropriate for preservation by that agency or its legitimate successor as evidence of the organization, functions, policies, decisions, procedures, operations, or other activities of the government or because of the informational value of data in them.

 whembly wrote:


1.15.2.2 (08-30-2013)
Definition of Records

According to 44 United States Code (USC) Section 3301, the term “record” includes all books, papers, maps, photographs, machine readable materials, or other documentary materials, regardless of physical form or characteristics, made or received by an agency of the U.S. Government under Federal law or in connection with the transaction of public business and preserved or appropriate for preservation by that agency or its legitimate successor as evidence of the organization, functions, policies, decisions, procedures, operations, or other activities of the government or because of the informational value of data in them.

 whembly wrote:

What we truly need to know, is what was the IRS' backup/retention policy during the time in question.

 dogma wrote:

 whembly wrote:

What we truly need to know, is what was the IRS' backup/retention policy during the time in question.

But you clearly have no interest in that, as your interest in 2013 policies shows.

Miissing tapes? Abuse of power? It’s 1974 all over again, with one exception – there seems to be no Woodward and Bernstein interested in delving into an abuse of power and a cover-up.

The parallels between the crisis in the Richard Nixon presidency and the current political environment are intriguing, if not entirely dispositive. Forty-two years ago, the targeting of political enemies by the executive branch erupted as one of the worst political scandals in American history, and took almost two years to reach its apex. A national election and the withdrawal from an unpopular war overshadowed the scandal for awhile, but the press kept Watergate on the front burner long enough for the cover-up to fall apart in 1974.

Forty years later, we have another scandal involving abuse of political power that targeted political opponents of the president. We have one IRS official in the executive branch refusing to testify, and now the same agency claims they cannot produce her e-mails during the time of the targeting.

When Congress erupted in outrage, the IRS added that they had also lost the email data for six more figures related to the targeting of conservative groups by the tax-exempt investigations unit. Yet the questions from the media these days largely focus on whether this is a “phony scandal” or an indication of corruption in the federal government’s most powerful agency.

Contrast that reaction to the media interest 40 years ago. Few remember that among the articles of impeachment under consideration by the House of Representatives in 1974 was a charge that the Nixon administration attempted to manipulate the power of the IRS against its political enemies. Article Two, Section One accused Nixon of “acting personally and through his subordinates and agents” to have his political opponents audited and to access their private data. Other allegations in the Watergate scandal eclipsed that particular accusation, but that article passed on a 28-10 bipartisan vote in the House Judiciary Committee.

There are are numerous differences between the two scandals, too. For one thing, no one has tied this to the White House or any of President Barack Obama’s advisers. The closest insinuation between the IRS targeting scandal has been an unusual meeting between the IRS’ chief counsel, William Wilkins, and Obama on April 23, 2012. The chief counsel for the IRS would have no discernible reason for a private meeting with the president; his job would be to brief the IRS commissioner - at the time Douglas Shulman – who met with Obama the very next day.

The day after that, Wilkins sent a revised set of guidelines to Lois Lerner for the tax-exempt unit to use when applying extra scrutiny. To this day, no explanation for this meeting has been made public, even though records show that Wilkins spent hours at the White House with “POTUS” as his host.

Nor was this the first time that Wilkins appears in the targeting narrative. Carter Hull, a retired high-ranking IRS official with 48 years’ experience at the agency, testified that after he approved a Tea Party-related tax-exempt application, it got routed to Wilkins rather than finalized.

After other clashes on approval for these groups, Hull got cut out of the loop in favor of an analyst with less than a year on the job. Hull also described an August 2011 meeting with three of Wilkins’ representatives present in which the extra scrutiny was discussed, a meeting corroborated by the Inspector General report that prompted the exposure of the targeting effort.

Two different House committees wanted to know more about what instructions Lerner issued in conducting the targeting, and more to the point, who may have instructed Lerner to target conservative groups in the first place. Lerner refused to testify when subpoenaed by the House Oversight Committee, but the House Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee both demanded all of her communications from the IRS. Those records could help establish whether this was a “phony scandal,” as the White House has insisted last year, or whether the abuse of power was a coordinated political strategy.

The House Ways and Means Committee pressed the matter for months, while the IRS dragged its feet. In March, new IRS Commissioner John Koskinen reassured chair Dave Camp that the IRS kept solid records of their communications and that collation of the material would only be a matter of time. However, time apparently ran out last Friday afternoon, when Koskinen told Camp that the IRS had lost two years of Lerner’s email data due to a hard-drive failure – and that the IRS only keeps six months’ server data on backup while requiring businesses to store far more.

A few days later, the IRS announced that they had similar two-year gaps for six more IRS officials connected to the targeting effort. While the IRS has been able to piece together the internal-only emails from Lerner and the other six officials, they claim that any emails between these seven IRS officials and outside agencies has been forever lost. Coincidentally, that’s exactly what the House panel wants to see.

Isn’t that rather … convenient? It certainly moves this from “phony scandal” to potential minefield for Barack Obama – or at least it should, if anyone pays attention. The hypocrisy alone is breathtaking: the government’s biggest stickler for accurate records and lengthy archival requirements claiming to have little regard itself for such measures.

Even worse, though, is the sudden change in story about the ability to access the archives. Koskinen’s long delay in informing Ways and Means of what the IRS now claims is a normal limitation on accessing archival data from its email servers doesn’t just look convenient, but very much like the agency has something to hide.

With all of these red flags and roadblocks on transparency, one might think that the media might start getting a little more interested in the scope of this abuse of power. Instead, the only curiosity appears to be whether this all means that the IRS should get even more money in its budget, because tape backups for more than six months apparently breaks the bank in an agency that gets $11.3 billion in the FY2014 budget.

Ironically, the IRS got extra cash a few years ago to modernize their internal systems, Fox reported at the time, while noting that the FY2015 budget request from the White House increased the IRS allocation by over 11 percent. In response to the lack of cooperation with the probe, the Appropriations Committee just trimmed 15 percent off Obama’s budget request for the IRS, and warns that the agency should stick to its “core functions.”

Perhaps the hue and cry over the lost funding will finally start to interest the media forty years after their tenacity over abuse of executive power forced accountability on a corrupt administration.

Unfortunately, a lot has changed since Watergate – and a lot hasn’t.

 -Shrike- wrote:
Hmm... not being able to access external communications is a problem. Do we know exactly how many people were affected by this server failure, apart from the seven under investigation?

WASHINGTON -- Taxpayers who do not produce documents for the Internal Revenue Service will be able to offer a variety of dubious excuses under legislation introduced by Rep. Steve Stockman (R-TX 36) a week after the IRS offered an incredibly dubious excuse for its failure to turn documents over to House investigators.

“The United States was founded on the belief government is subservient and accountable to the people. Taxpayers shouldn’t be expected to follow laws the Obama administration refuses to follow themselves,” said Stockman. “Taxpayers should be allowed to offer the same flimsy, obviously made-up excuses the Obama administration uses.”

Under Stockman’s bill, “The Dog Ate My Tax Receipts Act,” taxpayers who do not provide documents requested by the IRS can claim one of the following reasons:

1. The dog ate my tax receipts
2. Convenient, unexplained, miscellaneous computer malfunction
3. Traded documents for five terrorists
4. Burned for warmth while lost in the Yukon
5. Left on table in Hillary’s Book Room
6. Received water damage in the trunk of Ted Kennedy’s car
7. Forgot in gun case sold to Mexican drug lords
8. Forced to recycle by municipal Green Czar
9. Was short on toilet paper while camping
10. At this point, what difference does it make?

Stockman’s bill comes a week after the IRS refused to turn over to House investigators emails from former Exempt Organizations Divison director Lois Lerner that would implicate agency personnel in illegal targeting of citizens critical of President Barack Obama.

The IRS claimed a “computer glitch” has erased the hard drives of all incriminating evidence. The IRS further claimed the hard drives are not available for forensic investigation as they had just been destroyed for recycling.

The full text of the resolution follows:

The resolution may be cited as the “Dog Ate My Tax Receipts Resolution.”

Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) must allow taxpayers the same lame excuses for missing documentation that the IRS itself is currently proffering

Whereas, the IRS claims that convenient, unexplained, miscellaneous computer malfunction is sufficient justification not to produce specific, critical documentation; and,

Whereas, fairness and Due Process demand that the American taxpayer be granted no less latitude than we afford the bureaucrats employed presently at the IRS;

Now, therefore, be it resolved that it is the sense of the House of Representatives that unless and until the Internal Revenue Service produces all documentation demanded by subpoena or otherwise by the House of Representatives, or produces an excuse that passes the red face test,

All taxpayers shall be given the benefit of the doubt when not producing critical documentation, so long as the taxpayer’s excuse therefore falls into one of the following categories:

1. The dog ate my tax receipts
2. Convenient, unexplained, miscellaneous computer malfunction
3. Traded documents for five terrorists
4. Burned for warmth while lost in the Yukon
5. Left on table in Hillary’s Book Room
6. Received water damage in the trunk of Ted Kennedy’s car
7. Forgot in gun case sold to Mexican drug lords
8. Forced to recycle by municipal Green Czar
9. Was short on toilet paper while camping
10. At this point, what difference does it make?

In any case, IRS can see the NSA for a good, high quality copy.

 whembly wrote:

 -Shrike- wrote:
Hmm... not being able to access external communications is a problem. Do we know exactly how many people were affected by this server failure, apart from the seven under investigation?

We don't know for sure... we only found out Lerner's destruction last Friday and the other six this Monday.

Also... Congressman Stockman is trolling here... but, it's pretty epic trolling:
Stockman bill allows taxpayers to use same lame excuses as IRS

WASHINGTON -- Taxpayers who do not produce documents for the Internal Revenue Service will be able to offer a variety of dubious excuses under legislation introduced by Rep. Steve Stockman (R-TX 36) a week after the IRS offered an incredibly dubious excuse for its failure to turn documents over to House investigators.

“The United States was founded on the belief government is subservient and accountable to the people. Taxpayers shouldn’t be expected to follow laws the Obama administration refuses to follow themselves,” said Stockman. “Taxpayers should be allowed to offer the same flimsy, obviously made-up excuses the Obama administration uses.”

Under Stockman’s bill, “The Dog Ate My Tax Receipts Act,” taxpayers who do not provide documents requested by the IRS can claim one of the following reasons:

1. The dog ate my tax receipts
2. Convenient, unexplained, miscellaneous computer malfunction
3. Traded documents for five terrorists
4. Burned for warmth while lost in the Yukon
5. Left on table in Hillary’s Book Room
6. Received water damage in the trunk of Ted Kennedy’s car
7. Forgot in gun case sold to Mexican drug lords
8. Forced to recycle by municipal Green Czar
9. Was short on toilet paper while camping
10. At this point, what difference does it make?

Stockman’s bill comes a week after the IRS refused to turn over to House investigators emails from former Exempt Organizations Divison director Lois Lerner that would implicate agency personnel in illegal targeting of citizens critical of President Barack Obama.

The IRS claimed a “computer glitch” has erased the hard drives of all incriminating evidence. The IRS further claimed the hard drives are not available for forensic investigation as they had just been destroyed for recycling.

The full text of the resolution follows:

The resolution may be cited as the “Dog Ate My Tax Receipts Resolution.”

Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) must allow taxpayers the same lame excuses for missing documentation that the IRS itself is currently proffering

Whereas, the IRS claims that convenient, unexplained, miscellaneous computer malfunction is sufficient justification not to produce specific, critical documentation; and,

Whereas, fairness and Due Process demand that the American taxpayer be granted no less latitude than we afford the bureaucrats employed presently at the IRS;

Now, therefore, be it resolved that it is the sense of the House of Representatives that unless and until the Internal Revenue Service produces all documentation demanded by subpoena or otherwise by the House of Representatives, or produces an excuse that passes the red face test,

All taxpayers shall be given the benefit of the doubt when not producing critical documentation, so long as the taxpayer’s excuse therefore falls into one of the following categories:

1. The dog ate my tax receipts
2. Convenient, unexplained, miscellaneous computer malfunction
3. Traded documents for five terrorists
4. Burned for warmth while lost in the Yukon
5. Left on table in Hillary’s Book Room
6. Received water damage in the trunk of Ted Kennedy’s car
7. Forgot in gun case sold to Mexican drug lords
8. Forced to recycle by municipal Green Czar
9. Was short on toilet paper while camping
10. At this point, what difference does it make?

In any case, IRS can see the NSA for a good, high quality copy.

 motyak wrote:
God how I hate people wasting time in legislating piss like this. Or, as happens over here, they go into Parliament, in the ridiculously limited time that they actually sit, and waste time 'hilariously' trolling the other side with snide remarks and gak like that. No. They are meant to be grown ups and they should fething act like it.

 whembly wrote:

And you clearly have no interest in this ordeal at all other than providing cover that IRS were in the right to target only conservatives.

 whembly wrote:

Your stance supports a hypothetical IRS agency during a Republican presidency, whereas the IRS only audits liberal/progressive groups.

 Grey Templar wrote:
I hope it passes. Would serve the IRS right

Few remember that among the articles of impeachment under consideration by the House of Representatives in 1974 was a charge that the Nixon administration attempted to manipulate the power of the IRS against its political enemies.