IRS has the power to hack into any email more than 180 days old. Is it Constitutional? (legal, rating)

[wutitiz]

IRS tells agents it can snoop on emails without warrant, internal documents show | Fox News

The official position of the IRS currently is that it can peep into any email or other electronic communication, as long as it is 180 days old or more.

The Fourth Amendment states:

Originally Posted by founding fathers

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Note the absence of a 180 day limit.

Is the IRS in violation of the US Constitution, and if so what action should be taken against them?

[Gtownoe]

Yes they are, they should be stripped of that right immediately.

I don't believe legal action should be taken against them since they were operating under the law at the time.



We need more citizen's rights in this country though, that's for sure.

[summers73]

PGP and done. No more worries about the IRS or any other gov't agency. Works for me.

[pknopp]

Of course it's unconstitutional.

[GCharlotte]

Originally Posted by wutitiz

IRS tells agents it can snoop on emails without warrant, internal documents show | Fox News

The official position of the IRS currently is that it can peep into any email or other electronic communication, as long as it is 180 days old or more.

The Fourth Amendment states:



Note the absence of a 180 day limit.

Is the IRS in violation of the US Constitution, and if so what action should be taken against them?

Well, it gets complicated. First, they aren't breaking down doors to read e-mails or frisking people on the street to get a hold of their smartphones. And while it is good that FOX now takes it's news from the ACLU, this issue is dead, dead and dead. Not that we shouldn't be watching the IRS carefully:

IRS Says It Will Respect 4th Amendment With Regard to Email, But Questions Remain | American Civil Liberties Union

But as far as the 4th goes, if I had some documents of yours in my possession and a federal agent asked me nice to share with them and I did, where's the violation? The other part of this is keeping an eye on Internet service providers and their policies of cooperating and not protecting. For e-mail, you could avoid IMAP and set your POP to delete your messages from the server. Personally I don't care and like IMAP and would go nuts on GoDaddy if I found out they were handing out my e-mail because the feds said "please".

What's also worrisome is the feds have talked about granting immunity in advance to ISPs so the ISP can feel ok in violating federal law in order to "cooperate". That scares me even more.