Public.Resource.Org has been working intensively to make nonprofit tax returns more readily accessible. We undertook our initial effort in 2008 at the request of Aaron Swartz. We renewed our efforts in 2012 at the specific request of the White House, which has furnished us with DVDs and hosted numerous meetings. We are sad to conclude that during the course of our work, the I.R.S. has, in our opinion, misled both Public.Resource.Org and White House officials.
The latest scandal hitting the agency was discovered by Public.Resource.org, who then notified IRS by letter, highlighting just a small sample of instances where Social Security numbers were posted publicly by the IRS.
On July 2, Public.Resource.Org discovered this systematic violation of Americans' privacy and notified the U.S. Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration. We documented our findings in an audit document, copies of which were furnished to I.R.S. officials and senior White House officials. On July 3, the administration removed this database from public view.
Public.Resource.Org uncovered this serious violation of federal law in the course of an unrelated audit which was sparked when, on June 18, the I.R.S. notified Public.Resource.Org that it had sent out an improperly-vetted shipment of data on DVD for the January release of the Form 990-T, the Exempt Organization Business Income Tax Return. Because the I.R.S. had publicly released that data in February, and had not notified recipients of the bulk data subscription of this privacy breach for several months, Public.Resource.Org conducted a systematic examination of the breach and how it was handled and delivered that audit to the Inspector General on July 1, 2013.
In the July 1 audit, the Public.Resource.org's founder, Carl Malamud, found that of over 3,000 tax returns contained in the January update, 319 contained sensitive data the agency should have scrubbed, resulting in approximately 2,319 social security numbers being publicly revealed.
Their conclusion:
The I.R.S. effort to date has been unprofessional and amateur. The I.R.S. has even gone so far as to assert copyright by the government on the political disclosures database in direct violation of the “works of government” clause of the Copyright Act. The I.R.S. has a policy that even in an emergency, their staff are not allowed to use e-mail to communicate with organizations such as ours, a policy that makes it much harder to respond to incidents quickly. The I.R.S. has recklessly violated the privacy of Americans and deliberately tried to keep scrutiny away from our worst charities.
With the revelation of every new scandal involving the IRS, throughout social media, opinion pages, and forums, calls are mounting up to abolish the agency.
One prominent voice for Abolishing the IRS is Senator Ted Cruz, as seen in the video below:
Full Wake up America coverage on the IRS scandal can be found here.
