#E-Discovery MIRACLE: 30,000 missing emails from IRS' Lerner recovered

TWITTER SUES FEDERAL GOVERNMENT

TWITTER SUES FEDERAL GOVERNMENT Tech companies have complained about federal government demands for information on their customers and insistence that the companies tell no one about it (or else). Some, like Google, Apple and LinkedIn, have even tried to push back. The latest to do so: Twitter, which is taking the federal government to court saying its demands are a restriction in the company's First Amendment rights: "In the case of Twitter, their posts are public, they don't actually get that many requests that are related to national security, so they want to make that clear to users. In April, Twitter sent the government a draft copy of its July transparency report asking if it could be reviewed for publication. They were told they couldn't publish it. Twitter is saying this is what we call 'prior restraint,' it's a gag order under our First Amendment. Before we even speak, our First Amendment is violated. So they are asking now in court to be able to say more." Twitter's odds of winning in court are uncertain. Google and others who have sued the federal government ended up settling their cases out of court. The government still demands information from them, but the companies can give users a general idea of how many times the government has asked for information. In other words, it's a battle of inches, and there are still miles to go before Big Brother's prying eyes are closed. MORE MISSING IRS EMAILS This time, it's not related to Lois Lerner, but the Internal Revenue Service, facing a lawsuit from NetJets over a tax bill, is accused of "losing" the emails and other data relevant to the case: "In a suit against the IRS filed in 2011, NetJets claims the IRS improperly forced it to pay a ticket tax that is meant to apply to commercial-airline customers, not private jets. The IRS counter-sued. But in 2012, Congress clarified that NetJets was right, the tax does not apply to it. "In the meantime, key information and evidence has suddenly vanished. The Columbus Dispatch reports NetJets has filed a motion with US District Court Judge Edmund Sargus Jr., claiming the IRS has 'wiped clean a number of computer hard drives containing e-mails and other electronic documents that the government was required to produce' in the company's lawsuit against the agency." Destroying evidence appears to be the favorite pastime at the IRS.

IRS Monitoring Religious Groups

What would you think if the federal government announced that it would send in federal officials to monitor what Muslim mullahs preach during religious services to determine whether the sermons opposed federal policy or had other political ramifications? In 2008 we learned that one individual “posed as a Muslim convert at the request of the FBI” to gather information that might aid investigators. When this information came to light, the government refused to stop this monitoring, even though the vast majority of Muslims want nothing to do with terrorism.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) joined with the ACLU and sued, claiming that this government monitoring violated the First Amendment rights of worshipers who attended several California mosques.

Similarly, the ACLU, CAIR, and other human rights groups have challenged the New York Police Department’s blanket surveillance of New York mosques. Should government agents monitor to see whether any preachers instructed their congregations to tell the government that they object to U.S. troops in Muslim lands?

- See more at: http://verdict.justia.com/2014/09/15/irs-monitoring-religious-groups#sthash.vrRvq9It.dpuf

Obama IRS to monitor Church Sermons

It’s not just the Tea Party that the IRS is giving extra scrutiny to, it’s also checking into church sermons. According to Investor's Business Daily, the IRS agreed to an atheist group’s demands “to monitor sermons and homilies for proscribed speech that the foundation believes includes things like condemnation of gay marriage and criticism of ObamaCare for its contraceptive mandate.”

The division in charge of enforcing this review of religious speech, the Tax Exempt and Government Entities Division, was once headed by IRS scandal figure Lois Lerner. So far the Big Three (ABC, CBS, NBC) networks have yet to run with this stunning story on any of their evening or morning news programs.

On July 31, Investor's Business Daily (IBD) opened their editorial headlined “IRS Strikes Deal With Atheists To Monitor Churches,” this way:

http://goo.gl/3Adikg Amendment: Government's assault on religious liberty has hit a new low as the IRS settles with atheists by promising to monitor sermons for mentions of the right to life and traditional marriage.

http://goo.gl/3Adikg

TweetMe Please

E-Discovery: Even IRS Computers Crash

Patrick Oot, Law Technology News

June 29, 2014    | 3 Comments

Minerva Studio/Fotolia

On June 17, Internal Revenue Service Commissioner John Koskinen sat before a firing range of politicians in testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee, more than a month after his agency produced a June 13 letter describing the tax authority’s efforts to produce documents related to the Tea Party 501(c)(3) investigation. While disappearing government email might seem cliché, the facts behind the headlines are pretty easily understandable. Put simply: no money, no storage.

The short story of it all:

• IRS users were limited to 500 mb of mailbox storage on Microsoft Exchange servers. 
• According to Koskinen’s testimony, appropriations targeted for information technology were cut year-over-year, leaving no funds for system maintenance and storage upgrades.

Read more: http://www.lawtechnologynews.com/id=1202661307730/EDiscovery-Even-IRS-Computers-Crash#ixzz36dG6XhC6

IRS ‘did not follow the law’ on lost Lerner emails

The top U.S. official in charge of archiving federal records testified Tuesday that the IRS ran afoul of the law by neglecting to tell his office that a trove of emails from the woman at the center of the targeting scandal disappeared after an apparent hard drive crash. 

Archivist of the U.S. David Ferriero, speaking before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, made clear that federal agencies are supposed to report whenever their records are destroyed or even accidentally deleted. But he said that after emails from embattled IRS official Lois Lerner vanished after a computer failure in 2011, nobody told the National Archives. 

ADVERTISEMENT

"They did not follow the law," Ferriero said. 

http://goo.gl/w6KSLK

TweetMe Please

Photo Foxnews.com

ON JUNE 10, 2014 BY JOHN HINDERAKER IN IRS, OBAMA ADMINISTRATION SCANDALS

IRS GAVE FBI 1.1 MILLION PAGES OF TAXPAYER DATA TO ENCOURAGE PROSECUTION OF CONSERVATIVES

It is just about impossible to keep up with all of the Obama administration scandals, but the corruption of the Internal Revenue Service ranks near the top. Unfortunately, it has gone hand in hand with Barack Obama and Eric Holder’s corruption of the Department of Justice. The perversion of law enforcement agencies for political ends is starkly revealed by the fact that in 2010, as part of its effort to stem the Tea Party movement, the IRS gave the FBI disks containing more than 1.1 million pages of documents on Section 501 non-profits, so that the FBI could selectively prosecute conservative groups and donors.

The facts, as we know them so far, were laid out yesterday in a letter from Congressmen Darrell Issa and Jim Jordan to John Koskinen, Commissioner of the IRS. The letter includes a series of emails that the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform has finally obtained, after more than a year of stonewalling by the Obama administration. The IRS originally told the House committee–falsely–that the disks contained only publicly available filings by the non-profit organizations. But the IRS later admitted that it had illegally transferred confidential taxpayer information to the FBI.

http://goo.gl/cvulVJ

TweetMe Please

The Affordable Care Act – Where are We Now

The Honeymoon Is Over: IRS Says It Is Time to Amend Plans to Cover Same-Sex Spouses

IRS Issues Significant Convertible Virtual Currency Ruling – Bitcoin Community Abuzz

The First Pieces of Health Reform's Pay or Play Penalty Puzzle