IRS faces class action lawsuit over theft of 60 million medical records

I get it, we're all supposed to hate the IRS, but this is a really terrible article about some scumbag lawyers trying to get a quick settlement. This is just an new play on medical malpractice trolling.. And if there's anyone I trust to give me the scoop on the IRS, it's Wesley Snipes' tax lawyer!<p>From the filing:<p><pre><code> A lurid but vague class action accuses corrupt and abusive IRS agents of stealing 10 million people's medical records without a warrant - including "intimate medical records of every state judge in California." </code></pre> Sounds juicy..<p><pre><code> After being put on notice of the illicit seizure, the IRS agents refused to return the records, continued to keep the records for the prying eyes of IRS peeping toms, and keep the records to this very day. </code></pre> Peeping Toms? Getting pretty serious..<p><pre><code> Adding insult to injury, after unlawfully seizing the records and searching their intimate parts, defendants decided to use John Doe Company's media system to watch basketball, ordering pizza and Coca-Cola, to take in part of the NCAA tournament, illustrating their complete disregard of the court's order and the Plaintiffs' Fourth Amendment rights. </code></pre> The IRS agents had the audacity to order lunch and watch TV? How salacious.. So how did they end up stealing so many confidential records?<p><pre><code> "Despite knowing that these medical records were not within the scope of the warrant, defendants threatened to 'rip' the servers containing the medical data out of the building if IT personnel would not voluntarily hand them over," according to the lawsuit. "Moreover, even though defendants knew that the records they were seizing were not included within the scope of the search warrant, the defendants nonetheless searched and seized the records without making any attempt to segregate the files from those that could possibly be related to the search warrant." </code></pre> So they executed a search warrant, seized a server related to the financial crime they were investigating, and that server happened to have some confidential medical records too? And this is worth $250 billion in compensatory and punitive damages?

I don't see why this is such a big deal. Under the new healthcare laws, the IRS is going to be managing a vast majority of American healthcare records anyway. I think these agents were just being proactive!<p>Remember it's "theft" until you get someone to pass a law requiring people to voluntarily give you what you want.

Am I reading this article correctly, that the IRS didn't sieze medical records but rather a collection of records that included a small number of financial records they needed and then a large number of medical records they didn't care about?

The IRS is an unwieldy animal (I hesitate to say "brute"; YMMV) that will only get unwieldier as the tax code gets more and more bloated. The average IRS agent is, let's face it, not a genius, and even a genius would probably get lost in that code nowadays. I got married last year and was astounded that the joint tax return with my wife this year ran to 50 pages and cost me $1,500 in accounting fees to prepare.<p>I dream of the day when a simpler system like a national sales tax could replace the whole thing.

Hell, for $25,000 I'd let anyone take a look at my medical records!<p>On a serious note, it's been a bad week for the IRS, but that agency is seriously struggling right now with a slashed budget and increased responsibilities. As David Cay Johnston, puts it "The IRS is drowning." <a href="http://www.cjr.org/united_states_project/the_other_irs_scandal.php?page=all" rel="nofollow">http://www.cjr.org/united_states_project/the_other_irs_scand...</a>

As with many large and powerful organizations, it is not the top that is always the problem but the mid level players who wield their power either incorrectly or criminally.

IRS agents are given tremendous power. When they abuse it, they should face harsher penalties than those not so empowered.<p>Last night I heard on NPR the story of a New Zealand expatriate that did not file US taxes for several years as is required by every US citizen no matter where they live or how long they've lived outside the US. He voluntarily notified the IRS of his oversight and paid the $20,000 in back taxes. The IRS then told him his penalty exceeded $140,000.

This is not scary at all in the context of the IRS just admitted to going after groups that are political opponents of the current administration. Nope nothing to see here.

A tragic story, but my money is on the IRS in this one. They do not have to have an ongoing criminal or civil case. The Congress back in 2008 saw fit to that.<p>Remember the law where you had to start creating 1099s for every vendor you ran across? People yelled at that got taken care of, but there's a lot more in that law yet to come. [inset long discussion about the exact nature of that requirement]<p>I'd be interested in knowing if it is still possible to keep your health records private. I used to self-pay and this was not a problem. But now? Where I have to be part of some aggregate that then assesses health risks? I'm not sure how it works. (And note the use of the word "private", not "anonymous")

For starters, I'd like to know how they handled those records. Was it in a HIPAA-compliant fashion?<p>Regardless of use or potential misuse of such data, us "mere mortals" can face serious challenges just for improperly maintaining it.<p>Is all this stuff sitting on some agents' laptops, somewhere? Given the security requirements for the IRS's own inherent data (or, I would hope they have such requirements), one might hope that the records are reasonably secure. But I can't help being somewhat skeptical on this point. <i>And</i>... such IRS requirements may <i>not</i> be HIPAA compliant.<p>My point is, amongst everything else, if the government is going to run around vacuuming up data wholesale, we can also look at whether they are even prepared to... "properly", and consistent with the government's own requirements, manage the data that they hoover.

How about the trillions they stole from ordinary citizens?

Why does the IRS have medical records?