[HN Gopher] IRS accidentally releases taxpayers' private data again
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IRS accidentally releases taxpayers' private data again
Author : arkadiyt
Score : 135 points
Date : 2022-12-18 20:45 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (news.bloombergtax.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (news.bloombergtax.com)
| Lionga wrote:
| Ooopsie
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Accenture is the contractor responsible.
| nvdrx wrote:
| Perfect. It's not like the gov to pass the buck to a corpo.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| IMO the resposibility is entirely on IRS. They chose the
| contractor, they wrote the legal terms and conditions, they
| vetted them out and they presumably did the due diligence for
| security.
| latency-guy2 wrote:
| They also provided them with training, access rights, and
| general governance over the data.
|
| I'd personally blame 70% of the blame on the IRS, 30% on the
| contractor. Organizations should not be able to skirt blame
| by way of contractor IMO. Hope the IRS gets fined for gross
| negligence and breach of data. (lol)
| yucky wrote:
| My agreement is with the IRS, not Accenture.
|
| The IRS is 100% responsible.
| lgbrandon wrote:
| Nothing to see here folks we are in good hands
| [deleted]
| sircastor wrote:
| Title should probably read IRS Contractor accidentally releases
| the data again...
|
| This is bad of course, but I'm kind of amazed it was only 112k.
| Given the 330some million citizens, and presumably some more
| entities that also pay taxes, this is a relatively small number.
| tiahura wrote:
| I'm less concerned about the occasional unintentional f'up, and
| much more concerned about the targeted and politically motivated
| intentional leaking of information.
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| Are you saying "I'm not concerned about data leaks that I could
| potentially be affected by and have my own personal information
| leaked through as much as I am about a celebrity billionaire
| getting their tax records released after years of litigation
| and after lawsuits going all the way to the Supreme Court (or
| others like him)?"
| AmericanChopper wrote:
| I would say I find government corruption to be more
| concerning than government incompetence. For the same reason
| that I would find a crime committed with intent to be more
| concerning than a crime committed with negligence. Neither
| are unconcerning though.
| johncessna wrote:
| I think I know the problem, they probably don't have one of those
| 25 minute annual data governance trainings to teach/remind them
| how to handle PII.
| theknocker wrote:
| ccn0p wrote:
| What they really need are more agents. I think 87,000 should do
| the trick.
| dossy wrote:
| > "The agency is reconsidering its relationship with the
| contractor Accenture on this project, according to a person
| familiar."
|
| Any time I start to feel that Impostor Syndrome creeping in, I
| need to remind myself that there's someone who's working at
| Accenture probably earning 2x or 3x what I am, who gets to fuck
| up big not once but _twice_ doing the same wrong thing.
| jermaustin1 wrote:
| Everyone I've met at accenture actually was paid below market,
| and usually billed at 5x their cost, or more.
| ipsum2 wrote:
| Doesn't Accenture outsource a lot of its work to India and
| other third-world countries?
|
| Edit: According to Wikipedia, yes:
|
| > In 2015, the company had about 150,000 employees in
| India,[31] 48,000 in the US,[32] and 50,000 in the
| Philippines.[33]
|
| So the Accenture engineer probably gets paid a lot less than
| you.
| birdymcbird wrote:
| eatYourFood wrote:
| throwawaysleep wrote:
| They are like IBM. They can fail at everything forever and
| still get work.
| [deleted]
| mistrial9 wrote:
| the forms in question are US non-profit declarations 990-T. The
| same data was released a second time, minus less than 2% of them.
| There are a lot of dark corners in the USA non-profit world, in
| case you don't know it. The vast majority (a million?) of USA 990
| non-profits are the sort of small time operation you might
| expect, but there is a tiger of a long-tail on that one. Many
| major hospitals and the US Football league NFL, are "non-profit"
| and would file the same forms.
| bmelton wrote:
| > US Football league NFL, are "non-profit"
|
| This is not true now, and arguably never was (at least not with
| the intention it's generally applied).
|
| The NFL relinquished its tax exempt status in 2015, but even
| before that the NFL was not a 501(c)(3) but a 501(c)(6) (a
| trade organization) -- for interests of fairness (proven more
| necessary recently by actions of the Washington Commanders) the
| NFL collected ticket moneys and broadcast earnings and then
| distributed the money to the teams, where it was taxed. Without
| that, they'd have been taxed on the collection and on the
| disbursement, which would have meant that the teams were taxed
| twice.
|
| There are, to my opinion anyway, better reasons to be mad at
| the NFL than as a tax dodge, because they weren't ever
| particularly good at meeting the definition.
|
| https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/tax-season/
| gumby wrote:
| The US Football league NFL also has an antitrust exemption so
| is deserving of public scrutiny.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| NCAA is predicted to go for antitrust exemptions as well as
| lobby for legislation to dump the requirement to pay student
| athletes - all things Baker is expected to do, leveraging his
| political connections as a former governor and figure in the
| republican party.
| dmonitor wrote:
| I'm under the impression that the NCAA (or at least the
| schools) fought hard to legalize paying student athletes.
| Most big schools were illegally paying their players before
| it was allowed.
|
| if they wanted to spin off college football to a semi-pro
| league and let actual students play the game instead of
| "students" who get private tutors, sleep in a private dorm,
| have a private cafeteria, take exclusive classes, and
| generally don't interact with the rest of the student body,
| I would support this movement.
| yucky wrote:
| I don't believe this is correct, which is why competing
| leagues pop up every few years.
|
| You might be thinking of Major League Baseball?
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| Hey. Mr. Wimbley, it happened again.
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