5 chemicals to yank from your home

5 chemicals to yank from your home

T-Mobile hangs up its 'deceptive' ad campaign

The wireless carrier must now rethink its strategy after Washington state's attorney general put the kibosh on its marketing approach.

By Jonathan Berr 1 hour ago

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T-Mobile, the fourth-largest wireless provider,  thought it had come up with a winning strategy to retake customers from AT&T (T -0.91%) and Verizon Wireless (VZ) by marketing itself as the hassle-free "un-carrier." Too bad Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson found the ads to be "deceptive," and now the company has agreed to a court order to change its tune.

Under T-Mobile's "no-contract" plan,  customers were required to buy their own phone, though they could pay off their balance over a two-year period. The company didn't properly disclose to customers that they were required to carry a wireless service for the entire period or pay the full balance owed on the phone if they canceled their order earlier. Customers who purchased T-Mobile service and equipment between March 26 and April 25 are eligible for refunds. For its part, T-Mobile denies wrongdoing.

The question for the Deutsche Telekom wireless unit is what to do now to gain an edge in the fiercely competitive wireless market.

Last year, AT&T's plan to acquire T-Mobile was quashed by the U.S. Department of Justice on antitrust grounds. T-Mobile is now in the process of acquiring No. 5 player MetroPCS (PCS -1.00%), and it began carrying the Apple(AAPL +1.19%) iPhone April 12, so things are starting to look a bit better.

As TechCrunch recently noted, T-Mobile is losing fewer customers, particularly the lucrative postpaid customers. Nonetheless, it's still losing them, bleeding 199,000 in the most recent quarter. The carrier is also picking up more prepaid customers, gaining 1.7 million over the past seven quarters.

Its rivals, however, did better.

AT&T added 296,000 wireless customers in the second quarter. The company's wireless margins were its best ever, and its churn rate -- a measure of how many customers quit -- hit a record low.

Verizon, which may be buying out Vodofone's (VOD +0.33%) stake in Verizon Wireless, added 677,000 retail postpaid net connections. The company's customer additions on this basis increased sequentially in every quarter last year, and it expects to repeat that trend this year.

Sprint (S +0.42%), the third-largest carrier, is the subject of a takeover war between Japan's Softbank and John Malone's Dish Network (DISH -0.30%). It continues to struggle as well, losing about 560,000 subscribers in the latest quarter, worse than analysts expected.

Jonathan Berr does not own shares of the listed stocks. Follow him on Twitter @jdberr.

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Cancer Doctors Protest 'Astronomical' Drug Costs

By Lisa Collier Cool
Apr 25, 2013

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Day in Health

by Lisa Collier Cool

With some new, potentially lifesaving cancer drugs costing up to $138,000 a year, about 120 leading cancer specialists have joined forces in an unusual protest aimed at getting pharmaceutical companies to cut prices.Charging high prices for drugs cancer patients need to survive is like “profiteering” from a natural disaster by jacking up prices for food and other necessities, leading cancer doctors and researchers from around the world contend in a new paper published in Blood, the journal of the American Society of Hematology.

Of 12 new cancer drugs that received FDA approval last year, 11 of them cost in excess of $100,000 a year—prices that the specialists attack as “astronomical,” “unsustainable,” and maybe even immoral. What’s more, only three of these drugs were found to improve patient survival rates and of these, two only increased it by less than two months, according to the Washington Post.

“Advocating for lower drug prices is a necessity to save the lives of patients,” say the specialists who wrote the paper, who specialize in chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML), but emphasize that sky-high drug costs affect patients with many types of cancer.

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Going Bankrupt to Stay Alive

“Medical illness and drug prices are the single most frequent cause of personal bankruptcy” in the US, according to the specialists, where patients’ copayments on drug prices average 20 percent of the total cost of the drug. That means that cancer patients often face having to shell out $20,000 to $30,000 a year, simply to stay alive.

The specialists also note that astronomical drug prices may be the single most common reason why patients stop taking lifesaving drugs. This is particularly true for those with CML, which requires daily treatment for long-term survival.

As a result the paper says, “grateful patients may have become the ‘financial victims’ of the treatment success, having to pay the high price annually to stay alive.” One study found that 10 percent of cancer patients fail to fill new prescriptions for oral cancer drugs.

For some patients, such as breast cancer survivor Patti Tyree, medical costs—not the disease—are stealing their future. The 57-year-old postal worker inherited $25,000, but after just one round of treatment for breast cancer, nearly half of the money is gone—and bills continue to pour in, she told USA Today.

One of the more expensive therapies for CML is Gleevac, a cancer drug that generated $4.7 billion in sales last year, making it the bestselling drug for its manufacturer, Novartis. Another Novartis leukemia drug, Tasigna, had sales of $1 billion, according to The New York Times.

Doctors Pressure Drug Companies to Slash Prices

Some of the specialists who joined the protest were inspired by the doctors from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) who refused to use a new colon cancer drug called Zaltrap because it cost more than twice as much ($11,063 on average for one month of treatment) as another drug (Avastin) without improving outcomes.

“Soaring spending has presented the medical community with a new obligation. When choosing treatments for a patient, we have to consider the financial strains they may cause alongside the benefits they might deliver,” the MSKCC doctors wrote in an October, 2012 op-ed for The New York Times about their boycott.

Subsequently, the drug’s manufacturer slashed the price by 50 percent.

Cancer and Your Diet: Making the Right Choices

Cancer Drugs Rank Among the World’s Most Expensive

The idea that "one cannot put a price on a human life” has led to wildly overblown healthcare costs in the U.S., estimated at $2.7 trillion in 2011, according to the paper’s authors, who urge insurers and government to more aggressively negotiate with pharmaceutical companies.

Many reports show that cancer drugs consistently rank as the most expensive therapies, even though some only extend life by a few months or offer no benefit over older, less expensive drugs.

The paper discussed Gleevac, which was originally priced at about $30,000 a year when it was approved in 2001. Since then, the price has tripled. However, its manufacturer told The New York Times that relatively few patients actually pay the full cost—and that the price reflects the high cost of developing new medications, which reportedly exceeds $1 billion.

Yet even doctors involved with developing Gleevac, such as Dr. Brian Druker, are criticizing Novartis, which raked in $4.7 billion in sales for the drug in 2012.

“If you are making $3 billion a year on Gleevec, could you get by with $2 billion?” Dr. Druker, now director of Knight Cancer Institute at Oregon Health and Science University, said in an interview with The New York Times. “When do you cross the line from essential profits to profiteering?”

Warning Signs of Breast Cancer

’Hear my voice’: Listen to Alexander Graham Bell on 128-year-old record

’Hear my voice’: Listen to Alexander Graham Bell on 128-year-old record

Rich got richer during the recovery, and rest got poorer, study says

By Allison Linn, TODAY

 

The nation’s richest American households generally gained wealth during the first two years of the economic recovery, a new research report finds, while most American households saw their net worth drop.

The report, released Tuesday by the Pew Research Center, found that the mean net worth for the 7 percent of American households at the top of the wealth distribution rose by 28 percent between 2009 and 2011, the most recent data available.

Meanwhile, the mean net worth for the other 93 percent of American households fell by 4 percent during that period, according to Pew’s analysis of Census data.
Overall, the aggregate net worth for all American households rose between 2009 and 2011. But Pew’s more detailed analysis showed that the gains were concentrated among the wealthiest Americans, and the wealth gap increased during that time.

Economists say that’s a continuation of a trend toward more wealth being found at the top of the income scale.

“There’s been a growing concentration of wealth in this country for quite a while now, and it’s just really accelerated in the last, really, 15 years,” said Joel Naroff, chief economist with Naroff Economic Advisors, who was not involved in the Pew study.

The Great Recession officially ran from December of 2007 to June of 2009, but the recovery since that time has been weak and uneven.

The Pew researchers said rallies in stocks and bonds, which benefited affluent households with major investments, largely drove the discrepancy in wealth gains during those two years.
The housing market, where many other Americans derive a lot of their wealth, did not do that well during that period.

The Pew researchers said they focused on the top 7 percent of the wealth distribution because that was the tabulation available from the Census data. The report found that the mean net wealth for those 8 million households rose to around $3.17 million in 2011, from approximately $2.48 million in 2009.

For the other approximately 111 million households, mean net worth fell to nearly $134,000 in 2011, from nearly $140,000 in 2009.

The report’s authors note that some less-wealthy American households no doubt saw wealth gains during the period. In general, however, more of the households in that 93 percent saw their wealth fall rather than rise.

Naroff noted that income distribution is always shifting in one way or another, but the wealth gap has grown especially wide in recent years. That could pose problems for an economy that is largely driven by consumer spending.

“We haven’t seen it at least in 100 years as heavily distributed to the upper income side as we’re seeing now, and we don’t know whether that pattern is readily reversed,” he said. “And if it’s not reversed what happens to the economy that’s built on a consumer base? That’s the uncertainty that we have.”

Do you think your net worth has increased since 2009?

Helen A.S. Popkin   –   5 hrs.

AP latest victim in string of Twitter break-ins by Syrian Electronic Army 

A shady group that claims to represent the interests of Syrian al-Assad supporters is raising havoc on the Internet, going so far as to (momentarily) crash the stock market. So who is this Syrian Electronic Army, and what do they want?

 

On Tuesday, the Syrian Electronic Army claimed credit for hacking the Associated Press' verified Twitter account, which it used to issue a short-lived but potentially disastrous tweet, falsely reporting two explosions at the White House and injury to the president. Though the fraud was quickly exposed, the tweet caused a sudden 140-point dip in the Dow Industrial Average.

The financial losses were immediately recovered, but the impact showed the power of a group that has, up until now, operated on the fringe. The Syrian Electronic Army's stated mission is to attack and deface websites in a fight against anti-Syria media coverage. But its actions cause observers to wonder increasingly aloud whether this is a gang of activists, pranksters or operatives from Syria's al-Assad government itself.

RELATED: Fake AP tweet reveals nation on edge over terror

The Syrian Electronic Army describes itself on its website — launched in May 2011, as the Syrian civil war escalated — as "a group of enthusiastic Syrian youths who could not stay passive towards the massive distortion of facts about the recent uprising in Syria." Its targets are not only the websites of media, but social network accounts as well, which it says "deliberately work to spread hatred and sectarian intolerance between the peoples of Syria to fuel the uprising."

In addition to the AP, the hacks the SEA claims credit for include BBC, NPR, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), France 24 TV, Deutsche Welle and other media groups around the world. It also reportedly hacked the website and Twitter feed of Human Rights Watch website.

"The SEA has kind of shifted from actively defacing websites they perceive hostile to the Syrian regime to mostly compromising Twitter accounts of media organizations," said Helmi Noman, Senior Researcher with Citizen Lab, University of Toronto, in an email to NBC News.

Syrian Electronic Army

The Syrian Electronic Army logo from the group's official website.

 

Noman, who has been tracking the group for several years, says that as coverage of the Syrian civil war expands, so do the actions of the group. "I am not surprised that the SEA is intensifying its campaign against the media and their Twitter accounts."

President Bashar al-Assad, which the Obama Administration has urged to give up power, has shown support for the SEA, describing the group in a televised address as "a real army in virtual reality."
Such vocal support leads Noman and others to be suspicious. "The challenges for researchers (are) distinguishing between the spontaneous actions of groups of citizens supporting regimes out of their own volition, and those actions which are directed, either formally or informally, by governments," he wrote in 2011.
"Although we have no concrete evidence linking the SEA to the Syrian regime, the president’s statement, and the fact that the group is able to operate with impunity over Syrian networks, shows at least tacit support for their activities," Noman continued.

Twitter, for its part, is currently engaged in a game of virtual "whack a mole" with SEA. On Saturday, Twitter shut down the original SEA Twitter account, @Official_SEA, after SEA compromised Twitter accounts for various CBS properties, including @60Minutes.
So far, as Graham Cluley of Internet security firm Sophos described in a blog post, Twitter has not been successful.

How did the Syrian Electronic Army respond to their Twitter suspension? Well, they created a new account called @SyrianCyberArmy.
And when that one was shut down, they created yet-another-Twitter-account - @SEA_Official3.
Guess what? Yep, that one has been shut down too. And - as certain as night follows day - the SEA responded by creating @Official_SEA5.
You can probably guess what happens next in this story. That's right, @Official_SEA5 was suspended by Twitter.

At the time of this publishing, the latest SEA account, @Official_SEA6, is still live on Twitter.
The SEA's agenda have carried it beyond just sorties against the media.
It recently hijacked Twitter accounts of both the FIFA World Cup and FIFA President Sepp Blatter, in apparent retaliation for the Syrian national team's 2011 dismissal from a qualifying tournament for the 2014 World Cup.

As well as accusing FIFA of corruption through its own Twitter accounts, one message from SEA stated, "The decision to disqualify the Syrian team on a technicality was found to be politically based."

Syrian politics previously also led it into direct clashes with another notorious hacker group, the "Anonymous" collective.

In 2011, after Anonymous claimed victory for taking down the Syria's Ministry of Defense website, SEA responded by attacking properties belonging to Anonymous, in one instance posting gruesome images on a social portal launched by the collective.

Following the 2012 countrywide Internet blackout in Syria that many activists believed was aimed at silencing opposition to the al-Assad government, Anonymous declared that it would bring down websites belonging to the Syrian government outside the country. Soon after, the website for Syria's embassy in Belgium went down, though others were not affected.

As Anonymous and SEA fight their enemies — and occasionally each other — tearing up websites and social accounts in the process, the tagline from the sci-fi B movie "Aliens Vs. Predators" comes to mind: "Whoever wins ... we lose."

Helen A.S. Popkin is Deputy Technology & Science editor for NBCNews.com Follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

 

Obamacare dares states not to expand Medicaid

Local lawmakers have the right to refuse -- but businesses, poor residents and political careers may suffer as a result.

By Jason Notte 6 hours ago

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States and their lawmakers have the absolute right to reject the new health care law's expansion of Medicaid benefits and sniff at it derisively as "Obamacare." 

However, they should also be aware that it will burden state businesses with Internal Revenue Service penalties and deny coverage to low-income citizens while legal immigrants get aid for their own coverage.

So far, 20 states, plus the District of Columbia, have accepted the expansion. Thirteen GOP-led states have declined, citing current Medicaid expenses and distrust of Washington. An additional 17 states are still weighing options and considering how more aid to low-income adults with no children at home will affect them.

In Arkansas, the Republican-controlle​d legislature and Democratic Gov. Mike Beebe just struck a compromise in which the state will accept additional Medicaid money under the federal law but will use it to buy private insurance for eligible residents. The Obama administration hasn't weighed in on the move yet, but it's been deemed necessary if the state wants to avoid tax penalties for businesses and other politically uncomfortable scenarios.

Roughly half the nearly 30 million uninsured people who will get coverage as a part of President Obama's health care overhaul will do so through Medicaid, which has an income cutoff of roughly $15,860 per person. Middle-class Americans who don't have coverage at their jobs will be able to purchase private insurance in new state markets, helped by new federal tax credits.

However, states that don't expand Medicaid are putting their employers with 50 or more workers in a tough position. Those businesses face penalties if any of their employees have to get subsidized insurance through those new state markets, but not if those same workers are on Medicaid. Without the expanded Medicaid option, tax firm Jackson Hewitt says employers could be on the hook for more than $1 billion a year in penalties.

There's also the not-so-slight detail that U.S. citizens with incomes below the poverty level -- $11,490 for an individual, $23,550 for a family of four -- can get coverage only through the Medicaid expansion. Legal immigrants who are also below the poverty level, however, are eligible for subsidized private insurance.

That's a potential mess in waiting for lawmakers in immigrant-rich states like Texas and Florida, where declining Medicaid expansion could be construed as favoring immigrants over lifelong residents. That possibility has prompted outspoken Obama administration critic and Republican Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer to propose that her state expand its Medicaid offerings.

Small in size, big on power: New microbatteries the most powerful yet

Small in size, big on power: New microbatteries the most powerful yet

                        

Technology     

Julie Ingwersen, Reuters

 

  CBS News says some of its Twitter accounts were hacked

 

(Reuters) - Social media accounts maintained by CBS News programs, "60 Minutes" and "48 Hours," were compromised on Saturday, the two programs' official Twitter accounts said.

A post on the "60 Minutes" Twitter microblog account, @60Minutes, said, "PLEASE NOTE: Our Twitter account was compromised earlier today. We are working with Twitter to resolve." Another post read, "A message that was posted earlier to this account was not written or sent by @60Minutes or its staff."

The Twitter account for @48Hours showed a similar message, and several blogs said a third account, @CBSDenver, also had been hacked.

Tech bloggers posted screenshots of fake posts that appeared under the CBS accounts, including one from @48Hours that read, "General Dempsey calls for #Obama's arrest under new anti-terror laws #48hours."

On its own official account, @CBSNews, the news organization said it had "experienced problems" on the other two accounts, and added, "Twitter is resolving issues."

The rogue posts appeared to have been removed from Twitter.com later on Saturday.

Check out this great MSN video - Hidden health benefits of sex

Check out this great MSN video - Hidden health benefits of sex

Still think humans can't fly? Watch this nut in a wingsuit

Still think humans can't fly? Watch this nut in a wingsuit

Congressional report says FDA faltered in deadly meningitis outbreak

By Steve James, NBC News contributor

 

The Food and Drug Administration failed to act on warnings about contaminated drugs produced by a Massachusetts company linked to last year’s meningitis outbreak that killed 53 people and sickened hundreds more, a congressional committee report said on Tuesday.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee report concluded that the tragedy might have been prevented if the FDA had taken tougher enforcement action against the New England Compounding Center (NECC) and ordered state inspections of drug-producing facilities.

“Going into this investigation, we knew NECC and its sister company, Ameridose, were bad actors. But what makes this tragedy even more heartbreaking for these families is that this could have been prevented,” Chairman Fred Upton (R-MI) and Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee Chairman Timothy Murphy (R-PA) said in a joint statement.

The committee’s majority staff report cited internal FDA documents chronicling the agency's opportunities over the years to address warning signs about NECC that produced and distributed the contaminated drugs that led to the deadly meningitis outbreak.

Compounding pharmacies, which mix customized medications, have usually been overseen by state pharmacy boards. But the growth of larger operations like NECC which mass produce thousands of drugs across the United States, has prompted calls for more federal oversight.

Last October, the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee launched an investigation to examine the deadly outbreak in which 53 died and over 700 were sickened, and to determine whether the tragedy could have been prevented.

Tuesday’s report revealed that FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg did not disclose some key information during a November  hearing.  She did not say that the agency had received a litany of complaints about NECC and Ameridose, right up until the outbreak. A number of these complaints were associated with issues different in nature and scope than those addressed in a 2006 warning letter sent to NECC, the report said.

These complaints were related to the safety and potency of NECC and Ameridose products, issues that the FDA failed to routinely, if ever, inform the state about, it said. Finally, FDA also considered - but never conducted - several additional inspections of the companies and related enforcement actions that, had they happened, may have adverted the tragedy.

FDA spokesman Steven Immergut said the rapid growth of the pharmacy compounding industry had been a challenge for the agency's limited resources. "For years, FDA has been working with a limited set of authorities and tools to regulate the rapidly growing and evolving pharmacy compounding industry."

"We all need to urgently work together to fix this, and our hope is that the House Energy and Commerce Committee will work with FDA to put the appropriate laws and resources together," Immergut said.

However, a review of more than 27,000 documents presented a different picture of the FDA's actions than portrayed in the intial November hearing, Upton and Murphy said.

 “We now know that doctors, patients, providers, and whistleblowers tried to warn FDA for years that NECC and Ameridose were operating as manufacturers and marketing their products nationwide without patient prescriptions, the statement said. “The FDA was also warned about sterility and safety issues with the companies' products. Rather than do its job and protect the patients who were taking NECC and Ameridose drugs, FDA chose not to act,” they said.

“We found that FDA focused on perfecting their legal reasons for inaction instead of protecting families. Even the FDA staff wanted to go back and inspect these unsanitary manufacturers. And the FDA hierarchy said ‘no,’ the committee chairmen said.

"We owe it to the families who lost loved ones and the 730 individuals still suffering to get answers from the FDA on why they failed to protect patients and how they will assure this never happens again,” said Upton and Murphy.

Related:

Pharmacy tied to fungal meningitis outbreak files for bankruptcy
More bacteria fungi in drugs from mass pharmacy
FDA wanted to close Mass. pharmacy in 2002, report says

Lava and the sea

Check out these beautiful pictures as lava meets the sea and erupts.  Click on the link below.

Lava and the sea

    Details of sweeping Senate immigration plan revealed

John Moore / Getty Images, file

A U.S. Border Patrol agent looks into Mexico on the border near Sonoita, Arizona. A new proposal suggests allocating $3 billion for increased surveillance and manpower along the country's southern border.

By Kelly O'Donnell and Carrie Dann , NBC News
 

After months of negotiations, a bipartisan Senate group on Tuesday will unveil sweeping legislation to overhaul the nation’s immigration system, an effort that has been a major focus of President Barack Obama’s second term agenda and one that some Republicans view as a political necessity.
The plan outlines an emphasis on shifting legal immigration towards more skilled workers; sets ambitious goals for surveillance and security along the nation’s southern border; and offers qualifying undocumented immigrants a decade-long process – dependent on external border security triggers -- towards legalization and eventual citizenship in the United States.

 

Included in the bill are the following provisions, according to a summary memo provided to NBC News:            

• Allow undocumented immigrants who have lived in the United States continually since before December 31, 2011 to apply for “Registered Provisional Immigrant Status” if they pay back taxes and $500 in fines, and if they have not been convicted of a felony or 3 or more misdemeanors or voted illegally. Individuals with this status can work for any employer and travel outside the country but are not eligible to receive means-tested federal public benefits.
•  After 10 years in Registered Provisional Immigrant Status, individuals will be eligible – pending border security measures and a clearing of existing backlogs for legal immigrants – to earn a merit-based green card if they have worked in the United States, demonstrated knowledge of the English language and paid an additional fine of $1000.
• Allow eligible DREAM act applicants and certain agricultural workers to apply for green cards within five years
• Regarding border security, the bill would set a goal of “90% effectiveness” – meaning the rate of apprehensions and turnbacks of potential entrants – per fiscal year in the most high-risk areas of the southern border. If that goal is not met within five years, a bipartisan “Border Commission” made up of border state governors and experts will be formed to issue new recommendations on how to achieve it.
• Allocate $3 billion for increased surveillance and manpower along the country’s southern border and an additional $1.5 billion for fencing.
• Include a border security “trigger” requiring that no undocumented immigrant can achieve legal “Registered Provisional Immigrant” status until strategies for border security have been submitted by the Department of Homeland Security to Congress.
•  Require an additional “trigger” that prevents those with “Registered Provisional Immigrant” status from becoming eligible to apply for Lawful Permanent Resident status until the Department of Homeland Security and the Comptroller General certify that border security strategies are operational and a mandatory employment verification system has been implemented.
• Create a new “W” visa program to allow non-agricultural temporary workers to come to the United States to work for registered employers. 
•  Eliminate family-based visas for siblings of United States citizens as well as the Diversity Visa program while eliminating caps on visas for certain employment-based categories.
•  Use a point system for a new “merit based” visa, of which 120,000 would initially be awarded per year, with a maximum cap of 250,000 annually. Points will be awarded based on criteria including education, employment and length of residence in the U.S.
• Require an “enhanced E-Verify” system to prevent ineligible workers from taking jobs in the United States. Employers with more than 5,000 employees will be phased in within two years; employers with more than 500 employees will be phased in within three years.
• Raise the annual cap on H1-B visas for high-skilled workers from 65,000 to 110,000, with provisions to prevent such workers from undercutting American wages. Set a maximum cap at 180,000 such visas.

 

While events in Boston Monday caused organizers to postpone a planned Tuesday press conference to roll out the bill, the legislation will be formally filed in the Senate later today. Sens. Chuck Schumer of New York and John McCain of Arizona will visit the White House to brief the president on the plan.

Related:

Revealed -- a path to citizenship, shift to employment-based visas
10 things you need to know about the Senate immigration bill

Once filed, the process of examining the bill will begin in the Senate Judiciary Committee, where panel members will hold two hearings in the next week. The group is expected to continue its markup of the legislation into the month of May.

The proposal, drafted by four Democrats and four Republicans, represents the first major attempt to comprehensively address illegal immigration, border security, and the existing backlog for legal immigrants to the United States since a bipartisan bill stalled in the Senate in 2007. 

Hey, parking valet — use the brake next time, dude

Hey, parking valet — use the brake next time, dude

Convicted killer suing murder victim's family

Convicted killer suing murder victim's family

The IRS Doesn’t Think “Reasonable Expectation of Privacy” Applies to Your Emails

By Ryan Gallagher

 

Posted Wednesday, April 10, 2013, at 5:59 PM

 

The IRS Criminal Tax Division doesn't think the Fourth Amendment should apply to email
Photo by Chris Hondros/Getty Images

 

With Tax Day less than a week away in the United States, you probably don’t need another reason to dislike the IRS. But here’s one anyway: Newly released documents show that in recent years, the agency has claimed American Internet users “do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy” when it comes to their emails being snooped on.

 

The documents, obtained by the ACLU under the Freedom of Information Act and published today, reveal that in 2009, the Criminal Tax Division at the IRS claimed in an internal handbook that in general “the Fourth Amendment does not protect communications held in electronic storage, such as email messages stored on a server.” This claim may have been rooted in a reading of a controversial loophole contained in the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, which enables agencies to obtain email older than 180 days without a search warrant.
 

In 2010, a significant appeals court judgment held in United States v. Warshak that email was protected by the Fourth Amendment, and that government agents should obtain a probable cause warrant from a court before compelling email providers to hand over users’ messages—regardless of whether they had been stored on a server for more than 180 days. This is the highest legal standard, requiring authorities to show there is “reasonable basis” for believing the search will yield evidence of a crime.

 

But despite that ruling, ECPA’s requirements have been “inconsistent, confusing, and uncertain,” as Richard Salgado, Google’s legal director of law enforcement and information security, has put it. IRS emails obtained by the ACLU demonstrate this, as they suggest that that the IRS avoided having to always obtain a warrant by continuing to exploit the ECPA loophole. The loophole enables authorities to get their hands on emails older than 180 days with an administrative subpoena—which requires merely showing that the information sought is “relevant” to an ongoing investigation. A special counsel for the IRS in one email exchange seems dismissive of the Warshak ruling, stating that “I have not heard anything related to this opinion. We have always taken the position that a warrant is necessary when retrieving e-mails that are less than 180 days old”—implying that emails more than 180 days old can still be obtained by other, easier means. (It’s possible that other agencies have adopted a similar position, given the confusion over ECPA. The ACLU says it has lodged FOIA requests with the FBI and other components of the Justice Department to find out.)

 

Last month, lawmakers proposed new legislation that aims to update ECPA by scrapping the contentious 180-days clause. Even the Justice Department—which rarely takes the same side as civil liberties advocates—is backing the change: In March, a DOJ representative admitted to the House judiciary committee that there is “no principled basis to treat email less than 180 days old differently than email more than 180 days old.” This marked a stark reversal for the DOJ, which had previously been aggressively opposed to privacy-enhancing reforms of ECPA.

 

The ACLU is criticizing the IRS for its lack of clarity on the issue and demanding that the agency “let the American public know whether it obtains warrants across the board when accessing people’s email.” The rights group is also calling on the IRS to “formally amend its policies to require its agents to obtain warrants when seeking the contents of emails, without regard to their age.”

 

It’s worth noting, though, that not all providers will play along if the IRS is still attempting to obtain emails without a warrant. Earlier this year, in a move lauded by privacy groups, Google said that it is effectively ignoring the 180-days ECPA loophole by always requiring a search warrant from authorities seeking to obtain user content stored using its Gmail, Google Drive, or other services. It is unclear whether other providers—such as Microsoft and Yahoo—have similar policies.

 

The IRS did not immediately respond to a request for comment. I’ll update this post as and when I receive anything.
 

Update, April 11, 6:11 p.m.: The IRS has issued the below statement:

Respecting taxpayer rights and taxpayer privacy are cornerstone principles for the IRS. Our job is to administer the nation's tax laws, and we do so in a way that follows the law and treats taxpayers with respect.

Contrary to some suggestions, the IRS does not use emails to target taxpayers. Any suggestion to the contrary is wrong.

4/10/2013 4:15 PM ET

|

By Richard Satran, U.S. News & World Report

IRS tracks your digital footprint

The IRS has quietly upgraded its technology so tax collectors can track virtually everything people do online.

 

 

The Internal Revenue Service is collecting a lot more than taxes this year -- it's also acquiring a huge volume of personal information on taxpayers' digital activities, from eBay auctions to Facebook posts and, for the first time ever, credit card and e-payment transaction records, as it expands its search for tax cheats to places it's never gone before.

The IRS, under heavy pressure to help Washington out of its budget quagmire by chasing down an estimated $300 billion in revenue lost to evasions and errors each year, will start using "robo-audits" of tax forms and third-party data the IRS hopes will help close this so-called "tax gap." But the agency reveals little about how it will employ its vast, new network scanning powers.

Tax lawyers and watchdogs are concerned about the sweeping changes being implemented with little public discussion or clear guidelines, and Congressional staff sources say the IRS use of "big data" will be a key issue when the next IRS chief comes to the Senate for approval. Acting commissioner Steven T. Miller replaced Douglas Shulman last November.

"It's well-known in the tax community, but not many people outside of it are aware of this big expansion of data and computer use," says Edward Zelinsky, a tax law expert and professor at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law and Yale Law School. "I am sure people will be concerned about the use of personal information on databases in government, and those concerns are well-taken. It's appropriate to watch it carefully. There should be safeguards." He adds that taxpayers should know that whatever people do and say electronically can and will be used against them in IRS enforcement.

IRS's big data tracking

Consumers are already familiar with Internet "cookies" that track their movements and send them targeted ads that follow them to different websites. The IRS has brought in private industry experts to employ similar digital tracking -- but with the added advantage of access to Social Security numbers, health records, credit card transactions and many other privileged forms of information that marketers don't see.

"Private industry would be envious if they knew what our models are," boasted Dean Silverman, the agency's high-tech top gun who heads a group recruited from the private sector to update the IRS, in a comment reported in trade publications. The IRS did not respond to a request for an interview.

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In trade presentations and public documents, the agency has said it will use a massively parallel computer system that can analyze data from different networks to find irregularities and suspicious activities.

Much of the work already has been automated to process and analyze electronic tax returns in current "robo-audits" that flag unusual behavior patterns. With IRS audit staff reduced by budget cuts this year, the agency will be forced to rely on computer-generated audits more than ever.

The agency declined to comment on how it will use its new technology. But agency officials have been outlining plans at industry conferences, working with IBM, EMC and other private-sector specialists. In presentations, officials have said they may use the big data for:

• Charting and analyzing social media such as Facebook.
• Targeting audits by matching tax filings to social media or electronic payments.
• Tracking individual Internet addresses and emailing patterns.
• Sorting data in 32,000 categories of metadata and 1 million unique "attributes."
• Machine learning across "neural" networks.
• Statistical and agent-based modeling.
• Relationship analysis based on Social Security numbers and other personal identifiers.

Officials have said much of the data will be used only for research. The agency's economic forecasts and data are a key part of Washington's budget infrastructure. Former commissioner Douglas Shulman said in an IRS statement that the technology will employ "billions of pieces of data" to target enforcement and to "detect and combat noncompliance."

U.S. Tax Court records show that information gathered from Facebook and eBay postings have been used by the IRS in defending tax challenges. Under a Freedom of Information Act disclosure obtained by privacy advocates at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the group published the IRS's 38-page manual used to train auditors to search Internet addresses, Facebook postings and other social media to back audit enforcements.

In practice, the third-party data has been used only if the irregular returns merit more attention. In one much-cited example, IRS officials talk about prisoners who were filing false claims for energy tax credits for window replacements.

The agency, wary of public opinion about invasive audit practices, has pulled back from using so-called "social audits," which, for example, might single out horse-racing enthusiasts or sail boaters for special attention. But by screening existing data for one million unique attributes, the agency can quietly create a DNA-like code to understand the economic behavior of any individual.

The IRS last year used a profiling test model to study 1,500 tax preparers with histories of reporting deficiencies and managed to recover $200 million. It cited the experience as proof that its data analysis works. Early this year, however, a new set of rules it developed for tax preparers was thrown out by a federal court who said the agency had overstepped its mandate. The IRS would not comment on whether the rules were based on its new screening tools.

More from U.S. News & World Report:

• Tax tips: The good, bad, and ugly (but legal)
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• Tax time 2012: Changes you need to know