IRS Buying Spying Equipment: Covert Cameras in Coffee Trays, Plants

The IRS, currently in the midst of scandals involving the targeting of conservative groups and lavish taxpayer-funded conferences, is ordering surveillance equipment that includes hidden cameras in coffee trays, plants and clock radios.

The IRS wants to secure the surveillance equipment quickly – it posted a solicitation on June 6 and is looking to close the deal by Monday, June 10.  The agency already has a company lined up for the order but is not commenting on the details.

“The Internal Revenue Service intends to award a Purchase Order to an undisclosed Corporation,” reads the solicitation.

“The following descriptions are vague due to the use and nature of the items,” it says.

“If you feel that you can provide the following equipment, please respond to this email no later than 4 days after the solicitation date,” the IRS said.

Among the items the agency will purchase are four “Covert Coffee tray(s) with Camera concealment,” and four “Remote surveillance system(s)” with “Built-in DVD Burner and 2 Internal HDDs, cameras.”

The IRS also is buying four cameras to hide in plants: “(QTY 4) Plant Concealment Color 700 Lines Color IP Camera Concealment with Single Channel Network Server, supports dual video stream, Poe [Power over Ethernet], software included, case included, router included.”

Finishing out the order are four “Color IP Camera Concealment with single channel network server, supports dual video stream, poe, webviewer and cms software included, audio,” and two “Concealed clock radio.”

(AP Photo)

“Responses to this notice must be received by this office within 3 business days of the date of this synopsis by 2:00 P.M. EST, June 10, 2013,” the IRS said.  Interested vendors are to contact Ricardo Carter, a Contract Specialist at the IRS.

“If no compelling responses are received, award will be made to the original solicited corporation,” the IRS said.

The original solicitation was only available to private companies for bids for 19 business hours.

The notice was posted at 11:07 a.m. on June 6 and had a deadline of 2:00 p.m. on Monday. Taking a normal 9-to-5 work week, the solicitation was open for bids for six hours on Thursday, eight hours on Friday, and five hours on Monday, for a total of 19 hours.

The response date was changed on Monday, pushed back to 2:00 p.m. on Tuesday, June 11.

The location listed for the solicitation is the IRS’s National Office of Procurement, in Oxon Hill, Md.

“The Procurement Office acquires the products and services required to support the IRS mission,” according to its website.

In recent weeks the IRS has been at the center of multiple scandals, admitting to targeting Tea Party groups and subjecting them to greater scrutiny when applying for non-profit status during the 2010 and 2012 elections.

A report by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration revealed that groups with names like “patriot” in their titles were singled out, required to complete lengthy personal questionnaires (often multiple times) and having their nonprofit status delayed, sometimes for more than three years.

Last week a second Inspector General report detailed nearly $50 million in wasteful spending by the agency on conferences, in which employees stayed at luxurious Las Vegas hotels, paid a keynote speaker $17,000 to paint a picture of U2 singer Bono, and spent $50,000 on parody videos of “Star Trek.”

Requests for comment from the IRS and Mr. Carter were not returned before this story was posted.

CNSNews.com asked IRS spokesmen Dean Patterson and Anthony Burke to explain the reasoning behind the solicitation, where the surveillance equipment will be used, why the request was so urgent, and whether the request has anything to do with the recent scandals at the IRS.

 

 

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/irs-buying-spying-equipment-covert-cameras-coffee-trays-plants

Another IRS Scandal: Lawsuit Alleges 10,000,000 Americans Medical Records Seized

As the Internal Revenue Service finds itself embroiled in a scandal involving targeting “tea-party”, “patriot” groups, a lawsuit has been filed alleging the improper seizure of up to  60,000,000 medical records of over 10,000,000 Americans .

Intellihub.com

According Court House News Service :

“John Doe Company sued 15 John Doe IRS agents in Superior Court. “This is an action involving the corruption and abuse of power by several Internal Revenue Service (‘IRS’) agents (collectively referred to as ‘defendants’ herein) during a raid of John Doe Company, in the Southern District of California, on March 11, 2011,” the complaint states. “In a case involving solely a tax matter involving a former employee of the company, these agents stole more than 60,000,000 medical records of more than 10,000,000 Americans, including at least 1,000,000 Californians.”

The complaint goes on to say that warrants and subpoenas were never sought for the records.  IRS agents are accused of ignoring warnings  from company executives, ignoring their own published rule books, and the limitations of the warrant. The IRS agents are also accused of threatening ” to ‘rip’ the servers containing the medical data out of the building if IT personnel would not voluntarily hand them over.”

The warrant issued in the case dealt specifically with seizure of financial records of a former employee, not health and medical records of any employee. Despite this, cell phones and all data contained with were also seized. The medical records contain everything from psychological counseling, gynecological counseling, sexual or drug treatment, and a whole host of other medical matters.

The IRS has declined to name the 14 agents involved so far and decline to comment on the situation.

This latest incident comes after the news broke that the agency has been harassing so called Patriot groups who attempted to obtain non-profit status by singling their applications out for extra  examination.  Acting commissioner Steve Miller has issued a letter of resignation in response to the developing situation.

As I reported on last month, the IRS has also been called out for a 2009 handbookin which the IRS said the Fourth Amendment does not protect emails because Internet users “do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in such communications.” A 2010 presentation by the IRS Office of General Counsel reiterated the policy.” The American Civil Liberties Union discovered the documents from a Freedom of Information Act Request.

After a string of controversies many Americans are left wondering whether they can trust the Internal Revenue Service with the upcoming implementation of the Affordable Care Act, also known as ObamaCare.

Acting commissioner of IRS resigns, Obama says

Treasury Secretary Jack Lew requested – and has accepted – the resignation of the acting commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service in the wake of its handling of requests by conservative groups for tax-exempt status,President Barack Obama said Wednesday.

The “misconduct” detailed in a report about the IRS response to those requests is “inexcusable,” he said.

“Americans have a right to be angry about it, and I am angry about it,” he said.

He added his administration is working to enact “new safeguards to make sure that this kind of behavior cannot happen again.”

Read IRS Acting Commissioner Steven Miller’s resignation letter.

May 15, 2013 

The internal message to IRS Employees from Acting IRS Commissioner Steven T. Miller

Dear Colleagues,

It is with regret that I will be departing from the IRS as my acting assignment ends in early June. This has been an incredibly difficult time for the IRSgiven the events of the past few days, and there is a strong and immediate need to restore public trust in the nation’s tax agency. I believe the Service will benefit from having a new Acting Commissioner in place during this challenging period. As I wrap up my time at the IRS, I will be focused on an orderly transition.

While I recognize that much work needs to be done to restore faith in theIRS, I don’t want anyone to lose sight of the fact that the IRS is comprised of incredibly dedicated and hard-working public servants. During my 25-year IRS career, I am profoundly proud to have worked alongside you and to be part of an institution that has worked hard to support the nation. I have strong confidence in the IRS leadership team to continue the important work of our agency.

I want to thank everyone for all of their support and friendship during mycareer in government service. And I especially want to thank each and every one of you for your continued commitment to the nation’s taxpayers.

Steve

 

 

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2013/05/15/breaking-obama-acting-commissioner-of-irs-resigns/

IRS targeted groups that criticized the government, IG report says

 

At various points over the past two years, Internal Revenue Service officials targeted nonprofit groups that criticized the government and sought to educate Americans about the U.S. Constitution, according to documents in an audit conducted by the agency’s inspector general.

The documents, obtained by The Washington Post  from a congressional aide with knowledge of the findings, show that on June 29, 2011, IRS staffers held a briefing with senior agency official Lois G. Lerner in which they described giving special attention to instances where “statements in the case file criticize how the country is being run.” Lerner, who  oversees tax-exempt groups for the agency, raised objections and the agency revised its criteria a week later.

But six months later, the IRS applied a new political test to groups that applied for tax-exempt status as “social welfare” groups, the document says. On Jan. 15, 2012 the agency decided to target “political action type organizations involved in limiting/expanding Government, educating on the Constitution and Bill of Rights, social economic reform movement.,” according to the appendix in the IG report, which was requested by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and has yet to be released.

The new revelations are likely to intensify criticism of the IRS, which has been under fire since agency officials acknowledged they had deliberately targeted groups with “tea party” or “patriot” in their name for heightened scrutiny.

During an appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) described the practice as “absolutely chilling” and called on President Obama to condemn the effort.

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa told NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday he’s not satisfied with the Obama administration’s handling of the controversy. The IG report was “leaked by the IRS. to try to spin the output,” Issa said, and lawmakers now need to go through the full report so they can “see what the instituted changes need to be to make this not happen again.

The agency did not appear to adopt a more neutral test for social welfare groups — which file for tax-exempt status under section 501(c)(4) of the tax code — until May 17, 2012, according to the timeline in the inspector general’s report.

At that point, the IRS again updated its criteria to focus on “organizations with indicators of significant amounts of political campaign intervention (raising questions as to exempt purpose and/or excess private benefit.)”

 

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2013/05/12/irs-targeted-groups-that-criticized-the-government-ig-report-says/