The American Civil Liberties Union is accusing the Internal Revenue Service of reading private taxpayer emails without first obtaining a warrant. The ACLU broke news of the alleged privacy breaches in a new report based on documents acquired through a Freedom of Information Act request, reports the New York Daily News.
According to the ACLU, the acquired documents "reveal that the IRS Criminal Tax Division has long taken the position that the IRS can read your emails without a warrant."
ACLU lawyer Nathan Freed Wessler says that the practice is a direct violation of the Fourth Amendment and also a president set in the case United States v. Warshak:
"The documents the ACLU obtained make clear that, before Warshak, it was the policy of the IRS to read people's email without getting a warrant," Wessler wrote, according to the Daily News. "Not only that, but the IRS believed that the Fourth Amendment" — which protects citizens against unreasonable searches and seizures —"did not apply to email at all."
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