I was about to head to bed when I caught this
article on the front page of Yahoo!.
I'm still heading to bed, therefore this will be a cut and paste diary. So sue me.
More below the fold, which you might find quite disconcerting.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Computer-security flaws at the U.S. tax-collection agency expose millions of taxpayers to potential identity theft or illegal police snooping, according to a congressional report released on Monday.
The Internal Revenue Service also is unlikely to know if outsiders are browsing through citizens' tax returns, because it doesn't effectively police its computer systems for unauthorized use, the Government Accountability Office found.
The report was released three days after the deadline for filing personal income-tax returns, and at a time when concerns about identity theft and computer security are running high.
"This lack of systems security at the IRS is completely unacceptable and needs to be corrected immediately," said House of Representatives Judiciary Chairman James Sensenbrenner, a Wisconsin Republican.
The IRS promised to fix any problems and find out if tax returns had been exposed to outsiders. But the GAO found 39 new security problems on top of the 21 that remain unfixed.
Lovely. As if filing your tax return isn't painful enough.