Senator John Glenn, House Speaker Newt Gingrich, and other members of Congress will press for legislation to try to stop unauthorized snooping into taxpayer records at the Internal Revenue Service.
Glenn (D-Ohio) responded angrily to a Tuesday report from Congress' investigative agency, the General Accounting Office, which found that the IRS "continues to have serious weaknesses in the controls used to safeguard IRS computer systems, facilities, and taxpayer data."
GAO investigators canvassed five IRS regional offices and found that 6,400 computer tapes, some containing taxpayer data, could not be accounted for. Glenn said that of 1,515 workers investigated for unauthorized record-browsing in 1994 and 1995, only 23 were dismissed.
"That doesn't sound like zero tolerance to me," Glenn said, referring to a stated IRS policy for unauthorized browsing. "The bottom line is the IRS really has no idea how extensive the problem is, how often browsing is detected, how many times employees browse, how many accounts they may have accessed,"
Glenn has introduced the Taxpayer Privacy Protection Act to impose a US$1,000 fine or a one-year jail term for unauthorized file inspection. His bill would also close a loophole that limits prosecution of IRS employees who browse files without permission only when they do so with criminal intent or pass the information on to third parties. Gingrich said separately that he hopes to see such legislation passed.
A recent decision by the First US Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the conviction of employees who browse files, stating, "Although certainly inappropriate conduct, [unauthorized browsing] cannot ... sustain a felony conviction." Under that ruling, a Tennessee jury last year acquitted a former IRS employee who was charged with snooping through tax returns from President Clinton and actors Elizabeth Taylor and Tom Cruise.
A Treasury Department response included in the GAO report said the agency has taken steps to address concerns raised in the report and stressed that the IRS does not tolerate unauthorized browsing by its employees.
