The fact that Nixon was impeached for the very same thing and today the $illy $how of political $hit fooleys rolls along shows you how far this nation has decayed.
In between we got the Clinton debacle, making the solemn oath of government meaningless now. Thanks, fat-f***.
"E-mails of five employees lost, IRS discloses" by Stephen Ohlemacher | Associated Press September 06, 2014
WASHINGTON — The Internal Revenue Service has lost e-mails from five more employees who are part of congressional inquiries into the treatment of conservative groups that applied for tax-exempt status, the tax service disclosed Friday.
It's called destruction of evidence and a cover-up.
The IRS said in June that it could not locate an untold number of e-mails to and from Lois Lerner, who headed the IRS division that processes applications for tax-exempt status. The revelation set off a new round of investigations and congressional hearings.
Well, head on over the the NSA because I'm sure they have copies somewhere.
On Friday, the IRS issued a report to Congress saying the agency also lost e-mails from five other employees related to the investigation, including two agents who worked in a Cincinnati office processing applications for tax-exempt status.
Released on Friday, huh?
I'm sure the ma$$ media will have forgotten it by Monday, what with the SILLI glare of ISIS.
The disclosure came on the same day the Senate’s subcommittee on investigations released competing reports on how the IRS handled applications from political groups during the 2010 and 2012 elections.
The Democrats’ report, released by Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, said both liberal and conservative groups were mistreated, revealing no political bias by the IRS. The Republicans’ report, from Senator John McCain of Arizona, said conservative groups were clearly treated worse.
The IRS inspector general set off a firestorm last year with an audit that said IRS agents singled out Tea Party and other conservative groups for inappropriate scrutiny when they applied for tax-exempt status.
Lerner’s lost e-mails prompted a new round of scrutiny by Congress, the Justice Department, the inspector general, and at least two federal judges.
The IRS blamed computer crashes for all the lost e-mails. In a statement, the IRS said all the crashes occurred before Congress launched its inquiries.
What kind of crap equipment is the government buying, and why are bank ATMs the only machines with functional software?
The IRS first told Congress in June that other employees involved in the inquiry also had computer problems. At the time, IRS commissioner John Koskinen promised lawmakers a report on whether any others had lost e-mails. The report was issued Friday.
It's an impeachable outrage.
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When Congress started investigating the IRS last year, the agency identified 82 employees who might have documents related to the inquiries. The IRS said 18 of those people had computer problems between September 2009 and February 2014. Of those employees, five probably lost e-mails — in addition to Lerner — the agency said Friday.
Fine. Head on over to the NSA because they have been collecting everything since at least 2007, and likely all the way back into the 1980s through ECHELON.
Lerner, who was placed on leave and has since retired, has emerged as a central figure in congressional inquiries. The other five employees appear to be more junior than she.
In addition to the Cincinnati workers, they include a technical adviser to Lerner, a tax law specialist, and a group manager in the tax-exempt division.
In general, the IRS said the workers archived e-mails on their computer hard drives when their e-mail accounts became too full. When those computers crashed, the e-mails were lost.
‘‘By all accounts, in each instance the user contacted IT staff and attempted to recover his or her data,’’ said the IRS statement.
The IRS has said it stored e-mails on backup tapes but those tapes were re-used every six months. The inspector general’s office is reviewing those tapes to see if any old e-mails can be retrieved.
This is getting WEAK!
‘‘The IRS has lost thousands of e-mails, but worse yet, completely lost the American people’s trust,’’ said Sarah Swinehart, a spokeswoman for House Ways and Means Republicans. ‘‘The DOJ must appoint a special prosecutor so the full truth can come out.’’
As has the whole state, from federal on down to local. It's all a corrupt $hit pile. Sorry.
Attorney General Eric Holder has refused requests from congressional Republicans for a special prosecutor, citing numerous investigations already underway.
Investigations where evidence keeps disappearing!
The reports Friday by the Senate subcommittee on investigations mark the end of just one investigation. The Justice Department and three other congressional committees are continuing their inquiries.
Levin is chairman of the investigations subcommittee and McCain is the ranking Republican. Their staffs routinely work together on investigations, and while they do not always agree on the results, it is highly unusual for them to issue such diverging reports.
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The Democrats’ report slams last year’s audit by the IRS inspector general. It said the inspector’s report was incomplete because it focused only on the treatment of conservative groups. The inspector’s report ‘‘produced distorted audit results that continue to be misinterpreted,’’ the Democrats’ report said.
I am reading a AmeriKan newspaper, yeah.
J. Russell George, the Treasury inspector general for tax administration, said his investigation is ongoing, with facts ‘‘still coming to light.’’
Or not!
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Related: Lerner's Love Letters
Also see:
IRS Health Forms Will Tax You
Home Depot Was Hacked
This won't make you feel very good:
"Hackers threaten health care industry’s patient records" by Jessica Meyers | Globe Staff September 06, 2014
WASHINGTON — The latest threat of identity theft might not come from retail stores or big banks, but your doctor’s office or local hospital.
Then stay out of them at all costs.
Criminals are stealing patient records to file fake insurance claims, obtain prescription medication, or sell Social Security numbers. Just this summer, Chinese hackers seized the personal information of 4.5 million patients at a Tennessee-based hospital network.
Yeah, sure, it was the Chinese.
And federal officials disclosed Thursday that an intruder managed to install malicious software on HealthCare.gov, the government’s health insurance marketplace.
These and other recent incidents reveal the growing market for patient data and perilous gaps within the health care industry.
Then SHUT DOWN, SUSPEND, or WAIVE Obummercare!
“It’s a war we’re in,” said John Halamka, the chief information officer of Boston-based Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and cochair of the Health IT Standards Committee, a federal group that advises the government. “Hackers innovate and find new ways to get in and those who store data innovate and find new ways to keep them out. We’re leapfrogging back and forth.”
And $omeone is making a pile of money!
Related: SILLI ISIS Has Invaded Southern California
War, war, war, war, war, war, war, war, war!
Halamka considered this summer’s attack on the hospital operator, Community Health Systems, one of the most sophisticated he’s seen and an example of the increasingly clever methods of cyber criminals.
Demand for health records is high.
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Ponemon Institute, a research center that examines data protections, says breaches cost the industry up to $5.6 billion a year.
Stolen health care data can lead not only to financial loss but also to inaccurate medical records and, thus, misdiagnosis.
Criminal intrusions into health care systems have risen 100 percent in the past four years, according to a recent Ponemon report. The FBI warned this April that the health sector, amid mandatory transition to electronic health records, lacked protections to ward off the rising threat of cybercrime. It sent out another alert last month emphasizing the rise of “malicious actors” who prey on health care and medical device fields.
It’s not clear the industry is up for the fight.
And yet Obummer is full steam ahead and the in$urance companies are still making profits!
“They’re focused on delivering health care, not operational security,” said Stephen Boyer, cofounder of BitSight Technologies, a Cambridge-based security ratings firm that issued a recent report on the topic. “It’s just not a high priority.”
The study found that hospitals and other health care providers respond to data breaches more slowly than any other industry.
The attack on Community Health Systems reportedly resulted from a well-documented vulnerability known as Heartbleed.
That was a government NSA scoop!
And the HealthCare.gov hacker found a way into one of the nation’s most monitored websites, although federal officials said the hacker obtained no consumer data.
And we should believe them because.... ????
Analysts, at Ponemon and elsewhere, warn threats could only get worse with the Affordable Care Act’s online exchanges and the rise of digitalized records.
Motivations for attack range from political agendas to sheer greed.
The infamous hacker group Anonymous this spring disrupted Internet access at Boston Children’s Hospital and tried to infiltrate the hospital’s network.
Related: Hackers Hate Children
Emeline Lubin, a former employee of Tufts Health Plan this April stole Social Security numbers from thousands of patients.
***************
A state report released this week calculated that Massachusetts experienced 88 health care related data breaches last year. The number still trails the 1,551 that affected banks and financial institutions but suggests a market for health records.
“It’s getting to the point now where it has to be a number one focus for organizations,” said Daniel Nigrin, chief information officer at Boston Children’s who helped mitigate the Anonymous attack. “There are lots of competing priorities but, frankly, security is one that is bubbling up on the top of that list.”
At least some computer $oftware forms will get rich, cui bono.
The Obama administration, in conjunction with the passage of a 2009 health IT law, has doled out at least $24 billion to spur the transition from paper records to digital ones. The technological push expands opportunities for misuse to smartphone and computers, but no federal law mandates specific security procedures industries must follow — and a cybersecurity bill has stalled in Congress.
That's one of those shutdown the internet bills under the guise of security.
Meanwhile, low budgets for IT and the increasing sophistication of data theft have left the industry particularly vulnerable.
But the health apps being promoted are no problem?
A Ponemon report last year noted that health and pharmaceutical companies pay the least for information security staff.
But changes means convincing hospitals and other health care providers that they need to overhaul budgets, hire more staff, and share information.
The US Department of Health and Human Services has increased the incentive by cracking down on medical facilities that fail to protect patient data. The agency in May fined New York Presbyterian Hospital and Columbia University Medical Center $4.8 million for the disclosure of nearly 7,000 medical records because of lax technical safeguards.
They can't protect the data under their control and yet they are fining others? What sphincters!
The Health Information Trust Alliance, an organization that pushes information security in health care, partnered with Southern Methodist University in Dallas this year to create the first graduate program dedicated to addressing risk in health care organizations. The training is essential, the organization said, because “gaps in talent are proving more troubling than technical gaps.”
The industry, in the meantime, is scrambling to catch up.
“It’s not just medical identity theft that can be committed with a medical profile; it’s every type of identity theft,” said Eva Velasquez, the president of the Identity Theft Resource Center, a San Diego-based nonprofit.
“In a lot of ways, it’s a one-stop shop for the thief.”
Most of them working for the US government or the Jewish mafia in Eastern Europe.
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