[MrXY]

Quote:

IRS tracks your digital footprint

The IRS has quietly upgraded its technology so tax collectors can track virtually everything people do online.

The Internal Revenue Service is collecting a lot more than taxes this year -- it's also acquiring a huge volume of personal information on taxpayers' digital activities, from eBay auctions to Facebook posts and, for the first time ever, credit card and e-payment transaction records, as it expands its search for tax cheats to places it's never gone before.

The IRS, under heavy pressure to help Washington out of its budget quagmire by chasing down an estimated $300 billion in revenue lost to evasions and errors each year, will start using "robo-audits" of tax forms and third-party data the IRS hopes will help close this so-called "tax gap." But the agency reveals little about how it will employ its vast, new network scanning powers.

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Consumers are already familiar with Internet "cookies" that track their movements and send them targeted ads that follow them to different websites. The IRS has brought in private industry experts to employ similar digital tracking -- but with the added advantage of access to Social Security numbers, health records, credit card transactions and many other privileged forms of information that marketers don't see.

"Private industry would be envious if they knew what our models are," boasted Dean Silverman, the agency's high-tech top gun who heads a group recruited from the private sector to update the IRS, in a comment reported in trade publications. The IRS did not respond to a request for an interview.


In trade presentations and public documents, the agency has said it will use a massively parallel computer system that can analyze data from different networks to find irregularities and suspicious activities.

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The agency declined to comment on how it will use its new technology. But agency officials have been outlining plans at industry conferences, working with IBM, EMC and other private-sector specialists. In presentations, officials have said they may use the big data for:

Charting and analyzing social media such as Facebook.
Targeting audits by matching tax filings to social media or electronic payments.
Tracking individual Internet addresses and emailing patterns.
Sorting data in 32,000 categories of metadata and 1 million unique "attributes."
Machine learning across "neural" networks.
Statistical and agent-based modeling.
Relationship analysis based on Social Security numbers and other personal identifiers.

http://money.msn.com/credit-rating/irs-t...-footprint

Think about the power and intrusiveness the IRS will have now that it has the capability to put together everything you do on the internet with all the access it has to databases.

Say you make a Facebook post about the boat you just bought complete with pictures.

Think about everything the IRS can know about you

-how much income you reported and the type of deductions you took
-all of your credit card and Paypal and other electronic transactions
-the size of your mortgage
-how many vehicles you own, their purchase price and amount owed
-your travel records
-your bank records
-your investment records
-number of people in household and estimated monthly expenses for them
-medical bills
-on and on and on

Maybe the IRS algorithm will decide that you shouldn't have been able to afford that boat based on all the data they have on your income, expenses and assets...........

The federal government will become increasing desperate for revenue as the welfare state and the debt and deficit continue to expand and taxpayers are going to be harassed and squeezed to a degree never seen before in this country