Hating the IRS is nothing new. This 2012 dress-down of the commissioner by Congressman Paul Ryan is a classic. As if lying to Congress, losing emails and accusations of targeting the president’s political enemies were not enough—the agency America loves to hate is at it again. The AP reports, “the IRS has failed to implement dozens of security upgrades to combat cyberattacks, leaving the agency’s computer systems vulnerable to hackers, a government watchdog told Congress….”
To be fair to the IRS, the fact that agency has terrible cybersecurity practices hardly puts the tax collectors in a league of their own. In the last three years, there have been at least (count them) 23 major breaches of federal cyber security including every federal agency from the Pentagon to Fannie Mae.
At the very least the lesson learned here ought to be that, for goodness sake, the federal government, by the example it sets, is hardly the best authority on how to make the Internet more secure. Giving Washington more power over what is done online may not make much sense.
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