this post was submitted on 17 Feb 2025
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Summary

Elon Musk has requested access to the IRS's Integrated Data Retrieval System, which contains personal tax information for millions of Americans.

The request has not yet been granted but has raised alarm among privacy experts and government officials.

Critics fear Musk could misuse the data, especially given his existing federal contracts. The IRS is considering a memorandum to permit access, despite strict rules against unauthorized viewing.

A federal judge has already blocked DOGE from accessing Treasury data, but other agencies remain vulnerable.

(page 2) 50 comments
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[–] kryptonianCodeMonkey@lemmy.world 145 points 1 week ago (2 children)

For what reason? How does accessing individual taxpayers private income/tax information allow you weed out wasteful government spending?

[–] rottingleaf@lemmy.world 2 points 6 days ago

Theoretically (not wasteful spending, but corruption) - by noticing unexplainable incomes of government employees and relatives of those and politicians and their relatives. In practice - I don't think they can be caught this easily.

Also it is a huge dataset from which one can have some insights on how to, well, optimize taxes and tax returns for whatever goal one wishes.

In practice others have already answered that.

[–] jws_shadotak@sh.itjust.works 104 points 1 week ago (2 children)

By arbitrarily denying regular people their tax returns for the sake of "saving money"

[–] Chozo@fedia.io 68 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Yup. Tax refunds are about to become a thing of the past. For the bottom 99%, that is.

[–] fluxion@lemmy.world 51 points 1 week ago (1 children)

IRS audits for politically motivated reasons are about to become a thing.

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[–] FuglyDuck@lemmy.world 28 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I don't think there's anything "arbitrary" about who they fuck over.

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[–] DogPeePoo@lemm.ee 53 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] BothsidesistFraud@lemmy.world 3 points 6 days ago (1 children)

clever love it!!! any more

[–] DogPeePoo@lemm.ee 1 points 5 days ago

~~Cybertruck~~ ➡️ Deplorian

[–] Alteon@lemmy.world 38 points 1 week ago (1 children)

They are worming their way through the various departments looking for something....dirt on their opponents?

[–] ThePowerOfGeek@lemmy.world 51 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Probably dirt on everyone. And just to farm for their own purposes. Collate all the federal data, pump it into his grok LLM, and try to create his own file on every consumer.

[–] rottingleaf@lemmy.world 4 points 6 days ago

Right, propaganda had to be aimed at the average citizen, or at least the average citizen of a few major groups or layers. A huge headache. With enough data one can have personalized propaganda.

It's only the Web and customer UI\UX which are now "one size fits all" and becoming worse, with things really important for these companies they are doing their job properly.

I mean, that's where it was always going, since "big data" was a new buzzword, and neural nets were something only geeks cared about, with no commercial hype visible. When Bitcoin seemed a new anarchist (right anarchism is still that) thing, and The Silk Road was operational.

Why - because it was about advertising and insights for companies about customers, and also about creating a non-neutral medium from a social network, or in our current existence from the Web itself. A non-neutral medium is where your messages get effectively lost or amplified or distorted, depending on some policy.

You as a customer or a user don't need that to make your choice with whom to talk or what to buy. These destinations are all real, and thus a social media company doesn't need any information to "create" them. If they are distorting them, then they are distorting your own choices. They are stealing from you, in fact. This is violence and was always going towards the sad state of affairs we have now.

And I think it's worse than what people say about "fascism" or "cronyism" or whatever.

[–] einlander@lemmy.world 27 points 1 week ago (2 children)

AI generated dossiers, terrifying. Imagine all the crimes the AI can hallucinate a person did. And with generative audiovisual AI can manufacturer the evidence.

[–] rottingleaf@lemmy.world 0 points 6 days ago (1 children)

I don't think it's about that, even Musk isn't this dumb. It's about AI-generated individual profiles for propaganda and surveillance. One can play a person having studied them well enough. And turns out that of this LLMs are capable.

[–] einlander@lemmy.world 4 points 6 days ago (1 children)

While Elon might not do this, he has lackeys that aren't scrupled. And maybe Trump has a meddlesome priest he wants Elon to take away. I'm not very optimistic about the current regime.

[–] rottingleaf@lemmy.world 3 points 6 days ago

What you said is a subset of what I said, so I didn't say you were wrong, just that it's not everything. Point being, I said I think it's worse. Didn't sleep well, so my grammar is atrocious.

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[–] adarza@lemmy.ca 23 points 1 week ago

hell.

the fuck.

NO.

[–] wirebeads@lemmy.ca 20 points 1 week ago (1 children)

He wants to live like common people. He wants to see whatever common people see.

— he’s never paid any tax, so he obviously wants to live vicariously with the eyes of the poors. Not as one though, just wants to get closer to understanding them by looking at their tax returns, illegally.

Everybody hates a tourist. Especially one who thinks it′s all such a laugh.

[–] Brkdncr@lemmy.world 17 points 1 week ago (2 children)
[–] explodicle@sh.itjust.works 3 points 6 days ago

AI-powered audits on "everyone", but the source code and weights will be secret and it'll disproportionately target liberals.

[–] Willy@sh.itjust.works 2 points 6 days ago

The greatest question. There could be good answers. I don’t expect much.

[–] Nougat@fedia.io 12 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Maybe the sovcits were inadvertently on to something.

[–] rottingleaf@lemmy.world 3 points 6 days ago

inadvertently

I think their ideology, despite a set of religious beliefs, is about exactly what's happening without this word you used.

[–] watson387@sopuli.xyz 11 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] Iheartcheese@lemmy.world 14 points 1 week ago

He'll get it

[–] wildncrazyguy138@fedia.io 9 points 1 week ago

Fucking called it.

https://fedia.io/m/progressivepolitics@lemmy.world/t/1804942/Repeat-after-me-The-power-they-HAVE-is-the-POWER

[–] scripthook@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Glad I filed my taxes last weekend. Just got my state return and my federal soon. Considering 1,000 people got laid off at the IRS with tax season people will be waiting months for their returns

[–] aeternum@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 6 days ago

bold of you to assume president musk will allow people to get a refund.

[–] tiefling@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 6 days ago

I started mine early but I'm still waiting for tax documents to arrive, ugh

[–] JeeBaiChow@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago

Did his pet POTUS already give access? If not gtfo.

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