On today’s edition of the FreedomCast, legal scholar for the Heritage foundation and litigator, Andrew Grossman joins me to discuss the latest on the NSA phone data scandal, your rights in an increasingly technological world and why “Orwellian” seems to be the new buzzword.

Related links: 

NSA Collecting Phone Records of Millions of Verizon Users Daily 

The Unknown Patriot Who Exposed the Government's Verizon Spy Program

Is 1984 Now? 

Have a suggestion for an upcoming FreedomCast episode, or a comment? Send it to me on twitter @KristinaRibali.

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Follow today's guest @AndrewMGrossman on twitter. 

Our podcast is fabulously produced by @BradWJackson.

Today on the FreedomCast, Central Texas 912 President, Maria Acosta joins me to discuss being singled out by the Feds, and how the IRS targeted her group and the incredibly creepy requests made in order to gain tax exempt status.

Have a suggestion for an upcoming FreedomCast episode, or a comment? Send it to me on twitter @KristinaRibali.

Subscribe to The FreedomCast on iTunes here.

Follow FreedomWorks on twitter and on Faceboook.

Follow today's guest @Centex912 on twitter. 

Our podcast is fabulously produced by @BradWJackson.

Joining me today on the FreedomCast is CJ Ciamarella, reporter for the Washington Free Beacon.  We’ll discuss the IRS scandal,  the chilling effect it has on political dissent, and how Republicans should target big government and not Obama. 

More on this topic:

IRS Targeting Timeline

Chilling Effect

Republicans Promise Response

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Follow today's guest @CJCiaramella on twitter. 

Our podcast is fabulously produced by @BradWJackson.

IRS Target

This week Americans have woken up to revelations of IRS targeting of conservative organizations, and a lawsuit alleging an illegal IRS seizure of 60 million private medical records. If you think these developments are scary, sit down for this: the Internal Revenue Service is also about to become the leading enforcement agency under ObamaCare.

That's right. The IRS will be the primary enforcement agency of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA).
Though Obamacare is a sweeping, pan-government reform, the amount of power it delegates to the IRS is staggering. All told, the law delegates 47 distinct new powers to the national tax-collection agency. These powers can be grouped into three broad categories: tax/fee collection, credit/subsidy distribution, and information harvesting. The application of the new functions is as broad as the 2000-plus page bill is long. Here are just a few examples of what's in store.

1. Tax / Fee Collection

IRS's main job under PPACA is to collect the tax penalties on individuals and employers that are the linchpin of the new health care system, which goes into full operation on January 1, 2014. These tax penalties are designed to compel all Americans to purchase, and all but the smallest workplaces to offer, government-controlled health insurance. Although for political reasons Congress went out of its way to avoid calling the individual and employer mandate penalties "taxes" -- and President Obama even went so far as to vehemently deny that they are taxes -- the penalties are in fact, you guessed it, taxes. They're situated in the Internal Revenue Code and will be collected by the IRS. The Supreme Court even ruled that they're only constitutional because … they're taxes.

Among the numerous other taxes and fees the IRS is tasked with collecting: a new, highly unpopular Medical Device Tax; a new 3.8 percent tax on income from real estate and retirement investments; and several new fees levied annually against health insurance providers and brand name pharmaceutical producers and importers.

One of IRS's more intrusive tasks will be enforcing a "maximum profits" cap on insurance companies, the so-called Medical Loss Ratio (MLR) rule. This regulation is billed as a "consumer protection" measure, "protecting" consumers from being "overcharged" for their health benefits; however, its real effect will be to reduce competition in insurance markets, which will result in less choice, lower quality, and higher costs for consumers.

As an economic matter, all of the law's various taxes and fees will be passed on to consumers, in the form of higher prices and lower quality. A recent report by the Committee on Energy and Commerce of the US House of Representatives reveals the extent of these new costs to consumers. The average premium price increase if you intend to keep your current healthcare is projected to be 73 percent, while premium rates for new health coverage are predicted to increase by a staggering 96 percent.

2. Credit / Subsidy Distribution

Markets will also be distorted by several new, IRS-administered subsidies. The law introduces a wide array of these, but the largest of them by far will be a set of tax credit premium and cost-sharing subsidies for people who purchase their health plan through one of the new government-run "exchanges," pseudo-marketplaces that will function as the system's bureaucratic hubs. These subsidies will cost tens of billions of dollars per year, at first, and eventually hundreds of billions.

Another subsidy is the Small Business Health Care Tax Credit, which offers a subsidy to small firms under 25 employees to help them afford to keep offering health coverage to their workers. This credit, which features an application form of mind-boggling complexity, implicitly acknowledges the health care law imposes major burdens on small businesses.

Yet another IRS-administered subsidy: the Qualified Therapeutic Discovery Project Program, which offers up to one billion dollars in tax subsidies for companies to produce experimental treatments for “previously unmet” medical needs. This is simply a form of corporate welfare via the tax code, risking taxpayer money to pick winners and losers in the marketplace.

3. Information Harvesting

Most of IRS's 47 new duties under the law require it to harvest incredible amounts of sensitive personal and financial information. For example, IRS is required to share information about the type and value of the insurance coverage we have received with the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), in order to help determine eligibility for tax credits. But that's not all. As the Wall Street Journal reported earlier this week:

"To monitor compliance with these rules, the IRS and HHS are now building the largest personal information database the government has ever attempted. Known as the Federal Data Services Hub, the project is taking the IRS's own records (for income and employment status) and centralizing them with information from Social Security (identity), Homeland Security (citizenship), Justice (criminal history), HHS (enrollment in entitlement programs and certain medical claims data) and state governments (residency)." (Source: Your Next IRS Political Audit: The tax agency is getting vast new power in health care," Wall Street Journal, May 14, 2013.)

The privacy and political-abuse concerns raised here should be self-explanatory.

Conclusion

Given the mounting evidence that the the nation’s tax collection agency -- also one of its most feared law enforcement agencies -- has committed disturbing abuses of power, we should pause before letting the IRS take a leading role in enforcing something so critical, and so undeniably personal, as our healthcare.

Dear FreedomWorks member,

As one of our millions of FreedomWorks members nationwide, I urge you to contact your Senators regarding the ECPA Amendments Act (S. 607.). The Electronics Communication Act (ECPA) was designed in an era before electronic communication and storage had emerged as a dominant force in modern life. As such, it could not have foreseen the crucial need for better privacy protections, given the vast amount of sensitive information now stored digitally. As times change, legislation must be kept up to date in order to ensure that the continued liberty of the people against excessive government intrusion not be abridged due to gaps and ambiguities in previous laws.

Recent revelations about the Internal Revenue Service’s ability to view private emails without a court-ordered search warrant have raised legitimate concerns about the increasingly unchecked power of the state over its citizens.

Americans have the right to feel secure that their privacy will not be compromised without due process, a right explicitly protected under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. Additionally, the Fourth Amendment clearly protects against unreasonable search and seizure, and requires probable cause for the issuing of warrants. As it stands, ECPA leaves dangerous openings for the violation of these constitutional rights.

For this reason, we urge you to voice your support for the ECPA Amendments Act (S. 607) introduced by Senators Patrick Leahy and Mike Lee. This act would prevent the federal government from prying into private, electronically stored information of law abiding citizens without following the proper channels of law.

S. 607 is a critical step in keeping government out of the private lives of its citizens, and it is our hope that you will ask your Senators to co-sponsor and otherwise support the ECPA Amendments Act.

Sincerely,
 
Matt Kibbe
President and CEO
FreedomWorks

Finally, I cleaned out my Gmail inbox, one of the several email accounts I own. Since I rarely login to this particular service, there was a digital pile of 782 unread messages waiting for the delete button.

Skimming through one neglected missive after another, I noticed the ever-present Google ad affixed to each. One email commented on a music video I uploaded to YouTube years ago. The attached ad offered “Free Cha Cha Lessons” at the link. Another email was from an old friend mentioning his tax refund. What do you know, Google hit me with an ad for $20 off tax preparation from my neighborhood accountant. An email from a former co-worker mentioning caffeine? “Want Fresh Roasted Coffee?” was the ad headline.

On one hand, it’s pretty amazing how Google and other ad-based Web services can marry my daily conversations with a (sometimes) appropriate sales pitch. But it’s also pretty creepy. Even if it’s only robots trolling my account, I don’t want anyone seeing details about my ill relatives, my kids’ schedules or my award-winning collection of My Little Pony fanfic. (Keep the last one on the down-low, capiche?)

This email account also draws a lot of political email — criticism of the President and Congress, annoying federal laws, even campaign strategy ideas for conservative candidates. The bad news is that Google is reading all those messages too. The even worse news is that Google’s on record as unparalleled fans of President Obama, the Democratic Party and several liberal causes.

Individual Google employees donated 20 times as much money to Obama than they gave to Romney. Obama’s tech-savvy campaign manager was personally mentored by Google’s executive chairman. As soon as the 2012 election was over, a Google VP was named to Obama’s National Science Board. 

It’s certainly their right to make their political voice heard. But when you factor in the more than $18 million Google spent on lobbying last year alone, the Internet behemoth also has a huge motivation to curry favor with the powers that be. In modern Washington, Big Government plus Big Business often equals Big Cronyism.

Like all companies, Google will do what they think is in their best interest. It is government’s duty to make sure that the companies comply with all applicable rules and regulations. But as I noted in a recent article, the government has already dipped into your email without a warrant or even your knowledge. In 2012, officials accessed more than 30,000 of Americans’ personal accounts with next to no oversight.

Ultimately, our protection against such invasions of privacy is the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution. It is past time that our government stops conducting “unreasonable searches and seizures” of our email accounts.

And while they’re at it, they should remove the appearance of impropriety from their cozy relationships with favored business interests.

Follow Jon Gabriel on Twitter at @ExJon.

It's been a rough day so the boss lets you head home early. As you near your house, you see an unmarked van idling in your driveway. You park on the street and carefully open your front door to find a team of government agents digging through your bookcases, file drawers and medicine cabinets. Mail is scattered everywhere.

“Who are you and what are you doing?” you ask.

“Oh… you weren’t supposed to know about this,” the bureaucrat replies. “You never interrupted us before. Get off work early?”

“But what are you looking for?”

“That’s none of your business. Goodbye.”

This is the experience of many citizens of corrupt and totalitarian countries around the globe. But now it’s the experience of a growing number of Americans every day.

How can this be? Doesn’t the Fourth Amendment guarantee against “unreasonable searches and seizures” without a warrant? Luckily for the government, there’s a big loophole. A digital loophole.

In 1986, Ronald Reagan signed the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) in order to extend our Fourth Amendment rights into the new world of electronic communications.

Back then, the precious few who had email downloaded any useful messages from the server and stored them on their own hard drive. Those messages left unsaved for 180 days were considered abandoned and open to government searches without a warrant.

But email no longer works that way. The vast majority of computer users now store their email in "the cloud” — sitting somewhere on an online server, accessible 24/7 and for a lot longer than 180 days.

A law created to protect online privacy is now being used to destroy it.

Google revealed that the U.S. government made nearly 8,500 requests for user data in the last half of 2012. This is up 136 percent from the last half of 2009 when the company started tracking this data. In two-thirds of these cases, the requests are made using ECPA subpoenas, which do not need a court order.

Twitter isn’t immune either. Of the 815 requests for Twitter user info in the past six months, 81 percent of these “unreasonable searches and seizures had no warrant to back them up. And since both of these digital behemoths lobby the federal government they have serious motivation to meekly follow D.C.’s orders.

Getting a search warrant is a pretty high bar. Before the government can pore through your mailbox or wiretap your phone, they need to do some serious legwork. But now these same people can “wiretap” your email or social media networks without showing the slightest probable cause. And the out-of-date ECPA is making it easier than ever.

It’s past time for the Fourth Amendment to apply to digital “papers and effects” as well as our physical ones. Tell President Obama and Congress to stay out of our email folders and our online lives.

Follow Jon on Twitter at @ExJon.

Largely drowned out by media coverage of the State of the Union address Tuesday night was the simultaneous release of an executive order entitled “Improving Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity.” In a nutshell, the order paves the way for an information sharing program between government and private industry, in order to assess and address threats to cybersecurity.

The language of the order is vague, almost timid, and it appears that the administration is trying hard to avoid any backlash over privacy concerns, with repeated references to respecting civil liberties and a reported endorsement from the ACLU. That the White House would be a little gunshy about this issue is understandable. Last year, two bills designed to combat internet piracy - designated SOPA and PIPA - were met with massive resistance both by individuals and companies such as Google, Amazon and Wikipedia, ultimately resulting in a day of internet darkness with many popular websites shutting down in protest.

The major objections to these bills were rooted in the fact that they granted broad, poorly defined powers to the federal government to unilaterally control, and even shut down parts of the internet in response to unspecified threats to national security. Critics saw such powers as dangerously easy to abuse and feared for the civil rights of American internet users. Partially as a result of the public outcry, both SOPA and PIPA were ultimately defeated, as was a third bill, the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA,) designed to facilitate information sharing between business and government. Unlike the order issued Tuesday, however, CISPA would also authorize the federal government to shut down internet traffic from certain sources in response to a cyber-attack.

The problem with bills such as these is that there are no clear restrictions on what information can and cannot be shared. There is no guarantee that the personal information of private citizens won’t end up in government hands, and the thought that credit card numbers and medical histories could be shared without users’ consent is understandably worrying. This is no doubt the reason why the aforementioned executive order is so cautious in its language. The order exempts commerce and social media sites, such as Amazon and Facebook, from any information sharing, all of which is voluntary anyway. Indeed, the White House has gone out of its way to point out that nothing in the order forces companies to do anything they don’t want to do.

Although CISPA was defeated by the Senate when it was introduced last year, it is due to be brought up again sometime in the first half of 2013. The executive order issued by President Obama already implements parts of the bill, possibly as a way to ease lawmakers through the transition towards more comprehensive legislation. After the overwhelmingly negative reaction to previous attempts to regulate the internet, any new attempts will have to be subtle and gradual.

This means that advocates for internet freedom will have to be especially vigilant in the future, keeping a keen eye out for the gradual erosion of our privacy rights. To that end, it is worth pointing out that Obama’s executive order places responsibility for information sharing in the hands of the Department of Homeland Security, an organization not exactly renowned for its
constitutionality or respect for civil liberties, and that the order covers all “critical infrastructure,” a vaguely defined term that encompasses not just the internet, but also electricity, gas, the water supply, telecommunications, heating, banking and anything else deemed essential to the functioning of society. The consistent use of such open-ended terms leaves the door open for sweeping regulations with any number of unforeseen consequences.

As ever, victories for internet freedom are fleeting. The state will always fear that which it cannot control, and the attempts to regulate the internet are sure to continue for years to come. Although the cybersecurity executive order looks fairly innocuous, it is important to stay informed and alert to where it could lead. When CISPA is reintroduced later this year, it must not be allowed to slip through the cracks unnoticed.

As one of 22 Right to Work states in America, North Carolina workers are not required to belong to a union in order to keep their jobs. When 33 workers at AT&T exercised this right and resigned their membership in the Communication Workers of America Union in 2007, they were subjected to workplace harassment. The harassment then got worse as these workers had their private information made public. 

CWA official Judy Brown e-mailed other CWA officials a spreadsheet containing this personal information (including social security numbers) with instructions to “forward this information to your affected locals.” CWA Local 3602 union president John Glenn took the harassment one step further by posting the spreadsheet on a bulletin board outside the AT&T facility in Burlington, NC. This was in a hallway with public access, meaning that it would have been possible for anybody to see the information and use it in any way. 

The National Labor Relations Board investigated the incident and, although they confirmed that this information was posted, their general counsel refused prosecute the union. To seek justice, employee Jason Fischer and 15 other employees filed a lawsuit in 2008. Represented by attorneys for the National Right to Work Foundation, the group filed a lawsuit under North Carolina’s Identity Theft Prosecution Act to “strengthen safeguards for personal information.” Unfortunately, the both trial and appeals courts in North Carolina ruled that unions are exempt from any penalty for their actions, which would have been a fine of up to $5,000 per violation. They determined that this breach of privacy was covered by the National Labor Relations Act, allowing a federal labor law to pre-empt an unrelated state law. 

The National Right to Work Foundation appealed the case to the U.S. Supreme Court but, earlier this month, they declined to hear the case. This effectively gives unions carte blanche to access and disseminate private information about employees, at least in North Carolina. "With today's announcement, the U.S. Supreme Court has left intact a new type of ugly union boss retaliation, allowing union officials to target workers for identity theft even when state law clearly makes such retaliation illegal," said Mark Mix, President of National Right to Work. "The Court's decision not to correct this injustice makes a mockery of state and federal labor laws, which purport to 'protect' workers but really protects union boss intimidation, and now will be used to escape from state laws protecting workers’ identities across the country."

With unions losing their stranglehold on American workers, they are becoming more desperate. Americans must stand up for freedom in the workplace and not be cowed by intimidation, keeping judges and elected officials accountable for their actions.