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Ask HN: Why is PRISM a bigger deal than IRS targeting?
5 points by jprince on June 8, 2013 | hide | past | favorite | 8 comments
The IRS targeted the Tea Party during the 2012 elections and it is clear that it goes nearly all the way to the top of the food chain.

This is a big deal, and I never once saw a post about it on Hacker News. I figured, this is okay, these guys are mostly liberals anyway. They wouldn't care about Big Government bullying.

Then, a couple days ago, it's revealed the same government is tracking nearly every American's phone calls(big surprise), and NOW Hacker News cares? Why is it that IRS targeting is not important enough to merit a single post, but Verizon et. al giving the NSA access to all our data is?

Is it because more people are being harassed than before, a numbers game? Or is it because none of you are Tea Partiers, so it's okay for them to get taken out? It seems like it's only when they come for you that it's suddenly doom and hellfire.

Please, enlighten me. I'm a bit disappointed.



Because the IRS was rightfully reviewing a group of right wing lobby groups who were massively applying for tax breaks that they were not entitled to?


On top of that, thanks to the citizens united ruling, there were a ton of 501(c)4 groups applying for status. It would make sense for the IRS to apply extra scrutiny to make sure that they groups weren't just fronts for corporations.

Further more, there were liberal groups caught up in the IRS's extra scrutiny as well.


About 75 groups were specifically targeted for having words like "Tea Party" or "Patriot" in their names, and none had their tax-exempt status revoked.


Why is it that IRS targeting is not important enough to merit a single post, but Verizon et. al giving the NSA access to all our data is?

One is a widespread systematic invasion of privacy. The other is a bit of red tape that unequally scrutinized 501(c)(4) applicants based on party affiliation. The scope of these two things are so incomparable that I don't even know where to begin.

It is important the IRS (c)(4) process get fixed, but if they had applied the same level of scrutiny to both left and right leaning groups the reaction would have been more of a murmur. Or maybe even a productive debate on (c)(4) review (lol, probably not). Its not OK that they targeted by ideology, but the fact the criteria was political means Americans are just going to use it as an excuse to be loud. American politicians act like their parties are such delicate flowers, I've seen more dives taken in DC than in Johannesburg 2010.

On top of that, Hacker News is more or less about tech and startups. Not only is the NSA is data-mining from 3rd party tech companies, security and privacy concerns have been large elements of tech culture for decades. A few items on the IRS scandal did get posted here, but didn't get many comments. If I had to speculate, I'd say that even if this this audience finds the actions wrong, they just don't have a whole lot to say on the topic of the burden faced by political organizations abusing (c)(4) classification to hide their donation lists.


Looking into the IRS scandal, it seems like a non-issue in reality, despite being hyped up politically. They were targeting tax exempt organizations abusing their status by remaining politically active. And they did nothing beyond investigate. No threats, no bullying, no arrests. So that seems like significantly less of an issue to me.

Dragnet surveillance by the NSA, on the other hand, is a huge deal.


The IRS did not target the Tea Party.

The Tea Party asked the American taxpayer to subsidize their political action committee, by applying to the IRS for tax exempt status. THEN the IRS selected their application for audit and this delayed it -- this was the bad part that Congress needs to fix.


Good point. Maybe because HN is mostly a tech news site and the IRS targeting didn't involve any tech like the NSA scandal did.


My guess would be because now it's personal.




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