This statement: "Newly disclosed documents prepared by IRS lawyers says that Americans enjoy 'generally no privacy' in their e-mail, Facebook chats, Twitter direct messages, and similar online communications" is entirely consistent with the existence of Warshack. Warshack covers the Sixth Circuit, which includes the following states: Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, and Tennessee. The IRS is bound by this precedent in those states and nowhere else. Other circuits might find this precedent persuasive and agree in future cases, and that is something the IRS will have to deal with in future prosecutions, but for a Handbook on the law as it stands now, this statement is absolutely accurate.
The nation-wide precedent is they can access anything older than 180 days without a warrant, which for IRS's purposes is basically anything that would be relevant to a criminal tax prosecution (there is no statute of limitations on willful tax evasion or fraud).
Should we have privacy rights in our e-mails and personal messages? I think so. But the Constitution doesn't protect that, any more than it protects "one's papers" if those papers are left on the premises of a third party.[1] Not everything that is a good idea must be necessitated by the Constitution.
[1] Wikipedia's article on "expectation of privacy" is pretty good: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expectation_of_privacy ("In general, one cannot have a reasonable expectation of privacy in things held out to the public."). If you understand how SMTP works, it's hard to argue that it's a private means of communication. You send a clear-text message to a publically-accessible service that is empowered to forward the message to other publically-accessible servers if necessary.
The nation-wide precedent is they can access anything older than 180 days without a warrant, which for IRS's purposes is basically anything that would be relevant to a criminal tax prosecution (there is no statute of limitations on willful tax evasion or fraud).
Should we have privacy rights in our e-mails and personal messages? I think so. But the Constitution doesn't protect that, any more than it protects "one's papers" if those papers are left on the premises of a third party.[1] Not everything that is a good idea must be necessitated by the Constitution.
[1] Wikipedia's article on "expectation of privacy" is pretty good: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expectation_of_privacy ("In general, one cannot have a reasonable expectation of privacy in things held out to the public."). If you understand how SMTP works, it's hard to argue that it's a private means of communication. You send a clear-text message to a publically-accessible service that is empowered to forward the message to other publically-accessible servers if necessary.