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The IRS will pay Equifax $7.25 million to verify taxpayer identities and help prevent fraud under a no-bid contract issued last week, even as lawmakers lash the embattled company about a massive security breach that exposed personal information of as many as 145.5 million Americans.
A contract award for Equifax's data services was posted to the Federal Business Opportunities database Sept. 30 — the final day of the fiscal year. The credit agency will "verify taxpayer identity" and "assist in ongoing identity verification and validations" at the IRS, according to the award.
The notice describes the contract as a "sole source order," meaning Equifax is the only company deemed capable of providing the service. It says the order was issued to prevent a lapse in identity checks while officials resolve a dispute over a separate contract.
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/10/03/equifax-irs-fraud-protection-contract-243419
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 05 2017, @11:45AM (30 children)
I'm not normally of the revenge mindset but these asshats deserve to be fully doxxed. Equifax is allowed to profit from our data, be reckless with security, delay informing victims, and attempt to trick people into paying for monitoring services while giving up their right to sue. Instead of sending these shitheads to PRISON the IRS awards them another $7M in tax payer money while handing them another fresh mountain of data to mine (and eventually expose)?!
Fuck Equifax and fuck the IRS! I wouldn't shed a tear if the next hack targeted the personal data of all these corrupt execs and officials; let them experience the hell they put us through.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by NotSanguine on Thursday October 05 2017, @12:00PM
Are you new? This is how things work, friend. As for the breaches and attempts by Equifax to profit from them, you need to remember that *you* are the product, not the customer.
Secondly, of course Equifax will get the no-bid contract. And next time, it will be TransUnion or Experian. Or Equifax will pay folks off and get the next contract too.
You really don't get it. I would be very surprised if the executives of these "credit reporting agencies" didn't have monitoring and locking services included free in their employment contracts. Because they aren't the hoi polloi [wikipedia.org] like you and me.
To paraphrase Quentin Tarantino, you are the weak, and they are the tyranny of evil men. Deal with it.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 3, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday October 05 2017, @12:22PM (21 children)
This actually comes as a surprise to you? There is nothing, nothing, the government controls that is not intentionally made worse for a buck, screwed up through incompetence, or maliciously and deliberately used against the American people. And yet every chance they get retards on both sides of the aisle still line up to grant them even more power over our lives.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Whoever on Thursday October 05 2017, @02:46PM (12 children)
So, according to you, is it better or worse that the IRS has outsourced this task instead of doing it internally?
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday October 05 2017, @07:04PM (11 children)
Depends on your perspective. Me, I prefer the IRS to be as incompetent as possible, so it would have been better if they'd kept it in-house.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Thursday October 05 2017, @09:32PM
I dunno: with eqifux, it seems one of those "six of one" sitiations.
Methinks they both can fuck it up equally, but now the gov can blame someone else while paying them enough to settle any lawsuits equifux will need to settle if any lawsuits result from blah blah blah.
The new gov trough.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by Whoever on Thursday October 05 2017, @10:07PM (9 children)
So, basically, you want the government to not have any money to spend?
Let me suggest that you move to one of any number of failed and almost failed states in Africa or South America. They are all shitholes, but I am sure that the government fulfills your desired level of organization. If you are lucky, you might even get Internet service there.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday October 06 2017, @12:52AM (8 children)
Yes. It can't fuck things up as badly if it's neutered. See the pre-Civil-War United States if you want a successful example of a limited federal government.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Whoever on Friday October 06 2017, @02:26AM (1 child)
See Somalia for a modern-day example of a limited government.
(Score: 2) by Kromagv0 on Friday October 06 2017, @01:31PM
As much as people like to beat up on Libertarians and small government people by using Somalia as an example it turns out that in fact no government was better [peterleeson.com] than what they had. When a number of metrics used to judge how a country is doing improve when a government collapses maybe it isn't all bad. Also like most you are falsely equating that no government is the same as small or smaller government.
T-Shirts and bumper stickers [zazzle.com] to offend someone
(Score: 2) by Whoever on Friday October 06 2017, @02:30AM (5 children)
It's important to realize that the world has changed since the Civil War. What worked then doesn't work today. What's so hard to understand about that?
What you are asking for is something like Brazil is heading into. A country that's great to live in if you are in the very few wealthy elite, and crap for everyone else. You aspire to have a crap life. Why is that? Stupidity, or blinded by ideology?
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday October 06 2017, @02:34AM (4 children)
Even granting you everything you say as true, entirely for the sake of argument, yes, I would still rather have liberty than security. As would every American worth the name.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Whoever on Friday October 06 2017, @03:04AM (3 children)
Paying reasonable taxes does not reduce your liberty. Living in poverty does.
Living in a country where the government stands aside while powerful people take your liberty away is the end result of what you want.
(Score: 1, Troll) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday October 06 2017, @03:22AM (2 children)
One of these days you'll grok that I believe protection of your liberties is one of the very few legitimate functions of government. Well, no, probably not. That would interfere with the narrative you have to keep spinning in your head to justify using 1984 as an instruction manual rather than a cautionary tale.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 06 2017, @04:01AM (1 child)
And to provide that protection, the government will need money and best that collection be done competently or it cannot be collected fairly. So you're an idiot for wanting the IRS to be incompetent.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday October 06 2017, @10:47AM
You really don't grok snark, do you? I'm not going to explain it completely but let me put your feet on the path of wisdom at least: it's less important that it be utterly logical than it is that it convey your displeasure with the target.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 05 2017, @09:20PM (7 children)
You're painting with too broad a brush.
Social Security is a prime example of efficiency. [google.com]
Even limp-wristed[1] Obamacare is an improvement over what had existed in USA.
Previously, some insurance companies had been skimming off 30 percent or more in overhead.
Obamacare limited that to "only" 20 percent. [thinkprogress.org]
[1] ...compared to the universal healthcare available in all other industrialized nations.
...and, of course, there are the Nordic countries that do much better than USA.gov at just about everything.
(They have STRONG LABOR UNIONS there which keep gov't in line.)
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday October 06 2017, @12:57AM (6 children)
Social security is going bankrupt very soon, fool. It's a goddamned ponzi scheme by design and it's a miracle it's lasted as long as it has.
HA! Hahahahaha! Funniest shit ever said on SN right there. Just like a socialist, wanting to make everyone's situation equally shitty no matter how hard they work for it to be otherwise.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 06 2017, @02:07AM (5 children)
OK now, everybody point at the consumer of Faux Noise and Breitbart.
The most pessimistic numbers for Social Security (among responsible reporters) have it 100.00 percent solvent for at least another decade.
...and that's if no adjustments are made.
Note here that, currently (because of ridiculous caps that benefit only The Rich) there are some folks who are finished contributing to the trust fund on January 2 each year.
That's clearly unfair.
Obamacare
a socialist, wanting to make everyone's situation equally shitty
This Socialist already said that Obamacare is limp-wristed.
My choice would be to do what every developed nation on the globe--EXCEPT USA--does: Universal Healthcare.
Pay your taxes and get your services.
The people in Scandinavia don't call that shitty.
It's demonstrably doable--if your gov't isn't squandering 54 percent of taxes on hegemonic aggression.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2, Disagree) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday October 06 2017, @02:38AM (4 children)
Right, so you're wanting it to be getting back your money that you paid in... unless you're rich then it's everybody else's money. How do you look in a mirror and see anything but a blatant thief?
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 06 2017, @04:26AM (3 children)
If you have a huge pile of money--and you actually EARNED that--then you got it using the public infrastructure: roads; bridges; waterways; water; sewers; rights of way for communications, the electricity grid, natural gas; etc.
You owe The System.
...especially if you're not even equitably sharing what your company took in with the workers who made that money for you--AKA consumers who would actually spend it into the actual economy.
...and I'd like to see the "Look, I did it all myself" bunch try their hand in Somalia and in a year's time report back on how they're doing.
OTOH, if you never actually PRODUCED anything in order to extract that money from the economy (you made money while you were sleeping), then you are simply another worthless Capitalist^W parasite.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday October 06 2017, @10:49AM (2 children)
You mean the public infrastructure that you paid taxes to create and use, thus owe nothing either fiscally or morally for?
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 06 2017, @11:12AM (1 child)
Infrastructure requires maintenance.
...and a Capitalist that doesn't believe in growth and expansion and upgrades??
Sounds like some kind of commie.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday October 06 2017, @12:07PM
What's your point? You think moving things paid for from the past to the future somehow makes them magical? No. If you pay for something, your debt is gone. That's what "paying" means. No American who pays the taxes demanded of them owes jack shit to "society" or the government for public works.
I know you desperately want to find a moral way into the pockets of your betters but there isn't one aside from voluntary exchange of value for value. You want more than what you have? Create something of value to someone else and exchange for it. There is no other moral way to acquire wealth.
I don't even have an issue with the stated vision you have of privately created socialist concerns. They're voluntary. I don't think they work worth a shit compared to their capitalist counterparts but that's irrelevant so long as participation is voluntary. We have a very old word for those who are forced to work and see the fruits of their labor go to others: slavery.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Thursday October 05 2017, @01:27PM (3 children)
For what it's worth, this deal has been cooking since long before the breach - the IRS doesn't plunk down $7.5m on a whim, there are meetings and proposals and signoffs... I imagine whoever pushed the button on this has been holding it to the last minute to see if they could find an acceptable alternative. Now, picture in your mind what could be worse than giving this to Equifax... I assure you, whatever you're thinking of, there are even worse alternatives out there - many of which were probably discussed and even promoted by your bureaucrats in the IRS.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 05 2017, @04:31PM
No. Given the political climate right now, any bureaucrat or political appointee could easily kill this proposal. Saying "Equifax has literally just broke the public trust, we need to stall a few weeks to re-investigate" would pass any congressional oversight committee or White House audit with a nod and rubber-stamp. That's also begging the question of why it's a sole-source contract in the first place. What could Equifax do that TransUnion and/or Experian couldn't? There may be something, but I don't know what.
You are right that this has been cooking for quite some time, though. As you said, $7.5M is not a small procurement. What really happened here is that "somebody" really wanted to give money to Equifax. I don't know why: it could be corruption, it could be a back-handed reward for assisting an Intelligence agency with something, it could be pork-barrel spending by a congressman, or any number of reasons. However, somebody really wanted to give Equifax money. Then the recent news sidelined that and gave somebody a really bad day. They stalled as long as they could, but then realized that the fiscal clock was running out and tried to sneak the procurement out with as low a profile as they could... and they got caught.
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Thursday October 05 2017, @06:08PM (1 child)
"...what could be worse than giving this to Equifax..."
Well for one: from TFA:
"The IRS defended its decision in a statement, saying that Equifax told the agency that none of its data was involved in the breach and that Equifax already provides similar services to the IRS under a previous contract."
Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts"- --Daniel Patrick Moynihan--
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 05 2017, @07:26PM
And the IRS is stupid enough to believe them. With such a breach, IRS should demand concrete evidence that their data was not compromised. The breach alone, and how incompetent Equifax has shown to be, they cannot be trusted in keeping anyone's data secure.
(Score: 1) by WillR on Thursday October 05 2017, @04:08PM (2 children)
I doubt having anonymous opening a million credit cards in their names would hurt them much. They know how to navigate credit report bullshit efficiently, because they built the bullshit system. It would be like trying to take revenge on Bear Grylls by dropping him off on a remote mountaintop with only a pocket knife.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Thursday October 05 2017, @09:50PM
Or dropping him off at a resort with a credit card
https://infolific.com/leisure/wilderness-survival/man-vs-wild-bear-grylls-fakes-situations/ [infolific.com]
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday October 05 2017, @09:54PM
Please don't throw me into the briar patch!