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Washington, D.C.—The continuing failure of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to ensure the internal security of sensitive taxpayer data points out once again the danger of the agency’s plans to freely turn over such information to private sector debt collectors, the leader of the union representing IRS employees said today.

The ongoing security failures are cited in another of a series of reports by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) on measures the IRS needs to take to protect taxpayer privacy.

The GAO report “makes it clear that the IRS has continuing and serious internal information technology security issues,” said President Colleen M. Kelley of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU). “These problems make it all the more pressing that the IRS abandon its ill-conceived and dangerous plan to privatize tax debt collection.”

The IRS plan is to turn over to private sector debt collection companies—the most complained-about industry in America—the private financial information of tens of thousands of U.S. taxpayers, including their Social Security numbers. NTEU has been an outspoken opponent of this plan to privatize debt collection for many reasons, chief among them the serious issue of identity theft and the lack of adequate safeguards to protect against misuse of this information once it leaves the IRS.

GAO said the IRS has corrected only 41 of the 81 information security weaknesses it previously reported on at two of the agency’s critical data processing sites; moreover, GAO said it has identified “new information security weaknesses that threaten the confidentiality, integrity and availability of IRS financial information systems and the information they process.”

These include, for example, the agency’s failure to implement effective “electronic access controls related to network management, user accounts and passwords; user rights and file permissions; and logging and monitoring of other information security controls to physically secure computer resources, and to prevent the exploitation of vulnerabilities,” GAO said.

Its report added: “Collectively, these weaknesses increase the risk that sensitive financial and taxpayer data will be inadequately protected against disclosure, modification, or loss, possibly without detection, and place IRS operations at risk of disruption.”

President Kelley called the latest GAO report “another warning signal” about the dangers of the IRS effort to move ahead with plans to hire private sector debt collectors to pursue tax debts.

“Rather than seek to move personal and sensitive taxpayer information into private hands,” Kelley said, “the IRS needs to devote time, attention and resources to ensuring it can protect these vital data when the information is in its own hands. I don’t think anyone can realistically be satisfied right now that the agency has accomplished that.”

NTEU is the largest independent federal union, representing some 150,000 employees in 30 agencies and departments, including 90,000 in the IRS.