Indeed the IRS website blocks Tor users from accessing tax information, as if tor users don’t need tax information. Important legal guidance exists on irs.gov, so it’s obviously an injustice to block people from becoming informed about their rights and obligations.
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What’s the fix? Would it be effective to make a FOIA request on paper so the IRS must send the info on paper via USPS? Or would that require compensation to offset their burden?
infosec 101:
If users who should have access (e.g. US taxpayers) are blocked, there is an availability loss. Blocking Tor reduces availability. Which by definition undermines security.
Some would argue blocking Tor promotes availability because a pre-emptive strike against arbitrary possible attackers revents DoS, which I suppose is what you are thinking. But this is a sloppy practice by under-resourced or under-skilled workers. It demonstrates an IT team who lacks the talent needed to provide resources to all legit users.
A mom and pop shop, sure, we expect them to have limited skills. But the US federal gov? It’s a bit embarrassing. The Tor network of exit nodes is tiny. The IRS should be able to handle a full-on DDoS attempt from Tor because such an effort should bring down the Tor network itself before a federal gov website. If it’s fear of spam, there are other tools for that. IRS publications could of course be on a separate host than that which collects feedback.