Voices of Millions of UK Taxpayers Stored By HMRC (bbc.co.uk) 90
AmiMoJo shares a report from BBC: The voices of millions of taxpayers have been analyzed and stored by HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) without consent, privacy campaigners say. Big Brother Watch says HMRC's Voice ID system has collected 5.1 million audio signatures and accuses the department of creating "biometric ID cards by the back door." The Voice ID scheme, which was launched last year, asks callers to repeat the phrase "my voice is my password" to register. Once this task is complete, they can use the phrase to confirm their identity when managing their taxes.
Without consent? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't love the idea of companies collecting biometrics, but what did people think was going on when they repeated the phrase in order to register? Did they think a person was on the other end that was going to remember their voice?
Re:Without consent? (Score:5, Insightful)
Under EU derived UK law HMRC is required to completely inform the user of what data is stored and how it will be used, including if it will be shared with any other organization. Not only did they fail to do so, but have admitted storing the actual recordings rather than just the metadata which strongly suggests that their system is badly designed and insecure.
The recordings represent a massive and unnecessary security risk, because anyone with access to them an impersonate any user of the system. Like passwords they should just store an irriversible hash of the metadata.
This kind of system is fine if it is done properly and legally, but that means fully informing the users and properly controlling the data.
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The recordings represent a massive and unnecessary security risk, because anyone with access to them an impersonate any user of the system.
You misspelled "can".
You misspelled "will"
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A hash of the metadata (if by this you mean the output of the voice print, as "Mrs Miggins, The Pie Shop, The High Street, East Cheam, is also metadata) might not allow the matching to work, depending on how it has been implemented.
Ding Ding Ding! Unless someone can replicate a sound exactly, comparing a new hash to a recorded hash will fail.
So I take it the Slashdot community hasn't spent their time studying the theory of fuzzy hashing and secure sketches.
http://web.cs.ucla.edu/~rafail... [ucla.edu]
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You're right. that would take some super advanced technology. I read about something like that in a really far-fetched futuristic science fiction novel once - I think they called it a "tape recorder" or something like that. The sequel had some nonsensical-sounding "mp3 recorder". Fucking ridiculous, right? The space-detective in it even magically figured out that the bad guys had spliced together words and
Re:Without consent? (Score:4, Funny)
The UK government has already said it intends to retain the GDPR rules after Brexit.
Re:Without consent? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Without consent? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's often said that biometrics are user IDs, not passwords. Perhaps that's a little simplistic, but for practical purposes it's probably a better analogy.
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BINGO !!! Biometric measurement + a userid make a great start, then a user derived password.
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Just never utter the word "Passport", no matter what Mary McDonnell tell you.
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If they were here in NY it would be an intereseting international situation. New York has a law regarding 1-party consent for recording phone calls.
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Worked as a contractor for them for 3 years. I barely trust them to store their own toilet paper.
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Clearly they should have taken their business to some other country's tax administration or just done without taxes. What could go wrong?
Sounds Foolproof (Score:5, Funny)
The Voice ID scheme, which was launched last year, asks callers to repeat the phrase "my voice is my password" to register.
I'd really like you to say 'password'.
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wasnt' it "verify me"
Sneaky (Score:3, Informative)
"My voice is my passport", surely?
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Now they will ask you to put a recording device in your trunk in order to determine where you live!
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v... [youtube.com] :P
Without consent? (Score:1)
"Without consent" as in they tell you exactly what they're doing and ask you to say a specific phrase three times, the whole of which is entirely optional.
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which is entirely optional.
Unless you are legally required to pay your taxes.
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which is entirely optional.
Unless you are legally required to pay your taxes.
Was it a legal requirement to pay using your voice?
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According to some here, no but they do all they can to convince you otherwise.
Can we sue (Score:3)
and put HMRC out of business? Is this the way to end taxes once and for all?!
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Brexit already did that. Remember? Its all plain sailing from here on out. lol
Does it not make one feel warm and fuzzy knowing that the Brits these days are not far behind the Americans when it comes to inveterate stupidity?
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Having been in the UK a couple times in the last year, I'm not so sure that "behind" is the correct choice of words.
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and put HMRC out of business? Is this the way to end taxes once and for all?!
Not exactly. You sue HMRC, then they have to pay, and as a result the government has to raise tax rates to compensate for the payout. The more people who sue, the higher the taxes go. Eventually they recoup all the money they paid out and celebrate the windfall of new tax income they have! WIN-WIN!
My voice is my password? (Score:1)
Someone's been watching too much of the movie "Sneakers".
Oh come on now, that's just dumb. (Score:3, Insightful)
It's a convenience for taxpayers and probably a lot easier to use than having to remember a PIN that gets used once a year (listen up IRS).
Re:Oh come on now, that's just dumb. (Score:5, Interesting)
HMRC have some particularly complex requirements for logging on to any of their services. You need a magic number and a password. The magic number bears no resemblance to anything you might know, or ever learn. The password has to be so complex that it too is something you'll never know. I forget exactly how these things are supplied to you, but I seem to remember one half is sent via snail mail and the other half is SMS messaged.
In the days before password managers, there was literally no way any human on earth could have remembered those details that they only use once per year. Of course we all wrote them down, and of course that was horribly insecure and yes, I suspect a few of them got stolen along the way. Even with a password manager, you can't log on in an automated fashion because their website somehow stops that from working, but at least you could just write yourself a 'secure note' with the details you need to remember in it.
Then along came biometrics (from the Home Office, who had their strings pulled by MI5, who in turn had theirs pulled by the NSA). They've tried time and time again to get the British Public to sign up to some biometric-based system for tracking the population. It's never really stuck though, so I suspect HMRC got hold of some 'Home Office Surplus' to do their biometric password stuff.
Being the government though, no matter what they implement it'll feel like it'd be easier to break into the Bank of England than to use it, but if you look closely enough you'll see the whole thing is made of cardboard and sticky tape. It seems they didn't disappoint here, by keeping the recordings instead of the fingerprints of them. It's only lucky that they didn't copy them all to a USB stick and lose it on a train or in the back of a cab, I suppose.
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HMRC have some particularly complex requirements for logging on to any of their services. You need a magic number and a password. The magic number bears no resemblance to anything you might know, or ever learn. The password has to be so complex that it too is something you'll never know. I forget exactly how these things are supplied to you, but I seem to remember one half is sent via snail mail and the other half is SMS messaged.
For the uninitiated, the HRMC (Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs) is the tax department of the UK, like it's contemporaries the IRS (US) and ATO (AU) they operate in such a fashion that no interaction with them can be completed without extensive pain and suffering. Put simply, with the HRMC, Nothing. Is. Fucking. Easy.
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Well, HMRC is in an impossible position. The tax rules it is required to use are so complicated that I doubt anyone understands them completely, and it it has far too few resources to do its job properly, and the people it does have are often not well trained. (These three factors may be related...)
Given those constraints, I think a lot of the automated systems for filing the main types of return electronically are fairly usable these days. If you do get to speak to a real person from HMRC, in my experience
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I'm going to disagree—I'm really impressed with HMRC's technology. Their website is extremely well laid out and as well explained as any complex system can be. Their login system is 2FA with SMS messages (not perfect, but it's better than most things and it works). Every interaction I've ever needed has been possible online. It all works pretty well online (and that's rapidly becoming the case for the UK government as a whole).
HMRC's website is better than the website for my mobile phone and utility c
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Requirements so complex their IT folk never got it to work in the 3 years I tried creating my account, before retiring. Closest was the sign up page sending me to the self-employment 1st time registration page, none of them could tell me if that would recognise my existing (off line) account (assuming I magically remembered business details from 35 years ago) or create chaos. It's the last resort for incompetent IT workers.
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Minor quibble, keeping the original recordings is actually reasonable foresight, as it it allows subsequent re-coding of the "fingerprints" when technology improves. Other than that an excellent appraisal of the situation; I'm suspecting inside information ;-)
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Maybe... but that approach leads to "keep everything, just in case we need it" - which of course GDPR really doesn't like (even the old school Data Protection Act didn't like it either, for that matter).
As things stand, you could probably make some reasonable guesses about what technology might look like in the future. I don't really know much about audio fingerprinting, but lets say you take 20 samples and do some maths on them to end up with the fingerprints. It's not too hard to do that 100 times instead
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What system is going to cost less and would most people prefer to use?
One where when a weakness, or a more accurate, "finger print" * technology is discovered all existing users have to access the system using the potentially comprised existing encoding technology and record new training data.
One where whilst any update processes is underway, both the old and new systems have to be operated and developed concurrently.
Or one where admins can run a script using the original voice recordings and update the "fi
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Then along came biometrics (from the Home Office, who had their strings pulled by MI5, who in turn had theirs pulled by the NSA).
Um, so you're going to blame this on NSA, and why isn't this also required in the US then?
Re:Oh come on now, that's just dumb. (Score:5, Informative)
Problem is, or at least was, that it was not optional (not when I last called them and was "invited" to enroll anyway). Well, technically it might have been because I simply refused to speak when I was told to and after several prompts it gave up, but there was no indication that you could opt-out and so most people probably did as they were told by the recorded instructions. Consent isn't valid if it's only given under coercion, if people only do it because they have to (or think they have to) then they haven't consented.
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But insofar as opt-in/opt-outs and the GDPR are concerned, the tax collectors all ready have your personal information and they aren't going to delete it no matter what you want. It is necessary for them to collect and retain it, so another drop in that bucket is hardly a big deal. Maybe they should ha
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Of course I had to call them, I don't just ring the tax man for a chat. They have all the information they need for tax purposes yes, no one is suggesting/expecting that they would delete that, not sure where you got that idea. What they don't need for tax purposes is your voice print. Giving the government this is certainly extra information they didn't have before. They have created a large government-controlled biometric database, of a type never previously collected in the UK, without the informed, legi
Not exactly obvious this is optional (Score:1)
I encountered this for the first time yesterday when having to call HMRC. I don't recall the automated message indicating that registration was optional. I simply stayed silent and mashed the 0 key on my telephone. The system did attempt to get me to say the phrase multiple times, but eventually gave up and put me through to a human with registering. However, I suspect that the average user will realise that they can stay quiet to sidestep the registration.
"My voice is my username" would be better (Score:1)
One still needs a password, which should be secret, not public.
Just wondering (Score:1)
Is there IVR as well to confirm you are actually saying the phrase as well as the repetition to confirm it is the same person saying it?
What if you said (in response to "please repeat the phrase" prompt) "Go fuck yourself" each time? Would that become the passphrase?
Voice change? (Score:1)
Great...
until your voice changes.
Missing something (Score:3)
The voices of millions of taxpayers have been analyzed and stored by HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) without consent, privacy campaigners say.
and
The Voice ID scheme, which was launched last year, asks callers to repeat the phrase "my voice is my password" to register.
Once this task is complete, they can use the phrase to confirm their identity when managing their taxes.
Responding to the request "repeat the phrase 'my voice is my password' the register" is giving consent - that the government agency might misuse the data is not the same as the government agency is misusing the data. This appears to be a case of "might" not "is".
Can you ... (Score:2)
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I want to use the phrase that pays....
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In the British computer game "Uplink" by Introversion one of the biometric locks you need to bypass actually uses the exact same sentence "My Voice is My Password. Verify me."