IRS 'Looking Into' Alternatives to Face-Scanning After Privacy Complaints - and Long Wait Times (msn.com) 45
Last week America's Internal Revenue Service announced a live-video-feed verification of taxpayer's faces would be required by this summer access online tax service. But now the Washington Post reports that "complaints of confusing instructions and long wait times to complete the sign-up have caused an unknown number to abandon the process in frustration."
"The $86 million ID.me contract with the IRS also has alarmed researchers and privacy advocates who say they worry about how Americans' facial images and personal data will be safeguarded in the years to come." There is no federal law regulating how the data can be used or shared. While the IRS couldn't say what percentage of taxpayers use the agency's website, internal data show it is one of the federal government's most-viewed websites, with more than 1.9 billion visits last year. The partnership with ID.me has drawn anger from some members of Congress, including Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), who tweeted that he was "very disturbed" by the plan and would push the IRS for "greater transparency." Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) called it "a very, very bad idea by the IRS" that would "further weaken Americans' privacy." The Senate Finance Committee is working to schedule briefings with the IRS and ID.me on the issue, a committee aide said.... "No one should be forced to submit to facial recognition as a condition of accessing essential government services," Wyden said in a separate statement. "I'm continuing to seek more information about ID.me and other identity verification systems being used by federal agencies."
A Treasury official said Friday that the department was "looking into" alternatives to ID.me, saying Treasury and the IRS always are interested in improving "taxpayers experience...."
About 70 million Americans who have filed for unemployment insurance, pandemic assistance grants, child tax credit payments or other services already have been scanned by the McLean, Va.-based company, which says its client list includes 540 companies; 30 states, including California, Florida, New York and Texas; and 10 federal agencies, including Social Security, Labor and Veterans Affairs.... Equifax, the credit-reporting company that previously confirmed taxpayers' data for the IRS, had its $7 million contract suspended in 2017 after hackers exposed the personal information of 148 million people...
[ID.me] says 9 of 10 applicants can verify their identity through a self-service face scan in five minutes or less. Anyone who hits a snag is funneled into the backup video-chat verification process...But some who have tried to verify their identities through ID.me for other purposes have reported agonizing delays: cryptic glitches in Colorado, website errors in Arizona, five-hour waits in North Carolina, days-long waits in California and weeks-long benefit delays in New York. The security blogger Brian Krebs wrote last week that he faced a three-hour wait trying to confirm his IRS account, three months before the tax-filing deadline.... The company said it intends to expand its workforce beyond the 966 agents who now handle video-chat verification for the entire country. It has also opened hundreds of in-person identity-verification centers — replicating, in essence, what government offices have done for decades.
The article also points out that advertising is also a key part of ID.me's operation, with people signing up through their web site asked if they want to subscribe to "offers and discounts" — though the company stresses people do have to opt in. And in addition, the article adds, "If a person is using ID.me to confirm their identity with a government agency, the company will not use that verification information for 'marketing or promotional purposes,' the company's privacy policy says."
But a senior counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center complained to the Post that "We haven't even gone the step of putting regulations in place and deciding if facial recognition should even be used like this. We're just skipping right to the use of a technology that has clearly been shown to be dangerous and has issues with accuracy, disproportionate impact, privacy and civil liberties."
A spokesperson for the U.S. Treasury Department also told Bloomberg News "that any taxpayer who does not want to use ID.me can opt against filing his or her taxes online." "We believe in the importance of protecting the privacy of taxpayers, while also ensuring criminals are not able to gain access to taxpayer accounts," LaManna added, arguing that it's been "impossible" for the IRS to develop its own cutting-edge identification program because of "the lack of funding for IRS modernization."
"The $86 million ID.me contract with the IRS also has alarmed researchers and privacy advocates who say they worry about how Americans' facial images and personal data will be safeguarded in the years to come." There is no federal law regulating how the data can be used or shared. While the IRS couldn't say what percentage of taxpayers use the agency's website, internal data show it is one of the federal government's most-viewed websites, with more than 1.9 billion visits last year. The partnership with ID.me has drawn anger from some members of Congress, including Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), who tweeted that he was "very disturbed" by the plan and would push the IRS for "greater transparency." Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) called it "a very, very bad idea by the IRS" that would "further weaken Americans' privacy." The Senate Finance Committee is working to schedule briefings with the IRS and ID.me on the issue, a committee aide said.... "No one should be forced to submit to facial recognition as a condition of accessing essential government services," Wyden said in a separate statement. "I'm continuing to seek more information about ID.me and other identity verification systems being used by federal agencies."
A Treasury official said Friday that the department was "looking into" alternatives to ID.me, saying Treasury and the IRS always are interested in improving "taxpayers experience...."
About 70 million Americans who have filed for unemployment insurance, pandemic assistance grants, child tax credit payments or other services already have been scanned by the McLean, Va.-based company, which says its client list includes 540 companies; 30 states, including California, Florida, New York and Texas; and 10 federal agencies, including Social Security, Labor and Veterans Affairs.... Equifax, the credit-reporting company that previously confirmed taxpayers' data for the IRS, had its $7 million contract suspended in 2017 after hackers exposed the personal information of 148 million people...
[ID.me] says 9 of 10 applicants can verify their identity through a self-service face scan in five minutes or less. Anyone who hits a snag is funneled into the backup video-chat verification process...But some who have tried to verify their identities through ID.me for other purposes have reported agonizing delays: cryptic glitches in Colorado, website errors in Arizona, five-hour waits in North Carolina, days-long waits in California and weeks-long benefit delays in New York. The security blogger Brian Krebs wrote last week that he faced a three-hour wait trying to confirm his IRS account, three months before the tax-filing deadline.... The company said it intends to expand its workforce beyond the 966 agents who now handle video-chat verification for the entire country. It has also opened hundreds of in-person identity-verification centers — replicating, in essence, what government offices have done for decades.
The article also points out that advertising is also a key part of ID.me's operation, with people signing up through their web site asked if they want to subscribe to "offers and discounts" — though the company stresses people do have to opt in. And in addition, the article adds, "If a person is using ID.me to confirm their identity with a government agency, the company will not use that verification information for 'marketing or promotional purposes,' the company's privacy policy says."
But a senior counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center complained to the Post that "We haven't even gone the step of putting regulations in place and deciding if facial recognition should even be used like this. We're just skipping right to the use of a technology that has clearly been shown to be dangerous and has issues with accuracy, disproportionate impact, privacy and civil liberties."
A spokesperson for the U.S. Treasury Department also told Bloomberg News "that any taxpayer who does not want to use ID.me can opt against filing his or her taxes online." "We believe in the importance of protecting the privacy of taxpayers, while also ensuring criminals are not able to gain access to taxpayer accounts," LaManna added, arguing that it's been "impossible" for the IRS to develop its own cutting-edge identification program because of "the lack of funding for IRS modernization."
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Yea, the browser shit is happening more and more, even at work where other departments don't talk to IT before making purchases and pick some shit product that only works in Chrome - their response is exactly as you describe, they're not interested in making it not shit. Spyware is matter of course at this point.
This idea is doomed. (Score:5, Interesting)
Clearly, someone at the IRS has a vested interest in seeing cash flow into the coffers of ID.me. If the goal here was truly and exclusively to mitigate identity theft, there are much cheaper means of doing so that the IRS absolutely has the means to implement. I don't believe this "lack of funding" argument for a nanosecond.
But these heels-dug-in strongly worded statements like "any taxpayer who does not want to use ID.me can opt against filing his or her taxes online." aren't going to stick. Too many people will do precisely that, which will hugely increase the processing costs for the IRS. And then the truth about their funding will be visible to all.
And anyway, if enough people hate this some politician will ride in on that hatred with promises of regulatory laws to block the IRS from doing this, and that will be that.
(I realize that I am making predictions about the future based on the assumption that lots of people agree with me and are willing to make a stand. These are shaky grounds for a prediction. Really, I am just holding on to hope that sanity will win in this case. ID.me is awful).
Looking for alternatives to the IRS... (Score:1, Interesting)
Paid my taxes last year at the end of February. Got a CP80 notice [yahoo.com] this week saying they've credited payments to my tax account, but "haven't received your tax return."
Dafuq? Obviously they DID receive my tax return, else they wouldn't have been able to cash my check that was sent to them in the same damned envelope.
Now they want me to send them a new copy of the original return or else I may lose my credit. SMH.
It's BS like this, the ID.me junk, and the crooks in DC destroying America that just makes people
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Dual use (Score:2, Troll)
Alternatives for secure login (Score:4, Interesting)
Be sure to reach out to login.gov for some advice. Or you know, a working system.
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Is it really better though?
Worry worry (Score:1, Insightful)
Re: Worry worry (Score:2, Interesting)
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People worried about the government having their photo, probably shouldn't look at their drivers licenses or passports. lol.
Agreed.
That's the dumb part of the whole "Oh noes, they want to scan my face" outrage.
The process is this:
You go to the ID.me web site.
You give them your email address
You upload a picture of your driver's license, passport or similar photo id government document.
You give them your social security number
Then using a video camera, you get your face scanned in real-time and their software compares it to the uploaded document to verify that it is
1) a live person
2) the person's face matches the uploaded document
Who? (Score:3)
Re:Who? (Trump, that's who) (Score:5, Informative)
Anyway, that's your explanation. The Trump Admins approved and fast-tracked this contract just to complicate things, and most likely DID NOT adhere to all federal regulations in doing so -- which is why EPIC et al. are confounded by the swift implementation without proper constitutional/congressional discussions vetting requiring facial recognition to file taxes online (but not other ID-contingent things like licenses to drive or firearms, or voting, or international travel documentation).
Ugh, it gets worse the more I think about it...
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This is NOT required for filing. (Score:3)
Re:This is NOT required for filing. (Score:4, Informative)
There is absolutely no relationship between IRS funding and how much money is available for stupidity like wars and mass incarceration.
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Also, the Treasury Dept (incl IRS, US Mint) has a different budget than the Defense Dept (Pentagon) war machine, or Homeland Security (DHS) domestic security apparatus.
Sorry, they are others ways to ID myself... (Score:3)
.
The IRS attitude of ~use ID.me or don't file online~ is not correct. The IRS should do better to make online filing available to everyone who wants to file online, not just those who care little about privacy.
Oh fuck you IRS (Score:3)
Suck it, IRS. I'll just mail you paper. Less hassle for me anyway.
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fscking
Linux-bro, who said I was going to use my own dick on the IRS? More like a rusty chainsaw, mmkay?
Send a message to the IRS (Score:1)
File by paper. It will increase their cost.* Include a letter saying WHY you are filing by paper and copy your Congressperson and Senators and maybe your local news media outlets if you have any.**
*Yes, I know increasing the IRS's cost of doing business means "we the taxpayers will pay for it eventually in the form of higher taxes" but sometimes it's worth paying a little money now to avoid big "what could possibly go wrong"-level problems later.
**In many areas, local news is corporate-owned and local-in-
Fuck that shit (Score:2)
Filing a hardcopy by mail this year...
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It sounds nice, but people who can't understand what services are even affected by this are also unlikely to read all that stuff and fill out all those forms in writing.
They'll post stupid comments about doing it, and then stop at that place with the person outside dressed up as the Statue of Liberty waving an advertisement in the air.
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Most people, I would guess, use tax software for preparing their returns. So, they actually don't have to "fill out all those forms in writing" - although they will have to print them out and prepare an envelope and, perhaps, opt to take a trip to the Post Office to send the forms via certified mail (I really don't know how much good that is -- you could have mailed blank sheets of paper and still have a certified receipt).
But it is true that this change won't directly affect those who file electronically i
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If you're going to use software anyway, you can just use freefillableforms. It's the same amount of work for the IRS. Somebody either checks your return by hand, or they don't.
They have a lot of employees. Rather than cost them more money with a paper return, you simply have to wait 6 months for them to finish all their other work, and then when they run out of other things to do do, they finally process your return. It's just one less game of minesweeper somebody plays at work at the end of the season when
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FreeFillableForms is fine for some but many people want more cross checking and interform transfers, calculations being done automatically for based on prompts rather than reading through the instructions in detail, importing from last year's forms for both simple (name, list of last years DIV/INT which repeat often for longer term investors which helps catch missing 1099s etc) and more complicated (capital loss carry forwards, AMT, computing taxable portion of annuities) aspects. And most people have state
the fine print (Score:2)
Does it say that it has to be your face though?
Some days, I feel like identifying as a facerig panda..
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I've heard they try to compare it to the passport/driver's license picture that you upload (I have no idea if they have access to the relevant government copies of these same documents).
It's already being done. (Score:2)
Fly into the US now and at most airport customs areas you have to have your picture taken.
What's incredulous is this statement
Treasury and the IRS always are interested in improving "taxpayers experience...."
taxation is theft, they're just trying to smile at you while they pull the money out of your wallet.
I'm glad to see that this getting attention. (Score:2)
A couple months ago I logged onto the IRS site to check on my tax transcripts for a past year and they warned me that my account would go away in the middle of 2022 and I would have to use ID.me.
I started that process and got deeper into it than I should have -- but even after uploading my Driver's License, submitting to a face scan, providing my SSN, email address, full name, and a cell phone number, they were still going to require me to engage in a video chat with a "security referee" (I think that's wha
MyGov.gov.au (Score:2)
In Oztralia we have mygov which connects you to all useful government departments.
ID is email address and a password, then it sends a code to your phone.
Hooks up tax, health, social security, veterans affairs, housing, child support, etc
coronavirus support and govid which ties together all your government issued ids including drivers license and passport with photos.
and parents accounts if you are power of attorney.
Tax returns are simple and quick.
just works for me and it's as safe and trustworthy as our go
Can someone explain.... (Score:2)
Humans recognize eachother by their faces all the time, but we don't get upset about it. Mere accuracy can't be behind the issue because humans are actually better than computers at recognizing faces anyways.
If the problem is just a matter of scalability, can you define exactly how many faces does one have to recognize before it is actually a problem? Like, an exact number. a hundred faces per day, a thousand per day, or what?
Re: Can someone explain.... (Score:2)
With cameras everywhere it would become easy to do location tracking for the entire population.
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So it's an issue of scalability, as I said.
But if you can't put any particular number on it and mass facial recognition is somehow wrong, then it follows that people recognizing faces is also wrong, albeit to some lesser degree.
Yeah ~ Right. Try Mailing it (Score:1)
Living in Texas helps a bit (Score:2)
I paid my tax prep guy under $50, his assistant completed everything in under 20 minutes, and I didn't have to deal with any of this facial-recognition mess.