IRS abandons facial recognition plan after firestorm of criticism

[mahatmakanejeeves]

I spent two days back in January going through the routine of setting up an ID.me account. It really was a pain. No selfie I took was acceptable. I had an online video conference at 6:20 a.m. to finish setting up my account. I was already up, and the person on the other end was easy to get along with.

I'm all set up and ready to go. I can understand the "firestorm of criticism," though. You really do hand over an awful lot of information to some entity to get access to your IRS account. It is quite disturbing. I've been through the Login.gov procedure too.

I understand that there has to be security when people are accessing accounts at the IRS, but someone didn't have his thinking cap on when he came up with this idea.

Hat tip, the CBS morning news, which had a crawl at the bottom of the screen.

New: The IRS is abandoning its facial recognition requirement after a hellish week of criticism: "No one should be forced to submit to facial recognition to access critical government services,"
@RonWyden
says https://wapo.st/34Fgh8q

Link to tweet

Technology

IRS abandons facial recognition plan after firestorm of criticism

The agency had planned to require taxpayers send video scans of their face to a private company starting this summer

By Drew Harwell
Yesterday at 2:13 p.m. EST | Updated yesterday at 4:04 p.m. EST

The Internal Revenue Service has abandoned its plan to require millions of Americans to submit to a facial recognition check through a private company to access their online tax accounts following a firestorm of criticism from privacy advocates and members of Congress.

The IRS said Monday it would “transition away” from using a face-scanning service offered by the company ID.me in the coming weeks and would develop an additional authentication process that does not involve facial recognition. The IRS said it would also continue to work with “cross-government partners” on additional methods of authentication, but it did not provide a precise time frame for the change or say what the additional authentication process might entail.

The agency originally had said that starting this summer all taxpayers would need to submit a “video selfie” to ID.me to access their tax records and other services on the IRS website. But lawmakers and advocates slammed the idea of mandating the technology’s use nationwide, saying it would unfairly burden Americans without smartphones or computer cameras, would make sensitive data vulnerable to hackers and would subject people of color to a system known to work less accurately on darker skin.

{snip}

The government runs a separate sign-in service, Login.gov, whose leaders told The Washington Post last week that they would not use facial recognition until a “rigorous review has given us confidence that we can do so equitably and without causing harm to vulnerable populations.” ... IRS and Treasury officials did not respond to questions of how the change could affect the two-year, $86 million contract that Treasury signed with ID.me last summer, or what would happen with the personal or facial data that Americans have submitted to ID.me already.

{snip}

CORRECTION

An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that 15 Republican members of the Senate Finance Committee had signed a letter to the IRS. Each party has only 14 members on the committee. The 15th Republican who signed, Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, is not a member of the committee.

By Drew Harwell
Drew Harwell is a technology reporter covering artificial intelligence and the algorithms changing our lives. Twitter https://twitter.com/drewharwell

POLITICS

IRS Retreats From Facial Recognition to Verify Taxpayers’ Identities

Agency’s use of the technology has drawn bipartisan concerns over privacy

By Richard Rubin and Laura Saunders
https://twitter.com/RichardRubinDC
[e-mail]
https://twitter.com/SaundersWSJ
[e-mail]
Updated Feb. 7, 2022 3:51 pm ET

WASHINGTON—The Internal Revenue Service is scrapping its use of a private facial-recognition system to authenticate taxpayers’ identities for online accounts, the agency said Monday after criticism from lawmakers in both parties over privacy concerns.

“Everyone should feel comfortable with how their personal information is secured, and we are quickly pursuing short-term options that do not involve facial recognition,” IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig said in a statement on Monday.

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[mahatmakanejeeves]

1. "I'm hearing major frustration from people who proactively did these IRS face scans: ..."

I am in this cohort.

I'm hearing major frustration from people who proactively did these IRS face scans: “I am not the only person whose biometric information is now in the possession of an unknown government contractor because I needed my own tax records," one told me

Link to tweet

[Farmer-Rick]

2. My account at the IRS was all F*cked up

I ended up having to send my payments.....which was twice as much as Trump paid, through snail mail while DeJoy was f*cking over the postal service.

They had no record of me...... But they were quick to cash my check. They thought I died when my spouse died. What a bunch of F*ckwads.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

3. This experiment was doomed

[mahatmakanejeeves]

4. IRS dodged a cyber minefield by ditching facial recognition

Drew Harwell Retweeted

Analysis | IRS dodged a cyber minefield by ditching facial recognition. Today's Cybersecurity 202 w/
@aaronjschaffer

Link to tweet

The Cybersecurity 202 • Analysis

IRS dodged a cyber minefield by ditching facial recognition

By Joseph Marks
with research by Aaron Schaffer

Today at 7:44 a.m. EST

Welcome to The Cybersecurity 202! I was reacquainted with the neo-noir film “Night Moves” this weekend, which I highly recommend. Not to be confused with the Bob Seger song, which isn’t half bad either.

Below: Lawmakers are taking another shot at mandatory cyber incident reporting, and there’s a new threat of data thefts from tech-savvy insider threats.

Cybersecurity advocates are relieved taxpayers won't have to show their faces

A wave of relief swept through the cybersecurity community yesterday as the Internal Revenue Service scrapped plans to make taxpayers share the most personal of personal information: the identifying features of their faces. ... The now-scrapped system run by by contractor ID.me had prompted dire warnings from Democratic and Republican lawmakers and privacy and security advocates, who said it could make taxpayers even more vulnerable to damaging hacking and privacy violations, as Drew Harwell reports.

“Facial recognition technology is based on your face and that’s something you can’t change easily. Once you lose control of it, it’s extremely hard, if not impossible, to regain control of your identity,” Jeramie D. Scott, senior counsel with the Electronic Privacy Information Center, told me.

The program, which was already being rolled out, would have required all taxpayers to submit a “video selfie” to ID.me to access tax records and other services on the IRS website. The about-face came in a letter to Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), who had urged the IRS to jettison the system, calling it “simply unacceptable to force Americans to submit to scans using facial recognition technology as a condition of interacting with the government online.”

{snip}

There are nine other federal agencies already using ID.me services — though none for systems as far reaching as the IRS proposal. ... It’s also not clear what will happen with video selfies that people have already submitted to ID.me for IRS services. Here’s more from CyberScoop’s Tonya Riley.

{snip}

Thanks for reading. See you tomorrow.

By Joseph Marks
Joe Marks writes The Cybersecurity 202 newsletter focused on the policy and politics of cybersecurity. He previously covered cybersecurity for Politico and for Nextgov. Twitter https://twitter.com/Joseph_Marks_

By Aaron Schaffer
Aaron Schaffer is a researcher for Technology 202 and Cybersecurity 202 at The Washington Post. Twitter https://twitter.com/aaronjschaffer