IRS is exploring alternatives to selfie verification with ID.me

The Internal Revenue Service is reconsidering alternatives to ID.me, the controversial identity verification system already used by states and other federal agencies, following public crackdown on the idea that taxpayers will need to take selfies to access your IRS.gov accounts.

A Treasury official told CBS MoneyWatch that the agency was looking for alternatives to the software.

The IRS announced in November its partnership with ID.me, under which taxpayers would have to register with the company to access their IRS.gov accounts to view their tax payment history or access your tax transcripts. The deal received little scrutiny until this month, when security investigator Brian Krebs documented the process of verifying his identity by uploading documents, attempting to take a selfie and connecting with an agent via video chat.

“Big Brother Tactics”

Lawmakers and civil liberties groups called the process invasive.

“This is a very, very bad idea on the part of the IRS. It will further weaken the privacy of Americans,” said Ted Lieu, a Democrat from California. dit on Twitter. “The IRS must reverse this Big Brother tactic, NOW.”

Senator Ron Wyden, a Democrat representing Oregon, said he was “very disturbed” by the development.

In a statement, a Treasury spokesman reiterated that ID.me accounts would not be required to file tax returns and said the agency was trying to balance ease of access with the agency’s defense against the criminals.

“The IRS’s lack of funding for computer modernization has made it impossible for the IRS to invest in state-of-the-art technology. “This includes ID.me, which meets the standards of the National Institute of Security Technology and is used by various government agencies,” the spokesman said.

Irregonable

Civil rights advocates have long pointed out that facial recognition is less accurate for people with darker skin tones than for people with lighter skin. Face-to-face technology led to the unlawful arrest of a man for theft and the fact that members of Congress were mistakenly linked to a database of photos.

“Regardless of whether the IRS needs a new way to verify identity, they should not use facial recognition, especially when there is a lack of regulation on the use of facial imaging and other biometric data,” Jeramie said. Scott, Senior Lawyer at the Electronic Privacy Information Center. “Especially when … they plan to outsource this identification to a third-party company that will now also collect personal information, creating another goal for your information to be lost,” he said.

Once a user has registered with ID.me, the company will have to share their information with law enforcement upon request, according to the Surveillance Technology Supervision Project or STOP. While users may revoke ID.me’s access to their data, the software must retain it for years to protect themselves from fraud, which can put identity theft at risk.

EPIC, STOP, Fight For The Future and three other civil rights groups have launched a petition asking the IRS to revoke the contract. The petition has already received more than 1,000 signatures, according to Fight For The Future.

ID.me founder and CEO Blake Hall maintained that ID.me has high security standards that make online access safer and more accessible to taxpayers than the previous methods used by the IRS, which typically required users to have a credit report. Hall said ID.me has stopped “tens of thousands” of potential attacks on the IRS that could have led to the theft of taxpayers’ identities.

“What we’re doing is just the digital equivalent of what every American does to open a bank account,” Hall said.

A company spokesman said 9 out of 10 users can successfully self-verify with ID.me and that the process takes 5 minutes on average.

However, due to the ubiquity of ID.me, this unsuccessful 10% is a large number of people. Since last year, when ID.me contracted with more than half of the U.S. states to administer unemployment benefits, there have been countless complaints from people whose funds were incorrectly suspended or not they could be verified because they did not have it. the appropriate documents, could not access the Internet or for other reasons.