Lawmakers urge IRS to drop agreement with ID.me, the facial recognition company which promises to verify the identity of taxpayers with a selfie.
Four Democrats in Congress wrote Monday to IRS Commissioner Chuck Rettig urging the agency to pause the use of facial recognition technology for taxpayers logging into their IRS.gov accounts. citing concerns about privacy, data security, and access for people without Internet access.
“[M]Millions of Americans use the IRS website annually for a variety of vital functions, and as a result, each of them will be forced to trust a private contractor with some of their most sensitive data. ” Representatives Ted Lieu, Anna Eshoo, Pramila Jayapal and Yvette Clarke said in a letter to Rettig, “We urge the IRS to stop this plan and consult with a wide variety of stakeholders before deciding on an alternative.”
Lawmakers said using a third party to verify taxpayers’ identities endangers them by gathering sensitive information in a biometric database that would be “a primary target for cyberattacks.” They cite an incident in 2019 in which the computer system of a government contractor was broken, exposing thousands of American faces and license plates.
At the same time, verification software “discriminates against those who cannot afford reliable broadband and the necessary video capabilities,” they write.
“We are in the early stages of overseeing this issue and all options, from hearings to legislation, remain on the table,” Lieu told CBS MoneyWatch through a spokesman. His office has not contacted ID.me directly, he said.
ID.me CEO Blake Hall says “tens of thousands” of scammers have been arrested
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Face recognition technology has generally been shown to be less accurate when it comes to identifying people with darker skin tones, as well as black, Asian, and Native American faces. Other factors, such as the lighting of a room or the device that someone is using, are also involved.
“For biometrics, lighting is a huge, huge challenge,” said Rick Song, CEO of Person Identification Verification. “Aside from skin tones, you also have a device challenge. If you use low-quality devices, that has a big impact.”
“Lack of transparency”
ID.me has also obscured how its technology works, according to lawmakers. The company has long claimed that its facial matching technology, which is used by more than half of the unemployment systems in the United States and several federal agencies, is more accurate than other alternatives.
Specifically, ID.me said it did not use a technology called “one-to-many” matching, which tries to relate a person’s face to an image database, and which ID.me called “complex and problematic.”
But late last month, ID.me CEO Blake Hall backed down on this claim, admitting that ID.me uses one-on-one agreement to check when a person opens an account to protect -scamers who try to register with multiple identities. Admission came after internal discussions that ID.me’s public stance contradicted its practices, Cyberscoop reported.
“Given these issues, it is simply wrong to force millions of Americans to trust this new protocol,” lawmakers wrote.
On Monday afternoon, the IRS said it would drop ID.me over the next few weeks, and move on to a different identity authentication process that did not involve facial recognition.
An IRS spokesman previously told CBS MoneyWatch that the agency had long wanted to strengthen its security systems, but that it had been hampered by a lack of congressional funding for technology upgrades.
For now, anyone who registers on their first IRS.gov account will need to go through ID.me verification. Taxpayers who have previously set up IRS.gov accounts will be able to use their old sign-ups until this summer.
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- internal revenue service
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