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United States Government Privacy

Washington Post Editors: America's IRS Shouldn't Make You Scan Your Face (washingtonpost.com) 59

Posted by EditorDavid from the saving-face dept.
The Washington Post's editorial board announces its position in "The Post's view," a section of its site which officially "represent the views of The Washington Post as an institution, as determined through debate among members of the Editorial Board." Its newest position?

America's Internal Revenue Service "should not make you scan your face to see your tax returns." The Internal Revenue Service might soon force every American who wants to access their taxes online to record a selfie of themselves and submit to facial recognition to verify their identity. The IRS wants to start this extra verification procedure this summer. That would be a mistake. This cannot be the only way to access an account online, as 90 percent of tax filers currently do.

Requiring facial recognition could prevent a substantial number of people from accessing their accounts. Low-income Americans often lack the necessary technology, and research shows people of color are more likely to be misidentified. There are equally serious concerns about privacy and what will happen to the potentially more than 100 million selfies the IRS will collect. Cutting down on fraud is a worthy goal, but facial recognition should not be introduced so swiftly without clear guardrails around the data.... [T]here is no federal law regulating how this sensitive information can be used. And let's not forget that hackers exposed the personal information of more than 140 million Americans when they broke into Equifax — itself once an IRS verification company....

There have been encouraging reports that the IRS is reconsidering its sole reliance on ID.me for online verification for website access. At a minimum, the IRS must offer other verification options and clearly articulate guidelines on what happens to all facial data.
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Washington Post Editors: America's IRS Shouldn't Make You Scan Your Face More

Washington Post Editors: America's IRS Shouldn't Make You Scan Your Face

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  • It's not YOUR face you send (Score:4, Insightful)

    by nospam007 ( 722110 ) * on Sunday February 06, 2022 @05:20PM (#62243903)

    You obviously have to send the face of the guy you stole the ID from.
    Thank God for social media.

    You could send YOUR face to steal his IRS account, but if he doesn't pay his taxes you're fucked.

  • The phishing will be fun. (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 06, 2022 @05:30PM (#62243933)
    Sirs please kindly upload the selfie sirs. Please to be receiving your tax returns provide quickly provide the selfie video requested.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      yes thank you close ticket

  • Paper, please? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by kmoser ( 1469707 ) on Sunday February 06, 2022 @05:41PM (#62243959)
    If only we already had thousands of government offices distributed throughout the country whose job entailed verifying people's SSN and identity which they could provide to the IRS. Oh, wait, we already do: the DMV.

    • If only we already had thousands of government offices distributed throughout the country whose job entailed verifying people's SSN and identity which they could provide to the IRS. Oh, wait, we already do: the DMV.

      My state doesn't have a DMV.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gtall ( 79522 )

      The state DMV are not the federal gov.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by kmoser ( 1469707 )
        I didn't say they were. But the existence of a DMV (or your state's equivalent), and its role, implies there's no need for additional for-profit 3rd parties to do that job, since your DMV (or equivalent) could transmit that data to the Feds with your approval.

      • But, with the requirement for RealID, state licenses now count as official federal ID.

        https://www.dhs.gov/real-id [dhs.gov]

        So, why did they go through all that work if they are going to not use them for the IRS?

  • If you can vote without ID.... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by CubicleZombie ( 2590497 ) on Sunday February 06, 2022 @05:42PM (#62243969)

    then you should be able to file your taxes without ID.

    (yeah, trolling...)

    I, for one, never "access" my tax returns online. I file using the requisite third party service using a completely meaningless PIN number, and then cross my fingers. It's a one way process.

    And we can all still file by mail. The envelope doesn't even need a return address.

    Crap.. This is all absurd.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by PopeRatzo ( 965947 )

      If you can vote without ID....

      Then you live in one of the only 14 states that do not require ID to vote. There is some kind of voter ID law in 36 states, and all states require ID to register to vote except California, but in that state, if you register to vote by mail without an ID, you have to show your ID when you show up to vote.

      So really, if you can vote without ID, you probably don't live in the United States.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

  • Just not the government. If you trust Apple more than the govt, there's a serious problem.

    • Just not the government. If you trust Apple more than the govt, there's a serious problem.

      No, Apple doesn't have your facial image. That's not how FaceID works. The image never leaves your phone. ID.me on the other hand, would have your image on their servers.

      • No, Apple doesn't have your facial image. That's not how FaceID works. The image never leaves your phone. ID.me on the other hand, would have your image on their servers.

        Not only does your FaceID image not leave the phone, it isn't even available to anything outside the Secure Enclave, which is capable to return whether the stored information matches the face in front of the phone or not. The information cannot leave the Secure Enclave. And it is unlikely that the Secure Enclave actually has your image. What it has is a depth map that can be used to match your face, not an image.

    • Corporations didn't murder 100 million of their own customers in the 20th century alone, but never mind that.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jvkjvk ( 102057 )

        >Corporations didn't murder 100 million of their own customers in the 20th century alone

        Oh really.

        Between the pollution, working conditions, stress, etc. I would bet you that the real number of people that corps have killed is much higher than only 100 million. And we are all customers of corps.

  • Its coming. Like death and taxes, eradication of privacy is a certainty. What have you got to hide? Your face metrics are not private anyway. Unless you wear the hijab.

  • Let's not forget it was a private company (Score:4, Insightful)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Sunday February 06, 2022 @06:12PM (#62244065)
    People generally just assume this kind of thing happens because of big government. But most of the time if you look into it you'll find a private corporation greasing the right palms to get their product paid for by taxpayers.

    • People generally just assume this kind of thing happens because of big government. But most of the time if you look into it you'll find a private corporation greasing the right palms to get their product paid for by taxpayers.

      I know, right? If only there were some sort of chief executive ultimately in charge of the IRS who we could talk to about this.

      • mandating their product. Not by name (there are laws against that) but defacto in a way that only their product works for the purpose.

        My stove is like that. It has the stupid button things that have to be depressed or they burners shut down. Mandated by law on new stoves of the type I have and the company who makes them has a recent patent on them. The things are legendary for how much they suck, and make my little wok useless.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gtall ( 79522 )

      Actually, this little gem goes back to Reagan. He declared gov. was the problem and hence we needed to farm out its operations to those nice corporations. They gleefully took all that wasn't nailed down. Add to that years of underfunding the IRS because the Republicans cannot stomach paying taxes, and you get this clusterfuck. The sainted American people decided that skipping out on taxes and cheating the government, i.e., the rest of us taxpayers, made them smart, so smart, in fact, they elected Dear Leade

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by DarkOx ( 621550 )

      Yeah its almost like having federal bureaucracy so massive nobody can ever be clearly accountable for anything enables waste fraud and abuse.

  • Okay I'll let them selfie me (Score:3)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Sunday February 06, 2022 @06:12PM (#62244067)

    In return, I want each and every IRS revenuer's face to be plastered on a public website.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gtall ( 79522 )

      Why? if you don't like taxes, then help elect those who will cut them. That's how we got the enormous gov. debt.

      • I don't mind taxes. I don't like getting my privacy raped to pay them though.

        My thinking is, if they want our mugshots, we should be able to demand theirs also. You know, to balance things.

  • The internet never forgets (Score:5, Informative)

    by monkeyporn ( 663471 ) on Sunday February 06, 2022 @06:17PM (#62244081)

    The third party processor, ID.me, is my main concern. They use the data they collect in conjunction with a shopping portal. They keep any data for 7.5 years after account close. You can request they delete the data but, buried in their site, is a page that makes it clear that they can and will likely refuse such requests under the guise of fraud protection. Their "Help" and "Contact Us" areas do not allow for questions regarding their storage or security policies and practices. They seem to put a large effort to making sure none of the questions they do answer are framed and answered in a way that might cause you to think of such things.

  • With the advance of technology shouldn't we have arse-scanning by now ? --- because thats all the IRS deserves.

    "Und Wildsau in die hose scheibt"

  • I once had my IRS account compromised and the criminals could have gotten a nice fat refund check. Fortunately, I caught it and since then I get a PIN mailed to me every year. As long as face ID verification isn't the only way to gain access, then what's the problem? If you're worried about having your face tied to your IRS account, just remember the government has tons of data on you, just ask the DMV or passport office.

  • indeed a terrible idea (Score:4, Insightful)

    by e**(i pi)-1 ( 462311 ) on Sunday February 06, 2022 @07:05PM (#62244221) Homepage Journal
    in a time where our faces, voices are online, this is indeed a terrible idea. The Washington post editors are on spot here also by pointing out the possibility to have a database of faces leaked. No problem also to get the "password" of a person that is much in public. Public persons like politicians would be quite vulnerable to be hacked.
  • If only we knew who was in charge of America's IRS. If only there were some sort of chief executive who might help.
  • In the USA and many other western countries you are not given a unique identifier that is strongly tied to you. Unless you get a passport or drivers license (or commit a crime) the government has nothing that you can use to prove you are who you say you are. The result is every interaction you have with a government agency, bank, doctor, school or employer ends up requiring you to give your full name, a credit card number, your address and everywhere you have lived for the last 5 years, your email address
    • You're right inasmuch as the social security number is not supposed to be, strictly speaking, a citizen ID number. It often acts as such, but I think the idea of a true citizen ID number would be offensive to many in the USA. Personally I think it's silly to fuss over the selfie thing. I've known people who've been the victims of tax return fraud, and if better identification can prevent that, then we should try. I agree there's a limit, but I don't think a selfie crosses that line.

  • and the waiting list is months long for a plastic surgeon to give me a new face. All because of COVID-19 tying up hospitals with idiots who won't vax.

    Good news everyone, Jeff Bezos only owes $8 in taxes.

  • Don't you make a copy of it before sending it to the IRS?
  • FTA: "The IRS wants to start this extra verification procedure this summer. " I had to do this just last week. So it's already being rolled out.

  • Of course the Washington Post editors don't want to send their selfie in. Then people would realize they're really Russian agents.

    Alternative - Then people would realize they're lizard people.

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