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

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
richard.rubin@wsj.com
https://twitter.com/SaundersWSJ
Laura.Saunders@wsj.com
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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