A group of Republican senators led by Mike Crapo sent a letter to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), expressing concerns about the agency’s partnership with facial-recognition system developer ID.me.
This raises a host of serious concerns regarding taxpayers’ privacy and civil liberties. Read here to see a full list of questions and concerns Senate Republicans are raising: https://t.co/69WtIuAKST
— Senator Mike Crapo (@MikeCrapo) February 3, 2022
In the letter, the group expressed deep concern \”for many reasons,\” including \”the sad history of data breaches\” by the government. As an example, senators cited the 2015 attacks on the Office of Personnel Management, which compromised the information of millions of current and former federal employees and led to the theft of 21.5 million Social Security numbers.
The group also cited the IRS report from 2019, which estimated that it faces 1.4 billion cyberattacks per year.
«It is quite likely that ID.me could become a prime target for cybercriminals, given the personal information of about 70 million people, including biometric data,» the senators wrote.
They asked the agency a number of questions intended to shed light on the partnership between the IRS and the facial-recognition system provider. The senators want to know whether the IRS took due diligence to ensure the protection of taxpayers’ information before approving the partnership.
They also asked whether the ID.me system had undergone an independent cybersecurity audit.
In the summer of 2022, the IRS planned to connect the online account to a facial-recognition system. Users would have to register an ID.me account and submit a copy of their ID, a utility bill, and their own video selfie. The senators called the last item \”the most intrusive element of the verification process,\” because it cannot be easily replaced by a password.
In January, ID.me confirmed the use of a vast database for biometric identification.
In June 2021, due to facial-recognition system errors, many Americans lost unemployment benefits.
In April, Senator Ron Wyden proposed to ban government agencies from purchasing biometric data from private companies without a court order.
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