The IRS was going to do what now?

After some backlash, the IRS is scrapping plans to require taxpayers to send their face to a third-party company to verify identity. I really can’t believe such ideas make it out of a brainstorming session. Meanwhile, asking for ID to vote is racist.

ninja sends in the Washington Post’s coverage;

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.

“The IRS takes taxpayer privacy and security seriously, and we understand the concerns that have been raised,” IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig said in a statement announcing the decision. “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.”

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), one of nearly two dozen members of Congress who had urged the IRS to halt the plan, said in a statement Monday, “I appreciate that the administration recognizes that privacy and security are not mutually exclusive and no one should be forced to submit to facial recognition to access critical government services.”

Earlier Monday, Wyden had urged the IRS in a letter to abandon working with ID.me, calling it “simply unacceptable to force Americans to submit to scans using facial recognition technology as a condition of interacting with the government online.”

“The infrastructure that powers digital identity, particularly when used to access government websites, should be run by the government,” he wrote.

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.

There’s more at the source, but it might be behind a paywall. I personally like the Disable Javascript extension for such sites.

Category: "Teh Stoopid", "Your Tax Dollars At Work", Government Incompetence