Should you be worried about facial recognition?
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Proponents say the technology is an effective tool for catching bad guys and verifying who we say we are. Critics counter that it is an invasion of privacy, potentially inaccurate and racially biased — and may even result in wrongful arrests. Because of the complexity of the issue, AARP has not taken a position at this time. Get instant access to members-only products and hundreds of discounts, a free second membership, and a subscription to AARP the Magazine. As a consumer, you may welcome the ease of unlocking your smartphone by showing your face. However, you may be less keen about the prospect of having to upload a selfie and use your mug to access tax data online. Yet that was what the had been asking people to do — until the agency announced a change in plans in early February.
Think about the possibility of, for example, discovering the name and other details of an attractive stranger you pass on the street.
Government s Use of Facial Recognition Under Scrutiny
IRS decides to allow other ID verification methods after privacy advocates raise alarms
Getty Images Facial recognition has long been a divisive issue.Proponents say the technology is an effective tool for catching bad guys and verifying who we say we are. Critics counter that it is an invasion of privacy, potentially inaccurate and racially biased — and may even result in wrongful arrests. Because of the complexity of the issue, AARP has not taken a position at this time. Get instant access to members-only products and hundreds of discounts, a free second membership, and a subscription to AARP the Magazine. As a consumer, you may welcome the ease of unlocking your smartphone by showing your face. However, you may be less keen about the prospect of having to upload a selfie and use your mug to access tax data online. Yet that was what the had been asking people to do — until the agency announced a change in plans in early February.
IRS moves away from facial recognition
Under a controversial new identity verification process that had been scheduled to kick in this summer , taxpayers who wanted to would have provide d a photo from a , state ID or passport and have it matched against an uploaded selfie captured via smartphone or webcam. The IRS was planning to use a private Virginia-based verification company called ID.me that has its facial recognition technology in use at other federal agencies and in 30 states, in some instances to verify the identities of people filing unemployment insurance claims. ID.me says its technology helps combat fraud perpetrated by people using , and that it has prevented the loss of hundreds of billions of dollars in government benefits over the past 18 months. The company’s accounts are also used to verify the identity of military veterans so that on products ranging from Oakley sunglasses to HP laptops. But critics such as Caitlin Seeley George, campaign director at the Boston-based digital advocacy group Fight for the Future, called for the IRS to halt the plan. “Unlike a Social Security number or credit card number, you can never change your face.” — Jennifer Lynch, Electronic Frontier Foundation “This is an example of just how facial recognition has spread widely to a point where it is touching so many parts of really everyone’s lives,” George said before the IRS announcement. “In this specific case, it’s really raised to a level of concern because everyone has to do taxes.” She worrie d that a database of biometric scans, images of government IDs and those selfies would “more than likely be shared with different departments within the government” and also become a huge target for hackers, she said. George was concerned that ID.me’s privacy language was “obviously very vague and unsettling,” suggesting that it retains the right to share data with other partners under certain circumstances. ID.me declined an AARP request for an interview. Instead, the company directed AARP to its blog, where a distinction was made between one-to-one (1:1) , which is similar to the way you unlock a smartphone, and one-to-many (1:many), in which a photo of your face is compared with others in a database. “Selfies are critical to verifying identity and preventing fraud,” the company wrote. “We use ‘1:1’ matching for identity verification, and ‘1:many’ for fraud detection. We do not share selfies with any government agency unless fraud is detected.” ID.me added that “1:many is internal to ID.me and does not involve any external or government database. It occurs once during enrollment and exists to make sure a single attacker is not registering multiple identities. The selfie is turned into a mathematical representation of a face and then compared against multiple accounts to see if a single person has registered multiple different identities that do not belong to them.” As part of a LinkedIn post in late January, ID.me founder and CEO Blake Hall wrote: “We avoid disclosing methods we use to stop identity theft and organized crime as it jeopardizes their effectiveness.” But after the IRS backed away from its facial recognition plans, Hall also retreated. He announced that ID.me would provide its government clients an alternative verification option that does not involve facial recognition.New manual review offered
ID.me in late February put together what it is calling a Human in the Loop team of reviewers to weigh in if an ID card or selfie match is rejected during the automated process with the company’s government partners. If the information passes this manual review, users can continue identity verification through the automated process. If the document or selfie does n't pass muster, then users are directed to a one-to-one live video chat to verify with a human agent. AARP NEWSLETTERS %{ newsLetterPromoText }% %{ description }% Subscribe Flowers & Gifts 25% off sitewide and 30% off select items See more Flowers & Gifts offers > "Unlike a Social Security number or credit card number, you can never change your face,” she says. “Once we are all in a face recognition database, then it becomes possible to attach those databases to camera networks that are out in society and identify people as they walk about through society.”Think about the possibility of, for example, discovering the name and other details of an attractive stranger you pass on the street.