IRS says it will back away from facial recognition amid outcry (yahoo.com) Having to provide more and more personal information to the government, including your face for 'identification' purposes serving what purpose? Besides the fact that many features can be distorted and changed, the government's two step further into citizen's privacy will expand, and expand, and expand.... I am glad that the outcry was loud enough to have this reaction. But give it a year or two, and I'm sure they will find another way to get it through.
Yep, an overstep currently averted. They don't need this for taxes and honestly, if they were networking with government and state databases, they likely already have access to the images regardless. I can see both side of this but I would err on the side of privacy everytime.
IT WAS A STUPID IDEA: The IRS: We won’t use facial identification tech after all. "The Internal Revenue Service has done an about-face on its plan to use facial recognition technology via a company called ID.me." "You'll no longer need to worry about needing to submit a video selfie to access irs.gov." Yeah, that's a big problem.
While there certainly risks and issues that should be (and aren't always) properly addressed, this feels to me like more of a knee-jerk reaction to scary new technology rather than a considered approach to best achieving all the (often conflicting) aims. The idea of unilaterally banning an entire class of technology (and probably anything spun up by the media or politicians to sound like it) just because it has security aspects to address is certainly a step too far. On that basis, they should just ban any kind of on-line submission of data to government services and force everyone to return to handling everything on paper and in person (at least until they remember the limitations and risks of that and pull yet another U-turn). It does seem a little odd to object to the IRS having personal data since they obviously need to know exactly who is accessing their services somehow and the people accessing those services are submitting vast amounts of personal data about their finances by definition. If you don't trust the IRS with facial recognition data, aren't you masking a much, much bigger issue?
"We've asked ID.me, the company slated to provide facial recognition to the IRS, for comment. Under the plan, the IRS would have used the technology to authenticate users hoping to file taxes online or otherwise use the IRS' internet services. The approach was intended as a fraud prevention tool, and would have been available by the summer." would love to see a list of how many politicians bought this stock before the deal and sold before this was announced
Facial recognition for the IRS should never happen. What are they going to do watch you from every CCTV camera when you get lunch and bill you for $4 because you bought a cheeseburger instead of paying them back for the money you owe to the IRS?
When applying automation to enforcement of your laws makes the application of those laws hopelessly totalitarian, maybe that's a time to rethink the value of some of those laws. So while I support prohibiting the government from using facial recognition now as a short term measure, it won't make a lick of difference unless we reform our extremely invasive bureaucracies. How do we do that? I don't know, people are too easily lead by consequences. I guess I'm saying I don't have much hope for the future and freedom loving folks are best off isolating themselves from society the best they can. Go rural and don't look back.
Boy, the left would really blow a rod if they wanted to use facial recognition to vote wouldn't they? By the time the idiotic and doped up masses wake up we will be firmly in a police state.
Well said. Some people see a single goal, and a means to get there, disregarding the damage of the means to get there, the ripple effect, and the unintended consequences. Tunnel vision is alive and well.....
People are more guided by chemical reward centres in their brain than they would like to admit. Principle goes out the window for a few endorphins.
