A group of US senators demanded that the US Department of Labor reconsider or completely refuse cooperation with the supplier of the ID.me facial recognition system.
Facial recognition should not be required to access unemployment insurance or any other essential government services. After successfully pushing the IRS to transition away from its use of private facial recognition, now I’m pushing the Department of Labor to do the same. pic.twitter.com/SLfFlA7XD2
— Ron Wyden (@RonWyden) February 15, 2022
In an open letter, Elizabeth Warren, Ron Wyden and Sherrod Brown criticized the company for its lack of “transparency”. They urged the agency to help states find alternatives to the vetting system for people who apply for unemployment benefits.
Many state and federal government agencies have outsourced their core technology infrastructure to the private sector, lawmakers say.
“It is of particular concern that one of the most well-known vendors in the field, ID.me, not only uses facial recognition and is not transparent about its processes and results, but also often makes users wait a long time for manual verification of requests after an automated scanning system could not recognize them,” the senators wrote.
The senators urged the department to work with the US General Services Administration to create a secure citizen screening system. They also proposed making the login.gov agency service available to the states.
ID.me previously confirmed that it uses identity verification based on “1 to many”although before that the company claimed to use the system “1 to 1”.
Against this background, a number of politicians and human rights activists called on government agencies to refuse to cooperate with ID.me. In response, the company announcedwhich would make facial recognition optional for public sector partners and also allow users to delete their data.
privacy experts greeted concessions from ID.me management. However, they noted that the root of the problem is not in the facial recognition system itself, but in the provision of access to basic government services by external contractors.
Recall that in February, senators called on the US Internal Revenue Service not to use the ID.me facial recognition system.
A day later, the agency refused to use biometric verification of the identity of taxpayers. The US General Services Administration also refused to use ID.me’s facial recognition system.
In June 2021, many Americans lost their unemployment benefits due to errors in the ID.me facial recognition system.
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