Facial Verification Won't Fight Fraud

With the US economy just starting to recover from Covid-19 and millions still out of work, Congress authorized expanded unemployment benefits that supplement state assistance programs. While it's laudable to fortify struggling Americans during an ongoing crisis, bad actors have made unemployment fraud a serious problem. Unfortunately, the many states seeking to stop fraud through surveillance are installing biased systems that may do far more harm than good. Twenty-one states have turned to high-tech biometric ID verification services that use computer vision to determine if people are who they claim to be. This is the same technology that allows users to unlock their phone with their face--a one-to-one matching process where software infers if your facial features match the ones stored on a single template.