The IRS's Abandoned Facial Recognition Is Just the Tip of a Harmful Biometric Iceberg

All it took was public outrage, a widespread campaign, and political condemnation for the IRS to reverse its plans to require facial recognition for access to certain online services. In abandoning its intention to require tax-payers to upload images of their government-issued IDs and video selfies to controversial third-party company ID.me, the IRS has acknowledged that Americans shouldn't have to sacrifice their privacy for security. But the controversy around ID.me has somewhat eclipsed the broader and more concerning context of biometric identification technologies. Coverage of the IRS's announcement has in many cases not addressed the fact that millions of less advantaged individuals in the United States have already been forced to have their faces scanned by ID.me to access government services. ID.me has contracts with 10 federal agencies and has been verifying identities for the IRS's Child Tax Credit Update Portal since last year.