IRS Ends Plan to Force Individuals to Submit to Face Verification

The IRS announced today it is reversing course and will not go through with a plan to require individuals to use the privacy identity verification service ID.me to access the IRS website. The plan would have forced individuals to submit biometric data to ID.me, who would have held on to that data for a minimal of seven years. ID.me had previously misled the public about the exten of its use of facial recognition technology. EPIC criticized IRS’s the lack of meaningful privacy assessment and is working with other public interest organizations to push back against the use of privacy-invasive facial recognition verification by other government agencies.