Sign the petition: Demand President Biden end IRS facial recognition!

The IRS wants taxpayers to provide credit history and submit to facial recognition just to access their tax information online. They’ve hired a third party company called ID.me to verify user identity even though it’s common knowledge that facial recognition technology has racial and gender biases.

Anyone who cares about privacy and racial justice should be up in arms. That’s why we’re pressuring President Biden to end the contract between the IRS and ID.me.

Sign the petition: Demand President Biden end facial recognition at the IRS!

ID.me’s verification process is so invasive that a technology reporter at Gizmodo felt “sufficiently creeped out” and refused to finish it.1 If ID.me is allowed to continue working with the IRS then every tax filer will have to give over personal information – like photo IDs and access to consumer credit reports – just to access their tax information online.

But this gets much worse! The CEO at ID.me got caught lying to journalists about how it uses facial recognition2 and admitted that the company uses Amazon Rekognition, which is well known to have racial biases.

The IRS already 1) has enough of our sensitive income information, and 2) is scarily underfunded. They shouldn’t be spending more of their resources on an untrustworthy third party vendor who wants to scoop up more of your information and subject you to racist facial recognition technology.

The Treasury Department is already asking the IRS to reconsider this contract, but President Biden can end this private contract with the stroke of a pen. That’s why we’re taking the issue directly to him.

Sign the petition: Demand President Biden end facial recognition at the IRS!

Sources:
1. Gizmodo, “IRS Will Require Facial Recognition Scans to Access Your Taxes Online,” January 19, 2022.
2. Axios, “ID.me CEO apologizes for misstatements on IRS facial recognition,” January 27, 2022.