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If you want to see your tax returns, the IRS will ask that you take a photo of your face. Advocates for personal privacy are alarmed by the information that has come to light.
We're informed that the IRS will soon demand customers to scan their faces in order to view their tax returns in a matter of months. Advocates for personal privacy are alarmed by the information that has come to light.
Surveillance Technology Oversight Project head of technology and operations Jackie Singh said the decision "would only lead to additional devastation for Americans when their data is eventually hacked." It is "extremely awful" for anyone who cherish their privacy, she added, and she urged every "tech-aware American" to reject the IRS' use of facial-recognition technology.
Surveillance Technology Oversight Project was contacted for further information on this. Facial recognition is intrusive, error-prone, and ripe for misuse, according to the company's executive director Albert Fox Cahn. Technology, according to him, is prejudiced towards minorities, "women and children," and "the old." This "technology is becoming ubiquitous in contemporary life, given unparalleled capacity to follow us both online and in real space," unfortunately, is becoming increasingly common. Data breaches may occur in a variety of ways. It is "uniquely perilous" for biometric data to fall into the wrong hands, Cahn said. It's possible to alter your SSN and even your last name, but not your face." For the rest of your life, if your biometric data is hacked, you are vulnerable."
America is, I think, on its way to becoming an information-monitoring state. Cahn concurred. In the near future, the United States will be among the most heavily monitored nations in the world. The federal, state, and municipal governments are all increasing the amount of surveillance they carry out on their citizens. Graffiti and stealing are two examples of the kind of low-level crimes that law enforcement agencies are increasingly turning their attention to. We're running out of time to turn this trend around and prevent ourselves from becoming a permanent surveillance state. Yes, a situation of constant observation.
We're witnessing a salesman's foot-in-the-door tactic in action here. However, as Edward Snowden has shown, invasive technology may turn everyone into a suspect after a while.
According to Chris Burt, an editor at Biometric Update, every digital identity verification system, including those that employ face authentication or other biometrics, should address "legitimate data-privacy concerns." He did add, though, that "the agency seems to be having an issue combatting fraud, which robust authentication utilizing facial biometrics might absolutely assist with" However, even if the IRS has a problem with fraud, the "solution" should not be worse than the "disease."
Data breaches are not only conceivable, but they are a certainty. Hackers hacked the IRS network in 2015, taking the personal information of over 100,000 taxpayers, according to the Washington Post. Several years' worth of tax returns and other extremely sensitive information were among the material taken, according to former IRS Commissioner John Koskinen. The burglars "gained access to information from earlier years' tax returns" after "passing a security screen that required users to know the Social Security number, date of birth, residence, and tax filing status," according to the article.
The IRS's new method, ironically, may actually encourage, rather than discourage, fraud. On top of that, governments are ill-equipped to cope with ever-evolving, extremely sophisticated hacking tactics utilized by criminals. When compared to 2020, the US experienced a significant "change" in data breaches "mainly due to the rising amount of phishing attempts, ransomware attacks, and supply chain attacks," says Eva Velasquez, CEO and president at the Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC). More than 5.6 million US employees' fingerprints have already been compromised by cybercriminals. 80 percent of American citizens have already had their personal information taken by Chinese hackers. This time, they'll be for more personal information, and you never know what they could do with your face.
Mass surveillance is intimately linked to face recognition technologies. As a result, it puts innocent people at risk of a wide range of harms. To be happy, we'll have to get go of all we possess, and that day is becoming closer and closer. If the IRS gets its way, you may not even be able to own your own face in the future. Hackers from China or Russia may, though. Keep in mind that once your face is gone, it's gone forever. There must be a change in the IRS's determination. Tax data collection may be within its purview, but biometric data collection need to remain outside its purview.
