IRS Plan to Make Facial Recognition “Optional;” Fails to Address Privacy and Equity Harms

In an announcement, the IRS and identity verification company ID.me revealed that individuals will now be able to opt out of submitting to facial recognition by going through a live interview process. Earlier this month, after criticism from EPICother experts, and members of Congress, IRS stated that the transition away from facial recognition would “occur over the coming weeks” and that the agency was “quickly pursuing short-term solutions that do not involve facial recognition.” The announcement this week makes clear that facial recognition is still part of the “short-term solution.”

EPIC and a coalition of over 45 privacy and civil liberties groups, including Fight for the Future and the Algorithmic Justice League, recently published a letter calling on states and the federal government to abandon ID.me and facial recognition technology. The coalition stated “Facial recognition technology has been found to be biased, have a disproportionate impact on people of color and other marginalized communities, and the use of the technology has serious implications for privacy and civil liberties.” The coalition noted the obstacles people of experienced with ID.me’s live interview option and argued that such obstacles may force users to submit to face verification. Individuals can join organizations pushing back against the use of face verification by signing this petition.

Continue reading

Do Not Believe Absurdities, No Matter How Often They Are Repeated

If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

(Psst: The FTC wants me to remind you that this website contains affiliate links. That means if you make a purchase from a link you click on, I might receive a small commission. This does not increase the price you’ll pay for that item nor does it decrease the awesomeness of the item. ~ Daisy)

“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” –Voltaire

We have been asked to believe a lot of absurdities the past two years. Peaceful protests versus riots and looting, the relative dangers of a virus with a 99.97% survival rate versus economic destruction, the importance of borders on the other side of the globe versus our own borders are now subjects of serious dispute. We are continually asked to suspend our judgment.

Let’s look closer at some of these absurdities.

Those of us who have to conduct business or have friends in major cities know how crazy the 2020 riots were. Oops, I meant “peaceful protests.”

Those “peaceful protests” injured over 2000 police officers, killed more than two dozen people, and caused over a billion dollars worth of damage. We have a family friend who is a police officer in a major city. In 2020, he was locked in a precinct that protesters attempted to set on fire, had numerous projectiles thrown and/or shot at him, and was in a line of officers driven into by a vehicle. Our friend was able to move in time, but the three officers next to him were hit and hospitalized.

The downtown parts of cities themselves looked like third-world countries. A big stretch of Colfax in Denver had no glass windows for months. It was all plywood, with the hours of the stores just spray-painted on. The violence and destruction were unbelievable.

But those were “peaceful protests.”

The protest up in Canada, meanwhile, was so dangerous it warranted the government seizing emergency powers.

Hmm, I don’t see any burning buildings and no one has been killed, but Trudeau was so scared of his own people demanding to be heard that he disappeared. If you want to hear an interesting discussion between Canadians on the topic, I recommend Jordan Peterson’s interview with the author and radio host Rex Murphy.

We’re asked to believe that torching police precincts is a form of legitimate protest, but people standing in the road, singing the national anthem, and asking to be heard by the head of state is both dangerous and warrants stripping the protests of their rights as citizens. That’s absurd.

The truth is being hidden.

The Organic Prepper has published many articles questioning the motives behind government actions regarding the Covid pandemic. At this point, I think it suffices to say that many people, including the fully jabbed and boosted, know that the public hasn’t gotten the whole story. A spokeswoman…

Continue reading here