I understand the concern that people aren't getting help when they need it, but the numbers around unemployment insurance fraud are unbelievable. Axios reported that as much as half of all unemployment insurance paid out has been stolen. [1]
My dad was one of the 21.5 million who had their SSNs stolen as a part of having a government background check done [2], and a couple weeks ago he was personally a victim of someone fraudulently applying for unemployment benefits on his behalf.
I'm not saying that facial recognition is a reasonable way to try to fix this, but we're talking about $400,000,000,000 being stolen. They have to figure something out.
> I'm not saying that facial recognition is a reasonable way to try to fix this, but we're talking about $400,000,000,000 being stolen
No, we’re talking about a firm whose business depends on the perception of the magnitude of the problem claiming that. The source of that number in the article you cite is...the CEO of ID.me.
And when pressed by CNN to support that staggering figure ID.me responded with...promotional material for their product, instead. [0] It couldn't be any more clear that its a BS number the CEO pulled out of his colon for promotional reasons.
Perhaps someone should be FOIAing agreements between state unemployment departments and ID.me, and perhaps even the Veterans Administration, the Social Security Administration, and other federal agencies (mentioned in the posted article) who are leveraging a private firm for identity proofing services using facial recognition.
Fraud should be prevented, for sure! But a private corporation black box governing access to social safety nets is not to be tolerated.
This is not great. It's using the current issues to push for an ID system that could be leveraged by private parties and is thus likely to significantly reduce online (pseudo)anonymity. It also explicitly calls for the involvement of the private sector in delivering any solution.
I want state governments to have a reliable online identity option. I want it to be optional by law - I should be able to make an in person visit instead. I do not want private parties to have any access to the service whatsoever. I want private sector outsourcing of such services to be completely outlawed. No private third party has any business knowing about my interactions with any government provided service.
I should never have to share my data with private third parties in order to receive government services. Such usage data is very sensitive and thus a huge privacy concern.
Consider: If you ever had to go on food stamps, would you want retailers, potential employers, etc to be able to purchase that data? What about the risk of a data breach?
You should not expect anonymity when obtaining government services, full stop. That is the entire point of identity proofing and, at a higher level, identity and access management. I agree a private entity should not be required in the verification chain for interacting with government and obtaining government services.
My last link points to a blog recommending the USPS provide in person proofing, which I believe meets your in person proofing requirement. Login.gov is a service operated by the US government's GSA agency. It is not a private entity providing this service. It was developed as part of 18F and the US Digital Service.
I don't expect anonymity from the government (I suspect that would be a fairly absurd goal given current technology). Rather, I expect that absolutely no one other than the government should ever have access to such data.
My apologies for the misunderstanding. That's a high hill to climb, and I recommend engaging with policymakers to see that sort of legislation crafted and sponsored.
Why is that a high hill to climb? It's more like a slippery slope. Until recently it was definitely the expectation that your government information would stay only IN the government.
It seems wasteful to spend this thread rehasing the utter disregard the legislative branch has for enacting strong data and privacy legislation (California's CCPA aside), Equifax's willful ignorance towards data security with no consequences for them and no recourse for citizens who had their data leaked, etc. It's not easy, it hasn't been done yet, and it's a high hill to climb. Have to get in front of the folks who write the law, who currently aren't making it a priority.
> My apologies for the misunderstanding. That's a high hill to climb, and I recommend engaging with policymakers to see that sort of legislation crafted and sponsored.
It might be a high hill, though softening to allow contractors involved in providing the service to know but requiring them to observe privacy rules similar to what would apply in the healthcare space under HIPAA, would make it much lower.
At the state level, for either version, I would recommend, if possible in your state, you to work with advocacy organizations who are willing to sponsor a public ballot initiative rather than focussing on policymakers alone; while industry insiders can and will buy ads against ballot measures, they can't cut them off by compromising strategically targeted legislators the way they often can bills in the legislature.
Very difficult in the US because the Federal government has no authority to require one, and the Supreme Court has consistently ruled that any regulatory or back door methods to effectively achieve a similar result is not legal.
It is one of the reasons ID resolution in the US is largely outsourced to private entities, which have no such restrictions.
> Very difficult in the US because the Federal government has no authority to require one,
It absolutely could require one for functions within the federally-regulatable sphere, and not prohibit its use for private and state functions.
(If it was national-but-decentralized, it could just set standards for the digital ID and let states issue them, the same way it has for physical ID, see, e.g., REAL ID.)
> The US Department of Labor Inspector General Office in late March estimated that at least $89 billion of the estimated $896 billion in federal unemployment program funds could be paid improperly, with a significant portion attributable to fraud. This is based on a historic improper payment rate of at least 10%.
This is lazy BS from the other side; they know for a fact that the rate of fraud is going to be higher than it was pre-COVID. We know how much has been paid out and the only question is what the fraud rate is.
I agree that you have to be skeptical given that id.me is selling a product, and to be honest, I only put two-and-two together after making my comment and revisiting the axios article since I first came across it. That being said, given how many states are using id.me, they have unique visibility into the problem and I don't think it's fair to write them off as entirely untrustworthy.
tl;dr: The number is probably between $100B and $400B. It's hundreds of billions of dollars either way.
Fraud is a subset of that 10%, it could 10% of the total improper payment rate aka 1% of the total.
Assuming it’s higher with covid seems without justification is just an assumption. If anything it might be lower if a higher percentage of people applied for unemployment without quickly finding a new job.
That's fair. But the general consensus among media and government agencies has been that the rate of fraud (and not just the overall amount of fraud) is higher. ie: in Maryland
> According to the Maryland Department of Labor, as of July 13, 1,443,211 or 92.31 percent of all out-of-state and in-state claims were confirmed as fraudulent.
Again that 92% could be true, but those are clams not money actually being handed out. That said, if under 8% of clams where legitimate then paying out 50% incorrectly might actually be accurate.
> This is lazy BS from the other side; they know for a fact that the rate of fraud is going to be higher than it was pre-COVID.
As a percentage of total claims? I don't think they know that. What's the reasoning? Obviously, both numerator and denominator would go up, but beyond that...
>Axios reported that as much as half of all unemployment insurance paid out has been stolen.
Oh hell for NJ you can just send in fake unemployment claims to any business and the burden is on the business to dispute every claim. If they fail to respond or it's lost in the mail then it effectively defaults and the state pays out the scammer. I have a folder of fake claims to my company over the years.
A few years back the state decided to pay one of those false claims out for a women I've never met that doesn't even live in my state, I filed the fraud report, tried to dispute it in the mail, met with my state representatives about it, called the courts, and ultimately never got a resolution.
Being stuck with having to pay a higher (we'll call it tax) rate for my own salary, I instead paid distributions for the rest of the year and converted the business from S-corp to single member LLC out of spite.
When COVID rolled around and I was eligible to collect unemployment for a month or so last year, I filed a claim that's been stuck in 'pending' since April 2020. Yay shitty COBOL code, I guess.
>They have to figure something out.
Or acknowledge that it's fucked beyond repair and replace it with something else like basic income. It'd likely be cheaper and more efficient.
Conservative legislatures and governors/presidents have spent the last few decades gutting the agencies that handle unemployment, and then suddenly an extra 10% of the country is unemployed for weeks. Yeah, we're gonna see an increase in fraud.
In my deep blue State, progressives have had control of the government for a long time. They sent the better part of a billion dollars in unemployment aid to literal Nigerian scammers. No one even disagrees that the cause was gross negligence and incompetence. “Mistakes were made.” Somehow, the person responsible for this hilarious and shameful episode failed upward and is now a member of the Biden administration.
I’m sure “conservatives” are responsible for many ills but where I live this isn’t one of them because they were never involved. If you want to fix it, you have to be honest about the problem.
That does not absolve those who responsible for the problem of any culpability. Whataboutism isn’t valid response. The problems with unemployment aid were bipartisan. In my State, the Democrats own that mess because they created it. That isn’t a partisan assertion, that is a non-controversial observation of reality.
I’ve never been a conservative but I am not so much in denial that I will pretend that the comedic failure of execution at the State level by Democrats was actually the fault of some nebulous “conservatives”. The conservatives were never involved. The Democrats own that failure, and you would hope they have the self-awareness to recognize that.
In case it wasn’t clear I’m with you. As someone that’s lived almost all his adult life in a deep blue city in a blue state, I’m not a fan of letting incompetent or corrupt politicians and civil servants off the hook merely because they share my party registration. Competence matters.
Democrats seem to be judged by their intentions not their results
Republicans seem to be judged by their results and if the results are perceived bad their intentions are asssumed to be malicious and based in an ism or phobia of some kind
Btw, I am a Democrat and occassionally I'd like to call bullshit on many things. Challenge our own assumptions. But in last couple of years, that's become really difficult. I am vehemently against censorship and it appears to me that Democrats have unconstrained power since Big Tech and the entire internet is on our side. This is feeling a bit dangerous to me.
Your comment on Republican party is spot on. I'd be down with a more centrist and less populist party - Lincoln party would be something I'd consider.
I also don't take politics as seriously as so many people in this country. It shouldn't consume you. It should be a peaceful debate with picking good points and rejecting crazy ideas.
My biggest criticism of HN is that it doesn't know how to handle conflicting interests and most people here have lost their ability to speak freely and against mainstream. It used to be that HN was a contrarian community with lots of interesting perspectives without downvotes. It's no longer the same. My hunch is that social media is shaping the world to be more in-line with mob mentality and it is dismantling the founding principles of America. America is headquarted in Menlo Park, CA.
I am a small l libertarian, have observed politics since the mid 90's it has been interesting to see how how the political parties have changed
Democrats seem to think they Republicans have gone "far right" but from my point of view the both have shifted to the left socially with the democrat party taking a HUGE left turn starting around 2008, but really accelerating in 2016...
Where Socially republicans are more "left" or libertarian on many social issues from Gay marriage to Abortion[1], and economically are more open to "Blue Dog" democrat economic positions but now Democrats are "Democratic socialism or nothing".
[1] I recognize with Abortion there are a few state laws they may go against this statement, but this is a direct reaction to Democrats moving away from "Safe, Legal and Rare" of the 90's to full on celebration of abortion as a primary birth control method and women's empowerment issue.
I don’t think that’s the whole picture. Free trade has virtually no defenders now and deficit hawks few and far between, especially when their party is in power. Even a strong dollar and low inflation don’t have many defenders anymore. Basically the American public have given up on free market economics and are now squabbling over the best way to manipulate it.
That is kinda what I mean by republicans are more open to blue dog positions from the 90's... More Social Safety net, more money printing, more debt, and even more taxation.
This would have been unheard of in the 90's for a Republican, now today the difference is "Do we Print and spend 3 Trillion or 6 Trillion this year?"
Sadly for me I think the full effects of these terrible economic polices are going to hit about the time I ready to retire. 10 Years go I did not think retirement would be an option.. 2 years go I saw some hope... Today I am back to believing I will work until I am dead as there is no way these economic policies we see today will work out well for anyone.
Bill Clinton was a free trader and ran a surplus. I don’t think this has to do with the Republicans turning to the left. They are going back to an older, nativist, version of the right.
Bill Clinton ran a surplus because of the 1994 Contract with America and He had a strong Republican controlled Congress that he had the desire to work with to get things done.
unlike today where no one wants to work together to get anything done as the other side is "evil"
I am not sure what you believe an "older, nativist, version of the right" looks like so I can not possible comment on that
I mean Blue America isn’t exactly Denmark. California is the richest and poorest state in the country.
Edit: I live in a very well run part of blue America. Strong focus on good governance. The local dems try very hard to distance themselves from national politics.
Colorado sent me an unemployment benefit debit card. They get some credit for using my actual address (some scammer was hoping to steal it from our mailbox, I guess?) but they should have noticed I’ve lived in California for a decade and have literally never been employed in Colorado.
Typically that type of issue is addressed in audit. There’s no requirement that you live in a state to collect or file for unemployment. UI validates against IRS data and may or may not know where you are based out of.
My guess is some project manager at a fraud boiler room stuck your zip code in in the “CO” folder instead of “CA”. The people who file these claims are literally on the phone all day and know what to say.
> Axios reported that as much as half of all unemployment insurance paid out has been stolen.
I can't help but notice that people tend to talk about unemployment in terms of percentages instead of in terms of dollars. While 2020 was obviously an exception it looks like the US has paid out generally around $30billion most years: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/W825RC1
Lots of companies make more than every year in pure profit, not just revenue. Apple and Google made more than that last quarter:
These companies are all doing the "Double Irish" tax dance, so how much of that profit do you think is flowing back into the USA? I feel like if it were really about the dollars we would be fighting these corporate tax arrangements instead of trying to make poor peoples' lives even worse than they already are.
Your argument is that high levels of fraud by international crime syndicates isn't the real problem, the problem is that we don't tax corporations enough to be able to withstand that fraud?
When you profile code, do you spend your time fixing the most resource-intensive function or the function whose name you don’t like?
Maybe you disagree with the suggestion that there are way, way bigger fish to fry, and we should prioritize our limited resources accordingly. But to say that it’s “completely ridiculous?” That’s a little over the top.
In your analogy your implication would be that the software engineer should spend their effort in the corporate boardroom arguing for changes in product requirements rather than in fixing bugs in the current product.
The requirements are fine, the requirements are to pay 20% tax on your profits.
The bug is in the code, the interface with international trade. It's allowing many orders of magnitude more tax to disappear than the pesky unemployment fraud code.
So no, I think his analogy is solid, the requirements are clear, the implementation is at fault.
For fucks sake one is breaking the law. Corporations are following the law. There is no requirement that corporations pay 20%, that is crap you made up.
The law is quite clear on fraud.
In the analogy the law is the requirements, enforcement is the implementation. You don’t like the requirements, sure. The implementation is still broken because it doesn’t address the fraud. It can’t do anything about the requirements because those are outside the scope of things that can be changed by the implementor.
The analogy is absolutely shit because it presumes the same actor writing the code can change the requirements, which is not true in software engineering nor in the US government.
The money is taxed when individuals finally get it, assuming they are US residents or citizens and earn above the minimums required to pay taxes. Corporations don't need to pay taxes at all in theory; it just double-taxes the same income and leads to the govt adjusting rates accordingly to achieve the same outcome (e.g., avoid driving corporations overseas with an uncompetitive high tax regime, which the US currently has).
The GDP of the US last year was less than 21 trillion, and we're talking about fraud that's allegedly 400 billion. Ergo, we're talking about ~2% of GDP. That's not "chasing pennies."
To put that in different context, 400 Billion is about 4x as much as the federal government spends on education. It is about 15x what we spend on energy infrastructure.
400 billion is a 2% of GDP but >10% of the federal budget.
> the widespread fraud is the more important aspect
Agreed!
In the five years preceding 2020 the US averaged ~2million people claiming unemployment (high of ~2.4, low of ~1.7): https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CCSA
They told me the wealth will trickle down, so why are we looking at the people already on the bottom to get the money flowing when there's a clog? I guess we're on the Golden Standard after all.
> You do know that the discussion is about people who are abusing unemployment, not unemployed people, right?
The effect of combating so-called "abuse" can only make it harder for everyone who legitimately needs unemployment. These people are already time-poor in many other ways (e.g. riding a bus vs owning a car), and every additional hoop you make them jump through means a certain percentage will just give up and suffer. You understand this, right?
We’re talking about people who are stealing money meant for unemployed people and you can’t even bring yourself to admitting that is even a problem. If you’re going to scare quote “abuse”, why don’t you steal from unemployment as well since you don’t seem to think there is anything wrong with it?
> percentage will just give up and suffer.
This is already happening with the existing paperwork. What are you doing to advocate that people don’t even need to pick up the phone or get out of bed to get their unemployment?
> You understand this, right?
You understand that rampant fraud can cause the collapse of the entire setup right?
I guess I don’t really understand why unemployment payments don’t “come” from the (former) employer? They already know the direct deposit details and have a rough idea of the eligibility. It seems like the easy solution would be for a partial “paycheck” to keep being deposited and have the state make payments to the employer, instead.
If Acme Corp. gets an unemployment claim for an employee who’s still working they’re in a much better position to quickly recognize the fraud. And if they get a legitimate claim for a former employee but to a previously unknown bank account it’s easy enough for them to get in touch with the employee to double check the details.
Acme Corp's unemployment insurance premiums go up when their employees file claims. It's in their interest to deny claims. You'd be moving fraud around somewhat.
Is it possible that the total fraud would be lower because most businesses would prefer to follow the law and not be busted? Maybe, but it's hard to say.
In California the UI office will get in touch with your former employer to verify your claim. So there's that at least. Not to mention, what do you do when people lose their jobs because the employer has gone out of business?
I had someone file for unemployment in my name. I got an email from our Human Resources telling me my unemployment claim was rejected because I’m still employeed, with some information about what to do next if I hadn’t filed the claim (I hadn’t)
Unemployment insurance is part of the social safety net that is paid to the State. Among many other issues with tying this to the employer (much like with healthcare), the employer may not even exist anymore but the former employee is still entitled to unemployment.
States that weren’t doing it from the beginning did start checking with employers to determine if a person was actually unemployed.
I've had several former employers I wouldn't have wanted to maintain any sort of relationship with, for reasons up to and including them being likely to try some sort of mitm shenanigans and commit the fraud themselves.
I think this situation might be a strong case for better id verification and ubi. We've got the cryptographic tools, the funding, and the evidence that other systems are failing terribly. We just need the political will and legislative implementation - Yang had a great foundation for it.
you're eligible if you've been wrongfully terminated. if you're fired for showing up drunk to work then that's termination for cause, and you can't get unemployment, but if you're fired because your boss decides he wants a blond secretary and you're a brunette, you can absolutely collect unemployment.
I think you're missing the point that the tax authorities tend to have relatively up-to-date information because most people file tax returns annually.
'It's all the government' isn't helpful because government is large and complex and doesn't have any kind of central consciousness. You are conflating legal sovereignty with (the authority by which government operates) with operational efficiency.
That can probably be fixed with a flick of the pen by the governor. The point is, the problem is simply clerical, not organizational or otherwise difficult to overcome.
Imagining a thing and promulgating it through a messy and extremely inconsistent organization like a state government are two different things. Surely you've experienced the situation where an apparently simple concept requires a surprisingly large amount of code and time to implement.
> but the numbers around unemployment insurance fraud are unbelievable. Axios reported that as much as half of all unemployment insurance paid out has been stolen
If we’re talking about theft, why not talk about government bailouts of banks, low inheritance tax for the 1%, the corrupt military contracts and the millions of other ways the elite plunders the commons and steals from the working class?
I’m pretty sure when we have the numbers somewhere in the future, unemployment insurance fraud will be a drop in the bucket compared to all of that.
Also, seeing the level of alienation; the miserable conditions of American ‘jobs’ these days (I’m looking at you Bezos), I seriously do not blame people for trying to get more cash to escape their exploitation.
If a person filing for unemployment benefits fails the facial recognition step a few times, they'll be directed to a video chat where they must show identification documents to what ID.me calls a "trusted referee," the majority of whom are employees (the rest are contractors).
This sounds like a service that the DMV or police or town hall could offer. Every damned public notary does the same when they notarize a document, they check the drivers license against the person. In other words - someone is grifting from the government.
This seems to me like a common scheme in the US. People have a general aversion to government services, but they still need to be done so in the end the government ends up actually paying some completely opaque private actor for the benefit.
I remember reading about laws preventing the police from collecting license plate data but not private individuals, so companies exist where the police literally buys license plate location data and nobody knows anything about what data they collect. Same with Palantir, same with Clearview and so on.
Kinda disturbing trend to outsource fundamental services regarding identity and privacy to unaccountable private industry.
> This seems to me like a common scheme in the US. People have a general aversion to government services
The people with the strongest aversion, and who pay for the propaganda to create and maintain that aversion in others, are also people who benefit financially from government functions being outsourced to private industry.
That is a popular narrative of the left, yes. Most people on the right are indeed incapable of independent thought and the ones that are smart that appear to distrust centralized government services are faking it to line their pockets.
That’s on the same level as “Democrats want immigration just for the votes”.
There are groups who try to influence public opinion so that they get laws that are financially benefiting them.
It is how democracy and business works, actually. It should not be taboo that some people try to convince others the government service (schools or postal or electricity for example) is much worst then it is, so that they get laws they want.
This has nothing to do with independence of thought or theory. It has to do with lying about facts when it suits your business.
Historically, Enron is such example. They pushed for deregulation, intentionally created crises and then used those as argument for more deregulation.
But your point still supposes that deregulation is something that needs to be advocated by a special interest group.
My point is that there are many people who are philosophically opposed to regulation enforced by a violence monopoly (the government) so the default position is that all regulations need to constantly revisited and removed if they can’t be adequately defended.
It is just as likely for established mega corps to spread propaganda about the importance of the existing regulations over an industry to protect from new entrants as it is for companies to push for their removal.
I have no aversion to government handouts. I do, however, have a huge aversion to dragnet surveillance and the resultant systematic elimination of privacy. Police collection of license plate data and California's use of ID.me both seem like clear examples of enabling the latter.
I find it annoying that with license plate recognition everywhere, that on the toll roads in NY, which have eliminated human attended toll booths, they do read your license plate in order to bill you if necessary, but they charge extra if you don't have the traditional transponder. It's nuts. The transponders cost money, they set up the infrastructure for billing by plates, so they should discourage the former, not the latter. Sunk cost, etc.
However, it is outsourced to a private company and I just bet they have screwy incentives.
Same issue in WA. Some recent improvements (HOV lanes, bridge rebuild) resulted in some of the only toll roads in the entire state. Same billing structure with a surcharge to do it by plates. Some (all?) of the cameras have very distracting bright lights coming off of them at night. They incorrectly bill motorcycles all the time, forcing riders to call in and wait on hold to talk to a person and have the charges reversed.
Carpools can't even use the HOV lane for free anymore (!!!) without purchasing a transponder and setting it to indicate such. Unbeknownst to us, a transponder broke and was deducting from the account balance when set to indicate carpool for months. It was discovered upon finally managing to empty the entire account, at which point they refused to reverse the charges because it went back too far.
0/10, would not recommend whoever designed and implemented this pile of shit. I suspect screwy incentives exist in this case as well.
> People have a general aversion to government services
It's because of long lines at the DMV. I know it's a meme, but without an appointment (and those can be months in the future), you should expect to wait at least half an hour.
> companies exist where the police literally buys license plate location data and nobody knows anything about what data they collect
The problem here isn't that the police aren't collecting such data themselves but rather that private companies are still allowed to. You're pointing to a massive loophole in the current regulations in order to argue against having any regulation at all. Instead, the loophole should be closed - I have no interest in living in a glass house dystopia.
Identity is fraught because we leave it to revenue collection agencies (DMV).
Usually interstate sharing of DMV records is only allowed for law enforcement purposes. So a traffic camera can look up your records, but a permitting agency cannot.
Other uses are usually not allowed unless specified by statute. DMVs sell everything, and other agencies buy that data back from companies like ID.me and others.
They have an aversion to the "undeserving" getting government services, and are happy to set up a complicated public/private partnership to "prevent fraud", even if that privatized program ends up costing more and being less effective than just directly providing the services by a government program, even with fraud.
It's not surprising there's now a big push to 'prove' that the pandemic unemployment benefits were wastefully expensive. It doesn't fit the neoliberal economic worldview that says government aid should be "need based" and have means testing. Of course the total dollar amount said to be lost to the waste is less than what the DoD spends in a day.
The most obviously agenda-driven aspect of this new pandemic fraud panic is that it directly plays on the American aversion to the helping the "losers" who didn't clear the "pulled up by one's own bootstraps" bar. It's the same rhetoric employed against student loan forgiveness and by the Tea Party, to name just a couple of examples.
CA DMV is using ID.me and now forces you to share data with IM.me when you login or create a new account.
Seems like a disaster waiting to happen.
Worse, ID.me's privacy policy (https://www.id.me/privacy) states: The Service and Website offer eligible Users who create an account with an electronic identification resource (or “ID.me Account”) that allows eligible Users to verify their status as a member of an affinity group create accounts with websites that use the ID.me Account and access certain exclusive benefits, including without limitation, deals, discounts, cash back rebates and employment and educational opportunities, offered by participating retailers, service providers, employers or benefits administrators (collectively, the “ID.me Service”)
Canada Post does this. Post offices are everywhere, so it's reasonably convenient. For example, when I applied for student loans in Ontario and when I opened an online bank account I had to go to a post office to verify my identity.
The US does this at the federal level, for example when applying for a passport. For state related matters the local DMV (goes by DoL in some states) does this. The oddity to me is how difficult it seems to be proving for many (most?) states to link their unemployment payouts back to their own driver's license databases.
I suppose the issue is that not everyone who collects unemployment necessarily has an ID card, and that someone with an ID card doesn't necessarily have a current mailing address (someone might be homeless or couch surfing for example). It seems like a fairly straightforward solution would be to have those people physically come in to a local licensing office.
But that would introduce accessibility issues for many (the most disadvantaged would be the most inconvenienced), hence facial recognition and video chats, but apparently the state couldn't be bothered to build out it's own system for that?
A much better solution would be to just put PKI chips into ID cards. US passports, the US DoD, many other countries, and the vast majority of credit cards have this at this point. Why not state issued photo IDs? I have no idea.
Oh yeah, and most states send unemployment electronically to a bank account. So it seems like you could just require the account to be with a bank that operates in the US and thus already complies with our rather extensive KYC laws. I have no idea why the banks themselves couldn't be used to vet their customers here.
Ahhh yes the DMV. Let me get an appointment for next month and deal with a pissed off employee who says “no, the website told you the wrong documents, you’ll have to come back”.
In the notary laws I have read, they are clearly officers of the courts. They usually are not paid by the courts, but they have strict enforcement of what they do.
The article doesn't go into much detail about what type of fraud they're trying to prevent, but it looks like the issue is fraudulent unemployment claims:
> A rapidly growing number of US states, including Colorado, California and New York, turned to ID.me in hopes of cutting down on a surge of fraudulent claims for state and federal benefits that cropped up during the pandemic alongside a tidal wave of authentic unemployment claims.
This ID.me company doesn't sound great at all. Although the government doesn't always have a track record of efficient software development, I wish they would work on developing a different solution for verifying identities remotely.
There is a similar problem with people filing fraudulent tax returns using stolen identities. Fraudsters are loving this shift to remote filing because it bypasses the need for creating a fake photo ID and risking walking into a building. These new remote-only systems only require some personal information to allow someone to file fake taxes under your name or steal unemployment benefits. They get to walk away with the money and you're left to deal with the consequences.
Can anyone share how other countries are handling remote ID verification? As more services go remote, we're going to need better ways to verify people's identity remotely. Passing the problem to companies like ID.me doesn't sound like a great solution.
"with certain customers who are at higher risk of fraud — including all state unemployment agencies it works with — facial recognition. If a person filing for unemployment benefits fails the facial recognition step a few times, they'll be directed to a video chat where they must show identification..."
This sounds reasonable given the current situation. Washington state alone lost ~1b to fraudulent claims during the pandemic (that's almost $3000 per taxpayer). If you are going to allow people to file online, you absolutely need to verify their identity.
That being said. Verifying by mailing address or in person seem more effecvive, fraud resistant, auditable, reliable, don't rely on a contractor etc.
Unfortunately it seems thay many of the pandemic era "temporary" solutions are simply going to become the norm because of inertia.
This isn't great, but there have been states that already use biometrics (e.g. fingerprints). I see this as an unfortunate acceleration of a trend ten some new thing that's begun.
I'm surprised they'd bother with facial recognition as it's a downgrade generally from fingerprints and fails the "twin test." The article doesn't really explain the impetus for using facial recognition.
This is great! Nice to see technology tackle a big problem. I don't see how you should have any expectation of privacy from the government in order to get government benefits. Totally reasonable.
I don't think people are saying they have any expectation of privacy (regarding PII) from the government under those circumstances.
I think people are saying they shouldn't be forced to expose themselves to a private, for-profit organization without, at least, some very strong legal safeguards.
People trying to access government/public services that are coerced into using 3p SaaS with their own TOS/Privacy Policy are basically being shafted outside of the legislative authority of the state.
These 3p processors basically get to write arbitrary law, gatekeeping public benefits.
It's utter bullshit and should be illegal.
You shouldn't have to agree to arbitrary private company TOS to access the things your tax money has already paid for.
It seems both Matt Thompson and Blake Hall (former Army Rangers) launched the company while at Harvard for the Military and I presumed through connections they had. After the Military adopted their platform, they were able to segway into the Civilian Gov side of things.
> ID.me uses a form of facial recognition known as facial verification, which compares a photo ID with a video selfie that a person takes on their phone
Noteworthy. This is not Clearview taking a face and returning a name, this is a service taking video and an ID photo and returning a boolean.
No one would be shocked if a clerk in a government office asked for an ID and looked at his face before approving unemployment benefits. Providing access to benefits over the internet is a strict improvement, pandemic or no, but it doesn’t seem unreasonable to subject people to a similar level of identity verification.
> No one would be shocked if a clerk in a government office asked for an ID and looked at his face before approving unemployment benefits.
They might, though, if a clerk in a government office asked them to hand a copy of their ID to, and have a video taken by, the proprietor of a random private business next door that has a weak privacy policy, before approving unemployment benefits.
I've started wearing a mask outside again because I've realized it provides some defense against this stuff and they'll probably make it illegal again if people stop doing it.
I'm glad retail stores can't figure out whom I am.
My allergies are better too.
I was the odd ball guy who wore a mask before Covid when doing most stuff outside though.
I am prepared for retail saying no to masks though. They will claim security, or some other reason.
I would like to see a federal law stating a person can wear a mask anywhere, at anytime, with obvious common sence exceptions, like DMV, and I guess international flights?
It's called a disability accommodation. Legally in the United States they can only ask is if the mask is needed "on the basis of a disability". They cannot legally ask what disability it is. The Rehabilitation Act and also the Americans with Disabilities act applies in this situation.
There is another law for air carriers, and the Rehabilitation Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act does not apply once you enter an airport. For airlines/airports/flights the law is called the Air Carrier Access Act, and it applies to flights to and from the US. In that case, you may need a note from your doctor.
Masks were a felony in most of the southern US before. In Virginia you could only wear them if you had a doctor's note with a visual description of the mask and an expiration date.
I will wear a mask for as long as I can without drawing any attention to myself. I've even thought about wearing a gator over my mask that has a print that fucks with facial recognition.
I figure there are still a lot of Greek Alphabet letters left for Corona that will give me at least a decade to continue to wear the mask without looking crazy.
There are several companies that will let you customize and personalize face masks with any pattern you want. I had a half dozen of various patterns printed a year ago.
> Unfortunately, most flexible e-ink displays aren't made to always be flexing. If they're flexed during an update, it can damage the display
That's news to me. I've seen their flexible displays being updated while being bent 10 years ago, shape sensing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ol_uu5pMmq8 Is there some information we can read about your claim?
I'm seeing some more masks lately, but I doubt it will get back to where it was.
And therefore, I suspect there will be a lot more cold and flu cases this winter than last.
Somewhere I think I read something about how masks probably prevented 40,000 flu deaths. It makes the comments about how "covid-19 is no worse than the flu" seem particularly ironic.
In other countries we have a form of digital ID with 2 factor authentication.
I get that if you don't have any such scheme, it can hard to verify that anyone is who they say they are.
In 2008 I reported address change online without any verification, in 2013 it required using an ID system with 2FA. I'm personally rather happy to know that scammers can't change my address anymore.
Just had to jump through the ID.me hoops to get the IRS to stop sending us money. A bit of a PITA, and my wife couldn't get it to work for her without going through a video call with some employee at the company. I hope it actually works given what a hassle it is.
I use ID.me to track down my payments...It was indeed a very PITA and I can't imagine those who are less computer literate and those where English is a 2nd language can navigate this complex system. It needs you to turn on your webcam - what if you're using a desktop? I had to take a picture of my license...what if someone doesn't have a smartphone? Even if you do, would they know how to get a photo easily from phone to a computer before the timeout?
In today's world, the short answer is probably that there should be an iOS and Android app. That probably would have a higher average success rate than a desktop computer.
What's wrong about it? They should also put cameras in the streets to analyse people's movement patterns. If you can cluster someone's daily movements as highly resembling daily movements of employed people, it suggests a person is working (even if in undocumented way), deny him benefits. What's wrong about denying freeloaders, many of them illegal immigrants, some taxpayer's cash?
My dad was one of the 21.5 million who had their SSNs stolen as a part of having a government background check done [2], and a couple weeks ago he was personally a victim of someone fraudulently applying for unemployment benefits on his behalf.
I'm not saying that facial recognition is a reasonable way to try to fix this, but we're talking about $400,000,000,000 being stolen. They have to figure something out.
[1]: https://www.axios.com/pandemic-unemployment-fraud-benefits-s...
[2]: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/10/us/office-of-personnel-ma...