But now, California’s nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office is urging lawmakers to take another look at ID.me. And ID.me, under pressure from Washington lawmakers and others, is saying it will offer alternatives to the controversial facial recognition system.
The analysts said Newsom and his unemployment insurance strike team’s use of ID.me was warranted during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021, “when the magnitude of the claims backlog called for prompt and decisive action.”
But, the analyst’s report said, “Now that this critical period has passed, we recommend the Legislature pause and carefully consider the implications of requiring third‑party biometric scanning—in this case, facial recognition performed by artificial intelligence.”
ID.me can verify someone’s identity by having them take a photo or video of themselves. That is then digitally compared to the documents in their application.
The state’s Employment Development Department, which manages the unemployment program, declined to comment. Assemblywoman Wendy Carrillo, D-Los Angeles, who chairs a budget subcommittee on state administration that plans a hearing on EDD Tuesday, did not respond to a request for comment.
CHANGES FOR ID.ME
ID.me had no comment Friday on the analyst’s report. It pointed to its previous public statements.Last week, Blake Hall, company CEO and founder, said that after listening to feedback, ID.me would add an option for people to verify identities using a human agent.
“In recent weeks, we have modified our process so government agencies can empower people to choose to verify their identity with an expert human agent without going through a selfie check. Agencies can now select this configuration,” he said. It’s unclear if that system is in place in California.
After March 1, Hall said, all ID.me users will be able to delete their selfie or photo at account.ID.me.
He announced the changes came the day after the Internal Revenue Service announced it was “transitioning away” from using facial recognition technology.
“The IRS takes taxpayer privacy and security seriously, and we understand the concerns that have been raised,” said IRS Commissioner Chuck Rettig in a statement “Everyone should feel comfortable with how their personal information is secured, and we are quickly pursuing short-term options that do not involve facial recognition.”
Key members of Congress have also expressed concern.
“Facial recognition should not be a prerequisite for accessing unemployment insurance or any other essential government services,” wrote Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, and Sens. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, and Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., in a letter this week to Labor Secretary Martin Walsh.
They cited ID.me.
“It is particularly concerning that one of the most prominent vendors in the space, ID.me, not only uses facial recognition and lacks transparency about its processes and results,” they said, “but frequently has unacceptably long wait times for users to be screened by humans after being rejected by the company’s automated scanning system.”
EDD FIGHTING FRAUD
In California, ID.me has proven an important way of reducing fraud and making the overwhelmed unemployment system more effective, the analyst’s report found.
“Setting up automated identity verification substantially sped up EDD processes so benefits could be paid promptly during the pandemic,” the Legislative Analyst’s Office said in its report.
The system “likely also reduced fraud in the temporary federal programs.”
Most suspected fraud in California has involved federally-funded unemployment benefits programs that ended last year.
Newsom touted ID.meat a September, 2020, news conference where he detailed the findings of his strike team, a blue-ribbon group he created to recommend ways to make EDD more efficient.
He explained how the state considered about 16 vendors, then reduced that to 12 “where we really tested and kicked the proverbial tires. And we’ve come up with a system called ID.Me.”
He said the program would allow people “to do selfies, to provide additional verification in ways that we think could substantially, not exclusively, no one’s naive, but substantially mitigate fraud.”
The analyst’s report found that ID.me was effective.
“Setting up automated identity verification substantially sped up EDD processes so benefits could be paid promptly during the pandemic. The software likely also reduced fraud in the temporary federal programs,” it said.
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