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A year after outcry, IRS still doesn’t offer taxpayers alternative to ID.me

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Re: A year after outcry, IRS still doesn’t offer taxpayers alternative to ID.me

#41

Post by MonkeyMalarky »

curryberto wrote: post #39
OkGoDoIt wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I run a small business and I need to collect W-9's from basically everyone I ever pay, which means I have an absurd amount of SSN's in PDFs sitting in a folder on my computer. It feels very wrong, but apparently that's how taxes work. Kind of makes SSN's feel less secure/protection-worthy than I used to believe shrug

First job out of college I was given, with no oversight or training, access to thousands of peoples SSNs, names, phone numbers and addresses. I also had a private investigator locate someone from my childhood once and got not only their phone number, address, and SSN but their entire family and neighbors and anyone who had a name similar to theirs. It's outrageous how insecure everything is.

Between the Equifax breech and others, hasn't the average American had their SSN compromised several times over by now?

Re: A year after outcry, IRS still doesn’t offer taxpayers alternative to ID.me

#42

Post by sofixa »

flangola7 wrote: post #34

A centralized federal ID system, I'm sure there's no historical precedent for how this could go wrong.

Well don't leave us hanging, what's the precedent? The Nazis using government records to find the Jews in occupied territories? Not really applicable because the IRS and Social Security already know all Americans, including "race". A central ID system could only bring benefits in UX.

Re: A year after outcry, IRS still doesn’t offer taxpayers alternative to ID.me

#43

Post by jf »

hansvm wrote: post #38

> “Login.gov can handle less than 30 transactions per second,” Rettig told lawmakers. “We need more than about 1,500 transactions per second.” Even on a $2/mo VPS that's enough for image recognition in something as slow as Python. What gives?

I'm skeptical of the number that Rettig quotes. I'd like to know where he got those numbers. Also, the code that runs Login.gov is (mostly) in the public domain: https://github.com/18F/identity-idp – anybody with a $2/mo VPS could run the code and do their own load testing.

Re: A year after outcry, IRS still doesn’t offer taxpayers alternative to ID.me

#44

Post by piuantiderp »

exabrial wrote: post #3

how about everyone gets a pgp key to establish a long term online identity... kinda like keybase sought to do. Not so great for sending secret messages, but really great for an identity toehold.

The mexican version of the IRS already does that.

Re: A year after outcry, IRS still doesn’t offer taxpayers alternative to ID.me

#45

Post by corbulo »

photochemsyn wrote: post #20

Yes, there's a solution, it's called one's social security number. If people are fraudulently abusing the social security number system, stealing other people's numbers and so on, then they should be prosecuted for fraud. Implementing a Chinese-style facial recognition and social credit score program in order to keep tabs on everyone is just another authoritarian fantasy project, and government incompetence during th…

Could you even imagine where to start for pursuing a fraud case on the Equifax SSNs?

If!? Basically every SSN has been breached. It's statistically certain at this point with how many breaches there have been. You think its feasible to prosecute that much fraud? For the same org thats paying $200m for broken websites?

Re: A year after outcry, IRS still doesn’t offer taxpayers alternative to ID.me

#46

Post by abofh »

jf wrote: post #43
hansvm wrote: post #38

> “Login.gov can handle less than 30 transactions per second,” Rettig told lawmakers. “We need more than about 1,500 transactions per second.” Even on a $2/mo VPS that's enough for image recognition in something as slow as Python. What gives?

I'm skeptical of the number that Rettig quotes. I'd like to know where he got those numbers. Also, the code that runs Login.gov is (mostly) in the public domain: https://github.com/18F/identity-idp – anybody with a $2/mo VPS could run the code and do their own load testing.

> If you are getting the error:

>

> LoadError: cannot load such file -- sassc

>

> Try make run for a short time, then use Ctrl+C to kill it

That's.. confidence making.

Re: A year after outcry, IRS still doesn’t offer taxpayers alternative to ID.me

#47

Post by 2Gkashmiri »

sofixa wrote: post #40
netfortius wrote: post #13

Why couldn't they design and offer alternatives similar to the French tax services (alongside many other French online services) [1]? [1] https://franceconnect.gouv.fr/franceconnect

To expand on this, France Connect is open source and uses open standards (OAuth), so any government can adopt it.

but muh "we must reinvent the wheel because look at these poor multi-billion dollar companies. how will they pay for their CEO's planes"

Re: A year after outcry, IRS still doesn’t offer taxpayers alternative to ID.me

#48

Post by stonogo »

sofixa wrote: post #42
flangola7 wrote: post #34

A centralized federal ID system, I'm sure there's no historical precedent for how this could go wrong.

Well don't leave us hanging, what's the precedent? The Nazis using government records to find the Jews in occupied territories? Not really applicable because the IRS and Social Security already know all Americans, including "race". A central ID system could only bring benefits in UX.

We already have a central ID system: the passport. They even come in wallet-friendly card form now.

The difference is it's not a forced central ID system, which is the primary difference between a useful tool and the foundation of a police state. "Your papers, please" was a meme before there was even the concept of memes.

Re: A year after outcry, IRS still doesn’t offer taxpayers alternative to ID.me

#49

Post by sofixa »

stonogo wrote: post #48
sofixa wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well don't leave us hanging, what's the precedent? The Nazis using government records to find the Jews in occupied territories? Not really applicable because the IRS and Social Security already know all Americans, including "race". A central ID system could only bring benefits in UX.

We already have a central ID system: the passport. They even come in wallet-friendly card form now. The difference is it's not a forced central ID system, which is the primary difference between a useful tool and the foundation of a police state. "Your papers, please" was a meme before there was even the concept of memes.

> We already have a central ID system: the passport. They even come in wallet-friendly card form now.

Passports being optional and expensive, they don't fit the same utility as a universal ID system, but you're right, they could.

> The difference is it's not a forced central ID system, which is the primary difference between a useful tool and the foundation of a police state

Laughable bullshit. Specific technical things, especially ones with actual utility, such as ID cards, or speeding cameras, are not "the foundation of a police state". A police state is a systemic thing, and can be achieved with low tech (Stasi) or high tech solutions (drones doing facial recognition and pattern tracking) regardless of utilities available to the general population.

What you actually want is laws and systems preventing police abuses, spying without just cause, tracking en masse, etc.. Refusing utilities that have actual real life applications that are genuinely useful because they could be abused isn't preventing anything. Do you forget the Patriot Act and everything that came out of it? The US president ordering the execution of an American citizen without due trial? Guantanamo? Police abuses on a massive scale? And I'm sorry, it's ID cards that are the foundation of a police state? Your efforts are misguided and wasted.

And again, the US federal government already has multiple ways of knowing everything about anyone - like with IRS records and not to mention credit reporting agencies and telecoms selling this kind of data to whoever, including government agencies. That ship has long ago sailed, why not actually make it into something useful?

Re: A year after outcry, IRS still doesn’t offer taxpayers alternative to ID.me

#50

Post by mavhc »

curryberto wrote: post #39
OkGoDoIt wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I run a small business and I need to collect W-9's from basically everyone I ever pay, which means I have an absurd amount of SSN's in PDFs sitting in a folder on my computer. It feels very wrong, but apparently that's how taxes work. Kind of makes SSN's feel less secure/protection-worthy than I used to believe shrug

First job out of college I was given, with no oversight or training, access to thousands of peoples SSNs, names, phone numbers and addresses. I also had a private investigator locate someone from my childhood once and got not only their phone number, address, and SSN but their entire family and neighbors and anyone who had a name similar to theirs. It's outrageous how insecure everything is.

I've found addresses of people in USA based on: their entire name; their first name and the state they live in, and confirmed by a single friend's name; their name, city and that they lived near a golf course

Then you can see where they've ever lived, and who with. All for free

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