[Software] Facial recognition of unemployment beneficiaries in the US is not reliable enough

[SougarLord]

 

Half the states in the US are using facial recognition technology to verify people seeking unemployment benefits is not working well and is unreliable. It works inconsistently, leading to many people being denied benefits or having their applications suspended.

 

The ID.me identity verification service is intended to help reduce unemployment fraud and uses biometric data and official documents to verify individuals. But according to Motherboard, some who have applied for unemployment have reported that ID.me has not identified them correctly and that they have had difficulty reaching someone at ID.me to fix the problem.

 
Facial recognition software is not yet reliable enough

In an extensive response to The Verge, ID.me CEO Blake Hall said the company uses 1: 1 Face Matching to match the selfie image to the government ID photo. This is similar to how Apple uses FaceID to unlock phones and is similar to how a TSA agent would match her face to her photo ID at an airport. This is according to the executive director of the service, but the reality is that facial recognition technology has its biases and is not reliable enough to be used by the state on an important issue such as unemployment benefit.

 

Hall added that the algorithms the company uses for Face Match "work about 99.9% efficient." He also said that the company was unaware of "eligible individuals" who were unable to verify their identity with its software, and that wait times for a video chat with a company representative "have been consistently below 30 minutes. all week long".

 

But with millions of people unemployed due to the coronavirus pandemic, state offices have seen an increase in claims for unemployment benefit over the past year. Some states reported a sharp increase in fraudulent claims last spring, and the Labor Department reported in February that between March and October of last year it had identified more than $ 5,000,000,000 in potentially fraudulent unemployment payments. This is why they wanted to quickly push facial recognition, but it has caused many legitimate claimants to be struggling and casts doubt on its reliability.