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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 identificat

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.

yumraj 5y ago
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 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”) They also run a shop at: https://shop.id.me/ https://shop.id.me/
Barrin92 5y ago
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.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > 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.
  - d110af5ccf 5y ago
    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.
    - perl4ever 5y ago
      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.
      - d110af5ccf 5y ago
        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.
frosted-flakes 5y ago
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.
- d110af5ccf 5y ago
  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. On the whole I'm completely unimpressed.
refurb 5y ago
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”.
pyuser583 5y ago
Yes, but notaries aren’t generally public employees. If I need a notary, I go to the bank or Fedex store. This is something that can totally be handled by private orgs. But it has to actually be done!
- landemva 5y ago
  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.
  - pyuser583 5y ago
    They’re officers of the court like attorneys are officers of the court. Like attorneys they are privately employed.

yumraj 5y ago

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 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”) They also run a shop at: https://shop.id.me/ https://shop.id.me/

Barrin92 5y ago

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.

dragonwriter 5y ago
> 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.
- d110af5ccf 5y ago
  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.
  - perl4ever 5y ago
    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.
    - d110af5ccf 5y ago
      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.

frosted-flakes 5y ago

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.

d110af5ccf 5y ago
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. On the whole I'm completely unimpressed.

refurb 5y ago

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”.

pyuser583 5y ago

Yes, but notaries aren’t generally public employees. If I need a notary, I go to the bank or Fedex store. This is something that can totally be handled by private orgs. But it has to actually be done!

landemva 5y ago
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.
- pyuser583 5y ago
  They’re officers of the court like attorneys are officers of the court. Like attorneys they are privately employed.