Jun 21, 2021 12:00:00

The face recognition system has caused many unemployed people to not receive unemployment allowances.

While the increase in unemployment is threatened by the effects of the new coronavirus infection, many unemployed people are denied or delayed in applying for unemployment allowance due to problems with the facial recognition system used to apply for unemployment allowance. It is reported that it is doing. On the other hand, the developer of the facial recognition system said that the problem was not the system but the inadequate application.

Facial Recognition Failures Are Locking People Out of Unemployment Systems
https://www.vice.com/en/article/5dbywn/facial-recognition-failures-are-locking-people-out-of-unemployment-systems

' ID.me ' is an identity verification service aimed at preventing unemployment allowance fraud and fraud, and has the function of collating biometric data obtained via smartphones with official documents. I will. According to a survey by the IT news site Motherboard, ID.me is used by the governments of 20 states in the United States to receive administrative services.

It has been reported that unemployed people are not receiving unemployment benefits in multiple states due to a bug associated with the introduction of this ID.me. For example, in California and early from the 2020 year-end 2021, it is stopped 1.4 million unemployment allowance beneficiaries of the account of a sudden, a few weeks benefits stagnate until the account is restored

problem has occurred. In Colorado, the person who had received unemployment benefits from previously, has become not receive the border the introduction of ID.me cases , was reported by local media. These issues have also been reported in other states that have introduced ID.me , such as Florida , North Carolina , Pennsylvania, and Arizona.

Tim Weaver, who lived as a gig worker in Las Vegas, is also one of the unemployed people whose unemployment allowance was suddenly stopped by ID.me. On Twitter, Mr. Weaver said, 'ID.me's facial recognition failed three times and the system was locked. So I tried chatting to contact ID.me, but I tried five times and all said,' Nobody is there. In addition, I was told to contact the state because there is nothing I can do, so when I contacted the state, the state also said, 'I can't do anything that the system can't authenticate.' I complained.

told you'd 'send a report to the state and they'd help me because there was nothing more you could do.' You told me that at least three times.

Well, I talked to the state and they said there is nothing ..... NOTHING ..... they can do if your system doesn't verify people. They also

— Tim Weaver (@ TimWeaver20) April 1, 2021

Mr. Weaver was finally able to resume receiving the unemployment allowance, but the resumption procedure took three weeks. 'Fortunately, I was saved because I had a stockpile of food, but some bill payments were delayed. It's a terrible story,' he told Motherboard.

Meanwhile, ID.me's CEO Blake Hall said in a statement sent to multiple media, 'Other facial recognition systems match a lot of data against one user, but our facial recognition technology We perform the same one-to-one matching as a clerk at the airport comparing the passport with the customer's face. Therefore, the effectiveness of our algorithm is 99.9%. 'No,' he denied the complaint that face recognition failed. In addition, the waiting time for live chat for inquiries is within 5 minutes, and it is said that it has always been within 30 minutes even in the last week.

According to Hall CEO, the failure of facial recognition is not a technical issue with ID.me, but a user issue. “For example, you might have uploaded a selfie with only half of your face,” said Hall CEO.

In response, Mr. Weaver said, 'When I tried to authenticate the face of ID.me, I took a picture of my face with my mobile phone as instructed by the system, but no reason was displayed. It was rejected. It was repeated three times and I was locked out of the system. '

In a television program broadcast in Oregon in February 2021, Hall CEO commented, 'The damage caused by the unemployment allowance is $ 100 billion.' However, this swelled to $ 200 billion on a Montana TV show a few weeks later and $ 300 billion on another TV show the following month, 400 billion in an article published by foreign media Axios in June 2021. It was in dollars. However, the amount of fraud received by the US government's Ministry of Labor from March to October 2020 was 5.6 billion dollars (about 616.9 billion yen). The ministry estimates that the damage is tens of billions of dollars, including the amount that escaped the detection.

Regarding this, Motherboard said, 'ID.me has an incentive to make fraud a big problem. It is reasonable for companies developing fraud prevention technology to study fraud, but it fuels the problem. It's no wonder people are skeptical about the statistics released by companies that benefit from it. '

In addition, Mr. Weaver said, 'I think it is very important to prevent fraudulent applications, but I am angry with ID.me, and I introduced such a system in a short period of time. I'm even more angry with the state of Nevada. '