Millions of British taxpayers have had their voices recorded, analysed and stored by HMRC without their consent.
According to Big Brother Watch, HMRC’s Voice ID system has collected more than five million audio signatures, which have been used to create “biometric ID cards by the back door”, the privacy group claims.
Callers are asked to repeat the phrase “my voice is my password” to register for the scheme. This is then used to confirm their identity when managing their taxes.
HMRC says the service had proved “very popular with customers” since it was introduced last year, and has helped speed up security procedures and improve access to its digital services.
However, Big Brother Watch said taxpayers were being “railroaded into a mass ID scheme”, as they were not given the choice to opt out.
The group’s director, Silkie Carlo, described the scheme as “shady” and is quoted by The Week:
"These voice IDs could allow ordinary citizens to be identified by government agencies across other areas of their private lives”.HMRC could also fall foul of the EU’s new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which came into force last month and requires all organisations to obtain explicit consent from users before they use biometric data, “including voice recordings”, to identify someone.
I assume someone will be reporting HMRC to the relevant regulatory authority?
Tax does have to be taxing.
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Bring yourself back on line Dolores ..
ReplyDeleteHMRC are law breakers who take it upon themselves to hide misconduct and criminality of staff who have been useful bullies on senior management's behalf. The Voice ID scandal is simply their latest, albeit mass scale, two fingers up to the law.
ReplyDeleteGet the authorities in there and bring the guilty into line.
They will spin their way out of it. There are enough perception twisters to sink the Titanic.
ReplyDeleteThe top end snout in the trough brigade might get another jolly up away day in to get the story straight.
If they do get hauled up to account for themselves, some Sir Humphrey Frobisher Giblet will be trotted out to furnish them with evasive indirect non answers for about an hour
It's concerning that HMRC spin their way out of all their murky conduct. In plain old fashioned English 'spinning' means lying, dishonesty etc. These rogues are failing to live up to the standards of the Civil Service Code...
ReplyDeleteThey can spin like 'Twizzle' on LSD, this is an EU bit of legislation that is not going away, and HMG have agreed to hold it through and after Brexit.
ReplyDeleteOh yes, and Royal Assent given to THE EU (Withdrawl) Bill 2017-2019 approx an hour ago.
Stand by for broadcast, standby for broadcast....
Readers should have a browse of;
ReplyDeletehttps://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-the-general-data-protection-regulation-gdpr/individual-rights/
In particular, but not solely, - Individuals Rights
The GDPR provides the following rights for individuals:
The right to be informed
The right of access
The right to rectification
The right to erasure
The right to restrict processing
The right to data portability
The right to object
Rights in relation to automated decision making and profiling.
If you apply Artificial Intelligence (AI) to personal data:
Be upfront about it and explain your purposes for using AI.
If the purposes for processing are unclear at the outset, give people an indication of what you are going to do with their data. As your processing purposes become clearer, update your privacy information and actively communicate this to people.
Inform people about any new uses of personal data before you actually start the processing.
If you use AI to make solely automated decisions about people with legal or similarly significant effects, tell them what information you use, why it is relevant and what the likely impact is going to be.
Consider using just-in-time notices and dashboards which can help to keep people informed and let them control further uses of their personal data.
Something to share the popcorn over!?
Must make profiling by voice a bit harder than just arbitrarily doing it, think accountability for once, and currently laying with EU oversight until post Brexit.
The reason your personal email got busy a month or so ago was related to GDPR.
DeleteIt's far more robust than the Data Protection Act, as are the penalties for non compliance.