Voices of Millions of UK Taxpayers Stored By HMRC (bbc.co.uk)

AmiMoJo shares a report from BBC: The voices of millions of taxpayers have been analyzed and stored by HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) without consent, privacy campaigners say. Big Brother Watch says HMRC's Voice ID system has collected 5.1 million audio signatures and accuses the department of creating "biometric ID cards by the back door." The Voice ID scheme, which was launched last year, asks callers to repeat the phrase "my voice is my password" to register. Once this task is complete, they can use the phrase to confirm their identity when managing their taxes.

Comments

Without consent?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't love the idea of companies collecting biometrics, but what did people think was going on when they repeated the phrase in order to register? Did they think a person was on the other end that was going to remember their voice?

Re:Without consent?

[AmiMoJo]

Under EU derived UK law HMRC is required to completely inform the user of what data is stored and how it will be used, including if it will be shared with any other organization. Not only did they fail to do so, but have admitted storing the actual recordings rather than just the metadata which strongly suggests that their system is badly designed and insecure.

The recordings represent a massive and unnecessary security risk, because anyone with access to them an impersonate any user of the system. Like passwords they should just store an irriversible hash of the metadata.

This kind of system is fine if it is done properly and legally, but that means fully informing the users and properly controlling the data.