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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.
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?
The Voice ID scheme, which was launched last year, asks callers to repeat the phrase "my voice is my password" to register.
I'd really like you to say 'password'.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
HMRC have some particularly complex requirements for logging on to any of their services. You need a magic number and a password. The magic number bears no resemblance to anything you might know, or ever learn. The password has to be so complex that it too is something you'll never know. I forget exactly how these things are supplied to you, but I seem to remember one half is sent via snail mail and the other half is SMS messaged.
In the days before password managers, there was literally no way any human on earth could have remembered those details that they only use once per year. Of course we all wrote them down, and of course that was horribly insecure and yes, I suspect a few of them got stolen along the way. Even with a password manager, you can't log on in an automated fashion because their website somehow stops that from working, but at least you could just write yourself a 'secure note' with the details you need to remember in it.
Then along came biometrics (from the Home Office, who had their strings pulled by MI5, who in turn had theirs pulled by the NSA). They've tried time and time again to get the British Public to sign up to some biometric-based system for tracking the population. It's never really stuck though, so I suspect HMRC got hold of some 'Home Office Surplus' to do their biometric password stuff.
Being the government though, no matter what they implement it'll feel like it'd be easier to break into the Bank of England than to use it, but if you look closely enough you'll see the whole thing is made of cardboard and sticky tape. It seems they didn't disappoint here, by keeping the recordings instead of the fingerprints of them. It's only lucky that they didn't copy them all to a USB stick and lose it on a train or in the back of a cab, I suppose.
Problem is, or at least was, that it was not optional (not when I last called them and was "invited" to enroll anyway). Well, technically it might have been because I simply refused to speak when I was told to and after several prompts it gave up, but there was no indication that you could opt-out and so most people probably did as they were told by the recorded instructions. Consent isn't valid if it's only given under coercion, if people only do it because they have to (or think they have to) then they haven't consented.