Just keep slurping: HMRC adds two million taxpayers' voices to biometric database HMRC's database of Brits' voiceprints has grown by 2 million since June – but campaign group Big Brother Watch has claimed success as 160,000 people turned the taxman's requests down. The Voice ID scheme, which requires taxpayers to say a key phrase that is recorded to create a digital signature, was introduced in January 2017 …
Exactly. HMRC's copy is deleted. But the data that was pushed to GCHQ etc on arrival won't be.
Intelligence services won't even delete bio data, even if ordered too, even if audited. There will always be a copy somewhere else, and the storage requirements are tiny compared to AV recordings.
So yes, those illegally obtained genetic swab data that UK police collected, and were ordered by ECHR to dispose of will never actually be deleted.
I hadn't previously heard of this, but this sound utterly creepy and invasive and is unbelievable that anyone even considered it could be implemented.
And it really boils my blood that organisations like HMRC refer to us plebs as customers. I find that really offensive - I am not a customer of theirs. I buy no product or service from them, and I have no real desire to want to deal with them.
As someone who runs a small business I know what a customer is, and I fully understand how to respect and treat them, and that they can easily pull their business away from me and go elsewhere. None of that matches into HMRC domain at all.
"If you are looking for ransom payment on account for the next fiscal year, I can tell you I don't have money. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills; skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you let my daughter go now allow my claim for a new duck house, that'll be the end of it. "
Not just Amazon and Google (and Apple with Siri), but I believe several of the major UK banks have voice ID systems in place.
Now I'm not suggesting just because the banks are owned by different governments around the world that any of that data may leak to any of the national security services (cough, Qatar).
I was 'railroaded' into this while submitting my tax return last year, and had to go along with the voice recording before I could proceed any further.
Has anyone had any luck on the HMRC website in finding where you can 'opt out' and delete your voice? I haven't looked yet but assume it will be sneaky and tucked away in small print somewhere, but Hey I could be wrong.
"I was 'railroaded' into this while submitting my tax return last year"
When asked to say "my voice is my passport" the trick was to either say nothing, or to say something completely different and let the system decide it couldn't match your response to the passphrase. At that point it would let you carry on with your call and tell you to try and register for voice ID next time. I opted for saying "I refuse", in case they were building up a database of responses the system couldn't interpret...
I personally don't trust voice ID systems to be reliable, or unhackable, so I'd have had to resort to snail mail if the above hadn't worked...
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