Privacy organisation: British tax authorities collect voting samples without opt-out

The British civil rights organization Big Brother Watch has accused the HMRC, the British tax authorities, of collecting voice samples from callers without proper permission. A Wob request shows that voice samples from 5.1 million people have now been collected.

Big Brother Watch writes that the HMRC required callers to say the phrase “my voice is my password” to identify themselves. In addition, the organization would not have given people the option to refuse permission to store their voices. Big Brother Watch says it has tested itself and found out that there was no option for an opt-out.

In this way, the organization says it has discovered that it is possible to refuse by repeatedly saying ‘no’ when the system asks to pronounce the aforementioned sentence. A so-called freedom of information request, or a kind of Wob request, shows that 5.1 million people are now participating in the so-called Voice ID program, which the HMRC introduced in 2017. It can be concluded from the same document that no people have made use of an opt-out in the thirty days prior to publication of the information.

HMRC responded to Big Brother Watch’s findings, saying the Voice ID system is “very popular” among customers. The tax agency tells the BBC that the samples are stored securely and that the system is speeding up the security process. The privacy organization wants the tax authorities to destroy the samples collected so far. Under the General Data Protection Regulation, explicit consent would be required for the processing of biometric data. The Voice ID system turned out to be fake last year, a BBC editor and his twin brother showed.