Berbix

I’ve been following Berbix because their core product - matching government-issued photo IDs to selfies - is key to verifying identities online. When I learned about BerbixMe, a new product that applies their B2B technology to consumers, I could immediately recognize how important this would be to protect individuals online. BerbixMe’s instant ID checks will reduce fraud and prevent online catfishing and swindling, making it safer for people to find friends, dates or roommates, buy and sell second hand, and to generally connect with others virtually.

How would this product handle the situation that certainly isn't their making but nevertheless is a rather significant problem in that our broken immigration laws have effectively created a second class citizenship status for millions who grew up just as you and I only to discover at 16 that they're not able to get any sort of government-issued identification that is accepted everywhere? They may have DACA, they might not, since DACA is expensive and not every state allowed for recipients to obtain a state ID. Some are only able to receive consular or city IDs. It's hardly their fault, but wouldn't this simply reinforce this notion that your personhood is effectively dictated by something entirely out of your control and cannot fix thanks to the state of our government? And to explicitly connect the inability to provide such documentation with the notion of fraud, catfishing, scamming is entirely absurd, since they have chosen to not obtain a false ID to pass this kind of checks when it exists as an option certainly. Having read the terms, one more question: does the legal department have someone who has explicit experience in handling administrative subpoenas? They are distinct from judicial subpoenas, not issued by a court, and carries no judicial weight because it is not subject to due process in the same manner as a judicial one. However, it is not illegal for federal law enforcement to use false pretenses and misleading wording to essentially use a ruse (their word, from FOIAs) to obtain information via a side channel such as this, especially since the collection here is not being ordered by any government entity. The policy stated so far makes no differentiation and the storage of this biometric data without a robust legal department that can handle a very niche (so niche that the Trump administration did not have a single staff attorney with sufficient expertise in it until 3 years in, when they hired outside counsel for it) field of law that can easily be exploited as easily as leaving your AWS keys openly in your public github repo. Also, since there is no national ID system in the US, it's by no means necessary, and indeed in real life it's by no means true, that everyone has an ID. There are states that doesn't allow a trans person to receive an ID that reflect their gender. That's obviously not a case of attempted fraud but the state acting in an intrusive way to force an identity upon someone. Since the way the website demonstrates as to how the tool is used, it seems to put them on the spot. If I'm selling, say, my Xbox, and someone asked me to verify not the existence and working condition of the product but the status, as the regulatory and legal term of art, that I'm assigned, I would have serious issues with the implication behind the request, that it's not enough that the product is what it is but I need to be a certain person that has some imprimatur of "legitimacy" bestowed by the government or I'm some scammer. It's utterly dystopian. I'm frankly extremely wary of products such as this. Well intentioned or not, it will at best reinforce discrimination that already exists and at worst, aid in warrantless, administrative detention through a side channel, detention that is by definition of an indeterminate length. This is dangerous ground to tread on.