IRS Awards Equifax $7.25M Contract to Help 'Verify Taxpayer Identities'

How incredible it is that a Federal Agency needs a private company to identify its own citizens. You guys really should get smart ID cards like every other sane country. They have a certificate on them and you can even buy a card reader to use the chip and identify yourself in state-ran online services. Come join us in 2017, it's cool here.

&gt; &quot;the IRS has determined Equifax is the only business capable of providing this service.&quot;<p>Equifax and capable in the same sentence? Oh IRS...<p>The hackers should incorporate! Then two businesses would be capable of providing the service.<p>Would it be &#x27;ethical hacking&#x27; if you hacked companies like Equifax so you could offer their data to tax-payer-funded clients for cheaper than companies like Equifax do?<p>&lt;&#x2F;silliness&gt;

The important part of the reply:<p>&gt; As noted in public records, the short-term contract was awarded to Equifax to prevent a lapse in service during a protest on another contract. The service relates to assisting in ongoing identity validation needs of the IRS. Equifax provided these identity proofing services to the IRS under a previous contract.

&quot;The no-bid contract, which pays $7.25 million, is listed as a “sole source” acquisition, meaning the IRS has determined Equifax is the only business capable of providing this service.&quot;<p>If they are the only business capable why not make them bid anyway just in case?

&gt; <i>a contract to assist the IRS in verifying “taxpayer identities”</i><p>I&#x27;m guessing they will use the last 6 digits of the SSN for verification purposes.<p>&gt; <i>the IRS has determined Equifax is the only business capable of providing this service</i><p>We all know that isn&#x27;t true. There is something very rotten with this.<p>Anyone in possession of the Equifax breach data can get validated as 143 million different individuals.

So, why didn&#x27;t the IRS just download their leak and do the verification in house?<p>&#x2F;snark

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=15395639" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=15395639</a>

2017 has been the most bizarre year of my life so far.

We need to remember that this process probably started months ago before the hack. Also, remember that Equifax (while not really loved) was not really thought about as being a really bad company.

Now they can crowd source this project.

Clearly only Equifax has the level of incompetence needed by government sponsored work.

Awful time to be a satirist. How can you even parody this stuff?

Nuts