{"id":109857,"date":"2026-07-17T18:22:12","date_gmt":"2026-07-17T18:22:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/109857\/"},"modified":"2026-07-17T18:22:12","modified_gmt":"2026-07-17T18:22:12","slug":"federal-response-needed-to-fight-ai-fueled-digital-identity-fraud-panel-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/109857\/","title":{"rendered":"Federal response needed to fight AI-fueled digital identity fraud, panel says"},"content":{"rendered":"

Outdated privacy laws, the rise of artificial intelligence and a lack of communication between federal agencies is putting Americans\u2019 online identity at risk, lawmakers and witnesses said during a congressional hearing<\/a> Wednesday.<\/p>\n

A panel of fraud and cybersecurity experts appearing before the House Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on Government Operations testified that the government must come together to combat online identity fraud, including to improve Login.gov<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe way the federal government verifies identity was designed for a threat that no longer exists,\u201d said Jordan Burris<\/a>, head of public sector at Socure and former chief of staff to the U.S. chief information officer. \u201cWe are no longer confronting isolated fraudsters \u2014 we are facing organized, increasingly sophisticated transnational fraud rings using AI at an industrial scale.\u201d<\/p>\n

Burris said the country is essentially in \u201ca national crisis\u201d because AI is accelerating fraud attacks due to its speed and cost-effectiveness.\u00a0<\/p>\n

David Maimon, head of fraud insights at SentiLink and director of Georgia State University\u2019s Evidence-Based Cybersecurity Research Group, said the government has some of the tools it needs to fight digital identity fraud. What it is missing, however, is the \u201cauthority, the coordination and the sustained investment\u201d in those tools before fraud happens from a moving, \u201cdurable, specialized criminal infrastructure.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cCriminals exploit the seams between agencies precisely because our defenses are built program by program, while their infrastructure is built to move across all of them,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Marisol Cruz Cain, the Government Accountability Office\u2019s director of IT and cybersecurity,\u00a0 said the General Services Administration<\/a> has not taken all the recommended<\/a> steps to collaborate with agencies to address Login.gov\u2019s technical challenges. Agencies reported that they lacked visibility into authentications, the system had a high failure rate and lacked fraud controls, she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cTo their credit, they have been taking the issue very seriously and partnering with new technologies and new companies to enhance their fraud controls, but they need to partner with the users,\u201d she said. \u201cIf the users can\u2019t use it, the technologies can be great, but if your users are still having issues using the system, you\u2019re going to lose that user base.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rep. Emily Randall, D-Wash., raised concerns that Login.gov<\/a> is now led by Greg Hogan<\/a>, who was associated with the Department of Government Efficiency\u2019s efforts.<\/p>\n

\u201cPresident Trump took one of the DOGE bros who oversaw the looting of the federal government\u2019s data and endangered the privacy of every American and put him in charge of identity verification and login systems for every American,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd based on our previous line of questioning, that doesn\u2019t sound like a way to safeguard the American people\u2019s information.\u201d<\/p>\n

Panelists hearkened back to fraud that occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic<\/a>, with Maimon saying the pandemic \u201cdid not create this infrastructure, but it supercharged it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cCriminals learned how to acquire stolen and synthetic identities, stand up shell companies, open bank accounts, and recruit money mules at scale,\u201d he said. \u201cWhen pandemic relief programs ended, none of that capacity disappeared \u2014 it simply migrated. Today, my team is tracking that same infrastructure inside SNAP, Medicare, Medicaid, federal student aid, tax refunds and SBA-backed clones.\u201d<\/p>\n

But digital IDs may not be the answer either. Jay Stanley, senior policy analyst at the American Civil Liberties Union, said they are a \u201cdisaster for individual liberties\u201d and have an infrastructure that could be exploited \u201cif it\u2019s not done right.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have to ensure America does not become a checkpoint society, and that digital IDs don\u2019t become virtual ankle monitors \u2014 something that tracks us but we can\u2019t turn off or escape,\u201d he said. \u201cSome of the fraud prevention techniques are based on gathering an enormous amount of intrusive data about individuals.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stanley said digital IDs must be an \u201cempowering option\u201d and not an \u201cimprisoning requirement\u201d for those without smartphones or who are not technologically literate, as \u201cwe should never make policy based on an assumption of 100% adoption of technology.\u201d He was also concerned about threats from \u201cabusive\u201d political figures to revoke digital identification.<\/p>\n

Each panelist laid out their recommendations to combat digital identity fraud, but agreed that the federal Privacy Act of 1974<\/a> is outdated and needs to be updated to reflect the current state of digital privacy.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ranking member Kweisi Mfume, D-Md., committed to working on updating it, saying that \u201cthe world has changed, and the least we can do, I think, is to try to find a way to protect the privacy of Americans by updating the federal policy that we have.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\"K.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWritten by K. Sophie Will
\n\t\t\tK. Sophie Will is a reporter at FedScoop. Previously, she was an investigative data reporter at Bloomberg Industry Group. An award-winning journalist and Utah native, she graduated from Boston University and formerly worked with CQ Roll Call, the Utah Investigative Journalism Project, the Deseret News, USA Today, Reuters, HuffPost, WGBH, and more. Reach her on Signal at ksophiewill.66 or by phone at 617-888-0900.\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Outdated privacy laws, the rise of artificial intelligence and a lack of communication between federal agencies is putting…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":109858,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[24,56594,25,111,28001,313,56595,22173,56596,16251,56597,56598,28203,56599,4212,7341,56600,56601,56602,56603,56604,38096,56605,26420,2538,56606,20826,9608,2586,56607,4599,4862],"class_list":["post-109857","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ai","tag-ai","tag-american-civil-liberties-union","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificial-intelligence-ai","tag-covid-19","tag-cybersecurity","tag-david-maimon","tag-department-of-government-efficiency-doge","tag-digital-id","tag-digital-identity","tag-federal-chief-information-officer","tag-federal-student-aid","tag-general-services-administration-gsa","tag-georgia-state-universityu2019s-evidence-based-cybersecurity-research-group","tag-government-accountability-office-gao","tag-government-it-news","tag-greg-hogan","tag-house-oversight-and-government-reform-committee","tag-jay-stanley","tag-jordan-burris","tag-kweisi-mfume","tag-login-gov","tag-marisol-cruz-cain","tag-medicaid","tag-medicare","tag-privacy-act-of-1974","tag-sba","tag-smartphones","tag-snap","tag-socure","tag-tax-refund","tag-white-house"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109857","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=109857"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109857\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/109858"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}