Harriett Hageman and Jim Jordan:
The Committee on the Judiciary and the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government are conducting oversight of the federal government’s use of artificial intelligence (AI) technology to surveil American citizens’ financial information. Based on recent reporting and other information obtained by the Committee and Select Subcommittee, we believe that the Department of the Treasury possesses information necessary for our oversight and we request your full cooperation.
In September 2023, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) announced that it was using AI to “help IRS compliance teams better detect tax cheating, identify emerging compliance threats and improve case selection tools.”1 According to the announcement, “the IRS is deploying new resources towards cutting-edge technology to improve our visibility on where the wealthy shield their income and focus staff attention on the areas of greatest abuse,
” including “cutting-edge machine learning technology.”2 On February 28, 2024, the Treasury Department publicly be acknowledged that it has “implemented an enhanced process using AI to mitigate check fraud in near real-time by strengthening and expediting processes to recover potentially fraudulent payments from financial institutions” since late 2022. 3 As noted in a Treasury Department press release, “[t]he enhanced AI process and OPI’s [Office of Payment Integrity] strong partnership with federal law enforcement agencies have led to multiple active cases and arrests with law
enforcement” and the recovery of $375 million in Fiscal Year (FY) 2023 alone.4
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