Welfare Surveillance System Violates Human Rights, Dutch Court Rules (theguardian.com) 119
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: A Dutch court has ordered the immediate halt of an automated surveillance system for detecting welfare fraud because it violates human rights, in a judgment likely to resonate well beyond the Netherlands. The case was seen as an important legal challenge to the controversial but growing use by governments around the world of artificial intelligence (AI) and risk modeling in administering welfare benefits and other core services. Campaigners say such "digital welfare states" -- developed often without consultation, and operated secretively and without adequate oversight -- amount to spying on the poor, breaching privacy and human rights norms and unfairly penalizing the most vulnerable.
A Guardian investigation in October found the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) had increased spending to about $10 million a year on a specialist "intelligent automation garage" where computer scientists were developing more than 100 welfare robots, deep learning and intelligent automation for use in the welfare system. The Dutch government's risk indication system (SyRI) is a risk calculation model developed over the past decade by the social affairs and employment ministry to predict the likelihood of an individual committing benefit or tax fraud or violating labour laws. Deployed primarily in low-income neighborhoods, it gathers government data previously held in separate silos, such as employment, personal debt and benefit records, and education and housing histories, then analyses it using a secret algorithm to identify which individuals might be at higher risk of committing benefit fraud. "A broad coalition of privacy and welfare rights groups, backed by the largest Dutch trade union, argued that poor neighborhoods and their inhabitants were being spied on digitally without any concrete suspicion of individual wrongdoing," the report adds. "SyRI was disproportionately targeting poorer citizens, they said, violating human rights norms."
"The court ruled that the SyRI legislation contained insufficient safeguards against privacy intrusions and criticized a 'serious lack of transparency' about how it worked. It concluded in its ruling that, in the absence of more information, the system may, in targeting poor neighborhoods, amount to discrimination on the basis of socioeconomic or migrant status."
A Guardian investigation in October found the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) had increased spending to about $10 million a year on a specialist "intelligent automation garage" where computer scientists were developing more than 100 welfare robots, deep learning and intelligent automation for use in the welfare system. The Dutch government's risk indication system (SyRI) is a risk calculation model developed over the past decade by the social affairs and employment ministry to predict the likelihood of an individual committing benefit or tax fraud or violating labour laws. Deployed primarily in low-income neighborhoods, it gathers government data previously held in separate silos, such as employment, personal debt and benefit records, and education and housing histories, then analyses it using a secret algorithm to identify which individuals might be at higher risk of committing benefit fraud. "A broad coalition of privacy and welfare rights groups, backed by the largest Dutch trade union, argued that poor neighborhoods and their inhabitants were being spied on digitally without any concrete suspicion of individual wrongdoing," the report adds. "SyRI was disproportionately targeting poorer citizens, they said, violating human rights norms."
"The court ruled that the SyRI legislation contained insufficient safeguards against privacy intrusions and criticized a 'serious lack of transparency' about how it worked. It concluded in its ruling that, in the absence of more information, the system may, in targeting poor neighborhoods, amount to discrimination on the basis of socioeconomic or migrant status."
I’m surprised (Score:2)
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Is the system only looking for citizens paying tax with a past in the tax system?
ie working, paying some tax and getting serval full gov payments... into the same bank account.. under the same name for years..
Complex bank accounts used only to cash out gov payments on the day of payment.. with no further bank/gov/support/housing/wrok/medical history under that "fake" name found once in both systems? Once to apply for lots of gov support and one to open the bank account to ac
Reverse Willy Sutton ? (Score:1)
"The court ruled that the SyRI legislation contained insufficient safeguards against privacy intrusions and criticized a 'serious lack of transparency' about how it worked. It concluded in its ruling that, in the absence of more information, the system may, in targeting poor neighborhoods, amount to discrimination on the basis of socioeconomic or migrant status."
"Why do you rob banks Mr. Sutton ?"
"That's where the money is"
---Willy Sutton.
Who would of thought that welfare cheats would live in poor neighborhoods or come from groups most likely to be using the system ?
This is almost as bad as the case in the U.S. where the courts ruled landlords couldn' exclude tennatns based on illegal drug use and other criminal activities.
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This is almost as bad as the case in the U.S. where the courts ruled landlords couldn' exclude tennatns based on illegal drug use and other criminal activities.
Bullshit. [realestatelawyers.com]
Wrong (Score:2)
This is almost as bad as the case in the U.S. where the courts ruled landlords couldn' exclude tennatns based on illegal drug use and other criminal activities.
Bullshit. [realestatelawyers.com]
Try harder and try to understand what was being said
https://www.citylab.com/equity... [citylab.com]
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Everyone who says "would of" is a dumbass.
The biggest welfare cheats are corporations.
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Everyone who says "would of" is a dumbass.
The biggest welfare cheats are corporations.
Wow. Well I suppose you at least managed to try deflecting with something marginally on topic, instead of distracting with "Think of all the starving children in Africa".
It's still pretty funny to see someone trying to take the moral and intellectual high ground with the "But he did worse" defense.
Trolls (Score:2)
This thread took only 10 minutes to become overrrun by trolls.
Must be some kind of record.
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This thread took only 10 minutes to become overrrun by trolls.
Otherwise known as "people I disagree with."
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This thread took only 10 minutes to become overrrun by trolls.
Must be some kind of record.
With large groups and companies all the way up through state actors trying to sway things? And we won't even get into official or unofficial trolling by the web site itself to fish in readers and responders to get additional ad peeps.
Is this a joke? (Score:2, Insightful)
Taxpayers HAVE A RIGHT TO KNOW that their tax money is being spent on its intended purposes and not for fraudulent activities.
If the recipients don't like it, too bad. Stop asking for a hand out. This goes for welfare recipients and Boeing.
Re:Is this a joke? (Score:5, Interesting)
It always winds up costing more to detect welfare fraud than it's worth. The most logical solution is to institute UBI and then the only fraud you have to detect is people pretending that other people aren't dead so they can collect their UBI. It's cheaper, it's better, and the wealthy can afford to pay for it. They derive the most benefit from the system, so they should pay the most to maintain it. The alternative is torches and pitchforks, tomorrow if not today.
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Paying 100% of a nations workforce "money" every month is not "cheaper" for decades.
The alternative is to see if a person is not wealthy, not working and can get a full or a part gov payment until they are working again... retire... get a payment for doing education.
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"It always winds up costing more to provide welfare than it's worth."
Sure, if you don't value your neck.
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"I am for quick execution of anyone caught robbing / murdering someone for moneyary gain"
Great. Let's line the CEOs and other top executives of all major corporations up against the wall, starting with PGE, ATT, Boeing, every oil company...
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Welfare also saves money in policing. If you're hungry and starving, you will commit crimes for food. This ends up making the place less safe and requires more
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The worst part is that it's not a graduated claw-back. It's not 'Okay, you're making an extra $10/month, so you're gonna get $10 less in benefits a month.' It's 'okay, your $0.05/hr raise took you over the threshold, so YOU GET NOTHING.' And at the same time, you may lose food stamps, medicaid, and other benefits, which may amount to more than your job nets you entirely. It's not uncommon for those in this position to refuse small raises because of this.
It's the most back-assward and regressive way to se
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bollocks, even the kind of person you're describing can find a manual job that requires little mental capacity. Local goverment official, for example :-)
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Suppose you did what you propose - scrap all benefits and welfare (except perhaps for those who were born with a disability). No UBI.
The likely market reaction to this would be to provide insurance products. You lose your job or become unable to work? We will provide a monthly sum, for life, based on whatever premium you were paying. Most people like you and me would see this as an unavoidable cost of living, like health care in the US, and just factor it into our finances.
Of course the insurers would want
Re: Is this a joke? (Score:5, Insightful)
Taxpayers HAVE A RIGHT TO KNOW that their tax money is being spent on its intended purposes and not for fraudulent activities.
If the recipients don't like it, too bad. Stop asking for a hand out. This goes for welfare recipients and Boeing.
Higher volumes of loss, and concern to taxpayers come from tax evasion.
These systems should be fed with any available purchase history, credit history, income sources, international data sharing agreements, then basically follow linkedin connections to find other likely culprits, etc. Sounds fair.
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So the AI should be used on public schools, medicare claims, and government contractors, as well. You're already demanding that, right?
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If the person says they are using the money for "education" from a service approved by the gov...
Does the person exist? Not a fake ID?
Does the type and years of education listed by the person exist as gov approved education? No a scam front company to allow people to request years of education payments.
Is the person attending as they said they would when accepting the full "education" payment from the gov...
ie the needed full t
Re: Is this a joke? (Score:1)
Re:Is this a joke? (Score:4, Insightful)
Most of the people on benefits have paid into the system, i.e. it's more like an insurance pay-out than a hand-out.
And no, privacy is a human right in Europe so taxpayer concerns about how their money is spent can't override that. In practice it's a balance but anything too invasive is not acceptable, as the court has confirmed.
Re: Is this a joke? (Score:2)
Does it also apply to government agencies who use taxpayer money to develop something as broad in scope as this without putting that decision in front of voters?
Violates human rights? (Score:2, Insightful)
Since when has defrauding welfare been a human right?
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For a car analogy, it would be as if the police decided to automate searching the cars of everyone who happened to be driving while poor because someone, somewhere, must be speeding
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... ... ...
Fair enough!
No surprise in the Netherlands (Score:3)
Everything in the Netherlands gets overturned based on some complaint about discrimination the first pass. This is often abused as it's in Article 1 of the Constitution for the government to treat everyone equally.
This law and practice will be fine tuned and rolled out again. The Dutch love suing their government on basically every issue, and ultimately all that happens is the government makes a slight change and then it's all quiet from that point onward.
Other classic examples:
- Trying to ban mopeds from inner city bike paths for safety reasons. Oh but it turns out the majority of moped drivers are immigrants, and the majority of cyclists are white Dutch folk. Well we can't ban mopeds on bike paths because we're discriminating against immigrants. This went through the courts for a full year before Amsterdam finally got it through.
- Changes to the tax exemption were overturned based on discrimination of wealth. They government couldn't just arbitrarily stop the expat tax discount as it didn't affect all expats equally, so they had to change the law to create a 3 stage phase in.
Am I abusing welfare? I wouldn't call it that. (Score:2)
There is no two ways about it: We're already living in a post-scarcity economy. I'm dropping out of my current gig consisting of a baseline bullshit job interspersed with me trying to explain to my POs and PMs how the internet and software projects fundamentally work and sometimes get to write specs or some gluecode for the software components that we buy and plug together. This is 20% of my 4/5th dayjob, the rest consists of me sitting around and ready articles on Microservice architecture and trying out v
Cost? (Score:2)
Does anyone have a recent "cost/benefit analysis"?
Given the enormous cost of "AI", and the probability it will not work as expected - its a Government IT project, I am sure the bookies will give good odds it will never actually work at all - it seems that "Gordon Brown knows how to spend your money better than you do!" is likely to be out done by "Boris can squa
Poor people are more likely to use welfare? (Score:2)
Seriously, that's a stupid argument. Of course the poor are going to be disproportionately affected by this. That doesn't mean it's bad. That doesn't mean it violates anyone's rights. I don't even see how this can be called surveillance, since it appears to involve little more than scraping data from various pre-existing government databases! That's a government using it's own data to predict the likelihood that the recipient of benefits it provides might cheat.
I don't know how the D
Pauper's Oath (Score:1, Troll)
Whether being observed by others violates a human right or not, it is not relevant. Because people unable to provide for themselves can be expected to surrender such a right in exchange for assistance.
If I am paying them, I'm entitled to attach any strings to such payment as I please. Take it or leave it. Which strings to attach to their charity is up to the Dutch tax-paying public. But they can attach anything they please
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Most normal nations just add legal text to the application for gov support.
The gov will look over past tax and bank details.
If the person is working while getting gov support.
Show up in the tax system as working while getting full gov support for not working?
Using fake ID, more than one ID to get a lot of gov support payments per person?
Travel to a war zone to support a banned group while getting full gov payments..
Detect the fraud and thats more support, services and
Re:Pauper's Oath (Score:4, Funny)
Whether being observed by others violates a human right or not, it is not relevant. Because people unable to provide for themselves can be expected to surrender such a right in exchange for assistance.
I understand first born are in particularly high demand.
Re:Pauper's Oath (Score:4, Insightful)
Feudalism ended some time ago your "Lordship".
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Exactly! And that's why, you have no right to my money. If I'm agreeing to give you any because you have no means to support yourself, I get to set the terms.
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Still don't get it, do you? I'm a tax-payer of a non-autocratic country — it is my money my country's rulers are dispensing to the paupers. That is what entitles me to set whatever terms to the aforementioned paupers — and I get to do it through those rulers. The rulers, who are not autocrats, but rather hired help...
Re:Pauper's Oath (Score:4, Insightful)
Still don't get it, do you? I'm a tax-payer of a non-autocratic country — it is my money my country's rulers are dispensing to the paupers. That is what entitles me to set whatever terms to the aforementioned paupers — and I get to do it through those rulers. The rulers, who are not autocrats, but rather hired help...
No they can't set "whatever terms" they wish. The"rules" can't violate rights guaranteed by the constitution.
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In the USA the "rights" you have are, to summarize "Right to Life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness" without government interference.
I'm just curious, which of these does attaching terms to welfare assistance violate?
Even if you dig out the bill of rights, which of those specific rights (which are really details of the above summary) are we discussing?
Asking for a friend...
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Could you enumerate, please?
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Once your tax money is taken from you (no it doesn't require your consent) it isn't your money any more and you have absolutely no say what happens to it.
If some organized crime organization came to put a machine gun to your head and politely ask for some cash you wouldn't try to tell them what they must or must not do with it. It is just as silly to do that here. It *is not* your money anymore and no one cares what you think should be done with it.
Taxes are not a voluntary donation and it is silly to act a
Re:Pauper's Oath (Score:4, Interesting)
sure, once the tax money is taken the elected officials can spend it how they like.
Except you, as a democratic citizen, can change the elected officials and tell them that you woudl like them not to give money away in welfare, and the new officials should then do just that.
That's how democracies work, its not some authoritarian state where only a select few of a special group get to compete amongst themselves to be chosen as the leader of the oppressed peasantry. Well, not since the populace realised they were being "represented" by a bunch of oligarchs and voted in an outsider.
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That's how democracies work, its not some authoritarian state where only a select few of a special group get to compete amongst themselves to be chosen as the leader of the oppressed peasantry.
Uh... aside from the fact that most modern democracies aren't quite authoritarian yet, the rest of that statement does describe a lot of them...
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its not some authoritarian state where only a select few of a special group get to compete amongst themselves to be chosen as the leader of the oppressed peasantry
Well that's not what authoritarianism is, but for the other thing: I've got news for you [opensecrets.org].
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Clown world. It's "pro-tyranny" to establish fiscal controls that prevent fraud.
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I get to set the terms.
Hmm, I wonder why I can't do that when I pay taxes.
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Most of these people have paid into a government run insurance scheme so they do have a right to that money.
Also a lot of the government's money isn't even from tax.
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Feudalism ended some time ago
Oh really, then why do we have a perpetual class of people happy to be serfs.
You cannot choose to be a serf and then expect to live like a king.
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Careful, you'll hurt your back that way.
The fact that you're using a ploy that desperate indicates that you fear it does.
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They probably can, as long as they apply it to everyone. I think it's the lack of transparency that lead to this conviction, the plaintiffs claimed it dis-proportionally targeted specific groups and the government refused to disclose the specifics of how it works. There's some bad sides to social democracies but they work hard on procurement, recruitment, permits, benefits etc. to avoid nepotism, corruption and hidden discrimination. Nobody's supposed to get preferential treatment and nobody's supposed to b
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Actually, no — non-uniform application is not violating anybody's human rights either.
That may (or may not) be desirable, but it is not a human rights violation, when this does not happen to folks, who are, literally begging strangers for help.
Human rights (Score:2)
The Dutch government is rife with human rights violations in the way they deal with things. Everyone is supposed to have the right to be treated fairly. The Dutch government is far from fair. They have the system so tied up that for the most part it is completely unaccountable. The system has evolved that way over years and government officials are actually really cocky about how they can violate your human rights.
I'm a Dutch citizen and my human rights were violated for through deliberate obstruction of ju
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A long and sad story but not at all typical.
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The episode of Zembla presents a different story, they have shown that refusal to prosecute DA's that obstruct justice is in fact a policy, that's straight from the mouth of the head of the public prosecutor's office. But the English speaking world doesn't watch such programs and so they are not aware of this.
It wasn't one or two people that obstructed justice in this case it was the mayor, the chief of police, the DA's in the Maastricht office of the openbare ministerie, the jurist from the mayor a whole s
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Typical or not is not so much the problem it's the trivial ease and willingness at which *ALL* the democratic safeguards can were bypassed. This could happen to anyone and simply should not be possible in a democratic state of law. This means that the Netherlands as a properly functioning democratic state of law is more of an illusion.
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Have we no poor houses?
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If I am paying them, I'm entitled to attach any strings to such payment as I please. Take it or leave it.
Ah the rare anarcho-capitalist, spotted on YouTube. Tell us more about how our corporate overlords have every right to do whatever they want to you, as long as you agree out of need?
That's the thing about human rights, they're held above contract law. They are precisely the rights you shouldn't be able to give up, even when desperate. Recognizing that, recognizing that slavery doesn't belong, is one difference between a libertarian and an AnCap.
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Anarchists are not typically pro-corporation.
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They are, they just don't realize the inconsistency inherent in their position.
Re:Pauper's Oath (Score:4, Insightful)
Whether being observed by others violates a human right or not, it is not relevant. Because people unable to provide for themselves can be expected to surrender such a right in exchange for assistance.
If I am paying them, I'm entitled to attach any strings to such payment as I please. Take it or leave it. Which strings to attach to their charity is up to the Dutch tax-paying public. But they can attach anything they please — this is not about human rights...
You missed something. BIG. I suggest you have your eyesight examined.
Holland as most European countries does not limit benefits to the "trailer park" population. Everyone can at some point in life receive a benefit - state handouts during maternity leave, state handouts if you have children, etc.
The surveillance, however, was CLEARLY ILLEGAL because it was:
1. Violating the GDPR and other data protection legislation. You can do what the software does only if you have a REASONABLE CAUSE to suspect a crime. You cannot officially declare everyone in a neighbourhood or everyone earning less than X a crime suspect.
2. Clearly discriminatory. It was not applied to EVERYONE who was receiving a tax payer handout. It was applied only to the "poorer" parts. The posh mommies getting a maternity and child benefit living a 3 bedroom house in the Amsterdam Suburbia were not under surveillance. The poor ones living in the migrant dumps were.
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1) This is no contract, but a law. Laws are bound by the rules the state has given itself, called the constitution.
2) Even if it was a contract, contract clauses that run afoul the law are invalid.
You are not limitless in your power how and what can be done with your money. You are bound by the law, and the law is bound by the constitution.
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Reasonable verifications against fraud, including updates, yes. All-intrusive continuous monitoring sans evidence of fraud or other crime? Maybe not.
As usual, the problem is robo-dumping people instead of using it as a tool to flag for further human review.
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Whatever you say Comrade
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Hi, thanks for posting your remark.
I am guessing that you fell for the click bait, if you go and read the article ( which I read the guardians version ) it's very specific and it's easy to see why people are getting upset.
the AI system is forecasting future abuse and whom most likely it will be. Something like that crime prevention movie with Tom Cruise. This is completely unfair, in trouble just because you fit a category? to many people can fit and even if it was exact, it should be used as a tool to help
Re:Resonate (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not convicting people because the AI predicted they would do something nefarious. It's just directing resources to the places where crime happens statistically more. This is basically saying that police can't concentrate resources in any particular area because they know crime happens more often there, that would be a violation of human rights?
The problem with welfare fraud is that it is really hard to detect. I've grown up in those circumstances, in Europe, a lot of people are all abusing the welfare system because they are very open, they tend to cluster together and they all use similar methods to avoid detection. Applying an AI (really a classifier) to the datasets in order to highlight potential cases of similar fraud by comparing them to already convicted fraudsters seems appropriate use of limited resources.
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It seems that we both read the article.
Welfare abuse is everywhere. that I won't dispute with you.
but the system seems to be targeting highest probability, which like crime prevention is a smart thing to do.
Sadly, in this case ( and since you know of this group at one point or another ) it's really crossing a line,
I know many many people that do deserve these benefits, and it's a small percentage that commits the crime.
as a side view, this fraud has ways of being controlled over time due to evolution of pap
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I know many many people that do deserve these benefits, and it's a small percentage that commits the crime
Do they commit benefits fraud at a higher rate than the public at large? Then they should be placed under more scrutiny. Even if it's a small percentage, if it's higher than the public at large, it should be under more focus to reduce the crime.
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No, they don't commit benefits fraud at a higher rate: a poor person and a rich person both receiving benefits are about as likely as each other to be receiving it legitimately. But of course, the percentage of poor people receiving benefits is higher than the percentage in the overall population.
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Benefits systems vary from one country to another, obviously. But the eligibility criteria don't always include money in European countries. Child benefit is often paid if you have a child, irrespective of income. Similarly disability support, support for widowed people, unemployment, etc.
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So where's the AI finding rich people committing "tax fraud or violating labour laws"? Why is the government refusing to collate the "employment, personal debt and benefit records" of rich people? This is class warfare, nothing more.
Re: Resonate (Score:1)
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In turn, GurueVi claiming it hasn't "predicted they would do something nefarious", is incorrect. He's also incorrect in claiming it will be "convicting people": That requires evidence. It's m
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It seems to me that "probable cause" is a damn fine standard. If you can't prove how that you have at least a 50% chance of being right about a specific individual, you don't have the right to search or surveil that individual.
In the US we have (from time to time, not consistently) a strong resistance to the notion of "a black man robbed a liquor store, just stop and search every black man in a 10 block radius". That kind of "general warrant" was very much on the minds of our Founding Fathers when they re
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It's just directing resources to the places where crime happens statistically more.
This is one of the most commons errors made when defending these kinds of actions.
Most crime is undetected or unreported. If you send more police to an area detection rates will go up and it will look like there is more crime in that area. Maybe you should arrest the cops since the crime wave seems to follow them.
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Yes, I could RTFA, but being around /. for quite a while, I fear that might get me excommunicated.
Is an aid recipient in trouble or denied benefits solely because the "AI" identifies them as "likely to abuse the system" or does it merely flag them as deserving closer scrutiny? The former would, of course, be a problem. The latter however would be fine -- if there is no abuse, there's no repercussions.
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1) There is no publication so far which rules cause the system to flag someone. As far as the court could tell, it even could flag everyone whose family name starts with a letter later than L in the alphabet for instance.
2) Even if the rules are based on some statistical evidence, they still might be wrongly applied. If Smith is the most common family name, it will probably also be the name popping up most in previous known cases of benefit fraud. Would you call it thus fair to scrut
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I was, and unfortunately failed to mention this, looking at this from the standpoint of the United States where isn't a Constitutional right to privacy. As such, everything I said is consistent with US law.
Perhaps the Netherlands has a provision of law that precludes the application of statistics in this application -- if so, I assume the courts have, by now, issued an injunction (or the Dutch equivalent) to halt it.
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I've not researched GDPR, but my recollection is that it applies only to enterprises engaging in economic activities (which I took to mean commercial) and specifically exempts at least many government functions including police, military, national security, and justice.
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Thats not forecasting..
A person once paid a tax rate and then cant find work.. they apply for and are approved for gov payments until they find work, start gov approved education, retire...
So the gov has a set wealth amount and spending pattern per week, month, year
A list of past and new bank accounts.. their use patterns..
The "forecasting" part is then seeing strange cash movements, paying tax, othe
I would have gone with suspending the franchise. (Score:1)
It's the only way to solve the problem of the populace voting the government into bankruptcy.
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So naturally, those rules should apply even moreso to banks, wealthy financial firms, and government contractors as well (since they get so much more government money), right? Really all corporations since they owe their very existance to a government grant of charter.
The discussion of how dumb it is to insist that people on assistance should get a job coupled with punishing them if they do and even surveilling them to make sure they don't can wait for another day.
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thats gov money given to an approved person who requested that support payment...
Part of been approved for different payments is not working, starting with gov approved education, no longer working.
ie not having 2 to 20 bank accounts collecting 2 to 20 payments under different names.
Working and requesting 2 full gov support payment.
Re "should get a job"
Re "apply even moreso to banks" most nations have powerful reporting laws on all
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Part of been approved for different payments is not working, starting with gov approved education, no longer working.
I never questioned the right to be dumb, just the wisdom.
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Some criminals will pay a wage and their gov payment into the same account.
Not that smart... but privacy...
Some criminals will keep paying tax, be working and fake their need for a gov payment under the same name...but use very different bank accounts..
Not that smart... but "privacy" for the bank and "human rights" respected by the tax systems?
Others will set up complex systems of fake ID and try and move money around under different names.. as cash..
Not matc
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I mean, of course, dumb as in providing punishment (in the operant conditioning sense) when the person does what you WANT them to do,. Think spanking a child for cleaning their room and doing all of their homework on time. It's hard to argue against the idea that doing that is dumb. Perhaps even depressingly stupid. As B.F. Skinner demonstrated so clearly, if that is done with any consistancy the child will soon develop an aversion to cleaning his room and doing homework and the welfare recipient will soon
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they do already - the tax systems are very much automated and able to cross reference all manner of payments and invoices to detect tax fraud.
You migth be pissed because those companies charge moneya nd recieve it, but they will still be paying the exactly correct amunt of tax. They have special accountants to ensure that they follow all of the tax laws. (that way they also pay the minimum amount, but that's still fully complaint with the law).
For fraudsters, its a minority that abuse the system and appear
Re: (Score:2)
It's interesting that based only on a tweet about a nice purse with 5 IDs in it that you conclude the owner is engaged in fraudulently claiming a housing as opposed to some other more likely form of fraud. Particularly since based on your description of the housing, none would receive a housing benefit.