They just blacklisted people with foreign sounding names….
Wow that’s really fucked up.
But what did the authorities think? It is so clear you have to check every case with an actual person.
Good of you to post this, I was just about to do the same.
Fellow Europeans, please beware.
“Having dual nationality was marked as a big risk indicator”, tell me you are a xenophobe, without saying you are a xenophobe.
People need to realise that software is built by humans and so encodes their biases, but also removes the ability to empathise. If you take data that is inherently biased and put it into a machine learning algorithm you just end up with an algorithm that is biased, then it becomes even more biased as it learns from it’s own decisions
This has nothing to do with automatic detection of fraud, but more with the severe lack of follow up checks. After all, it’s a lot cheaper just to assume everyone committed fraud and has to pay back. Everyone including the judiciary helped to make this possible. And the actual culprits? No one will ever be in jail because of these decisions. And the same government can just do another term again.
This is beyond fucked up. Whoever implemented this should be brought to court and then jail. For a long time.
This isn’t even the first time our tax department had a scandal. It toppled our previous government, months before the election, only for us to elect the exact same government, changing nothing. The other day, there was also on the news that the tax department had flagged basically anyone who made donations to a mosque automatically. I wish I was making this up.
Of course, this all started with reforms which were done because people were scared that immigrants from Bulgaria were moving here solely to live off of Dutch benefits. So this new tax system was born from already racist ideas, and was given free reign to “tackle fraudsters” basically. Surprise surprise, our tax system is now very discriminatory, and lacking oversight. And Rutte has been prime minister all this time, and refuses to tackle this problem seriously, still.
>Dutch scandal serves as warning for the rest of Europe over the use of algorithms
That is a fucking idiotic title.
This comment will go against the grain and will probably enrage some people, but i still think its important to highlight the other side of the issue.
At this point in time there is not enough manpower (tax law has become too complex and requires high level education) to check every persons tax forms therefore you have to use self learning algorithms to narrow down the group to manageable numbers.
These algorithms are based on decades of (historic) statistics (from back when every tax reform was checked) that give a very clear picture of certain variables that may indicate if someone is more or less likely to commit tax fraud. These algorithm get more precise the more they improve themselves (due to human feedback). They are not made by racist people its just that these algorithm become racist because people from these groups (usually less wealthy, living in worse neighbourhood etc) are more likely to commit (in this case) tax fraud (or do so ‘accidentally’ due to language barriers).
After an algorithm has made the list more managable a person is going take up the case (also there are multiple check to readjust the algorithms). If we remove them (or just make them not ‘racist’) the effectiveness of the government institutions would diminish greatly.
A similar thing happened here in Australia with unemployment benefits and it ruined many people’s lives:
This is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard from the Dutch. Imagine getting “penalized for the mere suspicion of fraud”, it’s ridiculously moronic. What’s next? This scenario probably:
Police: “Sir you’re under arrest for suspicion to commit murder”
You: “What? How?”
Police: “Some tech wiz made a thing that predicts the future I think”
You: “Is that even possible or legal?”
Police: “Tell it to the judge sunshine”
This article sounds like something the Dutch would do. Lived there for quite a while, and events as such happen more often than not.
13 comments
Algorithms?
They just blacklisted people with foreign sounding names….
Wow that’s really fucked up.
But what did the authorities think? It is so clear you have to check every case with an actual person.
Good of you to post this, I was just about to do the same.
Fellow Europeans, please beware.
“Having dual nationality was marked as a big risk indicator”, tell me you are a xenophobe, without saying you are a xenophobe.
People need to realise that software is built by humans and so encodes their biases, but also removes the ability to empathise. If you take data that is inherently biased and put it into a machine learning algorithm you just end up with an algorithm that is biased, then it becomes even more biased as it learns from it’s own decisions
This has nothing to do with automatic detection of fraud, but more with the severe lack of follow up checks. After all, it’s a lot cheaper just to assume everyone committed fraud and has to pay back. Everyone including the judiciary helped to make this possible. And the actual culprits? No one will ever be in jail because of these decisions. And the same government can just do another term again.
This is beyond fucked up. Whoever implemented this should be brought to court and then jail. For a long time.
This isn’t even the first time our tax department had a scandal. It toppled our previous government, months before the election, only for us to elect the exact same government, changing nothing. The other day, there was also on the news that the tax department had flagged basically anyone who made donations to a mosque automatically. I wish I was making this up.
Of course, this all started with reforms which were done because people were scared that immigrants from Bulgaria were moving here solely to live off of Dutch benefits. So this new tax system was born from already racist ideas, and was given free reign to “tackle fraudsters” basically. Surprise surprise, our tax system is now very discriminatory, and lacking oversight. And Rutte has been prime minister all this time, and refuses to tackle this problem seriously, still.
>Dutch scandal serves as warning for the rest of Europe over the use of algorithms
That is a fucking idiotic title.
This comment will go against the grain and will probably enrage some people, but i still think its important to highlight the other side of the issue.
At this point in time there is not enough manpower (tax law has become too complex and requires high level education) to check every persons tax forms therefore you have to use self learning algorithms to narrow down the group to manageable numbers.
These algorithms are based on decades of (historic) statistics (from back when every tax reform was checked) that give a very clear picture of certain variables that may indicate if someone is more or less likely to commit tax fraud. These algorithm get more precise the more they improve themselves (due to human feedback). They are not made by racist people its just that these algorithm become racist because people from these groups (usually less wealthy, living in worse neighbourhood etc) are more likely to commit (in this case) tax fraud (or do so ‘accidentally’ due to language barriers).
After an algorithm has made the list more managable a person is going take up the case (also there are multiple check to readjust the algorithms). If we remove them (or just make them not ‘racist’) the effectiveness of the government institutions would diminish greatly.
A similar thing happened here in Australia with unemployment benefits and it ruined many people’s lives:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robodebt_scheme
This is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard from the Dutch. Imagine getting “penalized for the mere suspicion of fraud”, it’s ridiculously moronic. What’s next? This scenario probably:
Police: “Sir you’re under arrest for suspicion to commit murder”
You: “What? How?”
Police: “Some tech wiz made a thing that predicts the future I think”
You: “Is that even possible or legal?”
Police: “Tell it to the judge sunshine”
This article sounds like something the Dutch would do. Lived there for quite a while, and events as such happen more often than not.