Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Dutch scandal serves as a warning for Europe over risks of using algorithms

politico.eu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 197 posts

Re: Dutch scandal serves as a warning for Europe over risks of using algorithms

#11

Post by yunohn »

jacquesm wrote: post #2

This scandal and the issues at the dutch tax office runs much deeper than just this one set of issues, they also maintained illegal lists of 'potential fraudulent people' on which 100's of thousands of people that had done nothing wrong, such as having the 'wrong' surname. It's rotten to the core and to date there have been zero consequences for the perps and the damage continues to pile up. Our government has fallen…

Meanwhile, the irony amidst all this is that the Netherlands is the largest tax haven for companies globally. Literally every brand/company you can think of is legally headquartered in NL for tax purposes.

Eg: FAANG, Disney, IKEA, Uber, Mars Chocolate, etc etc

Re: Dutch scandal serves as a warning for Europe over risks of using algorithms

#12

Post by ClumsyPilot »

wallaBBB wrote: post #4

By reading, seems that the algorithm is just a scapegoat used in the title. This is racial discriminations dating way back, purposely introduced in the algorithm, and supported for 6 years. > Having dual nationality was marked as a big risk indicator, as was a low income. >In 2020, Trouw and another Dutch news outlet, RTL Nieuws revealed that the tax authorities also kept secret blacklists of people for two decades,…

No fly lists too, no algorythms involved

Re: Dutch scandal serves as a warning for Europe over risks of using algorithms

#13

Post by StreamBright »

sidewndr46 wrote: post #3

> The Dutch tax authorities now face a new €3.7 million fine from the country's privacy regulator. How does this work? Wouldn't the government be fining the government and paying itself with the citizens tax revenues? Also, this doesn't seem to serve as a warning at all. Unless all the politicians and civil servants were removed from their job, barred from public positions and given hefty fines then this is actually…

It is part of the theatre, unelected government officials waste taxpayers money on something illegal so they have to pay with taxpayer money for it. The only real punishment would have been is jail time for the people involved and explaining to the rest of the unelected government officials that they can end up in jail. Just like how the rest of society works.

Re: Dutch scandal serves as a warning for Europe over risks of using algorithms

#14

Post by chekibreki »

I hate how the correlation between income/country of origin and fraud probability is discarded as „racist“ by at least Amnesty International.

Maybe we should first do a correlation and causality analysis and see what it yields instead of closing our eyes because of PC?

Re: Dutch scandal serves as a warning for Europe over risks of using algorithms

#15

Post by sidewndr46 »

StreamBright wrote: post #13
sidewndr46 wrote: post #3

> The Dutch tax authorities now face a new €3.7 million fine from the country's privacy regulator. How does this work? Wouldn't the government be fining the government and paying itself with the citizens tax revenues? Also, this doesn't seem to serve as a warning at all. Unless all the politicians and civil servants were removed from their job, barred from public positions and given hefty fines then this is actually…

It is part of the theatre, unelected government officials waste taxpayers money on something illegal so they have to pay with taxpayer money for it. The only real punishment would have been is jail time for the people involved and explaining to the rest of the unelected government officials that they can end up in jail. Just like how the rest of society works.

This sounds like playing monopoly with taxpayer dollars.

Re: Dutch scandal serves as a warning for Europe over risks of using algorithms

#16

Post by chekibreki »

yunohn wrote: post #11
jacquesm wrote: post #2

This scandal and the issues at the dutch tax office runs much deeper than just this one set of issues, they also maintained illegal lists of 'potential fraudulent people' on which 100's of thousands of people that had done nothing wrong, such as having the 'wrong' surname. It's rotten to the core and to date there have been zero consequences for the perps and the damage continues to pile up. Our government has fallen…

Meanwhile, the irony amidst all this is that the Netherlands is the largest tax haven for companies globally. Literally every brand/company you can think of is legally headquartered in NL for tax purposes. Eg: FAANG, Disney, IKEA, Uber, Mars Chocolate, etc etc

Are you sure you’re not mixing up the Netherlands with Ireland?

Re: Dutch scandal serves as a warning for Europe over risks of using algorithms

#17

Post by eesmith »

jacquesm wrote: post #2

This scandal and the issues at the dutch tax office runs much deeper than just this one set of issues, they also maintained illegal lists of 'potential fraudulent people' on which 100's of thousands of people that had done nothing wrong, such as having the 'wrong' surname. It's rotten to the core and to date there have been zero consequences for the perps and the damage continues to pile up. Our government has fallen…

It's shocking to read, and reminds me of the British Post Office scandal.

A €3.7 million + €2.75 million fines are a slap-on-the wrist for what happened. Even €30,000/case seems a pittance compared to its effects on people.

It mentions there were "secret blacklists of people for two decades" and that "authorities [were] hiding information or misleading the parliament about the facts".

I don't see how regulating algorithms and AI could affect those institutional injustices.

Re: Dutch scandal serves as a warning for Europe over risks of using algorithms

#18

Post by Freak_NL »

chekibreki wrote: post #16
yunohn wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meanwhile, the irony amidst all this is that the Netherlands is the largest tax haven for companies globally. Literally every brand/company you can think of is legally headquartered in NL for tax purposes. Eg: FAANG, Disney, IKEA, Uber, Mars Chocolate, etc etc

Are you sure you’re not mixing up the Netherlands with Ireland?

Both are tax havens.

Re: Dutch scandal serves as a warning for Europe over risks of using algorithms

#19

Post by Kaotique »

jacquesm wrote: post #2

This scandal and the issues at the dutch tax office runs much deeper than just this one set of issues, they also maintained illegal lists of 'potential fraudulent people' on which 100's of thousands of people that had done nothing wrong, such as having the 'wrong' surname. It's rotten to the core and to date there have been zero consequences for the perps and the damage continues to pile up. Our government has fallen…

On the other hand one of the main triggers for this whole operation was the mass fraud by people from Bulgaria who netted a lot of benefits by gaming the system. They traveled to the Netherlands, applied for benefits and then went back to Bulgaria and used Dutch bank accounts and debit cards to get the cash. The tax office never wanted that to happen again and started this program to find fraudsters but ended up classifying a lot of people wrongly. To make it it even more Kafkaesque some of the Bulgarian fraudsters ALSO received the 30k compensation!

One of the recommendations is to stop pumping around so much money. If you let less money circulate the system trough taxes and benefits less can go wrong. Why do people need to receive hundreds of thousands of Euros for children daycare? It makes no sense whatsoever. Let the people keep the money, pay less taxes and pay the daycare centers from the government directly for each child. The bureaucracy is the real problem here.

When parents requested their paperwork they received hundreds of papers with all the real information blacked out. Imagine completely black papers. It was absolutely disgusting and the Dutch government even stepped down because of the whole affair. Amazingly the same political parties got elected again and are now in office in the same coalition as before...

Post reply on HN