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

politico.eu

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

#111

Post by BlargMcLarg »

vanderZwan wrote: post #86
orangepurple wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What went wrong?

Based on their username I would guess "being not-white in a country that is totally convinced it isn't racist but is actually seriously racist". Also, it's not discussed much but the Netherlands has a very serious "old boy network" problem where white douchebags who didn't achieve much during their studies except boozing with other white douchebags keep failing upwards. It's the reason why me and my mixed ethnicity b…

Mind you, literally anyone who doesn't fit this mentality in some way (ethnicity, sex, character, etc.) is quickly considered an outsider with problems getting in. You can be a white heterosexual native guy and still struggle because the Dutch mentality doesn't mesh with you personally. Very much because "boozing with other white douchebags" concerns all descriptors.

It's why the Dutch "kan niet"-mentality is so prominent.

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

#112

Post by account42 »

Dracophoenix wrote: post #91
jeltz wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Dutch allow companies to negotiate individual rates which are kept secret. No, this is not competition, it is corruption.

Economic agency is not corruption. It's no different from negotiating tax breaks with local governments here in the United States.

You're right, it's no different: both are corruption.

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

#113

Post by Jensson »

cjrp wrote: post #102
falcolas wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironically, this is one of the reasons I like the idea of UBI - you can't defraud the government when they're giving money to everyone. Most of the budget required to detect and enforce fraud vanishes. Secondary effects (and their costs), such as the one presented in this story, go away. It's not that simple, I know. But spending so much on bureaucratic red tape and fraud prevention is something that feels really sil…

Why would the required budget vanish? People are greedy. Why claim UBI for just you when you could claim for your fictitious family of 6?

How would you manage to register 5 fake family members with the government? Governments already track its citizens in basically every country, it is really hard to trick them into thinking more people than that exists.

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

#114

Post by samhw »

rocqua wrote: post #76
cool_dude85 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I only have as much information as is included in the original article, but this seems like a big issue to me: >Having dual nationality was marked as a big risk indicator, as was a low income. Again, even if these cases were all impartially investigated, you're still explicitly targeting low-income people and dual-nationals, probably significantly more likely to be an ethnic minority. I think the algorithm is a worth…

That is indeed a big problem. I wouldn't be surprised if this marking as a risk factor wasn't even backed by data. (Note that even if it was backed by data, it would still be wrong).

> Note that even if it was backed by data, it would still be wrong.

Is it? This is the big question, as far as I can see. If my country has green people and blue people, and green people are overwhelmingly more likely to commit fraud, is it wrong to require additional fraud checks on the basis of being green?

Note that this isn't a conviction. It's accepted that the standard is not so exacting that no one innocent must be subject to investigation - that would be impossible under realistic circumstances. (Hell, even convictions don't meet that standard.)

On the other hand, I do accept the argument that you would have to be very, very cautious that you don't end up with a feedback loop if you did this - in other words, a system where you keep convicting green people because you investigate them, and the data therefore keep suggesting that green people have a greater propensity for crime, and so forth. That's undoubtedly happening in many countries, I'm sure.

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

#115

Post by Beldin »

Kaotique wrote: post #70
mschuster91 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why do people need to receive hundreds of thousands of Euros for children daycare? It's not about "daycare", it is about assisting families in the (massive) expenses that raising a child incurs. Why? Because unlike the American pension system which is mostly backed by the stock market, European pension systems depend on young and healthy workers to pay the pensions of the current pensioner generation. Obviously thi…

I think you misunderstood me. I am not saying they don't deserve support. I am saying that the government can support people in a way that is not so bureaucratic. Pay the institutions like schools, daycare, etc directly and don't burden the parents with requesting benefits and sending around enormous amounts of money. The institutions can apply for government money for each child they have to take care of. And the pa…

> That means she received tens of thousands of Euros per year!

I'm writing this from memory, so it may be wrong, but as I remember it: parents would receive "modest" support; a much larger part would go directly to the daycare, outside of the parents' view. Now if the daycare was deemed to be illegal/fraud/..., the parents would be on the hook for both the money they received as well as the money the daycare received.

Again, I may be misremembering - but this is definitely one way to put a mom into 100s of thousands of debt that she'd never seen.

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

#116

Post by legulere »

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,…

Algorithms calculating the probability of some event of a person will always be discriminatory, because the probability depends on which groups you belong to.

The problem is that algorithms are an easy way to hide behind. Think of an algorithm to check wether to do a police check for a person. Statistically black people are more likely to commit crimes. The police could easily hide behind an algorithm and say that they are not doing checks only on black people but only on persons flagged by the algorithm.

The problem with that is that most people are not criminal, but will be discriminated just because of which group they belong to.

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

#117

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

vanderZwan wrote: post #86
orangepurple wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What went wrong?

Based on their username I would guess "being not-white in a country that is totally convinced it isn't racist but is actually seriously racist". Also, it's not discussed much but the Netherlands has a very serious "old boy network" problem where white douchebags who didn't achieve much during their studies except boozing with other white douchebags keep failing upwards. It's the reason why me and my mixed ethnicity b…

>but the Netherlands has a very serious "old boy network" problem where white douchebags who didn't achieve much during their studies except boozing with other white douchebags keep failing upwards.

This isn't some Dutch thing. I've seen the exact same thing in Germany, Austria and Switzerland at the big-name companies in those countries (like BMW, etc.).

Basically, to succeeded, be a white local from a mid-upper/upper class family, go to a famous uni there and party, and you'll fail yourself to the top management in a big company there quite nicely, while immigrants have glass ceilings to make sure they know their place.

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

#118

Post by iggldiggl »

mschuster91 wrote: post #60
Kaotique wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 clas…

> Why do people need to receive hundreds of thousands of Euros for children daycare? It's not about "daycare", it is about assisting families in the (massive) expenses that raising a child incurs. Why? Because unlike the American pension system which is mostly backed by the stock market, European pension systems depend on young and healthy workers to pay the pensions of the current pensioner generation. Obviously thi…

> but it has the disadvantage that society has to really take care of not falling into demographic traps.

Does it? Or is it just that the demographic issues are more readily apparent?

You can't eat the stock market, so you can accumulate as much wealth as you want in stock market-backed pensions plans or otherwise – if by the time you want to retire there aren't enough working-age people left around willing to provide you goods and services, your pension scheme is worth zilch.

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

#119

Post by Beldin »

Kaotique wrote: post #19
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 clas…

> If you let less money circulate the system trough taxes and benefits less can go wrong.

Bonus: less can go wrong administratively too. Case in point: ever since the Dutch tax office had to also give out these kinds of wellfare/assistance funds, things have been a wreck at the tax office. It's been over a decade and it's no longer even their most important thing to fix...

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

#120

Post by einpoklum »

I don't understand the article.

Suppose they had an algorithm for computing a risk score. Ok, so someone is determined to have a "high risk score". That doesn't mean that they've done anything wrong; at most, it means prioritizing them for closer scrutiny. That could still be discriminatory (e.g. focus on Turkish/Moroccan immigrants), but in itself - it's not supposed to lose anyone their benefits.

Also, the article says:

> Citizens had no way of ... defending themselves.

Why could they not sue the tax authorities in court, asking the court to order the tax authorities to withdraw their payment demands? If there was no evidence of them having evaded taxes, I mean.

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