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

Post by jacquesm » Wed, Apr 13, 2022, 11:22 PM UTC

sAbakumoff wrote: post #159

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…

D66 who I would argue was the true winner of the election does not consist of "exact same players". The next election, given that we don't have the new pandemic or war in Europe, will be the last one for Rutte, I believe.

Post by iostream24 » Thu, Apr 14, 2022, 12:27 AM UTC

liftm wrote: post #7

> risks of using algorithms Bubblesort so dangerous. Not exactly the best headline, is it?

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Apr 14, 2022, 2:00 AM UTC

falcolas wrote: post #100

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…

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…

Post by eesmith » Thu, Apr 14, 2022, 5:36 AM UTC

smaudet wrote: post #184

eesmith wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 algor…

> I don't see how regulating algorithms and AI could affect those institutional injustices. Because this is a dangerous technology which has only proven, again and again, to be unreliable, unethical, inaccurate, and is EASILY used by the people most likely to abuse it. The point is not that the dutch tax office is corrupt, it is that corrupt individuals and entities are likely, and have used, this for nefarious, foul…

Post by Beltalowda » Thu, Apr 14, 2022, 6:10 AM UTC

sfifs wrote: post #133

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…

Perhaps the problem is setting the wrong incentives. The way to deter fraud is not necessarily to make the benefits administration overly strict but to directly dis-incetivize fraud through stiff penalties. For instace if benefits fraud had a penalty of say 10 to 20 years imprisonment if convicted, the number of people trying to commit fraud would very likely go dramatically down.