Dutch scandal serves as a warning for Europe over risks of using algorithms • Hacker News Board

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

#51

Post by NoboruWataya » Wed, Apr 13, 2022, 1:51 PM UTC

yunohn wrote: post #35

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> corruption has enabled these companies to construct confusing and elaborate ways of avoiding their fair share of taxes. I'm not sure one can consider it corruption, per se, rather it's tax competition on the part of smaller EU states. To my mind, it's not that the countries are being bribed by companies, rather that the laws attract a (far too small proportion of) global/EU revenue to be taxed in their country.

I mean, you’re free to blindly dismiss obvious corruption - but it’s quite obvious that these loopholes were designed, and often illegal. Eg, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ireland_v_Commission

The article you posted states that Apple won their appeal against the finding of illegality in the ECJ.

Taxation is not an EU competence so in general it is not within the power of the EU to declare a member state's tax policy to be illegal. Vestager has been trying to use state aid as a vehicle to circumvent that restriction but the ECJ rebuffed her attempt to do that in Ireland. A big part of the problem is that the state aid findings rely on the assertion that tax authorities applied special rules to one particular company, which is typically not the case.

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

#52

Post by evandijk70 » Wed, Apr 13, 2022, 1:51 PM UTC

StreamBright wrote: post #45

Freak_NL wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was not a case of corruption. Incompetence, discrimination, and lack of accountability, but not corruption. Most civil servants involved believed they were doing the right thing (despite ruining many lives in reality), and none profited personally, provided favours, or pocketed money.

"Corruption is a form of dishonesty or a criminal offense which is undertaken by a person or an organization which is entrusted with a position of authority, in order to acquire illicit benefits or abuse power for one's personal gain." I use corruption in the dictionary definition sense. I guess you think that corruption only means bribery.

GP used the same definition - employees of the tax-office received no illicit benefits or personal gain.

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

#53

Post by ai_ja_nai » Wed, Apr 13, 2022, 1:51 PM UTC

> "An audit showed that the tax authorities focused on people with “a non-Western appearance,” while having Turkish or Moroccan nationality was a particular focus".

This has nothing to do with algorithms, mates. It had to do with how it wasn't tested and monitored. It appears that it was just rolled out live.

> "Fraud prediction and predictive policing based on profiling should just be banned"

And here are the usual luddists pandering on the confused using wrong arguments. Sigh.

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

#54

Post by Freak_NL » Wed, Apr 13, 2022, 1:52 PM UTC

StreamBright wrote: post #45

Freak_NL wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was not a case of corruption. Incompetence, discrimination, and lack of accountability, but not corruption. Most civil servants involved believed they were doing the right thing (despite ruining many lives in reality), and none profited personally, provided favours, or pocketed money.

"Corruption is a form of dishonesty or a criminal offense which is undertaken by a person or an organization which is entrusted with a position of authority, in order to acquire illicit benefits or abuse power for one's personal gain." I use corruption in the dictionary definition sense. I guess you think that corruption only means bribery.

> […] in order to acquire illicit benefits or abuse power for one's personal gain.

There was no personal gain nor illicit benefits gained by the civil servants responsible. For something to be corruption, the perpetrator has to gain something.

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

#55

Post by secondcoming » Wed, Apr 13, 2022, 1:52 PM UTC

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…

Genuine question... is 'people from Bulgaria' a euphemism for Roma gyspies?

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

#56

Post by Kaotique » Wed, Apr 13, 2022, 1:54 PM UTC

secondcoming wrote: post #55

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…

Genuine question... is 'people from Bulgaria' a euphemism for Roma gyspies?

No.

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

#57

Post by jacquesm » Wed, Apr 13, 2022, 1:54 PM UTC

orangepurple wrote: post #46

jacquesm wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That analysis has been done and the conclusions are devastating for the tax office. https://www.consultancy.nl/nieuws/39000/pwc-belastingdienst-... (dutch)

Devastating? I don't see anything devastating in the article you linked. Perhaps you can point it out? The language is very weak. > PwC considers it plausible that the people who ended up on the blacklist on the basis of appearance or nationality were disadvantaged as a result. Like others on the list, they presumably did not qualify for smooth debt restructuring, debt forgiveness, or a personal payment arrangement.…

You could of course start with the first paragraph:

"Bij het inschatten van frauderisico’s beoordeelde de Belastingdienst zeker tientallen mensen op hun nationaliteit en uiterlijk, zo blijkt uit onderzoek van PwC. Zo kwamen de mensen terecht op de Fraude Signaleringsvoorziening (FSV), beter bekend als de zwarte lijst."

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

#58

Post by rocqua » Wed, Apr 13, 2022, 1:55 PM UTC

cool_dude85 wrote: post #42

fallingknife wrote: post #5

> Authorities penalized families over a mere suspicion of fraud based on the system’s risk indicators This is the real story here. The algorithm is incidental.

Can't agree with this. Even if it was just feeding a list to human investigators, who fairly investigated each case, there's still the significant issue of how the list is determined. For example, the tax authority in your country right now catches a small portion of overall fraud. I give them a list of "hot leads" of fraudsters that's really just a list of all the ethnic minorities I hate. Obviously, even if they fa…

Whilst you are right in general that biased algorithms are bad even when people using them are good, the problem in _this_ scandal was the the people using the algorithm were trigger-happy, and partially so in a biased way.

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

#59

Post by secondcoming » Wed, Apr 13, 2022, 1:56 PM UTC

Freak_NL wrote: post #40

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #21

> Chermaine Leysner’s life changed in 2012, when she received a letter from the Dutch tax authority demanding she pay back her child care allowance going back to 2008. Leysner, then a student studying social work, had three children under the age of 6. The tax bill was over €100,000. A student can get €100,000 for child care? That is amazing. For me, that is the most surprising thing in the entire article.

She was a student at the time she received the letters claiming 'missing information' that led to the (unjust) claim. This does not mean she didn't have a job before that or some other occupation. She was around 30 at that time, and study was just part of her career path. If you have several children, the child care allowance adds up — I receive over €1000 a month for one preschool child. Multiply this for more than…

How often does income change?

I don't see what's 'hostile' about asking people to fill in a form a couple of times per year (at most) for €12k.

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

#60

Post by mschuster91 » Wed, Apr 13, 2022, 1:56 PM UTC

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…

> 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 this has the advantage that stock market crashes won't wipe out a whole generation's pensions and that the stock markets are not inflated artificially by enormous amounts of "dumb money" being loaded into anything that promises a profit (which is partially what caused the 2008ff crisis), but it has the disadvantage that society has to really take care of not falling into demographic traps.