The Dutch benefits scandal: a cautionary tale for algorithmic enforcement
Algorithm is too much of a term to use here. They simply labelled everybody with a foreign (read: Islamic, Polish or Bulgarian) sounding name and&#x2F;or an immigration background (including war refugees!) as a potential fraud case in response to some very limited actual fraud that exposed the tax office as being pretty bad at uncovering some (obvious) fraud cases.<p>Long story short, this article contains some grains of truth but the reality is much simpler: the Dutch tax office systematically engaged in discrimination, persisted in doing so when this was pointed out to them and made extraordinary efforts to hide their failings rather than to fix it.<p>The most ugly bit: the government that was in charge during all this fell due to the scandal and then was promptly re-elected claiming that they have full mandate to pursue their various un-ethical goals.<p>Families broke apart over this, children (1100!) got placed out of their parent&#x27;s homes (because having your parents labelled fraudsters gives extraordinary powers to the government to <i>really</i> mess up your life as if it wasn&#x27;t enough yet). A number of people committed suicide, one of which was directly traced back to the scandal.<p>If not for a single lawyer (González Pérez) persisting this whole thing would have never been brought to light. More than the algorithm I would blame the people who willingly implemented all of this. FWIW this is still unresolved, very few people (if any) have had any kind of compensation and the government is dragging its heels every step of the way.