Government institutions such as the tax authorities control Dutch people and create a profile

Julia Osendarp Inland March 8, 2024, 11:55

Government institutions such as the tax authorities control Dutch people and divide us all into a certain profile. If you are at risk, due to an incorrect report, high surcharge or fraud, you can receive additional checks. Something that we ourselves do not know. In fact, legally, this system should not exist at all.After the benefits scandal you would think that the government is a bit cautious about labeling system-based fraudsters and risk cases. But apparently, a donkey hits the same stone more often. Government institutions control and profile citizensInstitutions such as the tax authorities control citizens with secret algorithms, writes research platform Follow the Money. Do you have the characteristics of a fraudster? Then you get extra checks. These characteristics are categorized on the basis of, for example, income, family situation, age, place of residence and origin. If you score high on the “risk ladder”, this has consequences. Such as, for example, additional manual control or a temporary stop on VAT reimbursement. Systems to detect fraudsters, but it is not possible to verify that profiling is correct and careful. “The systems are a black box. This means that there is no legal protection — you cannot have the profiling reviewed by a judge. What's more: you don't even know you're profiled,” write the FTM investigative journalists. During the benefits affair, it was announced that people often received the highest risk scores based on their nationality, low income or single parenthood. We now know that a lot of people were wrongly labeled as fraudsters. Against the lawThe Court of Justice of the European Union made a rather groundbreaking ruling about profiling last year. As a result, it may well be that the current Dutch approach is not allowed. And the Ministry of Finance is concerned about that. By the way, there has been a legal ban on automated systems and profiling for years. But if an official then checked things again, it was okay. Tijmen Wisman, privacy lawyer and chairman of the Platform for the Protection of Civil Rights Foundation, told FTM: “In many cases, the government will generate risk scores and have another person look at them. In this way, the government thought it could operate outside the scope of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), because it involves human intervention and not automated decision-making. But that fly is no longer the case.” Privacy experts: “Government does not comply with rules” Privacy lawyer Sarah Eskens adds that the government must also comply with the GDPR. And that it must be clear whose personal information is being used and why. This means that the person concerned must also know this. Fatma Çapkurt is a university lecturer and is doing her doctorate on the effect of the Privacy Act on administrative law. According to her, the government has been breaking the rules for years. “The government has more and more information about citizens, but citizens know almost nothing about it. We have completely lost sight of those systems. This is the result of twenty years of flouting the rules,” she concludes.