<https://thecorrespondent.com/276/an-algorithm-was-taken-to-court-and-it-lost...> An algorithm was taken to court in the Netherlands last week. The System Risk Indication (SyRI) has been legal since 2014 and is intended to detect any social security fraud – benefits, taxes, you name it. SyRI combines all kinds of data sources and dumps them into an algorithm. Then suspects roll out who are scrutinised because they’re supposedly more likely to commit fraud. The police and the public prosecutor can also access SyRI’s analyses. In response, a coalition consisting of a large labour union, organisations, and even writers took the state to court. And last Wednesday, this diverse group was vindicated. The judge ruled that SyRI is against the law and violates the European Convention on Human Rights, which stipulates that every citizen has the right to protection of their private life. The ruling has damaged SyRI’s credibility, but it’s also important in the fight against a much bigger development: the digitisation of the welfare state. Because a system like SyRI is not unique. The digital welfare state is advancing all around the world. A digital dystopia "[T]here is a grave risk of stumbling zombie-like into a digital welfare dystopia." These words aren’t from a sensational column or an alarmist conspiracy blog; they’re from a United Nations (UN) report from October 2019. (Not exactly a place where you’d expect to find zombies.) Philip Alston, the UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights who wrote the report, is deeply concerned. His report mentions Universal Credit, the UK social security payment that was designed to simplify the British benefits system. The system, which was the first major government service in the UK to be "digital by default", means people have to apply for their benefits online, prove online that they have applied for jobs, and provide required documents online. But even in a wealthy country like the UK in 2019, some 12 million adults, 22% of the population, do not have the "essential digital skills" needed for day-to-day life. Another 19% can’t perform a "fundamental" task like opening an app. And about four million adults are offline because of fears that the internet is an insecure environment – mostly those who are poorer and older. It’s become much more difficult for them to access the welfare state. Alston also mentions Australia, where the government implemented far-reaching automation to calculate who had received too many benefits or other allowances. The government used to flag 20,000 wrongful payments per year, but when the "Robodebt" programme was launched, this rose to as many as 20,000 per week. People quickly received hefty fines. And the onus was not on the government to prove wrongdoing – instead, it was people themselves who had to prove that the accusation was wrongful. A judge ruled that the method behind the calculation was wrong. Terry Carney from the University of Sydney said that could mean as many as 300,000 alleged debts should be repaid with interest, amounting to as much as A$660m. Alston’s report gives more examples, from India to Canada, to South Africa and Sweden. Again and again, he shows that the digitisation of the welfare state leaves poor people out in the cold. Not only that – it’s violating their human rights. [...]