Dutch court rules that welfare surveillance system violates right to privacy
A Dutch court has ordered that the government stop using an automated surveillance system because it violates human rights and unfairly targets the poor.
The surveillance system in question, SyRI, is a risk calculation programme that predicts the likelihood of an individual committing welfare fraud. The system gathers government data that was previously held in separate silos (employment, personal debt, benefits records and housing and education histories) and analyses it to identify people which might be more at risk of committing benefit fraud. As this has primarily been deployed in low income neighbourhoods, Dutch welfare and privacy groups argued that poor neighbourhoods were being spied upon without any concrete suspicion of wrongdoing.
The government claimed that the system did not automatically trigger legal consequences or a full investigation. It also refused to disclose information about how it used personal data and how it infered a risk of fraud.
The Hague District Court ruled that the legislation contained insufficient safeguards against intrusions of privacy. It also said that it was not convinced that the government had to hide how it worked. Without information on how the system works, individuals under suspicion could not adequately challenge the government’s decision to investigate them for fraud. Given this lack of transparency, the Court said that the government’s actions could amount to discrimination on socio-economic grounds.
The system also failed to pass the European Convention on Human Rights’ test for proportionality. The legislation did not strike a balance between its objective to combat fraud and the violation of privacy that came with it.
In response to claims that it did not carry out a proper due diligence assessment of the system, the government claimed that the single data protection impact assessment they conducted was sufficient. The Court highlighted that this argument did not consider the need to conduct similar assessments at a municipal level if the system was adjusted to accommodate local needs.
This judgment will likely have an impact beyond the Netherlands as governments in the UK, US and Australia are developing similar programmes.
Click here for the decision in Dutch.