Councils’ ‘hidden algorithms’ profile millions on benefits

Councils across the UK are conducting ‘mass profiling’ and ‘citizen scoring’ of welfare and social care recipients to predict fraud, rent non-payments and major life events.

According to Big Brother Watch, 540,000 benefits applicants are secretly assigned fraud risk scores by councils’ algorithms before they can access housing benefit or council tax support. Additionally, personal data from 1.6 million people living in social housing is processed by commercial algorithms to predict rent non-payers.

The personal data of more than 250,000 people is processed by a range of secretive automated tools to predict the likelihood they’ll be abused, become homeless or out of work.

Big Brother Watch claims that most of the algorithms it uncovered are ‘secretive, unevidenced, incredibly invasive and likely discriminatory’. The campaigners complain that councils are using ‘tools of automated suspicion’ without residents’ knowledge and that the risk scoring algorithms could be ‘disadvantaging and discriminating against Britain’s poor’.

The group is calling for a public register of algorithms that inform decision-making in the public sector, and for authorities to conduct privacy and equality assessments before using predictive tools to mitigate the risks of discrimination. Such assessments, the group found, were rarely conducted.

Jake Hurfurt, Head of Research and Investigations at Big Brother Watch, said: “Our welfare data investigation has uncovered councils using hidden algorithms that are secretive, unevidenced, incredibly invasive and likely discriminatory.

“The scale of the profiling, mass data gathering and digital surveillance that millions of people are unwittingly subjected to is truly shocking. We are deeply concerned that these risk scoring algorithms could be disadvantaging and discriminating against Britain’s poor. Unless authorities are transparent and better respect privacy and equality rights, their adoption of these technologies is on a one way ticket to a poverty panopticon.”