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Content Type: Long Read
Introduction
In response to the unprecedented social, economic, and public health threats posed by the Covid-19 pandemic, the World Bank financed at least 232 "Covid-19 Response" projects. The projects were implemented across countries the World Bank classifies as middle and low-income.
This article will focus on eight (8) Covid-19 Response projects which sought to deliver social assistance to individuals and families on a "non-contributory" basis (this means that the intended beneficiaries…
Content Type: Long Read
The global COVID-19 health crisis not only induced a public health crisis, but has led to severe social, economic and educational crises which have laid bare any pre-existing gaps in social protection policies and frameworks. Measures identified as necessary for an effective public health response such as lockdowns have impacted billions workers and people's ability to sustain their livelihood worldwide, with countries seeing unprecedented levels of applications for welfare benefits support,…
Content Type: News & Analysis
Back in 2019, UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock announced a partnership between the NHS and Amazon Alexa. The goal of the partnership was for Alexa to be able to use the content of the NHS website when people asked health-related questions.At the time, we expressed a number of concerns regarding this agreement: Amazon did not appear to be an actor that should be trusted with our health information, and seeing the Health Secretary publicly praising this new agreement appeared to give…
Content Type: News & Analysis
This article was written by Jamila Venturini from Derechos Digitales. The original version (in Spanish) is available here.
While at the international level there is a growing demand to ban the use of surveillance technologies until rigorous human rights standards are achieved, in Latin America we observe a new and silent tendency to acquire and use such systems to control access to social protection, i.e., to policies developed to reduce poverty, social vulnerability and exclusion…
Content Type: News & Analysis
We have set out our understanding of the NFI’s current functioning here.
The National Fraud Initiative is a data-matching exercise overseen by the Cabinet Office which allows a range of public and private sector entities to access personal data, exclusively for the purposes of preventing and detecting fraud. A current government consultation suggests expanding the NFI to include four new, wide-ranging purposes:
Data-matching to assist in the prevention and detection of crime (other than…
Content Type: Explainer
You can access PI’s response to the consultation here.
This explainer is based on PI’s analysis and understanding of:
The Consultation text
The Draft Code of Data Matching Practice
The Cabinet Office’s data specifications for the public and private sector
The Cabinet Office’s 2015 case-studies both for the public and private sector
The Data Protection Impact Assessment for the current iteration of the National Fraud…
Content Type: Explainer
The UK Home Office provides basic subsistence support to people who are in the process of applying for asylum, as well as to those whose applications have been refused and are appealing their cases, in the form of an ‘Aspen Card’ - basically it’s a debit payment card, which can be used in any shop that accepts VISA debit payments. At the time of writing the programme is managed by corporate giant corporate giant Sodexo, but the administration of the payment system is soon going to go to a new…
Content Type: Long Read
In May 2019, the UK Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) – the department in charge of welfare – published their two-part staff guide on conducting fraud investigations. Privacy International went through the 995 pages to understand how those investigations happen and how the DWP is surveilling benefits claimants suspected of fraud.
Anyone who has flipped through a tabloid will have seen articles exposing the so-called “benefits-cheats,” people who allegedly trick the benefits systems for…
Content Type: Long Read
Back in 2019, we read through a 1000-page manual released by the UK Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) describing how they conduct investigations into alleged benefits fraud. While out in the open and accessible to anyone, the guide turned out to be a dizzying dive into a world where civil servants are asked to stand outside someone’s door to decide if they are indeed single or disabled and have to be reminded that living together as a married couple is not an offense. The guide – which…
Content Type: Long Read
All around the world people rely on state support in order to survive. From healthcare, to benefits for unemployment or disability or pensions, at any stage of life we may need to turn to the state for some help. And tech companies have realised there is a profit to be made.
This is why they have been selling a narrative that relying on technology can improve access to and delivery of social benefits. The issue is that governments have been buying it. This narrative comes along with a…
Content Type: News & Analysis
A unanimous ruling by the Court of Appeal confirmed earlier findings that the rigid monthly income assessment regime set up by the Department of Work and Pensions - the entity responsible for issuing benefits - to calculate the amount of benefits to be paid out resulted in significant and unwarranted cash losses to benefits claimants. The Court of Appeal found that the failure by the Department of Work and Pensions to rectify the issue was unlawful.
The case is a clear example…
Content Type: News & Analysis
On June 9th, in light of the global debate against racial injustices, the company IBM announced they would stop selling facial recognition. In a letter to the US congress, they demanded a “national dialogue on whether and how facial recognition technology should be employed by domestic law enforcement agencies.”
It is worth noting first of all that it is not entirely clear that IBM is actually stopping facial recognition. The letter states that "IBM no longer offers general purpose IBM facial…
Content Type: Long Read
This article has been written by our partner organisation InternetLab. Read this article in Portuguese here.
Over the last months, the organisation InternetLab has researched privacy, data protection, gender, and social protection, focusing on the beneficiaries of the Bolsa Familia Program (PBF). The PBF is the most extensive Brazilian cash transfer program, and its functioning is linked to CadÚnico, a database that comprises 40% of the country’s population. Moreover, it is a program whose…
Content Type: Long Read
Coronavirus-related lockdown measures have impacted almost 2.7 billion workers, with some countries seeing unprecedented levels of applications for welfare benefits support.
In response, emergency relief legislation for welfare recipients has been fast-tracked worldwide, from the UK to Brazil. These measures, combined with the growing awareness of Covid-19's differentiated impact along the fault lines of class, race, gender and legal status, rightly seek to address the needs of…
Content Type: News & Analysis
This week International Health Day was marked amidst a global pandemic which has impacted every region in the world. And it gives us a chance to reflect on how tech companies, governments, and international agencies are responding to Covid-19 through the use of data and tech.
All of them have been announcing measures to help contain or respond to the spread of the virus; but too many allow for unprecedented levels of data exploitation with unclear benefits, and raising so many red flags…
Content Type: News & Analysis
Today, the District Court of the Hague ruled that the right to privacy prevailed over the hunt against alleged benefits fraudsters. The ruling could have huge implications for the future of digital welfare around the world.
In NJCM cs/ De Staat der Nederlanden (NJCM vs the Netherlands), also known as the SyRI case, the court considered the legality of the System Risk Indication (SyRI), a system designed by the Dutch government to process large amounts of data collected by various Dutch public…
Content Type: Advocacy
TEDIC, InternetLab, Derechos Digitales, la Fundación Karisma, Dejusticia, la Asociación por los Derechos Civiles y Privacy International acogen el llamado de la Relatoría Especial sobre Derechos Económicos, Sociales, Culturales y Ambientales (DESCA) de la Comisión Interamericana de Derechos Humanos (CIDH) de enviar información para la elaboración del Informe Anual sobre DESCA del año 2019, que se presentará ante la Organización de los Estados Americanos (OEA) en 2020.
El objeto de este…
Content Type: Advocacy
TEDIC, InternetLab, Derechos Digitales, Fundación Karisma, Dejusticia, Asociación por los Derechos Civiles and Privacy International welcome the call made by the Special Rapporteurship on Economic, Social, Cultural and Environmental Rights (ESCER) of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) to inform the preparation of the Annual Report of the ESCER for the year 2019, which will be presented to the Organization of American States (OAS) during 2020.
This submission aims to outline…
Content Type: News & Analysis
On 30 January 2020, Kenya’s High Court handed down its judgment on the validity of the implementation of the National Integrated Identity Management System (NIIMS), known as the Huduma Namba. Privacy International submitted an expert witness testimony in the case. We await the final text of the judgment, but the summaries presented by the judges in Court outline the key findings of the Court. Whilst there is much there that is disappointing, the Court found that the implementation of NIIMS…
Content Type: Long Read
Following a series of FOI requests from Privacy International and other organisations, the Department of Health and Social Care has now released its contract with Amazon, regarding the use of NHS content by Alexa, Amazon’s virtual assistant. The content of the contract is to a big extent redacted, and we contest the Department of Health’s take on the notion of public interest.
Remember when in July this year the UK government announced a partnership with Amazon so that people would now…
Content Type: News & Analysis
CC: BY (Kirill Sharkovski)-SA
Este artículo fue escrito por Jamila Venturini, Coordinadora regional de Derechos Digitales. El artículo fue publicado por primera vez aquí. This article is available in English.
La implementación de programas que condicionan el acceso a servicios básicos por medio de vigilancia estatal y privada agudizan la inequidad imperante en el continente.
Mientras la brecha entre ricos y pobres se incrementa en el mundo, América Latina sigue siendo la región donde la…
Content Type: News & Analysis
Picture: CC: BY (Kirill Sharkovski)-SA
This article was written by Jamila Venturini from Derechos Digitales. The original version (in Spanish) is available here.
How implementing social protection programmes that condition access to basic services to state and private surveillance exacerbate the prevailing inequality on the continent.
While the gap between rich and poor is increasing in the world, Latin America remains the most unequal region of the world. According to the Economic…
Content Type: News & Analysis
Photo by Ray Witlin / World Bank CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
This article has been written by Ambika Tandon, Policy Officer at the Centre for Internet and Society, in collaboration with Privacy International.
On October 17th 2019, the UN Special Rapporteur (UNSR) on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights, Philip Alston, released his thematic report on digital technology, social protection and human rights. Understanding the impact of technology on the provision of social protection – and, by extent, its…
Content Type: Press release
Tomorrow, the UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights will present his annual report to the UN General Assembly in New York on digital technology, social protection and human rights. On the same day, Privacy International will be launching its own series on surveillance in the provision of social services.
The Special Rapporteur warns that specific areas need to be addressed to "avoid stumbling zombie-like into a digital welfare dystopia" and that "values such as…
Content Type: Long Read
This research is the result of a collaboration between Grace Tillyard, a doctoral researcher in the Media, Communications and Cultural Studies department at Goldsmiths College, London, and Privacy International.
Social Protection Systems in the Digital Age
In the digital age, governments across the world are building technologically integrated programmes to allow citizens to access welfare payments. While smart and digital technologies hold the potential to streamline administrative…
Content Type: News & Analysis
Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash
In May, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Philip Alston invited all interested governments, civil society organisations, academics, international organisations, activists, corporations and others, to provide written input for his thematic report on the human rights impacts, especially on those living in poverty, of the introduction of digital technologies in the implementation of national social protection…
Content Type: Examples
By 2018, the Danish municipality of Gladsaxe, in Copenhagen, began identifying children at risk of abuse so that flagged families could be targeted for early intervention by applying a set of specially designed algorithms to information already gathered by the centralised Udbetaling Danmark government agency, including health records and employment information, all linked to the personal identification number issued to each Dane at birth. The system raised concerns about mission creep; both the…
Content Type: News & Analysis
Picture: XoMEoX CC BY 2.0
1. Definitions of ‘fraud’ lack transparency and are often deceptive. States often define ‘fraud’ in vague and overbroad terms, which creates a seemingly compelling catch-all justification for denying or terminating benefits. The general public will often support this political narrative unless they have a greater understanding of the realities facing social benefit claimants and their experience navigating confusing and complex social benefits systems.…
Content Type: News & Analysis
Picture: Antti T. Nissinen, CC BY 2.0
In addition to the issues we highlighted in stage 1, where intrusive personal information is required in order to apply for social benefits, recipients who seek to maintain their social benefits are required to regularly disclose similar information and are also subjected to the numerous forms of surveillance described above.
1. Social benefits systems use monitoring to exert control over recipients. These systems are imbued with the…