Amnesty takes a deep dive into the shameful racial and socio-economic discrimination against students in the DUO case (about which we’ve written here, here, and here) in their briefing titled Profiled Without Protection: Students in the Netherlands Hit By Discriminatory Fraud Detection System.
Their conclusions are crystal clear:
The DUO case is illustrative of how governmental organizations in the Netherlands continue using algorithmic risk profiling without sufficient safeguards to protect human rights. In recent years, multiple other scandals have been unveiled about discriminatory risk profiling by Dutch governmental organizations. This shows that the Dutch government fails to effectively protect people in the Netherlands against discriminatory risk profiling.
Amnesty worries that the risk of the Dutch government repeating its mistakes is high. The government still hasn’t thoroughly tested its risk profiling practices against the prohibition on discrimination. It has only apologised for its indirect racial discrimination and hasn’t acknowledged that what it did was also a form of discrimination based on social and economic grounds. Amnesty suggests the latter should become a new protected category in discrimination law.
Amnesty’s final recommendation is to prohibit all forms of government risk profiling unless the right to non-discrimination can be guaranteed and proper safeguards are in place to protect other rights.
See: Amnesty International roept kabinet op om alle risicoprofilering stop te zetten at Amnesty or download and English copy of the briefing as a PDF.
Image copyright Tosca van der Weerden, from the cover of the Amnesty report.