20 July 2021 — Big Brother Watch

Big Brother Watch Team

Big Brother Watch’s new report “Poverty Panopticon: the hidden algorithms shaping Britain’s welfare state”, published today, reveals:

• 540,000 benefits applicants are secretly assigned fraud risk scores by councils’ algorithms before they can access housing benefit or council tax support.1
• Personal data from 1.6 million people living in social housing is processed by commercial algorithms to predict rent non-payers.2
• 250,000+ people’s data is processed by a range of secretive automated tools to predict the likelihood they’ll be abused, become homeless or out of work.3
• Campaigners file complaint with data watchdog

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