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
The New Dark Age 