For Whom the Algorithm Tolls by Andrew Wastling

Algorithm:

/ˈalɡərɪð(ə)m/ noun plural noun: algorithms

a process or set of rules to be followed in calculations or other problem-solving operations, especially by a computer. 'a basic algorithm for division'

The American Civil Liberties Union has expressed repeated and numerous concerns that : Artificial intelligence is playing a growing role in our lives, in private and public spheres, in ways large and small. Machine learning tools help determine the ads you see on Facebook and routes you take to get to work. They might also be making decisions about your health care and immigration status.

Government agencies at the local and federal level are exploring, and in many cases already using, automated tools to allocate resources and monitor people. This raises significant civil rights and civil liberties concerns. (1).

Recent scandals from Cambridge Analytica to the role of Facebook in inciting real-world violence in Myanmar, many experts see the internet as a civic space that requires better public hygiene. Chinese CCP state sanctioned plans to create their own Civic Space in the form of its own clearly delineated and state sanitised internet mean that the next Tiananmen Square Massacre will result not in a continuous debate of the number actually killed but no debate at all since nobody ( outside of the People's Republic of China ) will know it has even happened . The eternal philosophical question over the sound of one hand clapping or if a tree falls in a forest unobserved or witnessed whether it actually falls at all if there is no one present to hear it will reach a whole new dizzying existential and intellectual level

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The undoubted ability of the internet to assist in the organisation of opposition or act as a conduit for populare dissent will not have been missed by the authorities. Equally the targeting and brutalisation of citizens journalists by riot police at the recent Bristol disorders shows how paranoid our elites actually are about losing control of their stage managed mainstream media coverage of events being challenged by an alternative counter narrative from the perspective of the largely peaceful protestors

If the action of out of control police officers is captured on film ( or in actuality on mobile smart phones ) too often the illusion of policing by consent might be irrevocably shattered resulting in popular and irresistibles calls from terrified citizens to have them returned to barracks and re-trained ? It is no accident after all that after the huge number of injuries, blindings and eye loss , generated by tear-gas canisters fired at the massed ranks of 'Gilets jaunes' protesters by gendarmes were captured on hand held filming devices that the Macron regime sought to make the filming of his trigger-and -truncheon happy riot cops illegal by citizens of the riot ravaged Republic.

Insidious & sinister rise of Digital Surveillance

The recent Report of the UN Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights into the digital welfare state succinctly summarises the serious concerns that algorithmic decision making raises. These include:

difficulties in digital access for vulnerable persons most affected by these regimes, both in terms of access to the necessary technology and digital literacy;

the secrecy often surrounding how decisions are reached;

the tendency of risk-scoring and other algorithmic systems to exacerbate existing inequalities and discrimination;

the inflexible robotic application of rules which preclude consideration of relevant extenuating circumstances and removes human interaction and compassion from the picture.

Closer to home Big Brother Watch have just launched a new investigation called Welfare Data Watch into the one in three councils who use algorithms to make welfare decisions . A process which they claim will impact on : 'anyone who's life is touched by the welfare state , whether that is in social care , benefits or housing, may now be impacted by secretive data profiling , predictive analytics , and algorithm decisions. Algorithms , Artificial intelligence , and vast stores of data are being used to profile and monitor vast swathes of the population, A number that has only increased during the pandemic'.

The key areas Big Brother Watch will be investigating are:

(1). Risk scoring ( known as Rick Based Verification ) of Housing Benefit , Council Tax Support and Universal Credit

(2). Predictive analytics in children's care, adult vulnerability and homelessness

(3). Data analysis in social housing , including tools that claim to predict who will fall short on their rent

(4). Surveillance in adult social care , from fridge door sensors to fridge doors replacing in person care

More information about the new campaign and a link to a template letter for councils can be found at https://bigbrotherwatch.org.uk/campaigns/welfare-data-watch/

Whilst the text to the campaign letter to submit a Subject Access Request to councils can be read below:

To Whom It May Concern,

I am writing to submit a Subject Access Request for information held on me by the council.

I am solely requesting data related to my benefit or welfare payments by the council.

Please furnish me with:

- The data, and sources for this, used in assessing my claim for housing benefit and council tax support.

- Details on how this data was processed, including details of any automated or algorithmic process used to aid in decision making.

- The data used in risk assessing my claim [risk based verification], details of how it was processed and any data created in the process

- this should include any data not about me as an individual but still used in the system, such as OAC classifications, postcode level data and similar

- The risk score and category, including any descriptors, assigned to me by any computer system.

Please also explain any other profiling, algorithm or automated aid to decision making applied to me or my data.

Best Wishes

APPENDIX:

(1). WILL ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE MAKE US LESS FREE? Experts consider how the growing use of AI will impact civil liberties : American Civil Liberties Union

https://www.aclu.org/issues/privacy-technology/will-artificial-intelligence-make-us-less-free

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UK FREEDOM PASSPORTS TO BE ISSUED TO THE COVID NEGATIVE?

UK government is awarding contracts to firms to design an app that can be used to show a person is Covid-19 negative. This will allow the user to acquire a 'freedom passport' which will allow you to enter pubs, schools, and workplaces, and other public venues. The article says the government haven't quite decided to do this, but it looks like they're thinking in that direction.

The article raises the question of how the 'hapless', would be able to prove their 'negativity' if they haven't got a smartphone or some other whiz kid device. Presumably, they would have to go out and buy one or be refused admittance. Needles to say, this would be classed as essential shopping. 

Although I don't take a blasé attitude towards the Covid pandemic and take precautions, it does raise serious issues concerning civil liberties and possibly discrimination.

A university lecturer said to me only recently, that he thought Britain was beginning to resemble Vichy France. I said, I thought, a more appropriate comparison was with East Germany - more state control, the erosion of civil liberties, shop a neighbour, more spying, and the Stasi on your back. 

I just wonder what Mrs Gamp would have made of all this surveillance? After all, "I am not  a Rooshan  or a Prooshan" as she says: "and consequently cannot suffer spies to be set over me."

Extinction Rebellion protests Banned

London bans Extinction Rebellion protests

London has become the first city to prohibit the global environmental movement Extinction Rebellion from staging protests, in a move condemned by legal observers and campaigners as a massive "overreach."

 

Source: CNN

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Secretary of Blacklist Group in Court

Dave Smith under arrest

THE trial of Dave Smith takes place in the City of London Magistrates Court on Thurs 9th - Fri 10th June following his arrest for blocking after traffic in Park Lane during a protest against blacklisting of union members in the construction industry.  The secretary of the Blacklist Support Group and co-author of the book Blacklisted has been on bail for over 15 months since his arrest on 18th March 2015. The companies involved in the blacklisting have recently admitted their guilt, paid out millions in compensation and apologised for their involvement in The Consulting Association conspiracy in the High Court.

Smith does not deny standing in the middle of the central London thoroughfare but is claiming that he has a democratic right to protest and that includes causing minor disruption to traffic.  This right being enshrined in Article 10 (freedom of expression) and Article 11 (freedom of assembly) of the European Convention on Human Rights. In fact, Smith is providing video evidence of the incident as part of his legal submission.

Video of the Park Lane protest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLuP7iYDAfg

Video of Dave Smith's speech outside the court on the first trial date (that was adjourned): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72i1oSHOh48

The trial is about whether it is lawful to exercise every citizens's democratic right to protest. 

John McDonnell MP, who contacted the police on behalf of Smith on the night of his arrest commented:

'Blacklisted workers have suffered a grave injustice. Direct action has been an essential part of exposing that injustice. The action taken by Dave Smith stands in a long standing tradition of direct action in this country. I fully support Dave Smith and his colleagues.'

Dave Smith commented:

"Not a single company director responsible for blacklisting has been forced to appear in court for their role in the scandal. But if blacklisted workers protest about the human rights conspiracy, we could face a criminal conviction. That speaks volumes about the British legal system".  

Smith's pro-bono legal team of John Carl Townsend (barrister) and Liam Dunne (solicitor) of Guney, Clark & Ryan solicitors, were central players in the High Court blacklisting trial. The attached legal 'skeleton argument' presented to the court provides an in depth explanation of the legal issues at stake. 

Attached photos from Guy Smallman (NUJ)

Blacklist Support Group protest

9:15am Thursday 9th July 

o/s City of London Magistrates Court

1 Queen Victoria Street London EC4N 4XY.

(next to Bank tube station) 

Protesting jobseeker threatened with benefit sanction in Ashton-under-Lyne!

A 32-year-old jobseeker from Ashton-under-Lyne, Greater Manchester, has been told by staff at Ashton Jobcentre, that his benefit will be stopped if he continues to support a regular Thursday protest taking place outside the Jobcentre against unfair and illegal sanctions and the abuse of power by staff. He was also told by his advisor that she objected to him wearing a badge against sanctions and asked him, if he understood what he was getting himself involved with.

The English like to brag a lot about Freedom, but it seems that if your unemployed in Tory Britain today, your freedom to protest, certainly outside your own Jobcentre, is seriously being curtailed and makes you a prime target for unfair and illegal benefit sanctions. But this kind of draconian action and control, is not just confined to jobseekers.

In Britain today, students who have protested against such things as the high cost of tuition fees, have been threatened with expulsion from educational institutions. Bolshie workers who insist on safe working practices or.who take employers to an employment tribunal, are labelled 'troublemakers' and sacked and put on employers' blacklists. In the NHS, health workers who have identified deficiences in the standards of patient care, have been sacked and blacklisted from getting further work within the NHS. Most of this would have been unthinkable forty years ago before the advent of Thatcherism and political regimes that objectively favour private capital.

However, the lump-heads who work for the DWP at Ashton-under-Lyne Jobcentre, may very well have handed the protestors on a plate, the ammunition they need by their bullying of a young jobseeker. Initially, the protest was sparked in August this year, when the Jobcentre was found to have sanctioned a 19-year-old jobseeker for having the temerity to tell a local retailer, B&Q, during an interview for unpaid work, that she was 23-weeks pregnant. Now protesters outside Ashton Jobcentre, are telling the public that jobseeker's are being threatened with sanctions for exercising their legimate right to peacefully protest. There is also talk of a complaint being made to the police about the actions of Jobcentre staff who are causing  jobseeker's, harassment, distress and alarm, on a daily basis, which is a statutory offence in England and Wales.

The ancient Greeks recognised only too well that eternal vigilance was the price of freedom. The nineteenth-century historian, Lord Acton, was well aware that "power corrupts and and absolute power corrupts absolutely." But for me, it is the romantic poet Shelley, who puts it most succinctly in his poem Queen Mab, where he wrote: 

Power, like a desolating pestilence,
Pollutes whate'er it touches; and obedience,
Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth,
Makes slaves of men, and of the human frame
A mechanized automaton.

Protesters and skateboarders under threat from Tory Anti-Social Behaviour Bill!

Civil liberties groups are up in arms about what they see as truly shocking restrictions on civil liberties posed by the Government's 'Anti-Social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill', which is currently before Parliament.

Those opposed to measures within the Bill, say that it would give councils carte-blanche powers to allow them to ban everything from protests, to outdoor public meetings and children's skateboarding.

Campaigners point out that under Part 4 of the Bill  entitled 'Community Protection', Town Halls would be allowed to issue 'Public Spaces Protection Orders' (PSPO's) to restrict any activity deemed to have a "detrimental effect on the quality of life of those in the locality." The vague wording, and the failure to define the size of the areas to be covered, have led to fears that measures within the Bill, could be deployed to impose blanket bans on lawful activities. Anyone found to have broken the new laws, would be punished with on-the-spot fines, which could be issued by private security guards working on commissions for councils.

The orders, which would last for three years, would be directed at "All persons or only persons in specified categories", which has raised fears that certain groups such as trade unionists or rough sleepers could be descriminated against.

Clause 38 of the Bill, gives powers to an 'authorised person' (constable, local authority, designated person), to issue 'Community Protection Notices' (CPN), if satisfied on reasonable grounds that (a) the conduct of the individual or body is having a detrimental effect, of a persistent or continuing nature, on the quality of life of those in the locality and (b) the conduct is unreasonable.

Although there is a right of appeal in respect of some of the measures, opponents of the Bill say that processes are so expensive and complex that they will be beyond the reach of most groups. Climate change groups and groups like Occupy London, are likely to be seriously affected by the news laws.