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Dutch government to pay million Euro fine over racist data discrimination

38 points by FinnKuhn 5y ago

readthenotes1 5y ago
- wreath 5y ago
- forty 5y ago
  I guess that's what you mean, but I'm bothered that this article seems to mistake xenophobia with racism. Not that one is okay, but I feel confounding ethnicity with nationality is already a little racist.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
ggm 5y ago
I spent 6 months resident in Amsterdam and I have mixed feelings about Dutch attitudes to other races. On the whole it's a very low key, mind-your-own business culture but it has a small but vocal cohort of ultra-nationalists who are vocally opposed to Islamic faith symbols, people of colour, you-name-it. I routinely heard Dutch neighbours discuss the concerns the non Dutch native working in childcare centres would mean their kids "didn't learn Dutch properly" or "didn't fit in" -dutch people can be very welcoming of visitors but they also form strong bonds early in childhood and hold on for life. Admitting foreigners into the inner circle, the more private space, isn't that common. (This may be an Amsterdam thing but I'm told over in Maastricht people are even more insular, yet Maastricht had a very gay tolerant local administration for years) Some of this is just "speak Dutch and fit in" and If I lived in a state with so many expatriates who refuse to learn Dutch and rely on the states mandatory 65% pass mark in English to graduate highschool I too might carry resentment. Some of this reflects the huge numbers of immigrants from former Dutch colonies in Indonesia and Surinam and a very odd mix of views about them, half pride, half embarrassment (at what was perpetrated on their culture) and all dutch: "at least they mostly speak Dutch even if I am racist about them" Some of this is the general Dutch "fuck you" which goes on at all levels: try to use a 50 euro note.. fuck you. Try to order in a Cafe 45min before closing time.. fuck you. Try to call up to change your residency registration.. fuck you. It's OK, it's normal, they'd do it to each other too. You just ring back later, try next door, move on. A lot of this is a reaction to a liberal refugee resettlement policy which caused some ghettoisation and drug gang problems (there was a shooting two doors down from my flat at a shisha lounge reflecting this and people list suburbs they think are "not dutch" or "not safe"). It's not new. The Dutch had nazi sympathisers as well as war resistors. What's admirable is that the government appears to accept the fine. My own country (australia) has similar problems and is more likely to deny this kind of finding or refuse to pay it.
- NicoJuicy 5y ago
  The opinion: "they get social benefits, but the least they can do is respect our culture" is racist? What's the problem with learning our native language if you want to live here and become Belgian for example?
- rayiner 5y ago
  > On the whole it's a very low key, mind-your-own business culture but it has a small but vocal cohort of ultra-nationalists who are vocally opposed to Islamic faith symbols, people of colour, you-name-it. If the shoe was on the other foot—and it was African or south Asian refugees moving to the Muslim countries these immigrants came from—it wouldn’t be a “small but vocal minority” of nationalists. The government would be moving them to a remote island, like Bangladesh is doing to the Rohingya: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/11/25/bangladesh-resumes-moving-rohingya-refugees-to-flood-prone-island https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/11/25/bangladesh-resumes.... They wouldn’t be allowed to teach kids—they’d be relegated to manual labor. In Saudi, for example, 90% of teachers in girl’s schools must be citizens, and it’s virtually impossible for non-Saudis to get citizenship. The Dutch are just acting like normal people. It’s a small minority of people—mostly white Europeans—that actually seem to enjoy foreigners coming in and creating economic and cultural conflict and challenges.
  - jmeister 5y ago
    Yeah, from a historical perspective, it’s a miracle that the modern west is not more racist. “We have primitive instincts, medieval institutions, and God-like technology.” — EO Wilson
  - refurb 5y ago
    Indeed. On a related note, I find the criticism of US leadership (often much older folks as leader usually are) being “too white” a bit odd when the US was almost 90% white up until the 1970’s.[1]. Which actually surprised me as I thought it was much lower. So just assuming most leaders are 50+, just by probability you’d assume 80%+ would be white if they were educated in the 1980’s. Obviously there is work to do in term of women leaders as well as African Americans who have been underrepresented, but it’s odd to expect the people running the country and businesses who were educated in 1980’s to reflect 2020 demographics. [1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_racial_and_ethnic_demographics_of_the_United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_racial_and_ethnic...
pyuser583 5y ago
The government is paying a fine? So they’re going to tax their citizens and give their citizens money to the EU because the government was racist. Governments has the power to tax, so fines aren’t really that big of a deal for them.
- gsinclair 5y ago
  Fines would probably lessen the government’s reputation among voters, though. Risky to amass too many.
  - GekkePrutser 5y ago
    They just had an election and voters in the Netherlands have zero long term memory so they will consider themselves totally in the clear
GekkePrutser 5y ago
The child benefit thing was a complete clusterfuck and racism was only part of it. Basically the tax service decided some people were scamming the child daycare support system and turned on them. Any attempts to fight it from the parents were stonewalled and people were fined and got into massive debt and some even committed suicide. Most of them had done nothing wrong. The problem here is the Dutch tax system that has a "guilty unless proven innocent" setup. Then when it was brought to attention by some politicians they were stonewalled and eventually even sidelined. The mainstream politicians kept turning their eyes away. Eventually it did blow up in the media. The government fell. However the same people that turned a blind eye are now incumbent to government once again. The whistleblowers were rewarded with a snarky remark to "find a function elsewhere". The racism here is bad but it's only the tip of the iceberg.
- drukenemo 5y ago
  I’m an immigrant to the Netherlands and have lived here for more than 10 years. I don’t recollect ever experiencing racism. At the same time, I think there are demographics in this country that are more likely to abuse the system or display behavior that make one a little more suspicious of them in principle. That said, country profiling by the government, as much as it would probably be an effective dimension to detect fraud imo, shouldn’t be used by a government. The same way airport control shouldn’t profile people by appearance or any racial and gender characteristics.
  - Aeolun 5y ago
    I think the problem is that it’s only effective in the short term to profile like that. If you already consider someone guilty before they do anything, there’s very little stopping them from actually doing the thing for real (at least, I would have few moral qualms).
  - iovrthoughtthis 5y ago
    > At the same time, I think there are demographics in this country that are more likely to abuse the system or display behavior that make one a little more suspicious of them in principle. i want to gently point out, without implying intention, that this is, in it's self, a racist belief
theshowmustgo 5y ago
The tax service paid special attention to immigrants for the day childcare support system because immigrants in average commit more fraud (1) on other areas. This was understandable, not meant to be racist but very wrong and illegal. Also they just clawed the money back and you have to proof that you were innocent and they did not look at the evidence. Tax service uses outdated computer systems which are not connected to local system. Politicians promised to solve it and never did (still not). (1) Many commit fraud by accident because of language issues and complicated rules. Also there are a lot of traveling immigrants who make mis-use of the Dutch welfare state by applying child credits or unemployment benefits while abroad.
- throwawayboise 5y ago
  I don't think "fraud by accident" is possible. Fraud requires intent. Mistakes are just mistakes, and yeah you will have to pay back anything you shouldn't have received, and sometimes there are additional penalties, but fraud is something different. Then again, maybe the Netherlands doesn't distinguish between the two.
cblconfederate 5y ago
> the Dutch government has to pay a fine of 2.75 million euros ... to itself
yes_really 5y ago
How is the data "racist"? It doesn't utilise race at all. It uses citizenship information because tax authorities found that having a non-Dutch citizenship was a strong predictor of committing the fraud. The fraud encompassed people from mainly eastern European countries (mainly Bulgaria, hence it is known as the "Bulgarenfraude"). Because the tax authorities only checked afterwards, the fraud was often only noticed when the fraudsters had already returned to Bulgaria [1]. The target of these checks have the same race as the Dutch (they are both mainly Caucasian), so it is weird to hear that the nationality check is "racist". If you look at the press release of the Dutch Data Protection Authority [2] (the agency that imposed the fine), you can see it does not even mention race or racism. It says the fine is due to "serious violations of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the law governing privacy" and for discrimination in "unnecessarily retaining nationality data in its systems". I had to look that up because, if I had just read the headline, I would incorrectly believe there was racism involved. Why is this article inflaming racial resentment? Is it just trying to use clickbait to get views? Is it trying to push fake-news for an agenda? [1] https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulgarenfraude https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulgarenfraude [2] https://autoriteitpersoonsgegevens.nl/en/news/tax-administration-fined-discriminatory-and-unlawful-data-processing https://autoriteitpersoonsgegevens.nl/en/news/tax-administra...

38 points by FinnKuhn 5y ago

wreath 5y ago
forty 5y ago
I guess that's what you mean, but I'm bothered that this article seems to mistake xenophobia with racism. Not that one is okay, but I feel confounding ethnicity with nationality is already a little racist.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

ggm 5y ago

I spent 6 months resident in Amsterdam and I have mixed feelings about Dutch attitudes to other races. On the whole it's a very low key, mind-your-own business culture but it has a small but vocal cohort of ultra-nationalists who are vocally opposed to Islamic faith symbols, people of colour, you-name-it. I routinely heard Dutch neighbours discuss the concerns the non Dutch native working in childcare centres would mean their kids "didn't learn Dutch properly" or "didn't fit in" -dutch people can be very welcoming of visitors but they also form strong bonds early in childhood and hold on for life. Admitting foreigners into the inner circle, the more private space, isn't that common. (This may be an Amsterdam thing but I'm told over in Maastricht people are even more insular, yet Maastricht had a very gay tolerant local administration for years) Some of this is just "speak Dutch and fit in" and If I lived in a state with so many expatriates who refuse to learn Dutch and rely on the states mandatory 65% pass mark in English to graduate highschool I too might carry resentment. Some of this reflects the huge numbers of immigrants from former Dutch colonies in Indonesia and Surinam and a very odd mix of views about them, half pride, half embarrassment (at what was perpetrated on their culture) and all dutch: "at least they mostly speak Dutch even if I am racist about them" Some of this is the general Dutch "fuck you" which goes on at all levels: try to use a 50 euro note.. fuck you. Try to order in a Cafe 45min before closing time.. fuck you. Try to call up to change your residency registration.. fuck you. It's OK, it's normal, they'd do it to each other too. You just ring back later, try next door, move on. A lot of this is a reaction to a liberal refugee resettlement policy which caused some ghettoisation and drug gang problems (there was a shooting two doors down from my flat at a shisha lounge reflecting this and people list suburbs they think are "not dutch" or "not safe"). It's not new. The Dutch had nazi sympathisers as well as war resistors. What's admirable is that the government appears to accept the fine. My own country (australia) has similar problems and is more likely to deny this kind of finding or refuse to pay it.

NicoJuicy 5y ago
The opinion: "they get social benefits, but the least they can do is respect our culture" is racist? What's the problem with learning our native language if you want to live here and become Belgian for example?
rayiner 5y ago
> On the whole it's a very low key, mind-your-own business culture but it has a small but vocal cohort of ultra-nationalists who are vocally opposed to Islamic faith symbols, people of colour, you-name-it. If the shoe was on the other foot—and it was African or south Asian refugees moving to the Muslim countries these immigrants came from—it wouldn’t be a “small but vocal minority” of nationalists. The government would be moving them to a remote island, like Bangladesh is doing to the Rohingya: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/11/25/bangladesh-resumes-moving-rohingya-refugees-to-flood-prone-island https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/11/25/bangladesh-resumes.... They wouldn’t be allowed to teach kids—they’d be relegated to manual labor. In Saudi, for example, 90% of teachers in girl’s schools must be citizens, and it’s virtually impossible for non-Saudis to get citizenship. The Dutch are just acting like normal people. It’s a small minority of people—mostly white Europeans—that actually seem to enjoy foreigners coming in and creating economic and cultural conflict and challenges.
- jmeister 5y ago
  Yeah, from a historical perspective, it’s a miracle that the modern west is not more racist. “We have primitive instincts, medieval institutions, and God-like technology.” — EO Wilson
- refurb 5y ago
  Indeed. On a related note, I find the criticism of US leadership (often much older folks as leader usually are) being “too white” a bit odd when the US was almost 90% white up until the 1970’s.[1]. Which actually surprised me as I thought it was much lower. So just assuming most leaders are 50+, just by probability you’d assume 80%+ would be white if they were educated in the 1980’s. Obviously there is work to do in term of women leaders as well as African Americans who have been underrepresented, but it’s odd to expect the people running the country and businesses who were educated in 1980’s to reflect 2020 demographics. [1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_racial_and_ethnic_demographics_of_the_United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_racial_and_ethnic...

pyuser583 5y ago

The government is paying a fine? So they’re going to tax their citizens and give their citizens money to the EU because the government was racist. Governments has the power to tax, so fines aren’t really that big of a deal for them.

gsinclair 5y ago
Fines would probably lessen the government’s reputation among voters, though. Risky to amass too many.
- GekkePrutser 5y ago
  They just had an election and voters in the Netherlands have zero long term memory so they will consider themselves totally in the clear

GekkePrutser 5y ago

The child benefit thing was a complete clusterfuck and racism was only part of it. Basically the tax service decided some people were scamming the child daycare support system and turned on them. Any attempts to fight it from the parents were stonewalled and people were fined and got into massive debt and some even committed suicide. Most of them had done nothing wrong. The problem here is the Dutch tax system that has a "guilty unless proven innocent" setup. Then when it was brought to attention by some politicians they were stonewalled and eventually even sidelined. The mainstream politicians kept turning their eyes away. Eventually it did blow up in the media. The government fell. However the same people that turned a blind eye are now incumbent to government once again. The whistleblowers were rewarded with a snarky remark to "find a function elsewhere". The racism here is bad but it's only the tip of the iceberg.

drukenemo 5y ago
I’m an immigrant to the Netherlands and have lived here for more than 10 years. I don’t recollect ever experiencing racism. At the same time, I think there are demographics in this country that are more likely to abuse the system or display behavior that make one a little more suspicious of them in principle. That said, country profiling by the government, as much as it would probably be an effective dimension to detect fraud imo, shouldn’t be used by a government. The same way airport control shouldn’t profile people by appearance or any racial and gender characteristics.
- Aeolun 5y ago
  I think the problem is that it’s only effective in the short term to profile like that. If you already consider someone guilty before they do anything, there’s very little stopping them from actually doing the thing for real (at least, I would have few moral qualms).
- iovrthoughtthis 5y ago
  > At the same time, I think there are demographics in this country that are more likely to abuse the system or display behavior that make one a little more suspicious of them in principle. i want to gently point out, without implying intention, that this is, in it's self, a racist belief

theshowmustgo 5y ago

The tax service paid special attention to immigrants for the day childcare support system because immigrants in average commit more fraud (1) on other areas. This was understandable, not meant to be racist but very wrong and illegal. Also they just clawed the money back and you have to proof that you were innocent and they did not look at the evidence. Tax service uses outdated computer systems which are not connected to local system. Politicians promised to solve it and never did (still not). (1) Many commit fraud by accident because of language issues and complicated rules. Also there are a lot of traveling immigrants who make mis-use of the Dutch welfare state by applying child credits or unemployment benefits while abroad.

throwawayboise 5y ago
I don't think "fraud by accident" is possible. Fraud requires intent. Mistakes are just mistakes, and yeah you will have to pay back anything you shouldn't have received, and sometimes there are additional penalties, but fraud is something different. Then again, maybe the Netherlands doesn't distinguish between the two.

cblconfederate 5y ago

> the Dutch government has to pay a fine of 2.75 million euros ... to itself

yes_really 5y ago

How is the data "racist"? It doesn't utilise race at all. It uses citizenship information because tax authorities found that having a non-Dutch citizenship was a strong predictor of committing the fraud. The fraud encompassed people from mainly eastern European countries (mainly Bulgaria, hence it is known as the "Bulgarenfraude"). Because the tax authorities only checked afterwards, the fraud was often only noticed when the fraudsters had already returned to Bulgaria [1]. The target of these checks have the same race as the Dutch (they are both mainly Caucasian), so it is weird to hear that the nationality check is "racist". If you look at the press release of the Dutch Data Protection Authority [2] (the agency that imposed the fine), you can see it does not even mention race or racism. It says the fine is due to "serious violations of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the law governing privacy" and for discrimination in "unnecessarily retaining nationality data in its systems". I had to look that up because, if I had just read the headline, I would incorrectly believe there was racism involved. Why is this article inflaming racial resentment? Is it just trying to use clickbait to get views? Is it trying to push fake-news for an agenda? [1] https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulgarenfraude https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulgarenfraude [2] https://autoriteitpersoonsgegevens.nl/en/news/tax-administration-fined-discriminatory-and-unlawful-data-processing https://autoriteitpersoonsgegevens.nl/en/news/tax-administra...