surveillance

Things which start in the USA have a terrible habit of manifesting themselves here. I am sure public services will become increasingly dependent on this sort of algorithm process and for anyone thinking this might be a good idea my suggestion on the strength of this story is that you think again. Just remember the really negative implications to us all, of the portal through which we are increasingly manipulated through a process known as surveillance capitalism. It operates under the innocuous name of “cookies”. We, in the public sector have an opportunity to put a spoke in the wheel of all this stuff in England if we resile from it. Lets hope you agree. This story tells us:

The Trump administration has proposed a shift in rules that would make it “nearly impossible” for Americans to sue for housing discrimination caused by algorithms, according to tech scholars and civil rights groups.

Absolving companies of wrongdoing when algorithms are involved could have a major effect on the housing market, which often relies on automation – in the form of background checks, credit score analysis, and analysing an applicant’s history – to decide whether to rent or sell someone a home.

The new ruling would raise the bar for legal challenges against housing discrimination, making cases brought against landlords and lenders less likely to succeed.

It does this through tweaking the interpretation of the “disparate-impact” standard of the 1968 Fair Housing Act, which permits the use of statistical analysis to identify patterns of discrimination and prohibits discriminatory conduct, even if the conduct does not have “discriminatory intent”.

Representatives from New York University, the AI Now Institute, the University of Maryland, non-profit Center on Race Inequality, and the Law and Princeton encouraged the administration to withdraw the proposed rule in the lengthy letter issued on Friday.