I am not sure the data model is the problem here. I feel like the journalist tried really hard to make a case against scoring (which I do not like either), but overlooked the fact that the whole system in which its embedded is bad. The case should not be on the technology but on its usage.

It’s already looking like a bad journalism piece in the first part :

” Being flagged for investigation can ruin someone’s life, and the opacity of the system makes it nearly impossible to challenge being selected for an investigation, let alone stop one that’s already underway. One mother put under investigation in Rotterdam faced a raid from fraud controllers who rifled through her laundry, counted toothbrushes, and asked intimate questions about her life in front of her children.”

Here the problem is not the algorithm, its the investigators.

Another ethical problem for me : the system of flagging in whole relied partly on anonymous tips from neighbors. I am not an expert but I feel more at ease about a system that rely on a selection algorithm + randomness than delation.

I think the problem was the processes around the algorithm not its existence itself. The journalist seems to assume during the whole piece that the algorithm will become the main/only way to identify fraudsters. If its the case, it’s terribly wrong because how are you training your algorithm then ?

Most of the time, the piece try to put the reader in an emotional state of fear and anger and is not at all doing any analysis, while faking it using a lot of numbers and graphs.

Sorry for the long rant but I am surprised that this came from Wired which I consider quite good on tech topics, and that its on HN 2nd page.

I am against government scoring and algorithms for legal / police cases precisely because it can be badly used by powerful people.

Am I the only one to feel that its not a good article ?