Monitoring UK bank accounts for benefits fraud could be a huge blow to your privacy | surveillance

Ministers have been urged not to revive the Conservatives' plans to tackle welfare fraud by launching mass algorithmic surveillance of bank accounts.

Disability rights, poverty, pensioners and privacy groups fear the government is ready to deliver a snooper's charter, using automation and artificial intelligence to crack down on benefits fraud and mistakes costing $10 billion a year . They fear this will be a major blow to privacy in the UK.

In a letter to Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall this week, they said requiring banks to scan accounts for suspicious activity would be a serious infringement on the nation's privacy and have potentially punitive consequences for vulnerable individuals. He said it would result in .

Keir Starmer announced the Fraud, Errors and Debt Bill last week, forcing banks to share data about account holders that could show signs of potential benefit overpayments.

Details are yet to be released, but the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has stressed that the government will not have access to people's bank accounts and will not use artificial intelligence to examine the data. It said customers can request data from banks to indicate when they don't meet eligibility rules for benefits, and staff will always investigate if there are signs of fraud or errors.

The Government is concerned that welfare fraud is becoming more sophisticated and that without new legal powers it will not be able to keep up with the changing nature of fraud and tackle it robustly. We believe asking banks to share claimant data with the Department for Work and Pensions to tackle benefits fraud could help save $1.6 billion over five years.

The existing Conservative bill failed to pass parliament before the July general election. It has been welcomed by some, including the tech industry and the Information Commissioner's Office, as it aims to boost public and corporate trust in AI tools.

It also aimed to facilitate the flow and use of personal data for law enforcement and national security purposes. There was strong controversy over aspects of the bill that focused on privacy rights and automated decision-making.

Labour's new legislation could force banks and other third parties to scan the accounts of the entire population for welfare recipients for monitoring. According to our own assessments, we can only stop about 3% of the total amount lost due to fraud and errors.

Such large-scale financial surveillance powers would be disproportionate, according to signatories of the letter to Kendall, which includes leaders of Disability Rights UK, Age UK, Privacy International, Child Poverty Action Group and Big Brother Watch.

Imposing unsuspecting algorithmic surveillance on the entire population is creating Horizon-style scandals with the vulnerable people most likely to be harmed when these systems go wrong. They wrote to Kendall, citing the Post Office software that led to his wrongful imprisonment. Post office operator. Pensioners, disabled people and carers should not live in fear of the government stealing their finances.

A DWP spokesperson said: These claims are false. These powers will be used appropriately and proportionately, with strong new oversight and reporting rules, and our staff will be trained to the highest possible standard. The information provided by the bank is not linked to DWP algorithms and potential fraud signals are always comprehensively reviewed by staff.

The warning comes amid the expanding use of artificial intelligence (AI) by government departments, with approximately 70% of government departments estimated to be testing or planning to use AI, according to the Government Accountability Office's spending watchdog.

Welfare algorithms are completely flawless. It emerged over the summer that DWP software had incorrectly flagged more than 200,000 people for investigation into suspected fraud and errors.

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