Big Brother Watch announces that it has spearheaded a joint letter to the UK secretary of State for Work and Pensions, to scrap plans to spy on all of British bank accounts [*] on the premise of detecting welfare fraud and error. The NGO was joined by over a dozen NGOs, including Privacy International, Public Law Project, and Disability Rights UK.

The essence of the letter according to Big Brother Watch:

“Imposing suspicionless algorithmic surveillance on the entire public has the makings of a Horizon-style scandal – with vulnerable people most likely to bear the brunt when these systems go wrong.”
“Pensioners, disabled people, and carers shouldn’t have to live in fear of the government prying into their finances.”

From the letter (footnotes excluded) on the earlier plan that is revived by the current UK government:

The Conservative Government planned to compel banks and other third parties to trawl the accounts of the entire population, without suspicion of fraudulent activity, to target people receiving state benefits for ongoing monitoring. This sweeping plan would have targeted not only claimants, but also those ‘linked’ to them, including partners, parents, and landlords – which risked decimating the housing market for benefits claimants. It rightfully drew heavy criticism from Parliamentarians from across both Houses, 42 charities and civil society organisations, and over 270,000 members of the public for its potential to discriminate against vulnerable individuals and introduce unprecedented intrusive financial surveillance in the UK.

and:

The announcement of new financial surveillance powers has come with promises of “measures to protect vulnerable customers”, including oversight and reporting mechanisms, staff training, and a code of practice. However, we find it extremely unlikely that any code of practice could mitigate the privacy intrusion of a mass financial surveillance power specifically designed to intrude on individual’s privacy where there is no suspicion of wrong-doing.

The Guardian paid attention to the initiative in the article “Monitoring UK bank accounts for benefits fraud would be ‘huge blow to privacy’”.

AML/CFT = suspicionless algorithmic surveillance by banks
Suspicionless algorithmic surveillance on the entire public is the essence of anti-money laundering legislation in UK and the rest of Europe. Are data protection organisations waking up and realising what is happening due to the international legislation created by FATF?

[*] “This legislation will give DWP powers to: (…)
* Require banks and financial institutions to share data that may show indications of potential benefit overpayments“.