Between 2019 and the end of 2022, the UWV illegally collected data from people who visited the website to trace whether they were staying abroad illegally while receiving unemployment benefits. This is evident from research by the NOS and News hour which was published on Saturday. The UWV stopped this working method at the beginning of this year, after the state lawyer, according to News hour stated that there was ‘no legal basis whatsoever’ for checking all visitors. The UWV says that 3,600 investigations have been initiated by this system, which have led to 460 “adjustments to benefits (for example, by issuing a fine)”.
The UWV ignored according to News hour also the Data Protection Officer, an internal watchdog, who already rejected this method of verification when the system was introduced nationwide in May of last year. When Minister of Social Affairs and Employment Karien van Gennip (CDA) found out that the check was being carried out in this way, the UWV wanted it not to inform the House of Representatives about the file. She did so on March 30, but still spoke of “doubts” about the system. The State Attorney had already stated that the system was against the law. The UWV itself says in a comment that the system has been extensively tested: “During this process, all signals were always green. However, with today’s knowledge, it appears that we did make a mistake.” The UWV finds it “extremely annoying” that it “failed to act carefully”.
As with the Supplementary Affair – where tens of thousands of innocent citizens were classified by the government as fraudsters – an opaque algorithm was used to monitor large numbers of citizens who did nothing wrong. A spokesperson for the UWV will let you know when asked NRC know that any comparison with the Supplementary Affair is crooked: “This is of course something completely different.” Could the UWV not have learned lessons from the benefits scandal? The spokesperson does not think so: “Many organizations use algorithms.” The spokesman denies that it concerns vulnerable citizens who are being traced. “We have the assignment from law to detect and enforce. We have done that.”