Dutch grepping Facebook for welfare fraud : ‘The [Dutch] councils are working with a specialist Amsterdam research firm, using the type of computer software previously deployed only in counterterrorism, monitoring [LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter] traffic for keywords and cross-referencing any suspicious information with digital lists of social welfare recipients. Among the giveaway terms, apparently, are “holiday” and “new car”. If the automated software finds a match between one of these terms and a person claiming social welfare payments, the information is passed on to investigators to gather real-life evidence.’ With a 30% false positive rate, apparently — let’s hope those investigations aren’t too intrusive!
(tags: grep dutch holland via:tjmcintyre privacy facebook twitter linkedin welfare dole fraud false-positives searching)