EIJC18 & Dataharvest

Scoring people for creditworthiness has been done for decades in many countries. It has tremendous consequences for our lives: Do we get a mortgage, a mobile phone contract, a lease for an apartment? These and other decisions rest on credit scoring. But that's only part of the reason why it has always been controversial. Many systems have shown flaws, i.e. using wrong data, mixing up people with similar names, and in general working in a very opaque way. In this session, we'll present three investigations aimed at shedding more light on these systems: 'OpenSCHUFA' from Germany, investigating the dominant credit scoring company SCHUFA in Germany using a crowdsourcing approach, 'You are blacklisted' and 'The computers of the robo-judge e-Court', two investigations into the automated industry of private debt trade in the Netherlands, and 'The algorithm in your bank account', a coordinated six-country investigation of the impact of World-Check, a privately-run database listing allegedly "high risk" people and organisations. Please note: Because of the complexity of the projects, it is very likely that we will only be able to present them in this session. Discussion will happen in the following round-table slot.