In the news

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/935gka/uk-immigration-lawyers-fought-a-racist-algorithm-and-won

Some actual good news;

British immigrant rights advocates won a landmark victory Tuesday, forcing the U.K. government to stop using a discriminatory algorithm in the country’s first ever legal challenge of its kind.

The U.K.’s Home Office, which oversees immigration and law enforcement, among other responsibilities, announced that it would suspend use of the automated decision-making system, referred to as the Streaming Tool, which the agency used to determine whether visa applicants represented a high-, medium-, or low-risk to the nation. The decision came as a result of a legal complaint filed with the British High Court by the nonprofit Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants (JCWI) and Foxglove Legal, a technology justice advocacy group.

The advocates argued that the Home Office’s visa algorithm drew conclusions about visa applicants based on their nationality and data from immigration raids that disproportionately targeted people from certain countries. As a result, it was prone to fast-tracking applicants from predominantly white countries and sorting people from other nations into a longer and more onerous review process. The Home Office’s use of the algorithm was first reported by the Financial Times.