 We have a great talk for you. We have a wonderful speaker for you with me on stage right now is Lindsay Jackson as you can read Lindsay is a perfect example of what happens if you attend Big Australian government idea fest and get infected with the tech virus because several years later The same government got kicked in the butt by her and and her companions So hard that the media used the word clusterfuck to describe it So, please give a very warm welcome all the way from Australia Lindsay Jackson resisting algorithms of mass destruction Thank you very much for having me So why am I here? I'm gonna talk to you about a story that A campaign that happened in Australia. So this campaign started at the start of the year 30th of December actually was when we kicked it off and we kicked it off with a Essentially a four-day social hackathon to build a site around an issue that was going on in the Australian media and affecting people That issue it was it was quite difficult to figure out exactly what was going on when we started There was reports that were coming through through social media about people that had been issued with Debt notices from the government. They were told that they owed thousands of dollars worth of debt The first that most people heard of it was through Being phoned by debt collectors just before Christmas So they started getting these debt collector calls and say and being told that they Ode thousands of dollars for a debt from five six seven years previously From the government when they were receiving social security benefits So it was really strange like where was this coming from? How on earth are people being owed this money? Being told that they owe this money and where was the owners of proof that it was actually legitimate And why were there no organizations that were coming out and saying this is a problem and Who would those organizations be and that was really part of my thinking and part of what got me interested in this campaign? in the first place was when it comes to digital rights and what the government is doing Through say tech efficiencies or in this case It was through using algorithms to reduce human oversight within a government department so that they could reduce their budget costs or claw back money because Governments around the world have got this issue where they are spending more than they're bringing in and our government is no different So who does that you know and and that's been something that we've been talking about a lot here is How do we mobilize people? How do we get people to understand these technical issues? How do we get them to care? How do we get them to understand the different levels of complexity when it comes to tech? and that was something that we saw in this campaign as well is that The people behind the campaign and we'll we'll talk about the story around that shortly But as they started to be groundswell and as mainstream media picked it up We actually watched mainstream media Struggle initially to understand these terms to understand what an algorithm is to understand how the department could be messing this up in such an awful way to understand the questions that need to be asked and then to understand the how to articulate the rights that people have to Justice within a debt system as well So it had all of these different layers the government's going to use an algorithm if the Algorithm they used was quite simple and flawed in very simple ways They should have picked this up, but they didn't because they didn't have the Staffing levels that they needed within the department it had been outsourced So they really they didn't have they didn't have control of this They didn't have control of the monitoring And then there was also these legal issues of if you're going to start to remove human oversight Automate these things and do things like issue debts Then how are you going to communicate to people their rights to know whether or not their payment is legitimate? So I'm really going to share a story today And we're gonna I'm gonna talk to you through the campaign and how it unfolded So firstly, why am I here? I'm from Australia. So it I have come a really long way But I'm also from like this little part of Australia I'm not even like the good part where everyone is like we're all the IT jobs are I'm in the country as well So I don't live in a major city the town that I'm from is around about 3,600 people Around about the size of a hacker village in the middle of the Netherlands So this is quite an interesting evolution for me to go from there to here And so I kind of wanted to talk to you about why like, you know, what was what was my motivation behind it? behind doing this My background is in really grassroots community building community engagement How are we going to get people participating in communities? I do a lot of living in rural communities and big issues for them Are how are we going to get young people to move back to country towns because they're dying out? So that's where I started and then I evolved into Sustainable development. So how do we start to mobilise people to look at some of these big global issues around? Renewable energy and climate change, but then also different social political issues as well and then I accidentally fell into technology and I the minute I did was my Okay, if we want to be able to connect people Replicate ideas share ideas create projects do things at scale and do things at speed Technology plays a major role in this so I've been fortunate to Bridge that gap I guess between the social and the technical and I've been building Websites for government and CRM systems So I've been building websites for government and not for profit organisations for for nine years It's also really used to working with organisations that feel really uncomfortable with technology And it's changing and those organisations are feeling immense pressure to understand data to be collecting data to be accountable and measuring and They don't have the insight that people here have around What is the mess that you can create? What are the dangers? So they don't know these things yet. They are under pressure to to be working with them and responding So I think there's a huge responsibility that that tech has to not only Bridge that gap between non-technologists, but there's also a real responsibility to expose Non-tech people to tech because that's where the jobs are going to be and not only that if we start to create everything if we if we create the future around technology in a bubble that is disconnected from wider society Then I think we are already seeing some of the issues in the narrow-mindedness of thinking that occurs And and I built an open source. I built in Drupal. Is anyone here built in Drupal? Thank you for coming So I built an open source software as well. So, you know, I've got a I've got a real love for that So I'm in a little tiny town about this size in South Australia It happened that the company I was working for closed down so at the start of last year and then I had a baby and Babies are lovely, but they're boring. So I've got a lot of time to think about what I would do What would I create if we wanted if I want to connect all these things then? What does that look like? and so to Yes, so that is sorry. That's why I have created this project and I'll talk to you about it I did want to say firstly that The bugs in Australia are really not as bad as everyone keeps saying and I understand why you're so scared because like You're so scared of wasps that really are scary So Australia is really a beautiful place and I just wanted to put a bit of a plug in there And I'd really just also wanted to reflect briefly on The amazingness of this place and what's going on here And for someone like me that's very much a community optimist that thinks what would happen if we connect People with amazing skills together and what would happen if we connect those people to people that need those skills or have Skills outside of technology. What sort of things could we build? I mean, could we build a village in the middle of the Netherlands? So I've just been so overwhelmed with with this and this environment and it's it's just been so awe-inspiring So I really thank everyone for having me Thank you I Put the one thing that I've been thinking about to kind of lead into the talk is We think we often think about what we do and how we're gonna do it But one of the great things about technology and I think where we can be leaders around technology is to think about the how first Because if you think about the what first then that tends to dictate what the client wants or you know What people are asking for and that may not necessarily be the best technical implementation So how are we gonna do it first? What are the tools for the job? Who do we need to engage? Who do we want to have using those tools? And then how might we adjust our tool set as we go And I'm not gonna get into the depth of that, but that's something that was very much a part of this campaign We we really thought a really thought about what I was building in how things might evolve how to keep it flexible But also a job So that it could be flexible and we could we could change things around so if non-techs We're not responding to slack for example or as you'll see we added certain features to the website Some of them just didn't work and we just we just rolled with it and we built in Drupal So we could do that because we had that expand ability to do it quickly So thinking about how how would you do it and talking to people from that point of view? I think is really useful So leading into leading into this issue This is this is where it starts to build up on social media and we start to see a real opportunity To create a campaign to expose what's going on here So on social media we start to see because as most of the deaths came through just before Christmas So people before Christmas everything shut down. There are no legal services that sent to link the department That is administering this they've got minimal staffing levels everything in Australia shuts down during January So we're seeing heaps of people starting to complain on social media that they've got these debts and they don't understand it But they're responding to people that are saying they've got them to that's something that we're seeing So I'm here watching this thinking. Oh, this would be such a good campaign But I'm just one person in a tiny little village in South Australia And I don't have any connections and I don't have enough network and you know, what am I what am I gonna do? And then on December 30, we get this headline bludges and imaginary debt So a bludger is I don't even know the universal language term for bludger It is convenient in when for people that are receiving social security benefits to talk down to them Because that's convenient politically to say we're wasting money and they're no hopers and all of that sort of rhetoric So bludgers and imaginary debt what the hell is happening with the latest center link clusterfuck? You know, you have a campaign on your hands when the media uses the word clusterfuck, you know, it's gonna go well on Twitter anyway And that's what I was counting on So I needed one person with reach. I needed someone that really understood the complexity of Digital rights, but also algorithms that would have the connections and also the the breath political breath to be able to Spread this message and talk about what it is that I was proposing to do And I'll tell you that in a moment and so in Australia We have Asher wolf So if people are on Twitter and you're not following her please do because she's amazing and she's just you know a fierce advocate for digital rights and Has just such an amazing capacity to understand technology Understand or understand the the impact that this has on on government and on people And so I said about baiting her to make her get involved in my project She tweet later on that day She tweeted this and I said to her we should build a website. I reckon it would be fun She doesn't know who I am like I'm just some person from a village in South Australia But she bit and she said tell me more and I said I'll do it and I'll do it fast And it will be flexible and we can evolve it But I'm gonna I can't do it alone because I don't want to build a website on my own And I don't want to build something that's not actually gonna get anywhere because there's nothing worse than building a website No one visits And also she knows the proper algorithm geeks So she's got the connections to back something and get the right people talking about the right things We needed people that were talking about the politics the mathematics the technology the legal stuff So it was it was You know incredibly important Alright, what are you gonna do with this website? She's not easy to amuse by the way And I said we may never know the extent of this if people don't collectivize who in Australia which organizations were Realistically going to pick this up and and run with it, especially on the 30th of December Just before New Year's leading up to January where everyone's away in Australia It's when people go on holidays They're not bored living in small country towns with little babies and Then then I got my second person up the top and that was Amy and she said I've got no skills to offer But oh, but I aside from proof reading But I'd share the shit out of this and The proof reading was so useful because that's the content and so anyone that builds websites It's all it's all about the content But it's also the hardest part of the project to come together on So that became really crucial and Amy had an actually managed a content management system before and she is now The best content manager that I've ever worked with So this has created some really fantastic opportunities for her To be able to manage a massive what's turned out to be quite a massive website So we put together a Google doc and I had people Anyone that was interested as ashes sending them to me through social media through Twitter We start directing them and getting them to write content So there's really a lot of trust that's going on if anyone is interested enough to say I think that topic is important Here's what I can do. We just took them. You know, what was the worst that was going to happen? Let's put it all together So people with people were creating content pages on all of the legal organize eight organizations in Australia Who could people go to to help? They were editing content. They were collecting articles We've got over 600 content article news media releases on the website So people were not only doing things directly with this campaign. They were also doing things externally as well And I'll talk I'll talk a little bit into more depth So it was about enabling a core network to start working together But also really encouraging other people to do things that they thought were important to contribute to the overall broad conversation and Essentially, that's a movement right like that's that that's how we that's how we create movements So we end up being the backbone Organization that keeps it together that keeps it moving and people ping-pong off of us as we as we start going and So four days we end up with this with this website and this is it's it's a simple website But right down to the the banner here. This was designed by an amazing graphic designer I have no idea who they are. I'll share another one of their posters that they created Fantastic, they are just interested in this cause because people are interested in injustices that occur within our communities and if you don't offer ways for them to get involved or ask them to get involved or ask them to use a skill that they have or Something that they really want to do then how can they be involved? So it is about opening up those opportunities We did have some tools that were really integral to how we set this site up So the first thing was a hashtag And the not my debt hashtag became a key focal point for all of the conversation Around this on social media on all platforms really but particularly Twitter It also helped because it allowed us to be able to curate things together So we could monitor and curate and because we did that and it was so Focused and we also really encouraged everyone to use it and to have conversations We were very active with our retweeting through the official account So anything that people were talking about that was interesting or relevant. We were liking it We were retweeting it because it wasn't just our problem to solve This was a community problem to solve. We didn't understand the depth of it We didn't understand the reach of it. We didn't understand all of the layers of it. Was this legal was this Accurate was this good policy? Was it bad? We just did not know But we knew that there were incredibly smart people on Twitter that were going to be figuring this out for us So the hashtag was was vitally important. We did build in Drupal because that's just easy for me Fortunately the Australian government has a Drupal distribution called GovCMS and they use this now for all of their government websites So it's got some good features like it, you know, you can put it together out of the box quite quickly It's got some workflow stuff. It's got some security stuff. So it really seemed the perfect tool to use So sorry Don't want okay and then Slack so Slack was also another another tool that we used to enable conversation between core people that were involved and You know, most of those people were non-tex They're most of the people that were in the ended up coming into the core organizing team Didn't know any of them. They were just people that as we came along they came into it This occurred over January So there were a lot of people that got involved early on and then they went back to work So they were no longer involved and then new people came in so there was this evolution Because we were using technology and it didn't matter where people were there was a huge percentage of people That were from rural areas and a lot of people that were really active were also women So and non-technologists So this also opened up a way for them to be involved in a really big campaign that was really complex and Had lots of different networks and groups From that they would otherwise not be exposed to because they were women they were older they lived in rural communities and You know, it's just it's just not something that that they get the opportunity to necessarily do but they were amazing and the depth of knowledge and the stuff that we produced was just incredible Really really really amazing. I'm gonna talk about that shortly So a lot of stuff went on once this started and a lot of stuff that wasn't our stuff Because we were just a group of some volunteers that were randomly coming together But around us all of these other organizations started to mobilize and all of these different creative people that were You know, this is just what they do. It's they're fantastic at it They see the opportunity they see the opportunity to connect with something that other people are talking about And also to to reach a broader audience because we can we can bounce off each other and so this was Juice media created an honest government advert and I think it was something like five million views At least like last look on Twitter on Facebook. They're wherever platform. They're on so many different platforms But amazing really worth a watch because it's really quite Frank and Australian Which is refreshing But I we don't have what do you and yeah find it yourself and then we also started to get all of these different things like people were creating all these different memes and Different media digital things because it was what you could think of to contribute So we've got someone just started someone that does a lot of political cartoons or political memes Just start sending me these randomly. I have no idea who they are So Mrs. Maj Smith gets a not my debt letter fuck Maj 20,000 pounds And we've got this is my favorite one. Oh look Alice. It's one of them not my debt fellows They told us about at the LMP lodge meeting. Don't ever go near one of them And then this is Australian kids cleaning the floor of Alan touch who was the minister In charge of all this who was on holidays when the campaign started I think he's I think his holidays are a little bit disrupted Because this this literally came out of nowhere and then one more For fuck's sake touch. I didn't travel halfway around the world to discover Australia just for you to destroy it And I think this is like four of about 30 So at 30 from like one person let alone all the other memes that people were creating around this People were also taking this to the streets as well So this is this is a little bus stop in a tiny little town in Victoria over that side And someone there just started creating all of these posters and putting these posters up on on social media as well just just because they could see how they could contribute to it in January they started to be protests and protest at Parliament House Because as the community was talking about this and as it became such an issue Organizations started to respond around it So they started and they kind of they kind of did it loosely in some ways because most of them are still on Holidays at this point like especially all the managers that they have January off and then they come back late January This is happening. This is happening early January onwards So they really had to respond very rapidly and and they did a good job There was one group of 30 organizations different social service organizations and different legal organizations and they came together and they had regular Meetings and updates on how they were going to respond to the community concern that was being uncovered through this And so that became very different. That's very different to Coming together to berate the government for a bad policy Instead, this is about saying we're here. We can hear that the stories we can hear people are incredibly upset This is how we're going to respond to them and this is how we believe the government should respond so there's almost this era of positivity and Constructiveness around this because there's a project going on. There's there's action and activity going on These people are not on Twitter So this filters down to the ground as well They but they are very you know, but this is this is affecting them to the way that this the way that this Algorithm or this this project was was the algorithm was focused was that? The government were triaging how they were rolling this out So in the first round they were going after people that no long were no longer receiving social security benefits So for instance, they were just unemployed for a short period of time and they were unemployed for part of the year And then they transitioned out or they might have been students and So that is why it took people by surprise because they hadn't actually been receiving any of these benefits for up to five six Seven years and then they start getting these debt collection notices Saying you owe us money if you don't believe you owe us money Prove it go and get your pay slips from five six seven years ago The onus is on you to prove you don't owe this money So you can see we're starting to get into the legal implications of this This is this starts to clearly become a government program an Algorithm that has very simple flaws So two of the flaws that were very that that were causing a lot of the problems were Social Security Department Were we're changing how they were data matching with the tax office and They were automating it and there was no human oversight. So this was the computer So if if your if your business name was one thing in one system and another thing in the other system The computer was matching it as if you had two employers during that time There was there was nothing to employers You were lying and you now have a debt and prove it if you don't owe it So so that was really that was really one of the big ones and the other one was data averaging Over the course of an entire year So if you were unemployed for three months of the year and you had a legitimate reason to be collecting unemployment benefits during that time and then you got a job and you went off of it and you were working for That the rest of the nine months when the algorithm was coming together to calculate the debts They were taking the total figure for the year and dividing it by 26. So what that did was it? Obsessively made that three months where you weren't actually working It was calculating it as an average that you were earning income during that period of time So really simple errors that should have been picked up and that weren't And you know that that cause that caused chaos So we did some so we did some things like we did online An online rally so people that couldn't attend a physical rally We had them tweet either a picture of themselves or or a pet that was receiving Receiving a debt letter because a lot of people that were involved and a lot of people that still are involved Remain anonymous because they have some level of reliance on these government payments And they don't want to be targeted or have those in jeopardy So for people that have the ability or you know that I guess that are not going to be impacted negatively, it's so important for them to to stand up for those people that The that otherwise Could be compromised so anonymity became important, but also kind of content became important This was content this meant that we could keep tweeting things and retweeting things This one's on an angle apologies But this is this is a person with a disability saying the public trustee So sometimes with a disability there's or their money is managed within a within the public trustee Paid my debt without telling me The debt doesn't exist not my debt So this is a person with a disability the public trustee that manages their money Pays this debt that they don't owe without even giving this person with a disability the ability to be able to Find out if this debt is legitimate or not. So again, there's this continual erosion of rights and and access to to to to fair justice and understanding of of where where this debt is coming from Centrelink is broken. So this became one of the other things that formed was collective a loose collective of digital rights activists within Australia and so They started to they they started to kind of bounce ideas off of each other and and that was really fantastic so this program where this ended up evolving and from the individual that put this together was to look I was to ping ping the phone systems From Centrelink the agency that was entrusted with putting this together Because one of the problems was in the line of clusterfucks that caused this problem was that It was impossible to phone or go into an office to sort this out They did not have people on the floor that you could go into to sort this out You had to phone there are still ongoing issues with people being able to call with waiting list times So this guy created something person, baby created something so that So that they could just you know once every hour or so just phone Centrelink You can see if they could even get through because many many people just will and still do try continuously all day People will be on hold for hours at a time just to try to get this sorted So this was a this was another great project that occurred and then lawyers really early on a legal people started to get very involved in this project because They were the ones that people needed to go to to be able to sort out whether or not this was indeed legal And I'll read this out because it's a bit hard to read Just the highlighted bit at the most basic level no entity should be issuing legal demands for money unless they are Absolutely certain the money is owed and can be substantiated in this court It's for the creditor to prove the debt and it's up to the creditor to ensure the alleged debtor receives the repayment demand It's entirely wrong for Centrelink to put alleged debts in the hands of debt recovery Agencies when they're not proved and the debtor never received it The whole procedure is quite unethical and a complete abuse of legal process So this comes out in January 7th. This is a week after we've started that already lawyers are saying This this just is not right And when you start to look at the government system where all of this data and information is within Centrelink It's 35 years old. This system is a mess people were phoning and they were saying They were trying to find out how to update their information or find out where the problems were within the system and they couldn't people People that were successful in getting to the bottom of it contacted them multiple times You could not and you cannot still call through and just have this sorted because it's screen after screen What we were hearing was that if you didn't ask them to update the right bit in the right space They wouldn't update everything So your employer that is accurate or it might be in two or three different points within the system They might update it in one point, but they don't update it in the other So people were literally like they'd get a five thousand dollar debt and they'd ring and they'd sort it out And it would go down to three thousand dollars and then say well How do I owe three thousand dollars and they'd go through the process again, and then they don't eight hundred dollars It was continually changing on them but legally, you know legally what were the issues here and Legal organizations knew that these people would be coming to them. They were already stretched They were already looking at facing Massive funding costs in the middle of the year. So they've been they've been really concerned by this having said that There has been no legal case that has been arisen that's arisen through this. So there is there is no one That I am aware of actively looking out for the legal implications of this sort of impact in the digital In the digital space at least for this sort of thing people looked at a class action And that was the first thing that people talked about. Let's do a class action But this is so complicated because there's no consistency with individuals Every individual has a bit of a different case Maybe some people did report wrongly for a few months five years ago or their debt You know, they've they maybe they had this payment for a little while or that payment for a little while and then the money That could potentially be recouped for $1,200 $2,500, you know, it's just not sexy enough to pick that up for from a legal organ from a legal point of view And and far too complicated as well. So as it stands, there's been no legal action that that's tested this at all and Again, we we have We just have a prime minister the prime minister and all of the ministers involved in this Just put their heads down and they say the system is working as designed. This is what we wanted It is working and that's the rhetoric they maintain. They do make changes as we go along. They make changes to their Computer system their portal because they're telling people that they can upload information to prove They don't owe this debt people are logging in and those pages don't even exist that functionality within their web portal doesn't even exist let alone is Presented in a way that's usable usable to people that have very low technical literacy That are not that are not that are just just regular people and sometimes have real trouble operating computer systems And then there's no staff once you get to the offices. So there's also no one to help you So we also have this issue with these technical efficiencies being put on top of people and those people having no Capacity or support to be able to navigate those systems and then very little feedback That's going back through the department or back back through the department to make any of the improvements that that they need to make If it's a good idea to be doing that in the first place Is it a good idea to be removing the level of human oversight to the level that they did? so we just ignore it and Politically things move on a government has a one-seat majority Yeah Kathy O'Neill's got an amazing amazing book on weapons of of math destruction The human victims of weapons of math destruction are held to a far higher standard of evidence than the algorithms themselves And this was a hundred percent what we saw as well So this is really a living breathing example of that You think our algorithm doesn't work you prove it you go get the five years worth of payslips you sort this out Incredibly onerous to be putting on people So by January 18 one of the functions that we had one of the functions that we had within the website that actually became a really core functionality for this both in terms of Both in terms of finding out the the extent of the story The or the extent of the issue but also as far as creating social media content that we could share Was we created an anonymous web function so that people could share their stories anonymously on the website And so this 18th of January, so we're a few weeks into the campaign We've already got 334 stories and then we had a field that asked them what the dollar value of that was so we had over two million dollars Worth of people that have this concern about the level of of debt and this is just who we're reaching on Twitter And Facebook and and other and getting out into the media so we know at some level. This is this is the tip of the iceberg We've now got over 500 stories on the website It did slow dramatically because the government did change the way that they were sending out letters and they did slow the system down They weren't honest about it. It was something that we saw through observation and through a Senate inquiry that ended up occurring So people start collecting stories and we've got this information and we can we can tell the story of how it's affecting people So this one had a $5,000 debt and it turned out they were actually owed $1,500 when they got to the bottom of this and then we've got our Centrelink is broken sticker just starts appearing in cities around Australia I don't know who did that We had a really tragic case of a young man who his family attributed Part of the stress of having a Centrelink one of these debts to to his Unfortunate suicide because for a young person to get a $10,000 debt at the start of their life when they're not in stable long-term employment And they've got mental health issues and they start thinking how the hell do I cope with this? His his girlfriend was saying look this isn't this isn't real with we see there's a campaign around this This is you know that we can we can sort this out, but you know it it just it wasn't enough for him This one here they were forced to leave their job due to illegal discrimination Workplace bullying and a rape threat yet They had to go back and ask for pay slips from five years ago Because otherwise otherwise pay pay this debt I'll keep moving because I've had a bit of a wind up And then another one you know another comment from a person that was also affected if it was a psychology study The ethics would not get passed by the proposal board So people really really concerned about about the the ethics involved as well So a lot of people have ended up having to go to what we call the AAT Which is the administration appeals tribunal In order to get money paid back and then the department can still appeal through this So the process the process on how to even get to the bottom of this debt is never is not clear for a very long time And it's still incredibly murky ask for a review. What's a review? Ask for an appeal How do you know if you've actually triggered an appeal? And then what are your rights to be able to go to a tribunal when you get to that tribunal point you get Hundreds of pages of information So one of the things that we actively encourage people to do was to get freedom of information Files to at least get the information that Centerlink had on them people received hundreds of pages of documents through those freedom of information files and They may or may not have been useful. It was still even through that mess of paper It was not clear how this debt was calculated because there was no way of telling people But you know, we got hundreds hundreds of people ended up asking for freedom of information things had to put them all together So there was a disruptive element as people exercise their rights to be able to get that information from from the government and Here I'm basically computer illiterate. So you using online services in itself has been a big challenge and I don't own a printer This one yesterday they someone the $8,000 debt was wiped out with no detail fixing. This is nice, but no transparency and nothing learned And then down the bottom here So one of the things that started from this was that there was a Senate inquiry that was triggered So the government in power weren't interested in this the opposition had some very good members of Parliament that were by no means were they very active Very actively coming out of it, especially not from the leader of the opposition But there was a very quick push to get a Senate inquiry through and actually that was That happened in the first couple of weeks of Parliament going back for this year So down the bottom this person is talking about this person here says an apology You know, I didn't get an apology So we know that person has received a debt and then we would say to them We hope you've made a submission to the inquiry. Please do. This is how you do it We created information so that people knew how to submit to the Senate inquiry So that's basically a panel of politicians that review all of the aspects of Issues and so they had we had submissions from we encourage people to submit in their own words That's something that Australians don't necessarily do is engage in a political at a political level like that But individuals start submitting to a Senate inquiry. We give them information on breaking it down on Turning their story they've submitted into a Senate inquiry submission that meets the terms of the reference So of for the inquiry so that then it can be accepted and We ask people to do it We ask people to share their stories on their website on our website If people if we saw people on social media or Twitter or Facebook saying hey, this happened to me We would say please share with us. It's anonymous and your story helps and this person already had their Submission underway Is a great poster this was another poster that came from our anonymous person Anonymous graphic designer and this was around making a submission to not my debt to the sub to the sorry to the Senate Inquiry so we could send this poster out to all of the different social service Organisations and say to them. Hey give this to give this to people put this up in your lunchrooms or wherever And we had a guide that we also sent through to them as well So that it was a continual push continually talking to people on social media continually encouraging them praising people for sharing stories talking about why it was important and We got our Senate inquiry and we there was nine locations across Australia Where these Senate inquiries were held so again it happened incredibly quickly And lots of opportunities for people to be able to go and talk and people did people that had been affected by this Shared and that became really compelling We end up having a privacy leak where Journalist wrote a blog about her experience with Centrelink and then the government released personal information about her to the media And to a couple of key journalists So one of the things that does is it starts to erode trust that people can speak openly about this issue without being doxed by the government So that becomes really a quite a quite a serious thing that we then have to respond our campaign to because we don't want to be putting people at risk And it was just it was you know, it was part of the the tactics that were involved We put a submission to the inquiry and that was the volunteers in Slack coming together They took all of the stories the 500 stories and they just stilled it down into an amazing submission I put this slide in here because What we didn't do was dumb this down. We really had a very broad conversation When you're trying to figure out how to break these technical topics down to people in in terms they can understand We used to there was a range of different ways of doing that And it was interesting to see how the media for example started explaining algorithms You know, they didn't do it very well at first. So you'd watch the news and it's like But slowly over time they got it and they started to ask the right questions So you could see that evolution occurring. So on one hand, it's how do we, you know Simplify this down and get this so that people can understand it and then also how do we keep having these really high-level? discussions around privacy and freedom of information and this is welfare rights that this was their submission on on The their recommendations because different organizations start putting recommendations through so we tweet that stuff There are people that are incredibly interested in that sort of thing We did try to freedom of information the protocol and that in that came to be very difficult And and there were continual delay tactics and we kind of got something that's a bit not helpful So also dealing dealing with government departments on that as well Now this is sorry, this is actually really hard to read But this says so far over 72% of the debts raised had a recovery fee applied And there was questions about whether or not that was illegal. There was a 10% recovery fee added to it straight away And of the 220,000 assessments initiated so far 82,000 or 37% are still in kind of limbo with no debt raised and of the assessments that That JP ends it up doing 23.6% Resulted in people not owing any money so far So this continual rate of a 20% error rate that we were aware of Continues to happen and we know people paid these debts because they did not want to deal with the government That was that was very clear And of those 9.95% ended up owing nothing and still it's really hard to kind of get these figures because you've got to go through all these Senate inquiry processes and asking the department for information and they don't even have the capacity to run reports on this Really quite appalling But there's also this positive Campaign that we're running and that this is the power of people to pull together And to be supporting each other and collaborating and this feeling that working together we can actually solve this and Supporting people to submit to the Senate inquiry and to go and speak at a Senate inquiry when they've never actually Done anything like that before and people that did it responded really positively So these are people that are just on Twitter thanking every you know people just started to get involved with the conversation And early and far-reaching awareness raised it and emboldened a great many to challenge it And that was fantastic, and we did have some wins So we won there was the OAIC, which is the Office of the Information Commissioner it was Has started an audit into the program and then within the Australian Public Service. There's also Privacy impact assessments that are underway as well So that does there was there they continue to be wins in changes in behavior in how the department is Working and just on that as well. What sort of has happened is the the connectivity or the the connectivity between The managers at the top level of this department and the people on the ground and the people that are doing the work There's absolute disconnection there. These people are totally Disenfranchised when it comes to having pushback on these policies that they are being asked to find ways to implement So these people are doing what they're told they know these algorithms are ridiculous And they're gonna cause these errors, but it's their job and they've been told to do it so The other thing that the people power starts doing is It gives a voice that people within the department themselves don't have so once it's once you get a voice from Outside then that starts to be listened to in a in a much stronger way than people that are working for the department That are complaining about the work that they're doing so starting to Have we learnt anything from this? It's still going and it is still being rolled out to other sectors within the community and it's it's incredibly disappointing and it's tough because There is no real ability to get these sorts of grassroots movements funded in any way And we can see that some funding even small amounts would have actually gone a long way to Increasing the capacity of what we were able to do So, you know a couple of thousand dollars would have allowed us to be able to produce print material to people on the ground Or it would have been able to let us produce videos in other languages for people that were also affected by this You know, we're not touching. We're not even touching the edge of people from non-English speaking backgrounds The other other groups that are also affected by this So in Australia as far as digital rights go and as far as where we are within a global community And what what happens in one country how that may impact on other countries? We're still pushing ahead with this with with the not my debt stuff And we also have a war on mathematics at the moment. So we our government is wanting to Wanting to look at the encryption They're wanting to have access to to de-encrypted data and This is a quote from our from our prime minister that the laws of mathematics are very commendable But the only laws that applies in Australia is the law of Australia So, you know, this is this is this is where we're at This is this is exactly what we're dealing with. So this is from a couple of weeks ago Then a couple of days ago, we've got people that are within this within center link They're now getting these letters with this is the Australian federal police logo on it this actually the template for this started coming out early in the campaign and We were kind of skeptical about whether or not it was real It's real people are getting these letters at the bottom of the letter in red It says please dope someone in if you know that they're doing the wrong thing and Then last night we get this one here And I'll read this out the Turnbull government will today seek to impose restrictions on public servants criticising the coalition the government on social media warning that employees risk disciplinary action for liking anti-government posts or privately emailing negative material to a friend from home Documents obtained show that they would also be warned they could be in breach of the public service code of conduct If they do not remove nasty comments about the government Posted by others on the employees Facebook page So we are now monitoring the social media of people working within the public service. So who was that? nurses police People working within departments potential whistleblowers if you're spotted liking something, you know, this is All this effort all this work and yet there is still this continual need to be To be doing more and to be educating people the government's problem in this case We hope longevity wise is that so many people have gotten these debt letters and so many people have been Annoyed by them or know someone that's got one that when they go to vote this will be an issue that does arise again But I'm sure from the government's point of view They're just hoping that it goes away and everyone will have forgotten about it and and time will tell and we'll have to see That so just to close. I'll just close with it another quote from from from Kathy if we back away from them and treat mathematical models as a Neutral and inevitable force like the weather or the tides. We abdicate our responsibility Oh Last one last one from Asher is that one positive one strong positive was that this campaign so far has led to $18 million in false debts being revoked in New South Wales alone. So one state in South in Australia So this has had impact in real terms in terms that can be measured And it's it's been something that that has actually really helped people Thank you for having me Stay with me Enjoy your applause Well-deserved. Thank you very much. We still have two minutes for Q&A So if you have any questions, please line up at the microphones Otherwise, I will ask one question who explained to the media the algorithms did they do their work? And I think we did research or did they call you or the Organization we really stayed quite low and like especially me We were kind of the behind the scenes people people really came up to talk about this And that was the other great thing like it was incredibly smart people that understood this that that stood up and responded And and it actually led to quite a lot of information about what had been happening in the public service coming out At particularly at a digital level So so yeah, we we've definitely left that to people that knew what they were talking about Okay, so all things so technology is a multiplier, right? It project force and and multiplies it now the government has more computers and algorithms to do to fuck things up And you have like, you know the computers and the internets to counter them now all things considered Do you still do you think there's some equality of arms and is it getting worse or better if you take a line from the 60s civil unrest and community protest to now quick answer. Yeah Organizations that could be doing that work do not have the technical capacity to know how to do this This is not complicated. This is simple technology used well and Delivered well and delivered cheaply, but the organizations that might be able to do this and to counter that government They don't know how to computer Again, it's why it's so important that organizations and and you know people that it come to these sorts of things Can find ways to connect with non-tex and provide that expertise Yeah, thank you. Thank you very much. I'm very sorry. We're out of time. It's here Hopefully she will come back Lindsay, please. Thank you You