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By CHRISTINE LAI
Centrelink is cracking down on welfare recipients by using telecommunications metadata and password-bypassing software to investigate whether people are lying about their relationship status.
Services Australia made almost 166,000 “compliance interventions” across the 2021-2022 year in a bid to prevent recipients from receiving a higher rate of payment, and saved $20.5 million in payments.
According to documents obtained by iTNews, the Centrelink administrator told the Attorney General’s Department that metadata was being used to detect “people who receive payments as a single person while in a marriage-like relationship”.
In their latest annual report, Services Australia conducted 709 criminal investigations, 988 administrative investigations and put 203 referrals to the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecution (CDPP). The executive agency of the Australian Government stated that their objective was to enhance existing fraud detection measures and implement innovative new measures to combat fraud and corruption.
The telecommunications metadata and password-bypassing technology used by Centrelink is from Israeli digital intelligence company, Cellebrite. Since the company’s announcement that it would go public in 2021, Cellebrite has been accused of furthering human rights violations by selling its products to repressive governments and being implicated in global human rights abuses.
Centrelink investigates suspected fraud
Services Australia can access metadata in cases of suspected fraud, by making requests via the Australian Federal Police when they suspect people like jobseekers or students are claiming single payments while in relationships.
These investigations raise the question of individual privacy with the additional powers that police have if Centrelink suspects people are guilty of committing fraud. Centrelink has come under controversy on several occasions in the past decade, including The 2015 Medicare Benefits Schedule Review, The 2014 Medicare freeze and the four-year Robodebt scheme.
The Robodebt scheme was a controversial automated debt recovery program implemented by the Australian government in 2016 to recover overpaid welfare payments, particularly from people who had received unemployment benefits.
The algorithm used wrongly calculated debts, was criticised for its unfairness, lack of due process and declared unlawful by a Federal Court judge in 2019, which produced a $1.8 billion settlement from the government.
Law enforcement authorities may also confiscate an individual’s mobile device and employ password-cracking software to access their messages in order to verify whether a person claiming to be single is romantically involved with their housemate.
On Services Australia’s website, the listed criteria in assessing whether individuals are in a couple include considerations like: the financial aspects of a relationship, the nature of a household, social aspects of the relationship, if individuals have a sexual relationship and the level of commitment between people.
Services Australia spoke to iTnews, explaining that “key metadata” requested “enables us to identify records linked to telephone numbers or IP addresses to support criminal investigations.”
Executive director of advocacy organisation Digital Rights Watch James Clark told the Sydney Morning Herald that these new measures implemented by Services Australia represented a serious breach of privacy and a prime case in the social security payment services program exceeding their authority.
“People receiving welfare have as much right to privacy and dignity as everybody else. Mass surveillance has no place in a democratic society, and it’s deeply concerning to see this surveillance being used to dehumanise welfare recipients,” he said.
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