Thread by @tzemingdynasty

Here is the INZ profiling spreadsheet and the INZ briefing released to the media yesterday, thanks @NZMorningReport: 1/
drive.google.com/file/d/1MIzvdf…
drive.google.com/file/d/1sxBRJ-…

What they have released is an arbitrary points system. But guess what, it's still clearly discriminatory on the grounds of age and gender! 2/

We don't know whether officials just removed columns that profiled based on other prohibited grounds, such as nationality, before releasing this. 3/

INZ manager interviewed stated to RNZ that nationality was used. I suspect prohibited grounds are included in 'other concerns', or the deleted personal characteristics. Specific countries are described as 'high risk' within the briefing, in context of rationale for targeting. 4/

As for their briefing statement that INZ 'never' racially profiles - from my experience as a former frontline officer of INZ (Refugee Status Branch 2001-2002), that is a laughable claim. 5/

(but of course, they have to say that) 6/

Note: in nerd talk it is still a statistical 'model', as it is an additive model. As @aschiff noted to me, "So it’s a linear model with a coefficient of 1 on every variable? That is still a model, and a possibly terrible one. 7/

The points are tallied up, minus the visa category, and there are arbitrary cut-offs to assign the individual to low, medium, and high priority. 8/

The difference between being a man or a woman, all else being equal, will result in an individual case being 'high priority' for deportation or not. 9/

Being one year older or younger at whatever the age category thresholds are, all else being equal, will result in an individual case being 'high priority' for deportation or not. 10/

This is illegal discrimination. 11/

As there is no key to the variable values, I have no idea whether they are discriminating against men (assumed to be more violent?) or women (have babies that drain the health system?). 12/

Similarly, I don't know if they are discriminating against younger or older people, or both (assumed to be more in need of health services?), in favour of working-age people (assumed to be more likely to commit crime?), or vice versa. 13/

If only they had provided a key to explain their illegal discrimination! 14/

Given the language used by INZ in the initial story about this on RNZ, which discussed 'modelling' and 'prediction' at length, it's still unclear whether there was statistical risk modelling work done in the background that they therefore based some of the scales on. 15/

I mean, they spent 18 months working on just this? 16/

Some characteristics are just binary out of convenience (e.g. gender), or simply categorical in terms of age, but the 'model' remains additive, so it's doubtful that there has been any systematic analysis put into how much extra 'risk' these characteristics represent. 17/

If they are denying using a more complex statistical modelling to predict risk based on these characteristics, then the points assigned for age and gender are completely arbitrary and based on discriminatory stereotypes and not on the actions of the individual. 18/

If they did use more complex statistical modelling to predict risk based on these characteristics, the points assigned are less arbitrary, but still discriminatory in exactly the same way. 19/

So it's funny that @IainLG has gone to such lengths to protest that it's not 'an algorithm' and not 'a model', and 'just a spreadsheet', because it's exactly as bad, wrong and discriminatory, but maybe just more dumb. 20/