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Incident 260: US DHS’s Opaque Vetting Software Allegedly Relied on Poor-Quality Data and Discriminated against Immigrants

Description: US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS)’s ATLAS software used in vetting immigration requests was condemned by advocacy groups as a threat to naturalized citizens for its secretive algorithmic decision-making, reliance on poor quality data and unknown sources, and alleged discrimination of immigrants using biometric and sensitive information.

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Alleged: US Citizenship and Immigration Services developed an AI system deployed by US Department of Homeland Security and US Citizenship and Immigration Services, which harmed US naturalized citizens , US immigrants , US citizenship applicants and US immigration applicants.

Incident Stats

Incident ID
260
Report Count
2
Incident Date
2014-08-26
Editors
Khoa Lam
Applied Taxonomies
GMF, MIT

MIT Taxonomy Classifications

Machine-Classified
Taxonomy Details

Risk Subdomain

A further 23 subdomains create an accessible and understandable classification of hazards and harms associated with AI
 

1.1. Unfair discrimination and misrepresentation

Risk Domain

The Domain Taxonomy of AI Risks classifies risks into seven AI risk domains: (1) Discrimination & toxicity, (2) Privacy & security, (3) Misinformation, (4) Malicious actors & misuse, (5) Human-computer interaction, (6) Socioeconomic & environmental harms, and (7) AI system safety, failures & limitations.
 
  1. Discrimination and Toxicity

Entity

Which, if any, entity is presented as the main cause of the risk
 

Human

Timing

The stage in the AI lifecycle at which the risk is presented as occurring
 

Post-deployment

Intent

Whether the risk is presented as occurring as an expected or unexpected outcome from pursuing a goal
 

Intentional

Incident Reports

Reports Timeline

Incident Occurrence+1
Little-Known Federal Software Can Trigger Revocation of Citizenship
Little-Known Federal Software Can Trigger Revocation of Citizenship

Little-Known Federal Software Can Trigger Revocation of Citizenship

theintercept.com

U.S. Government Is Using an Algorithm to Flag American Citizens for Denaturalization: Report

U.S. Government Is Using an Algorithm to Flag American Citizens for Denaturalization: Report

gizmodo.com

Little-Known Federal Software Can Trigger Revocation of Citizenship
theintercept.com · 2021

Software used by the Department of Homeland Security to scan the records of millions of immigrants can automatically flag naturalized Americans to potentially have their citizenship revoked based on secret criteria, according to documents r…

U.S. Government Is Using an Algorithm to Flag American Citizens for Denaturalization: Report
gizmodo.com · 2021

U.S. citizens can be kicked out of the country based on the findings of a secret algorithm. The Department of Homeland Security is using an Amazon-hosted system called ATLAS that analyzes millions of records and can be used to automatically…

Variants

A "variant" is an incident that shares the same causative factors, produces similar harms, and involves the same intelligent systems as a known AI incident. Rather than index variants as entirely separate incidents, we list variations of incidents under the first similar incident submitted to the database. Unlike other submission types to the incident database, variants are not required to have reporting in evidence external to the Incident Database. Learn more from the research paper.
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