The data protection authority GBA is scathing about the plans of De Wever’s federal government. The latter wants to apply data mining to the bank accounts of Belgian citizens.
Prime Minister Bart De Wever wants to step up the fight against tax fraud, financial newspaper De Tijd writes. He wants to rely more strongly on the “Central Contact Point”, the database that already lets tax services look into the bank accounts and insurance contracts of Belgians. The government now also wants to use artificial intelligence to expand the database with data on crypto and foreign accounts. A group of data miners, appointed by the finance minister, can use anonymous data analysis within the new programme law.
The Data Protection Authority (GBA), the government watchdog that oversees privacy protection, is scathing about the plans. ‘The intention to take CAP data in its entirety into the FPS Finance’s data warehouse for the purpose of data mining and matching is a particularly far-reaching interference with the rights and freedoms of data subjects. The proposers of the draft fail to adequately substantiate the necessity and proportionality of this measure,” it reads.