Bolsa Familia Social Welfare Program in Brazil
| Bolsa Familia Social Welfare Program in Brazil | |
|---|---|
| Short Title | Brazilian Government Excessively Collects Peoples Data Through Bolsa Familia Social Welfare Program |
| Location | Brazil |
| Date | October 2020 |
| Solove Harm | Aggregation |
| Information | Identifying, Behavioral, Family, Professional, Demographic, Ownership |
| Threat Actors | Brazilian government |
| Individuals | |
| Affected | Brazilians |
| High Risk Groups | |
| Tangible Harms | |
Brazilian government was found to do excessive collection and analysis of personal information of families who are applying or part of the Bolsa Familia welfare program.
Description
Bolsa Familia is a conditional cash transfer program. The program’s purpose is immediate relief of extreme poverty and the provision of conditions to overcome socioeconomic vulnerability, as well as to break the intergenerational transmission of poverty.
This program includes constant collection, validation, and sharing of information among government bodies.
The main database with personal information is used for selecting beneficiaries and managing the program contains information such as housing conditions, personal identification, level of literacy and education, work situation and income and whether the family belongs to traditional and specific groups, as well as data related to the monitoring of conditionalities. The conditionalities are requirements assumed by the beneficiaries in order to be granted the benefits, and they consist of school attendance as well as immunization, prenatal care, and nutritional monitoring of children.
the automated selection of the beneficiaries is processed through this database and is done by the examination of eligibility criteria, the implementation of targeting mechanisms, the granting and payment of benefits, and the monitoring of conditionalities.
Such extensive processing of different pieces of personal data is an example of Aggregation.
Breakdown
Threat: Brazilian government collecting and analysing different pieces of personal information about people to determine their eligibility for solace welfare
At-Risk group: Brazilians
Harm: Aggregation
Secondary Consequences: not known
Laws and Regulations
Sources
https://privacyinternational.org/long-read/3758/brazils-bolsa-familia-program-impact-privacy-rights