What would you do if you were suddenly cut off from all your bank accounts? You can’t pay for anything, and you can’t really get answers as to why it happened. And how would you feel if you found out that the decision to cut you off from your money was in part made by an algorithm?

Banks have to use automated systems to monitor their transactions and customers to fight against money laundering and financing of terrorism. But sometimes, those systems go wrong, leading to people’s bank accounts being blocked or closed. That is happening to a lot of customers across Europe : small business owners, NGOs, religious organisations, migrants, political refugees... Even politicians. There could be thousands of victims, according to data released in some countries.

This phenomenon is called de-banking. It can happen through a semi-automated decision-making process involving algorithms and Artificial Intelligence. When mistakes are made by these systems, they are called “false positives”.

False positives – a podcast series produced by AlgorithmWatch and the international news agency Agence France-Presse – will take you on a journey across Europe. From Spain, to France and the UK, from Turkey to Germany and Poland, we talked to those who battled to have mistakes overturned, and industry insiders who’ll lift the lid on how and why this is happening.

Host : Alex Cadier

Editing by Camille Kauffmann

Music is by Nicolas Vair

Reporting and research by Pablo Jimenez Arandia, Naiara Bellio, Nicolas Kayser-Bril Yasir Gökce, Mayra Russo, Mathilde Saliou for Algorithm Watch; Benoît Pelegrin, Burcin Gercek and Michaëla Cancela-Kieffer for AFP.

Editors in chiefs: Naiara Bellio, for AlgorithmWatch and Michaëla Cancela-Kieffer for Agence France-Presse.

This podcast was based on a six month investigation conducted in the framework of the AlgorithmWatch Algorithmic Accountability Reporting fellowship. AlgorithmWatch is a non-profit organization based in Berlin and Zurich that fights to ensure that use of algorithms and Artificial Intelligence benefits the many, not just the few.

Agence France-Presse, is a leading global news agency present in 150 countries. It contributed with additional research and fact-checking in the UK, France and Turkey, as well as the production of the podcast.

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