Case studies

Australia's Robodebt scheme calculated welfare debts automatically and issued them without review, reasons, an audit trail, or a clear way to challenge and reverse them.

For a decade, websites have met a legal duty to disclose tracking with a consent banner, and people have learned to dismiss it without reading. Any new duty to tell people something, such as where their data goes or when AI is involved, has to be designed so it isn't ignored the same way.

One person authorizes an agent to file her annual tax return, and the story follows what happens next, from a question about eligibility to a disputed assessment. Each step shows which pattern applies and how the patterns depend on each other.

A public consultation on a mandatory buyback in a flood-hazard zone receives one resident's elevation survey disputing the boundary, alongside thousands of copies of a single campaign template. It shows how what each step records decides whether the analysis can tell those comments apart later.