Netherlands: Big Brother land?
01 November 2008
“Netherlands: Big Brother Land?” - this was the question posed by the Dutch national newspaper
NRC Handelsblad in May when it was revealed that the Netherlands taps more telephone conversations in one day than the United States does in a year. This revelation was preceded by news that CCTV cameras are to be installed on all national railway trains.
Since July 2007, all telephone interceptions in the Netherlands have been coordinated by the
Korps Landelijke Politiediensten (KLPD - National Police Services Agency), a national police force responsible for centralised missions and subordinate to the Dutch Interior Ministry. This centralisation has allowed the authorities to publish statistics on the exact number of interceptions a year for the first time. A letter by justice minister Hirsch Ballin (
Christen Democratisch Appèl, CDA) to parliament on 27 May 2008 shows that in the last six months of 2007, around 1,681 phone conversations were intercepted in the Netherlands every day, whereas in the USA, 2,208 phone calls were intercepted during the whole of 2007. Between July and December 2007, the Dutch public prosecution service ordered the interception of 12,491 telephone numbers, 84% of which were mobile phones and 16% mainline phones. Interceptions have to be approved by a judge with special powers to make decisions in criminal investigations (
rechter-commissaris). From now on, the minister will provide an annual overview on phone tapping.
A day before the phone tapping statistics were published, the Dutch National Railway (NS) announced that cameras were to be installed on all trains, beginning with 99 new trains at the end of the year. The NS is currently developing an OV-chipcard that will book an individual's travel on any form of public transport on one electronic card, an action that was severely criticised by civil liberties activists and hackers who have managed to access such cards. Only a month before this news, police in Zwolle announced that they would photograph, and keep for three days, the number plates of cars using a nearby motorway. Also in May, parliament passed a motion permitting the retention of people's telephone and internet traffic data for at least one year; around the same time, the state prosecution service confiscated a political cartoonist’s computer on the grounds that he was using it to produce "discriminating" cartoons.
Last but not least, the Advisory Council of Police Chiefs (
raad van hoofdcommissarissen) confirmed in May that the Dutch police regularly carried out online raids on suspect’s computers to search for incriminating material with the use of Trojan horses. This is illegal in Germany although Interior minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, is attempting to change the law reform to legitimise it in the future. The Dutch have not yet tested the method in court, and a precise legal basis allowing the authorities to hack people's computers without their knowledge does not exist. Whilst data protection officers in Germany are opposed to this police investigation method, their Dutch counterpart, the
College Bescherming Persoonsgegevens, has not given an opinion on the matter.
'Politie hackt pc van criminelen', Parool.nl, 17.5.08
NRC Handelsblad online, 28-29.5.08, 31.7.08
'Nein zur Online-Durchsuchung' [No online raids], press release by the German Data Protection Officers conference, 26.10.07, http://www.bfdi.bund.de