Secret services AIVD and MIVD want to be able to tap more information in the cyber battle against countries such as China and Russia. But cabinet adviser the Council of State has reservations: will information from innocent citizens not be tapped and stored too easily in the future?
If it is up to the Council of State, there is still a lot of work to be done on a bill that should give the secret services more scope. According to the AIVD and MIVD, they should be given more powers to tap information via fiber optic cables. In the event of cyber attacks by Russia or China, for example, they are now too powerless, is their claim.
But the law will soon also make it possible to collect ‘untargeted’ data from millions of citizens, so-called bulk data. A special committee must first give permission for this, but the rules are more lenient than they are now.
The Council of State sees that ‘the majority’ of the data that the services want to be able to capture ‘is about organizations and individuals that are not under the attention of the services and never will be’. In other words: the data that is obtained comes for the most part from good citizens who have no malicious intentions.
The cabinet adviser ‘understands’ that these data can nevertheless be ‘important’. After all, sometimes looking for danger is a needle in a haystack. But at the same time, the Council of State is critical and believes that the cabinet should ‘motivate’ better what the need is. The explanation it has given so far is ‘not sufficient’.
That is not to say that the bill is out of the question. The cabinet can adjust it, or even ignore the advice of the Council of State.
This law makes it easier to hack and eavesdrop on innocent Dutch people
Criticism
However, the objections are shared by other critics. Because in 2018, the Netherlands voted in a referendum against the collection of bulk data obtained via a ‘dragnet method’. Now the services want to be able to do that. Former AIVD member and supervisor of the services Bert Hubert recently spoke of a ‘narrow law’ during a hearing in the House of Representatives. “This law makes it easier to hack and eavesdrop on innocent Dutch people.”
The Council of State has also criticized how long intercepted data may be kept by the services. Supervisors will soon have to request permission for this every year, but according to the council’s lawyers, the regulation has ‘few concrete limits’. In other words: the criteria about what may be kept longer after a year and what not, are unclear. The Council of State therefore prefers a ‘statutory deadline’, so that there is a clear ‘demarcation’.
According to the director of the MIVD, Jan Swillens, it is ‘a delusion that we are going to eavesdrop on entire neighbourhoods’. “That’s not even possible. We can’t even store all that data.” But the Council of State wants the cabinet to take another look at the law before it is discussed by the House of Representatives.
Watch all our videos about politics here:
Free unlimited access to Showbytes? Which can!
Log in or create an account and don’t miss a thing of the stars.
#Council #State #critical #secret #service #tap #properly #explained