Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Dutch Gov't Has No Idea How To Delete Tapped Calls

Posted by timothy on from the these-days-neither-do-the-swiss dept.

McDutchie writes "The law in the Netherlands says that intercepted phone calls between attorneys and their clients must be destroyed. But the Dutch government has been keeping under wraps for years that no one has the foggiest clue how to delete them (Google translation). Now, an email (PDF) from the National Police Services Agency (KLPD) has surfaced, revealing that the working of the technology in question is a NetApp trade secret. The Dutch police are now trying to get their Israeli supplier Verint to tell them how to delete tapped calls and comply with the law. Meanwhile, attorneys in the Netherlands remain afraid to use their phones."

13 of 186 comments (clear)

  1. not afraid by Djinh · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Lawyers aren't afraid at all to use the phone: If a tapped conversation between them and their client turns up later in court, their client usually walks.

    1. Re:not afraid by ledow · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I think you're only looking at the simple case. What about: I find out the intimate details of what you and your client were talking about on the phone and then use those details to dig deeper and find evidence I never would have without that phone call? Then I turn up in court, destroy your case, have nothing but hard evidence and you have no way of knowing that I used your taped conversation to do so (and probably couldn't prove it even if you thought that).

      It'd be immoral and illegal but it *would* destroy your case outright and the chances of me getting caught are probably quite low if I'm someone with intelligence and knowledge of legal workings like, say, another lawyer?

    2. Re:not afraid by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      That may be true, but if the police / the prosecution is smart, they don't use the tapped calls themselves as evidence, but simply use them during their own investigation, and to better prepare their rebuttal to the defense attorney's arguments.

      Regardless of lawyers' feelings, this is a major violation of a basic right to have a private conversation with your defense attorney. The fact that these calls are tapped at all is outrageous. If those calls were occasionally accidentally stored that would be even more outrageous. But if they are not only recorded but even impossible to delete, ... well I can't think of a word.

  2. Just put an average user at the console ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    ... and tell them that there's no way they could ever delete anything. Trust me, they'll find a way.

  3. No joke, it's hard by Odo · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Deleting data is really really hard. If one is storing large amounts of data it is difficult to put a system in place which can prove that every copy in your posession has been deleted. Think about the work of sifting through thousands of write-once offline backups, be it tapes or CDs or whatever, locating the data, copying the original minus the data and destroying the originals. If that's not hard enough, what about data that's not in discrete files. Say there's a PostgreSQL database that's zipped and spans a thousand peices of physical media. The only way to delete a record is to load the whole database then redump it. And don't forget about regenerating all the index files. And dealing with obsolete file formats.

    This sounds like a stupid problem, but in reality it is really tough to delete something and be certain that you've got it all.

    1. Re:No joke, it's hard by petrossa · · Score: 4, Informative

      And, the Netherlands have about the most all encompassing citizens database on the globe. So all data is cross referenced all over the place amongst databases of all civil governmental and semi-governmental agencies . It's so vast that indeed it's not only hard, but virtually impossible to remove data completely. As an example: The colour, structure and density of pubescent children is stored. All this data is directly accessible via the misnomed 'Citizen Service Number'. We dutch tend to call it the 'Citizens Spying Number'.

  4. Wish i was surprised... by Veneratio · · Score: 5, Insightful

    But im not, really. Having worked for the Dutch police twice now, I can safely say that the majority of their IT staff are completely clueless. A few years ago they "outsourced" their IT to a seperate entity to handle all their IT, but this entity was staffed mostly with the people they already had, so there wasn't any actual increase of knowledge (as far as I could tell). They got a nice fat bag of money and an unclear manifest, all paid for by us - the Dutch taxpayer - and this is what we get.

    The Netherlands: No privacy, no competence and instead of capable beatcops we get highway robbery in the form of a cop with a lasergun having his daylong break sitting behind a bush next to our highways. And they wonder why the populace is starting to hate law enforcement.

    Do yourself a favor and do a search on Google for "C2000", another one of the Dutch police success stories.

    I could weep. Or well....puke really.

    --
    "Sarcasm is for *winners*, Alan." - Charlie Harper (Two and a Half Men)
  5. Re:Every knows by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    Whatever his mental state, according to the official numbers (which don't include the secret service) in the Netherlands the number of wire taps is over 10 times that of the number in the US and we've only got 15 million people...

  6. Lawyer client privilege by Kupfernigk · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I don't know if the law is different in the Netherlands, but in the UK if the client tells the lawyer that he did do it, he has to either find a new lawyer or agree to plead guilty and present mitigating circumstances. A lawyer is not allowed to tell actual lies in court.I doubt it is different elsewhere in the EU.

    --
    From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
  7. Re:You can't make this stuff up by rvw · · Score: 4, Funny

    I thought a Dutch Delete only applied to torrents?

    No no! The Dutch Police used to share all phone taps via torrents, and now they don't know how to delete those. That's the real reason why The Pirate Bay should be shut down.

  8. Delete, Remove, & Drop by blavallee · · Score: 5, Insightful

    For those who are offering commands to get rid of the data, you need to understand the why they will not work.

    This issue is that the storage system used is designed is such a way that you CAN NOT modify any data once it is written to the disk.

    Once the data is written, it can not be modified or deleted. Now, the reasoning behind this is so the police can not digitally manipulate the timestamps or data in any way. This is to protect the integrity of the data so it can withstand legal challenges.

    They are faced with a 'catch 22' situation. If they can figure out a way to delete a 'prohibited conversation' they could theoretically modify the data too. Opening up the possibility of having a criminal conversation being invalidated.

  9. Conspiracy theory by chrb · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It's a well-known conspiracy theory: that Mossad has created Telco front companies throughout the world to spy on other nations. See The Israeli Spy Ring, which talks about the Fox News articles, and another typical story. Of course, a conspiracy theory doesn't make it true...

  10. Re:Nuke it from orbit its the only way to be sure by Linker3000 · · Score: 4, Funny

    Store the data on your Sidekick device?

    --
    AT&ROFLMAO