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Utility Box Exposed As Spy Cabinet In the Netherlands
First time accepted submitter thejezus writes "A spy cabinet has been exposed on a public road in The Hague, the Netherlands (Google translate here). The cabinet was disguised as telecom-cabinet and was detected by the maintenance crew of Ziggo (a triple-play provider) because it was not listed as a property of the company. Upon opening, it was revealed the cabinet contained a camera and UMTS equipment. Later that day, the cabinet disappeared. 1984 much?"
Does a spy camera on the side of the road really justify comparisons to 1984? Are we really anywhere close to the type of life portrayed in 1984?
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Who would be spying on the Netherlands? Someone after the secret to wooden shoes, perhaps?
This "Schilderswijk" where the cabinet was discovered is a notorious low-income suburb. It's more likely to be native intelligence spying on locals in fear of extremists.
Some pictures of the cabinet are found here: http://tweakers.net/nieuws/88635/providerwijkkast-haagse-schilderswijk-zat-vol-spionageapparatuur.html
One of the most important tasks when discovering an electronic intruder or monitor is to trace if they try to clean up and remove their tracks. This is as true for electronic "spy boxes" as it is for unauthorized network taps, rootkitted servers, and hacked websites. It's too bad the discoverers didn't have the resources to set up a webcam to monitor the spy box, itself, to get data on the vehicle or faces of those removing the spy box.
The Hague is the seat of the Dutch intelligence services...
More importantly, The Hague is the location of the International Court of Justice, the judicial arm of the United Nations, as well as a number of other international courts. Definitely a city of international importance.
This "Schilderswijk" where the cabinet was discovered is a notorious low-income suburb.
It's settled, then. Someone pinched the stuff and sold it to make a bit of money on the side. Has the spy agency tried scouring the local pawn shops?
Ezekiel 23:20
A square. Dutch editions of the news speculate that it was there to monitor the coming and goings of militants. Might be related to recruiting of Jihadists for Syria too, at least that has been a big news item in these parts recently.
This looks much more like a police operation. A couple of years ago a small nondescript trailer was parked in Amsterdam to observe a meeting between two criminals. One of those started a shooting spree and the police officers inside the trailer were lucky not to be hit. They couldn't get out of the trailer from the inside quick enough to chase them. There probably is a notorious criminal living within sight there. The Ziggo employees were irresponsible in publicizing this. Ziggo is a cable company.
But pretty much irrelevant to this story. The neighbourhood in which they found the cabinet is far removed from where the international institutions are and from where the internationals live. As mentioned by previous posts, the Schilderswijk is a low income area with a large immigrant population. The purpose of the cabinet is most likely to help a police investigation into anything between organised crime or jihad recruitment, and on Dutch websites some have already pointed out that exposing this method effectively renders it useless in the future, but police have been doing it for at least ten years. This kind of surveillance was most likely done with the permission of a public prosecutor, unless it was the intelligence services in which case another law applies.
His usage was perfectly cromulent.
The box was placed by the police department. See this follow up article (Google Translate), in which the police department (it doesn't specify which one, but probably that of The Hague) states that the box is theirs and it was being used in a large financial crime investigation. Nothing to do with investigating the recruitment of youths to come fight in Syria, as had been speculated. They say they had permission from the public prosecutor to use it.