Dutch Bill Seeks To Give Law Enforcement Hacking Powers

An anonymous reader writes "The Dutch government today presented a draft bill that aims to give law enforcement the power to hack into computer systems — including those located in foreign countries — to do research, gather and copy evidence or block access to certain data. Law enforcement should be allowed to block access to child pornography, read emails that contain information exchanged between criminals and also be able to place taps on communication, according to a draft bill published Thursday and signed by Ivo Opstelten, the Minister of Security and Justice. Government agents should also be able to engage in activities such as turning on a suspect's phone GPS to track their location, the bill said. Opstelten announced last October he was planning to craft this bill."

Comments

Child porn

[readingaccount]

Ah good - they've been paying attention and made sure to include the good ol' "child pornography" bit in the list of reasons as justification for breaking into someone else's machine. No bill can be taken seriously without that think-of-the-children element added to it.

Re:Child porn

[JaredOfEuropa]

I think child porn ought to be the legislator's Godwin: mention it, and your bill gets shit-canned automatically.

Incidentally, the bill goes beyond hacking into suspects' computers. It also states that suspects (not convicted criminals) can be forced to hand over encryption keys, if they are suspected of serious crimes. So in the interest of making things easier for investigators, we've done away with an important legal principle ("nemo tenetur") which states that suspects cannot be forced to aid their own prosecution. The minister thinks that this principle should be set aside for, you guessed it, suspects of terrorism or kiddie porn.

Re:Child porn

[JaredOfEuropa]

Actually, it does. As a suspect, you are not obliged to hand over evidence or tell the police where to find it if they ask for it, and you can not be punished for withholding this information. However, the police are authorized to obtain this evidence by other means, i.e. busting down your door and looking for it, or asking someone else who is not a suspect and thus not protected by nemo tenetur.

There are several EU countries where this principle is interpreted narrowly (certainly the Netherlands), and the law in some cases does compel suspects to hand over documents and keys while retaining only the right to literally remain silent, but the European Human Rights Court has overturned many convictions obtained thus on appeal. Even in cases where suspects of tax evasion got fined for not handing over incriminating records (and the tax agencies over here are notorious for being allowed to do whatever the hell they please in order to get at your cash).

sure, if dutch officers never plan to travel.

[gl4ss]

they would still be criminals in the other countries. might be troublesome if they plan to travel, while having wire fraud and computer crime charges on their heads...

and well, they're part of the eu so that too, might be unavoidable to remain and not extradite to other eu countries.

Run-of-the-mill state-sponsored criminal hackers

[gweihir]

Really no difference to Chinese state-sponsored hackers. For anybody else, these people are just an (advanced) persistent threat, as they will not go to jail if identified, at least not in their own country. Treat them no different than any other criminal hackers from a different country.

Re:A Green Light to all Hackers

[jimshatt]

Exactly. When governments give themselves freedoms while taking the same freedoms away from their citizens, something is wrong. Unfortunately this seems to be de rigueur, lately.

The defence rests its case...

[Squeak]

If the hack is at such a level that they have system write access (e.g.. to place taps on communications) then the defence case has a much stronger case just by asking whether the the same channel could be use to plant evidence, whether by the law enforcement agency or by a third party.