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Dutch Government: Number of Internet Taps Has Quintupled In One Year
vikingpower writes "A Dutch newspaper has a digital version of the letter Mr. Opstelten, Secretary of Justice and Security, sent to Dutch Parliament (PDF in Dutch), in which he quietly admits to 56,825 phone taps (a 3% rise in one year) and to 16,676 internet taps in 2012, a 400% rise, or a fivefold increase, in one year. An older report already exposed the Netherlands as one of the biggest wiretappers in the western world. Slate also knew, back in 2006, that Europeans actually love wiretapping and internet tapping. In the Netherlands, a country with a population of only 16 million, the practice has risen to the level of a staggering 1 in 1,000 phones being tapped."
What does a stoner government do with anything for that matter !!
Blame Geert Wilders!
Oh dear. In Europe, we are so advanced that we do not need people like Snowden to be heroes (the process of deciding to work for NSA directly or through contracting, thinking that you never go against people's privacy and one day you discover that is not the case and you go and leak info, wow!) and leak the info. Ministers do it instead! :-)
quick, queue standard messages of how the US is worse anyway.
I wonder if they took the 22,000 wire tap orders and an estimated 22 million phones and came up with that figure. That may not be accurate. Wire tap orders expire. There could be 12 wire tap orders to keep a 12 month watch on one phone. Multiple agencies may want information from the same phone; therefore multiple wire tap orders.
What does a stoner government do with anything for that matter !!
"Duuuuude... Citizen 432B61 just ordered some pizzas! We gotta legislate ourselves some of that action! But first, pass the ClogginBong this way..."
OK, so I admit I know precisely dick about Dutch government, but I can't resist an opportunity to make fun of stoners.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Ignoring the human dignity issues, my question is what did they get in exchange for going NSA on their own asses?
Did it reduce the rate of crimes related to the wiretap investigations? I don't mean just raw numbers, I mean trendwise before and after the massive increase wiretapping what (if anything) changed?
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Way I see it, we have two options, neither of which will work. We can fix this shit ourselves and wrest control of our communications back from the corporations. Except there are several projects (like Tor) which attempt to do this and those are ignored by most of the people who say that being monitored by everyone bugs them. We could also petition the corporations and governments who are behaving badly and demand that they behave better. Then we could hold our breaths and see what happens.
Which leads us to the third option, which is suck it up and live with it. Seems like most people are picking that one.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Their machines have to connect to listen. Why aren't we spying on them?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
really question all this stuff. Not the numbers, but the purpose. Are the guys initiating and using this do it instead of doodling on paper?
Seems that just because the technology is available it is used and expanded without questioning the purpose and effect.
On top of it most happens under a veil of secrecy and when disclosed/caught it's defended and even more covered up or the whistle blowers are criminalized.
I can maybe understand that some software package like Prism is developed and the wow effect of all what can be seen with it may be there. Is it useful and adequate or does it lead to more suspects by association and then events like that:
http://www.salon.com/2013/07/10/militarized_police_overreach_oh_god_i_thought_they_were_going_to_shoot_me_next%E2%80%9D/
My spymaster is too ambitious, but I can't say no to the +2 bonus it gives all his stats!
Someone is trying to dilute the scale of what the US is doing by dragging up comparatively tiny stuff. I'm sure it works just fine.
Someone is establishing the new "normal" status quo. Seems they'll be successful at that as well.
Someone doesn't realize they will be at the receiving end of their own systems because they themselves as implementers and operators are the most important targets of "enslavement" for their own system.
And since they're doing such a good job no one will be able to save them.
They have learnt absolutely nothing but all the wrong lessons from the last century, they have understood nothing of importance, they are doomed.
System success === system failure.
remember the name -- one of the biggest nitwits in Dutch politics.
All pomp and no substance. BUT.... as a politician wont to cause
a lot of harm to individuals and society. He's Dutch liberal party,
which --read on-- is the Dutch conservative party. Conserve as
in record, keep track, survey, store, use when opportune.
A regualr fucker. Opstelten 's his name.
We evolved our phone service into a public broadcasting system.
"I'm not much interested in interoperability. I want substitutability. I want to be able to throw your software out."
as the article failed to point out its the use of smartphones that is the cause.
a smartphone requires 2 taps. one for voice the other one for data.
The statistics are only referring to the normal police, not the intelligence services. In the USA, the intelligence services tap 100% of the people. In the USA, the police don't even need a warrant to do a "wiretap" so there is no oversight. In the USA, county police departments routinely monitor the positions of people on probation via warrantless cellphone tracking.
Amsterdam is to global intelligence agencies what Las Vegas is to gamblers - they all go there at least once and many of them maintain a constant presence there. Amsterdam is the global exchange for the drug, money laundering, prostitution and human trafficking market. Intelligence services around the world fund their covert activities via the illegal business deals they carry out in Amsterdam.
Amsterdam has always been a trading city. The Dutch police keep a pretty close watch on things but they are largely unintrusive. If a tourist is being harassed, though, a burly plainclothes policeman will appear almost out of thin air to handle the situation.
Remember heavy breathing when using a phone or a computer.
That's all.
And the European propaganda machine is also doing very well, telling citizens "don't worry about our wiretapping, at least we aren't America!"
Probably the succession of the crown by installing a new monarch and subsequent rise in activity of republicans contributed to this increase. Anything labeled anti-monarchy is of interest of the Dutch General Intelligence and Security Service.
It's the mold that is also everywhere.
Yes! I have lived and worked with the Dutch for years. At the bakery every other bread is loaded with Weed. It makes our space cakes taste like stale bread.