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Dutch Court Says Government Can Receive Bulk Data from NSA
jfruh (300774) writes Dutch law makes it illegal for the Dutch intelligence services to conduct mass data interception programs. But, according to a court in the Hague, it's perfectly all right for the Dutch government to request that data from the U.S.'s National Security Agency, and doing so doesn't violate any treaties or international law.
Sounds about right.
Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason. -- Mark Twain
I love how pretty much every country has come to the same conclusion: We can bypass our own laws if we have someone else do it for us.
They've all decided, well, we can't spy on our own people, but if the Americans do it for us it's all good.
Essentially reciprocity means that any laws which are intended to protect you will be bypassed as people get other actors to do it for them.
So, it's illegal for the Dutch to spy on their own people, probably illegal when the US spies on the Dutch, but since they've already for the information, why not?
Pathetic. Free societies aren't maintained by using loopholes to get around laws intended to control how your citizens get spied on.
What horsehit.
When governments are getting the take from the blanket surveillance the Americans (and really, the rest of the world), they have very little incentive to actually stop the surveillance in the first place.
Some days it seems like the US has more or less subverted the privacy and rights of everyone on the planet, and every other government is deciding the information sharing is too valuable to recognize they're just lying to us and doing it anyway.
At this point, I don't believe any elected official, or member of any of these state security entities deserves any privacy rights at all. Because they've all decided we don't.
The dystopian future is alive and well, and getting worse every day.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Stick a fork in it. It's done.
And this is why no government really battles the NSA spoofing their citizens!
Now the citizens can demand that the law be changed. It'll be very difficult for the political class to say no: the law as interpreted by that court is effectively an end-run around constitutional protections.
This has been the standard loophole since World War 2. The same deal is in place with reciprocation between all nations that were concerned about soviet expansion. Most nations were forbidden from spying on their own citizens, so they asked neighboring nations to alert them about any of their citizens who became involved with suspicious foreign parties. The methods of observation varied some, but be aware that even without NSA violating their chartered limits, every US citizen and most "undocumented residents" are somewhere in the English and French bulk spying data.
I love how pretty much every country has come to the same conclusion: We can bypass our own laws if we have someone else do it for us.
Well, if the US government charges a hefty fee for this - say a percentage of a country's GDP - we could be an exporter of Big Brother services.
Just think, based on the economic principle of Comparative Advantage, we, the US of A, can spy on the rest of the World (think how much money the Chinese would pay us to watch their citizens!) while they pay us percentages of their GDPs.
Think about it, we could sit on our asses in leisure while they all bust their asses growing our food, making our clothes, etc ... and if they step out of line, well, we KNOW where they live!
If we pay you to spy on our citizens, because we're not allowed to do it ourselves, then will you pay us to spy on your citizens because you cannot do that yourself?
It's good for the global economy because money changes hands. (Nevermind that no actual goods or benefits to society are procduced.)
Everyone is happy. (Nevermind citizens in the global police state.)
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
Look, just install the telescreens in our homes already. Drop the charade, we all know where it's going. You know we're not going to do anything about it. Let's just cut to the chase and get it over with.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
And just what is our Dutch government giving back to the NSA? I'm pretty sure it's not fresh Dutch cabbages. The Dragnet is apparently global. How long until someone gets arrested just for blogging negatively about a politician? A banker? A NSA employee? This is an old, old cycle and marks the start of the end of an empire. Rome, Arabia and many others show this trend. Humans can and will conspire against each other in an ever growing bid for power until the masses once again have to overthrow the few. Only thing is, we can't win with pitchforks anymore, we need tanks and choppers. And they're decidedly harder to come by.
A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it well worth the effort.
About time we start calling it the ISA.
Though we'll face some risks from our own governments, it's a relief to know at the Dutch government would have no problem with me selling kiddie porn (as long as it was made in America) to Dutch citizens. "No crime happened here, within our jurisdiction," they'd say.
In fact, the Dutch government should tolerate our new businesses even more than this NSA thing, since the victims (whereever their rights were violated) won't even be Dutch citizens. No Netherlander will have any reason to say their government let them down.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
http://www.historylearningsite...
The dutch not only resisted the Nazis, they openly had strikes and did more to protect their Jewish citizens than virtually any other country in Europe.
The Dutch constitution is full of "You have the right to $whatever EXCEPT WHERE YOU DO NOT".
Yes, really, it's full of "... exceptions by law excepted" in various wordings, making the constitution effectively subordinate to those excepting laws.
Not that this makes much difference in practice to how the US constitution gets treated, though it perhaps requires less supreme court opinions full of tortured logic. But reading it is certainly a bit disheartening.
Shortly after it was established, the Nazi military regime began to persecute the Jews of the Netherlands. In 1940, there were no deportations and only small measures were taken against the Jews. In February 1941, the Nazis deported a small group of Dutch Jews to Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp. The Dutch reacted with the February strike, a nationwide protest against the deportations, unique in the history of Nazi-occupied Europe. Although the strike did not accomplish muchâ"its leaders were executedâ"it was an initial setback for Seyss-Inquart as he had planned to both deport the Jews and to win the Dutch over to the Nazi cause. Before the February strike, the Nazis had installed a Jewish Council: a board of Jews, headed by Professor David Cohen and Abraham Asscher, who served as an instrument for organising the identification and deportation of Jews more efficiently, while the Jews on the council were told and convinced they were helping the Jews. In May 1942, Jews were ordered to wear the Star of David badges. Around the same time the Catholic Church of the Netherlands publicly condemned the government's action in a letter read at all Sunday parish services. Thereafter, the Nazi government treated the Dutch more harshly: notable Socialists were imprisoned, and, later in the war, Catholic priests, including Titus Brandsma, were deported to concentration camps. Of the 140,000 Jews who had lived in the Netherlands before 1940, only 30,000 (21%) survived the war. But the real picture was even worse than this suggests. The Netherlands had the highest Jewish death toll of any western European country. Of the approximately 107,000 Jews deported to the camps, only 5000 survived; a survival rate of less than 5%. On top of that, included in that number were about 900 Jews still in Westerbork at war's end and not in the same extremis as those deported. This high death toll had a number of reasons. One was the excellent state of Dutch civil records: the Dutch state, before the war, had recorded substantial information on every Dutch national. This allowed the Nazi regime to determine easily who was Jewish (whether fully or partly of Jewish ancestry) simply by accessing the data. More to the point, the Dutch attitude of "going along to get along" with the Nazis made many Dutch workers more or less willing collaborators in the effort.
Another factor was the disbelief of both the Dutch public as a whole and the Dutch Jews themselves. Most could not believe that the Jews would be subjected to genocide and sent to death camps. This meant the Jews needed to hide in others' homes, but that was difficult especially in urban areas. It was also punishable by death. Despite the risks, many Dutch people helped Jews. One-third of the people who hid Jews did not survive the war.
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
Can't they just get the same thing from China or Russia?
So, it's legal for Americans to spy on the Dutch? Who knew!
Next it'll be found perfectly OK for the Dutch government to take kickbacks from American criminals that rob Dutch citizens.
Hurrah for the newly authorized power of crime laundering!
NSA to spy. Of course, I doubt that Germany KNEW that we were listening in on their gov officials, to which they absolutely should be mad. But, I suspect that NSA is still allowed to spy all over Europe. I would not be surprised though, if we have a few new treaties.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Which is really not all that bad.
I would rather NSA, who has no powers, spy on me, than FBI, or even worse, the local police.
Taking it further, I have less issues with say GCHQ spying on me. Why? Because not only do they not have any powers, but, they have no INTEREST in me, unless I am up to something that will be seriously detrimental to UK, or other western nations.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
But it's perfectly ok to buy it from someone else to resell it.
Ok, got it.
Which is exactly the point of five eyes as well as other such treaties. Any given agency may be limited on domestic spying, but they can share data freely with the others who are not.
A lot of people miss this element - "spying" is very different from "legally admissible evidence in court by a police agency". I care a lot less about intelligence agencies, than police agencies.
And yes, that why the supposed collaboration with DEA is so bad, that is far worse than almost anything else that's come out in my mind.
" I doubt that Germany KNEW that we were listening in on their gov officials"
The US has anti spying agreements with the UK, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. The German government knows that and the US does not have one with Germany.
Are they really that dumb?
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
I don't mind my (local) government having some sort of file on me, (preferably no racial or ethnic information as you so rightly state) but I would rather have it on paper and in a wooden building, so if we're ever occupied or a dictatorship arises the files are relatively easy to destroy : ).
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
Is Mark Rutte, i.e. the potential 'requestor'.
Looking up his address now.
Will post here.
This may be more a metaphor than an analogy.
The Dutch and American governments are doing something analogous to money laundering.
Only it's data, not money, that goes from bad to good, by taking a different path.
And it's governments, not individuals or companies, that are doing it.
And government decides it's not a violation, when government does it.
The metaphor is "data laundering". Or "illegal surveillance data laundering".
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.