May 30

Today a letter to the dutch minister of justice was released. This letter addresses phone tapping statistics collected by the Unit Landelijke Interceptie van het Korps Landelijke Politie Diensten (Unit National Interception from the National Police Department). I will try to translate the letter into English.

In the letter of 13 November 2007 (Tweede Kamer, vergaderjaar 2007-2008, 30517, nr. 5) I promised to send you the tapping statistics, as discussed in the letter, considering the second half of 2007. With this letter I’d like to full fill that.

The Unit National Interception from the National Police Department facilitates the interception for all police departments, the Special Investigations Bureau and the Royal Constabulary and since the middle of 2007 it functions as only body to talk to concerning interception of telecommunication for investigation.

In the second half of 2007 the Attorney General ordered the tapping of 12,491 phone numbers. Of these 84% of the cases considered a mobile phone number and in 16% a tap on a land line. In this period there was a daily average of 1681 active taps.

The statistics for the coming years will be included in the budget cycles and be presented to you through that path.

The Minister of Justice,

This is just an incredibly high rate considering that the Netherlands is a relatively small country with only about 16M people. An average of 1681 active taps means that every 1 in 10,000 is currently being monitored. 12.491 taps in 6 months means about 25K a year. That means on average a tap this year on about 1 in every 650 people. But you should also consider this; not only the people whose number is being taped have their privacy violated, but also the people who call and are called by those persons. If the tapped lines on average only make and receive 5 calls a day this means that the number of people affected daily is almost six times larger!

My sense of privacy on the phone has completely gone by now. I all ready knew that our government liked to tap a lot, but I never could have imagined it to be this bad.

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