
All calls in the Netherlands are stored, indexed and searched for keywords - Father
http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=nl&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.telegraaf.nl%2Fbinnenland%2F21642600%2F__Gesprekken_al_jaren_afgetapt__.html
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rorykoehein
Here's a year-old story by a more reliable Dutch newspaper, claiming 1 in 1000
phones is being tapped in the Netherlands.

[http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=nl&tl=en&u=ht...](http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=nl&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.volkskrant.nl%2Fvk%2Fnl%2F2686%2FBinnenland%2Farticle%2Fdetail%2F3259801%2F2012%2F05%2F23%2FNederland-
koploper-in-afluisteren-telefoons.dhtml)

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lucb1e
I call bullshit. Phone metadata is saved since forever yes, but stored at
ISPs, not at government organisations. There are strict regulations regarding
the privacy of voice data over the phone (VoIP does not count as such though),
and I don't think the secret service and military secret service (AIVD and
MIVD) can do anything they like. They have more permissions, such as demanding
passwords for encrypted files as long as it's not for your own conviction
(while normally you have the right to remain silent), but it probably doesn't
go that far. Keyword searches are probably not true.

It is however worth mentioning that we have this CIOT system which is a
publicly known and automated system that actually provides automated access to
name and address details of any given Dutch IP address. The system is updated
with ISPs' data every morning and can be queried at will. ISPs, even the most
privacy-aware one (XS4ALL) do not give statistics of how often their part of
the database was queried (I asked them), but it has been made public that the
database had a total of 2.6 million queries over 2010 and 2.9 in 2009. That's
one in six citizens' data queried for no apparent reason.

Tech details: The CIOT system is a centralized search dispatcher, that queries
systems provided by individual ISPs. A government official can enter an IP
there and within seconds all ISPs have been queried and one probably returns a
match.

~~~
ohwp
I agree this is a bullshit story. They only store conversations when they have
an eavesdrop approval.

A lot of people underestimate the amount of storage it would take to store all
voice data.

~~~
haarts
Storing voice (audio) data is not what the article says. I'd imagine you
transcribe the audio to text and search in that. Storing text is incredibly
easy. Besides you can throw away 99.9% of the data almost immediately.

I'm actually curious how much text data this would be per day; number of call
minutes * average number of words per minute. I'd be surprised if that
wouldn't fit in a reasonable cluster.

~~~
MichaelSalib
I'm sorry, but do we really think that machine transcription of millions of
cell phone conversations is worth anything? How can anyone believe that after
using google voice?

~~~
btilly
So you use a hybrid approach. The text transcription can be fed into programs
that look for specific phrases, build up social networks, etc. And then anyone
you decide you actually want to monitor you keep audio as well as the machine
transcription.

The machine transcription remains incredibly valuable for broad surveillance
even though it is highly imperfect.

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berryg
"De Telegraaf" may not be a reliable source, but even members of parliament
are asking questions. Apparently the Dutch government is preparing a massive
internet interception program. See:
[https://www.bof.nl/2013/06/10/nederlandse-overheid-broedt-
op...](https://www.bof.nl/2013/06/10/nederlandse-overheid-broedt-op-eigen-
aftapschandaal/). Sorry, but Google Translate does not translate HTTPS urls.

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merijn481
The newspaper that published this, 'Telegraaf', is notorious for publishing
bullshit. The article is very short, the journalist wouldn't be able to check
if it's true, and the newspaper hungry to publish anything that attracts
readers. Offline version of link-bait.

~~~
lucb1e
Yes, I got the same notion

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Arjuna
If you are interested in this story and comments, then you will most likely be
interested in the following comment and associated dialogue as well:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5830994](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5830994)

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guard-of-terra
I fail to understand why tiny tranquil european countries without serious
dangers of terrorism or organized crime even do this. They have nothing to
reveal by intrecepting communications, why spend money and public credit on
this?

~~~
yread
Are you serious? Dutch jihadists are fighting in Syria, the Detroit underwear
bomber boarded his plane at Amsterdam Schiphol and organized crime is a
serious problem in the Netherlands (see
[http://www.nokturnis.net/nokwiki/tiki-
index.php?page=Organiz...](http://www.nokturnis.net/nokwiki/tiki-
index.php?page=Organized+Crime) )

~~~
johansch
And a homegrown Islamist network assassinated a well-known dutch film director
after he made a movie criticizing the treatment of women in Islam:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theo_van_Gogh_(film_director)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theo_van_Gogh_\(film_director\))

~~~
lostlogin
What? So you can have attacks on your country without requiring the world to
go into lockdown, without having to invade several countries and without
having to molest every traveler?

~~~
roel_v
"without requiring the world to go into lockdown, without having to invade
several countries and without having to molest every traveler?"

Have you ever been here? There are cameras on all highways that recognize
license plates and track the movement over every car on the road network (cfr:
the ease with which they tracked the whereabouts of the father who killed his
children a few weeks ago), it has the most phone taps per inhabitant (to the
extent that if you look at the data, it seems like somebody accidentally types
a few numbers too much when typing it into Excel, that's how far we are
removed from the runner up), and in general the amount of information the
government has on every citizen is staggering (e.g. the age at which you first
grew pubes (!) ).

At Schiphol you are searched at will - a few years ago I was on a flight back
from the Caribbean and _everybody_ on the plane was searched - thoroughly,
more intense than when you are searched e.g. at sports events. Every city has
autonomous authority to designate certain areas as 'search at will' areas -
police can (and will), without cause, search you and your belongings
(including your car - US doctrine about the car being an extension of a man's
house? Hahaha, yeah, in the sense that it doesn't take much to search your
house, either...). Most train stations are such zones, but most of the city
centers of the bigger cities are, too (let that sink in - there a whole city
center where police, without _any_ cause, can search you and your belongings!)

Oh, not carrying ID (anywhere)? €90 fine, and you can be taken into custody
until you have proven your identity. No cause necessary for asking for it,
either.

Invading has never been a strategy generally employed here, the Dutch are
merchants, war is bad for business (I'm sure there's a fitting Ferengi quote
here...) Plus a country the size of a flyspeck on a global map just doesn't
generally have the muscle.

Look, I still love my country, and for all its flaws it's still the best place
on earth to live for me - but let's not kid ourselves, the surveillance state
is alive and kicking here, and the 'OMG the terrorists are coming' sentiment
is, too.

~~~
roel_v
I should put a nuance on my remark that police can ask for ID without cause;
after looking a bit deeper into it, this is not entirely true. There has to be
cause but that is defined very broadly. Examples mentioned on the government
website on when police can ask for ID, and when they can take you into custody
when you can't, include 'a car driving around at night in an industrial area',
'there is a shooting in a pub and for the inquiry it is necessary to establish
who are the witnesses', 'youth are being a nuisance in the neighbourhood',
'there is a fire and the arsonist might be amongst the spectators' (!).

Not quite 'papieren, bitte' yet, and not as dramatic as I made it sound, but
still not what one would expect in a land claiming to value freedom. (my other
points still stand though, including those about the 'no cause search' zones)

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kiep
ECHELON is a global communications interception system, created by the United
States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand to routinely and
indiscriminately monitor and record all forms of electronic communications
worldwide both military and civilian and overseen by the National Security
Agency. Designed during the cold-war, ECHELON primarily intercepts worldwide
non-military communications, including those from governments, organizations,
businesses and individuals. It could intercept practically any communication
between countries anywhere in the world. The project ECHELON receiving system
thieves this streams of millions of communications every hours to massive rez
of computers. These computers decrypt messages when necessary, than when
required utilize optical character recognition or advanced voice recognition
techniques to extract words from each message. Every message captured is
analysed for keywords or phrases found in the ECHELON dictionary. Keywords
include all the names, places, code words or subjects that might be of
interest. There are second search lists for each member country. Messages
acquired at any of the receiving posts, containing requested keywords are
automatically past on to intelligence organizations requesting those keywords.
Those messages are flagged for further analysis. ...and ray of receiving
stations collect all international communications carried by approximately 20
INTELSAT satellites. The INTELSATs are used by telephone companies of most
countries. Thou they carry primarily civilian traffic, they also carry
diplomatic and governmental communications. These INTELSATs are positioned in
the stationary orbit around the equator and carry tens of thousands of
simultaneous phone-calls, faxes and e-mails.

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Marthyn
The Telegraaf is not the most reliable source.. just saying.

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eternalban
[http://youtu.be/vyUQ0Z5hyU0](http://youtu.be/vyUQ0Z5hyU0)

