Here's a year-old story by a more reliable Dutch newspaper, claiming 1 in 1000 phones is being tapped in the Netherlands.<p><a href="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" rel="nofollow">http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=nl&tl=en&u=ht...</a>
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.<p>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.<p>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.
"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: <a href="https://www.bof.nl/2013/06/10/nederlandse-overheid-broedt-op-eigen-aftapschandaal/" rel="nofollow">https://www.bof.nl/2013/06/10/nederlandse-overheid-broedt-op...</a>. Sorry, but Google Translate does not translate HTTPS urls.
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.
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:<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5830994" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5830994</a>
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?
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.