On my resignation as regulator of the Dutch intelligence and security services

https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/resignation-as-intelligence-regulator/

by pabs3 • 4 years ago

566 224 4 years ago

FWIW:

I’ve seen some mediocre automated translations of my Dutch language resignation statement go round. To prevent any confusion, please find the story here in English:

greatgib4• 4 years ago

It is so crazy to see most "democracies" around the world to follow track of dictatorial countries like China, Russia, North Korea,...

We are now on the downward trend of civil rights everywhere. This makes me very worried.

Is it that we are following the pattern described in Animal Farm of Orwell?

atdrummond• 4 years ago

I always find it interesting that “democracy” has come to mean so much more than just the electoral system that provides the government. I guess I’m unsurprised that some democracies would be open and vibrant societies and others would have much more restrictive views of civil liberties and privacy.

(Not saying that’s a good thing, mind you.)

pfortuny2• 4 years ago

People conflate democracy with the rule of law. That is strange, but it is so.

In all these examples, what is lacking is the rule of law, as in the FISA courts: they can do something secretly and without accountability.

There have been monarchies and dictatorships in which the rule of law was more widespread than in the present US and possibly more countries which describe themselves as “democracies”.

seydor9• 4 years ago

Democracy is formally not about the elctoral system, but about power being bestowed to the citizens themselves (hoi polloi): self governance. In ancient democracies that was achieved by lottery instead of election.

Fukuyama sets 3 conditions for a liberal democracy : strong state, rule of law and accountability

mola• 4 years ago

You should consider modern democracy as a response to the horrors of the 20th century fascistic and autocratic governments. Especially the case of Nazism in Germany that rose inside of democracy. In the aftermath of WW2 the concept of human rights rose, and the idea the democracy is not a majority rule, and that every democracy should offer basic human rights and protections for minority classes, be it political racial ethnic or religious minorities. This is the prevelant ideal of the modern liberal democracy as is viewed in most of "the west". This is what's being eroded.

denton-scratch3• 4 years ago

"Democracy" isn't some kind of electoral system. There are working democracies that eschew elections.

JumpCrisscross• 4 years ago

interesting that “democracy” has come to mean so much more than just the electoral system that provides the government

It’s always meant that [1]. Elections are essential. But since antiquity it’s been recognised, first through custom then by law, that they had to be balanced against e.g. minority rights and tribal partisanship. Reducing democracy to elections is a modern American/British phenomenon.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy

BlargMcLarg4• 4 years ago

I'm not sure what you expect from a democracy to magically fix the issue of a minority of people selected primarily on good will by the majority, just so that majority doesn't have to care anymore.

The past century, information has exploded and the mental strain on individuals has increased massively. It's trivial to hide most of this information and these decisions, when major news outlets won't digest and show them to the people. Even digests are largely outrage for a day, only for people to return to the status quo.

We don't even elect individuals who know much about technology. On top of that, we have trouble electing individuals capable of solving problems they should know about. Problems that are far more noticeable and immediate to the common folk.

Heck, the majority of voters are still technology illiterate.

TEP_Kim_Il_Sung2• 4 years ago

Seems to me, with all this technology and information, humanity is still limited by Dunbar's Number.

https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeatures/live/976_549/images/live...

trinsic211• 4 years ago

The past century, information has exploded and the mental strain on individuals has increased massively. It's trivial to hide most of this information and these decisions, when major news outlets won't digest and show them to the people. Even digests are largely outrage for a day, only for people to return to the status quo.

I like this. Mental strain is an important side effect to what is going on. Strain from information overload I think, and powers expect this and use it to there advantage.

MomoXenosaga• 4 years ago

Actually if you follow Dutch politics you'd know this IS the will of the people. The common man is not a libertarian hacker.

jobstijl• 4 years ago

This is not the will of the people in the Netherlands. We had a referendum a few years ago about the laws for spying (sleepwet). Their was a clear vote for not allowing bulk spying. The rules that currently are broken down where made in reaction to that referendum.

tgv4• 4 years ago

The Netherlands is still quite far from being North Korea. And Animal Farm is about communism. You might be thinking of 1984, but that's quite the reach too.

Of course it is worrying that secret services get more power, but

We are now on the downward trend of civil rights everywhere. This makes me very worried.

when civil rights get abused or the rule of law cannot be upheld, society and the goverment have to react. There is no easy fix for this. I wish they'd expand the powers of intelligence services more carefully, but such is not the political climate at the moment.

And please, don't put democracies between scare quotes. You're not quoting the article.

greatgib4• 4 years ago

First, democracy between quotes as it emphases the word as a concept.

Second, if you just think that the book was just about communism, then you did not understand it very well.

The morale of the book is the "people" throwing out what they see as dictators abusing them, replacing it by a democracy/ free society. But then, the people enslave themselves to go little by little into another from of dictature. But they drive themselves to the butcher voluntarily by allowing each time new restrictions on their liberties and rights because it looks justified. Not realizing where this is leading them and forgetting the past. They think that they have free will but they don't really have because they are manipulated.

It happens that communism implementation did fit very well into this pattern. But if you look at it, communist China and Russia also pretends to be kind of democracy and only the voice of their people.

MonkeyClub• 4 years ago

You might be thinking of 1984, but that's quite the reach too.

I’d say 1984 plus Brave New World.

Not much of a reach either, we have PC for Newspeak, and lots of pharmaceutical support behind the social fabric.

msravi2• 4 years ago

It always was that way. The only thing that's changed is that information that was tightly controlled by governments via a small but powerful set of mainstream media channels to advance the notion of an open society that played by a tight set of rules and respect for civil rights has started to unravel by the democratization of news disbursal.

seydor9• 4 years ago

That's misleading. The governments had nowhere near the control of information that modern technology allows them. Look at which governments are most enthusiastic to use social media against their own citizens, primary in the list are authoritarian, even small underdeveloped countries like Myanmar and azerbaijan.

https://about.fb.com/news/2020/10/removing-coordinated-inaut...

Technology has made it real easy

And it is really shameful that the EU seems to go along with this trend. GDPR basically gives free reign to government services on the internet (but it restricts everyone else). And it has avoided all discussion of the increased censorship because of the usual suspects (cchildren/terrorism)

Silverback_VII• 4 years ago

It always was that way.

I don’t think so since the technological structure to support it was not always present.

Western societies have started to copy China because everthing else puts them at a competitive disadvantage.

there is a very helpful theoretical framework by Theodore Kaczynski, that of self-propagating systems, to better understand the evolution of societies:

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/ted-kaczynski-why-th...

andywood2• 4 years ago

I think you mean that the only thing that's changed is that information that was tightly controlled by governments via a small but powerful set of mainstream media channels to advance the notion of an open society that played by a tight set of rules and respect for civil rights has been augmented by a small and even more powerful set of big mainstream internet companies.

Give yourselves a round of applause, Silicon Valley et al.

guilhas• 4 years ago

Yes, to beat China we have to become China /s

gdy• 4 years ago

Yes, but you are quite far from where Russia is, not to speak of China and North Korea.

On the other hand, in Russia police don't use dogs against protesters, so maybe Netherlands are not that far.

koonsolo2• 4 years ago

Correct me if I'm wrong, but as long as citizens can vote on their leaders, you have a democracy.

This has nothing to do with how much power the government has or wants over its citizens. As long as they can vote on different representatives, I don't see a problem for "democracy". I do however see a problem with privacy and freedom, or like you say, a downward trend of civil rights.

switch007• 4 years ago

That’s a very weak definition of democracy

We have a democracy in name only. We elect people who rubber stamp laws that have been written by lobbyists.

We elect people from a pool of people many of who are running only because of donations from rich people and organisations with agendas, or that they are rich enough themselves and move in certain circles.

dekken_2• 4 years ago

Even if you can vote, it doesn't mean your vote matters.

Breaking campaign promises is not a crime anywhere that I know of.

Emigre_• 4 years ago

The notion of democracy has evolved over time and nowadays is commonly understood to be a gradient, encompassing a number of democratic indicators in addition to free and fair elections: freedom of press, freedom of assembly, respect for the individual, civil rights... There are a number of 'democratic indexes' like the Freedom in the World index by Freedom House and The Economist's Democracy Index. A contry can score low even if technically its citizens are able to vote. You can read more about democracy in an excellent book by Bernard Crick, 'Democracy: A Very Short Introduction' (2002), by Oxford University Press.

denton-scratch3• 4 years ago

I'll bite; I think you're wrong. Democracy isn't defined as "citizens can vote on their leaders". And I think your notion that as long as leaders are elected, there can be no problems, is manifestly incorrect.

If we accept your definition, then "democracy" isn't a form of government; it's an event that occurs every 4-5 years. In between polls, "citizens" have little input into decisions. With that definition, almost every government in the world is "democratic" - most of them have elected presidents. Just that they were elected 40 years ago, or they fix the elections.

Even the use of the word "citizen" is open to question; are US felons citizens? Why is it permissible to deny citizen-felons a vote?

vkou2• 4 years ago

What's crazy about it? Most democracies have behaved in the way you decried for most of their lifespans. Just because some subset of the population is allowed to vote for representatives in parliament doesn't mean that parliament can't run an anti-citizen secret police... Or internal repression against a minority group. Or some imperialist horror-show. Or carry out an a aggressive invasion and occupation. Nothing about a democracy necessitates that it adhere to a 21st century humanist understanding of civil rights.

Hell, if you're in the US, your local municipality is almost certainly both a democracy, and primarily exists to funnel your tax money into what is a frequently corrupt, unaccountable, and very anti-citizen police force. Nobody cares about fixing this state of affairs, because as long as its other people that are getting brutalized, I can sleep comfortably. And that's on a municipal level!

Bakary5• 4 years ago

The 21st century humanist understanding was always predicated on a world order of massive inequality and international power balances. Now that non-Western countries are providing more competition, and Western countries are seeing their relative living standards drop, it's not a coincidence that humanist values are more wobbly than before.

jonnybgood3• 4 years ago

What’s with the hyperbole? Following North Korea? And following China with their concentration camps? Everywhere? I don’t know. The US has been on a civil rights uptrend in the last 100 years. Such short memories.

elliekelly• 4 years ago

It’s not hyperbole to say our Fourth amendment rights are considerably weaker than they’ve ever been. One hundred years ago a person could communicate freely without any possibility of the government monitoring. Government monitoring of citizen conversations and communications is now the default. For everyone. All the time. Not even with probable cause!

goodluckchuck2• 4 years ago

In terms of following China, Russia, etc. there have been significant moves that affect the whole population in ways that are very important.

- Reduced access to firearms (safety, individual power) - Social Security and Medicare (financial independence, retirement, health) - Mandatory health insurance (health and financial freedom). - Formerly abortion (much less than 50%).

Gains have been for increasingly small groups.

- Sexual preference (affects about ~5% of population). - Transgender (<1%).

Then things like the Supreme Court’s recent gun cases have mostly just foreclosed future restrictions, but haven’t increased access to those sorts of small arms that would be needed in an e.g. Ukraine-type situation. This obviously leaves the American people closer to Russian, Chinese, etc in terms of their capacity forcibly defend their rights.

belter2• 4 years ago

The most shocking, is not so much that governments, try to extend their authoritarian tendencies. It's that is happening in the UK, Australia, Netherlands and others, with broad support, from a coalition of very diverse parties from all across the political spectrum.

Cthulhu_• 4 years ago

That's the thing; the PARTIES support it, but the people in those parties won't be affected by this. This is the problem with democracy; it's the people's representatives making the decisions, not the people. And said representatives have stopped being representative a long time ago, most of them being born and growing up priviledged (think rich, private education) and career politicians, instead of e.g. a blue collar worker being given decision power for a while, or a true democratic system where people can (or, have to) vote on issues.

I mean the latter isn't ideal but it feels more fair and democratic.

greatgib4• 4 years ago

Indeed, this is the major problem. Worse dictatures are like example of what can be done but also, setting a floor so extreme in the worse that some people can use that to say that even if they restrict the civil rights, there is worse and we are so far from the dictatures measures that it is still ok and acceptable.

Bakary5• 4 years ago

Ironically books like those of Orwell aren't particularly helpful, because they anthropomorphize too much. The idea of a downward trend of civil rights is also misleading, because it implies a separation of these rights from all the other material or cultural forces that are brushing up against each other at the same time.

Tales like Animal Farm create the impression that all we have to do is to get 'the team' back together again and just align the liberal democracies around the old methods in a struggle of good vs. bad.

We only have what we identify as civil rights from very specific material and historical conditions. It's not a coincidence that liberalism appeared around the same time that we first created a significant surplus during the industrial revolution.

denton-scratch3• 4 years ago

because they anthropomorphize too much

You seem to be basing your view on a single book. Is there anthropomorphism in 1984? Homage to Catalonia? Consider also reading some of his essays, as well as his books.

Orwell isn't all about pigs and horses. Animal Farm was a children's book.

rocqua5• 4 years ago

What's interesting is the justification for this change. It is not the typical "oh no terrorism" or "think of the children". Its specifically "nation states with an offensive cyber programme" (e.g. China, Russia, probably not US because ally). That is a new argumentation for an expansion of powers, and to me it feels like a better one (note, I have no idea whether this expansion of powers actually is limited to only the stated goal).

BlargMcLarg4• 4 years ago

I don't see why "oh no China" is any better than "oh no groomers". It's the usual, they provide some rationalities, they provide some numbers as to the problem, but the predicted effects are largely missing numbers and the entire thing comes across as fearmongering. And of course, an absolutely certainty that these things are necessary "for the good of the country/people". Bonus points: it is proposed after a related event happened just recently.

ajross3• 4 years ago

"democracies" [...] follow track of dictatorial countries [...] now on the downward trend of civil rights [...] following the pattern described in Animal Farm

This just isn't correct. In fact democratic government around the world are, almost universally, more transparent and more accountable than they ever have been. The kind of abuses details here have been done in the past, the only thing that changes is the tools used to do it. So, sure, the Netherlands may try to roll back regulation. But their senior civil servants quit if they try. The NSA may hoover up the whole of the internet, but Snowden leaks it anyway and the industry moves to pervasive HTTPS.

Things are better, not worse. This kind of fatalism serves no one except conspiracy theorists and extremists.

Aeolun2• 4 years ago

Not necessarily. If things are going much better, but people are still pessimistic, they’ll keep pushing to keep things going in the right direction.

whycombinater• 4 years ago

"But their senior civil servants quit if they try."

Why does abandoning ship when the ship is set on fire or under threat to be set on fire save the ship?

Worse if the abandoners are the good ones to be replaced by more fire starters.

trinsic211• 4 years ago

Thanks for this insight, You are right, there are counteractions to tyrannical behavior. I wonder sometimes if these changes are enough though, it seems like the tyrannical behavior is winning over the counters.

IAmGraydon• 4 years ago

Absolute power corrupts absolutely. In this case, that power comes from new technology.

trinsic211• 4 years ago

I don't think blaming tech is going to help. Technology is a tool, tools are just byproducts that help us to see what is already going on.

throwawaylinux• 4 years ago

The ruling class considers any power held by the people to be a theft of their natural rights, they'll never stop their struggle to restore that "injustice". Free democracies might just be an aberration in the history of our species where a lucky coincidence of culture, education, technology happened to tip the balance slightly in favor of the commoners in a few countries for a few generations.

Consultant32452• 4 years ago

Exponential growth of our economy stopped around the 1970s. A lot of our social paradigms are built on this exponential growth. Example: each university professor creates/trains x new university professors where x>1. Apply this to every industry everywhere. Without the artificial exponential growth potential created by population and recovery from world wars, resources are becoming more scarce. When resources are scarce the power structure picks someone to blame for the problem and the tyranny really starts. Could be racial minorities, the "wrong" political party, religious minorities, etc. It will be said they are a "threat" to the good people that are just trying to keep you safe or the good systems we have in place. This is going to happen everywhere across the world and it's going to have different flavors based on your culture.

mark_l_watson• 4 years ago

I think there are two things going on here: 1. Natural inclination to grab more power. 2. Governments and elites are worried about controlling a population in a future of infrastructure and supply chain collapse, and food shortages.

For number 2., there seems very little work on mitigation, rather, just locking down control of the population.

idiotsecant• 4 years ago

I think you're overestimating how much forward thinking is going on here. I think #1 big time not so much #2.

trinsic211• 4 years ago

This is a great insight. Thank you. I agree as we move further and further into food shortages and supply chain collapses, as I think about this, it would seem natural, and it appears to be apart of what people charge government to protect. (Even though the methods that are being used to protect the common good is not good, I.E authoritarian processes).

zosima• 4 years ago

In fact the dutch government seems to be actively working to worsen food shortages:

https://time.com/6201951/dutch-farmers-protests-climate-acti...

So they'd seem to be worried about controlling a population while creating food shortages.

cmurf• 4 years ago

The struggle against tyranny is never ending.

andywood2• 4 years ago

You think? Just read all the ones in black:

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_Orwell

But as so many even here keep repeating so idiotically, "We live in a society. We live in a society. We live in a society..." Gotta keep trading that liberty for more safety. Gotta keep 'em safe.

Anyone see the new messages you get on Twitter when its AI pre-judges your tweet to be Intellectual Spam?

Good job Twitter employees, if you're reading. Keep up the great work. Keep us safe from code points arranged in wrong orders.

dbxkcichhdfufu• 4 years ago

If alarm bells didn't go off when free speech became a dirty word on the left I don't know what to tell you.

hotpotamus• 4 years ago

I’m pretty sure Twitter isn’t part of our government yet, but perhaps once Musk is crowned supreme emperor or whatever title he and Joe Rogan dream up in their next THC fueled brainstorm-podcast session, that will change.

verisimi2• 4 years ago

We have 'representative democracy' NOT democracy - big difference.

One is where everyone has a vote on every option, and the other is where one person (the representative) represents thousands (millions?) of people, for 4-5 years, making all the decisions on their behalf, with no repurcussions for that representative if they lie, cheat or enrich themselves in their role during that time. In fact, the representative only has to be perceived less bad than the other alternative, and they will likely get back in!

djfobbz• 4 years ago

USA is also headed in the same direction. I guess we can thank the New World Order initiative...SIKE! Be careful what you wish for, history has a way of repeating itself.

cies• 4 years ago

most "democracies" around the world

There were no democracies in the first place (probably that's why you quoted). If you accept lobbying (legalized corruption if you ask me), and the super rich pay less tax percentually than then middle class, it's not a functioning democracy in my book.

This makes me very worried.

We worries me it that people still believe the "democracy" narrative. It is very clear now with Putin "invading a sovereign country"... While the US has been doing this over and over since WW2, now suddenly it is a problem, suddenly Putin is a dictator, Ukraine is democratic so must be helped, bla bla. It's just the next resource war, and frankly Putin plays it nicer than the US did in Iraq.

We are now on the downward trend of civil rights everywhere

Yups, I think the 70s/80s were the peak of human civilization, and we're going down hill now.

arrosenberg• 4 years ago

Nothing has changed really, the Dulles brothers were proto-fascists and the western intelligence apparati still carry the legacy of that.

StanislavPetrov• 4 years ago

It is especially ironic that the biggest proponents and advocates of expanded surveillance and police state powers are also those who cry loudest about the threats of "fascism". Nobody ever claims to be the fascist or the bad guy while they are accruing power and stripping you of your rights - it is always to protect against some (usually amorphous, exaggerated or invented) threat that requires it.

enviclash• 4 years ago

A true citizen, thanks for inspiring.

seper8• 4 years ago

Thank you so much, it takes courage to do this. Bedankt voor je dienst de afgelopen jaren, ik hoop dat je onze veiligheidsdiensten af en toe goed dwars hebt gezeten!

FabHK• 4 years ago

Indeed. Respect. Gotta love the last line:

On a final note, if anyone is looking for a government regulator with a proven track record of resigning when things go wrong, know that I’m available.

Hope this triggers re-evaluation of the proposed law by the Dutch legislators.

daniel-cussen• 4 years ago

Dude would love that for http://fgemm.com. Not raking in those revenues yet, yes I have the speedup and yes that's considered the hard part, but to me that's the easy part and translating that into human currency is the hard part.

Like I'd have to think for just a fucking second, stop and think it's a big ask...but yeah.

Idealism.

Yeah.

brnt• 4 years ago

He did first enable them through setting up their networks securely ;)

My reading is that it isn't so much about the security agencies (in the Netherlands at least), but the politicians that are widening scope because that's what they think is needed.

One of the problems in recent Dutch political culture is that elected officials listen less and less to their experts and own ministerial advices, and more and more to (imagined) public calls. The idea that part of their role means to translate, explain and defend technical advices from their ministries seems to have been entirely abandoned.

swores3• 4 years ago

If the ex-ante regulator (ie, my board) ruled a permission to do something was unlawful, it would indeed not happen. I think it is important to affirm this in public.

I have no knowledge on the subject so this isn't suggesting a conspiracy theory, but hypothetically if there were a conspiracy of the security services wanting to illegally do things that this board rejected, wouldn't they just... do it, without telling this board "oh, fyi we're ignoring that ruling you made yesterday and proceeding to hack away because we really want that info!"

They'd probably even be clever enough to do stuff like continue to submit less-invasive requests (if we can't do X can we do 1/2th of X) or whatever other responses they would have if they were indeed respecting the ruling, despite the fact that actually these follow-up requests were wasting everyone's time to obscure that they'd already done what they were initially banned from doing, and now just needed a smoke screen and maybe some parallel construction to give a legal way to prosecute.

In such a hypothetical (a security service wanting people to believe they're following the rulings while actually not caring about the rules at all), would it actually be discoverable short of them screwing up or having a whistleblower? Are there audits in place by other government departments that would even have a chance of finding out if it were happening? (Even before then wondering whether such an unethical hypothetical security service wouldn't also stoop to other unethical practices such as blackmailing those who are meant to audit them, etc...)

I don't know what any of the answers are to this line of thinking, I'm sure plenty of people smarter and more knowledgeable in this area than me have put plenty of thought into it, but I've never heard of any magic solutions to enable transparent accountability while maintaining the secrecy needed. Maybe I'm just uninformed?

dan-robertson• 4 years ago

Generally speaking intelligence services tend to be accountable to democratically elected officials and (at least in the us) typically staffed by a bunch of educated, reasonably pro-establishment people who tend to know what the rules are and want them followed. But then if you look at the FBI under Hoover, it seems possible that those things are not always enough.

swores3• 4 years ago

They're accountable to elected officials, but those officials are surely never personally involved in auditing actual behaviour, do they hire people to do that or do they just rely on heads of security services telling them the truth? (I appreciate that question probably doesn't have a simple answer in any one country, yet alone as a vague thought about security services around the world.)

advael• 4 years ago

The applicable cliche here is "the perfect is the enemy of the good." I may be misreading your point, but the way this reads to me, it's kinda a reductio ad absurdum of the concept of law in general, no?

Of course anyone can choose to go rogue and disobey or subvert the rules. This doesn't mean that all regulations are equally pointless. Oversight policies can be judged by how effectively they can detect, deter, and sometimes even (albeit imperfectly) prevent abuses of power. There is likely no way to 100% guarantee perfect democratic accountability in any system in which a motivated conspiracy of people in power is possible, which is as far as I can tell all the systems in which anyone has power. The link explains the author's view of the systemic consequences of this change in policy fairly well, and it's definitely cause for concern, despite the fact that there's no magic bullet for this sort of thing

swores3• 4 years ago

The applicable cliche here is "the perfect is the enemy of the good." I may be misreading your point, but the way this reads to me, it's kinda a reductio ad absurdum of the concept of law in general, no?

I'm asking questions about how it is and how it could be, not arguing that short of perfection we should ban it all.

vintermann2• 4 years ago

wouldn't they just... do it, without telling this board

That comes with the risk of getting caught. Especially when there is a board of actually empowered, not toothless people, tasked with stopping you from doing that. This guy's resignation shows that there actually was some real oversight, that they probably couldn't get away with just ignoring it (as they have in some other states I could mention)

t_mann2• 4 years ago

When you think further, you'll realize that almost all laws meant to rule out certain actions don't actually make it impossible for people to do them.

Concretely re your question: yes, such a conspiracy is conceivable, however, such large conspiracies are probabilistically doomed to get exposed: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...

marcus_holmes• 4 years ago

Laws never stop anyone from doing anything. They just describe the penalties for getting caught.

xg15• 4 years ago

From the abstract:

Parameters for the model are estimated from literature examples of known scandals, and the factors influencing conspiracy success and failure are explored.

I've only read the abstract so far, so it might be they try to account for this - but I think they are at risk of being hit by some version of the "WW2 aircraft" problem if they only use historical data.

Basically, if you say, "all historical conspiracies eventually were exposed" than that's sort of a truism - if they weren't exposed, we wouldn't know about them.

In the same sense, if you make a statistical model about conspiracies and only base it on the conspiracies that became historically known, you're sort of biasing your data towards failed conspiracies. That might lead you to underestimate what kind of conspiracies are possible that just successfully managed to keep secrecy.

Of course the other extreme is just as bad. You can always say "well that's what they want you to think / well they are just that good at hiding..." at which point your actual conspiracy theory becomes unfalsifiable.

rocqua5• 4 years ago

Sure, they could probably run operations without authorization, or with larger scope than the given authorization. But it would need to be quite a large conspiracy requiring quite a bit of lying and hiding. I think generally speaking these kinds of conspiracies fail to (disgruntled) whistleblowers.

There is a committee in parliament that gets to see secret information, perhaps they could demand to see authorization and activities of a given operation.

dane-pgp• 4 years ago

To give you an idea of how plausible this is, I recommend reading the facts that came to light thanks to the work of Privacy International taking the UK government to court. Here are some quotes from an article[0] written in 2018:

The Investigatory Powers Tribunal has reruled that GCHQ, MI5 and MI6 engaged in indiscriminate and illegal bulk cable-tapping surveillance for 15 years – and has once again refused to do anything about it.
By law the Foreign Sec cannot delegate that power and let, for example, the head of GCHQ decide what kind of data to grab or how much of it they wish to browse through. However, in practice, what was happening, the IPT ruled, was that the Foreign Sec rubber-stamped a "general direction" prepared by the spy agencies themselves that included a very broad form of words authorising them to do whatever they liked.
Sir Michael went as far as to say he was "disappointed that inaccurate information was given to the tribunal" about the number of contractors with admin privileges working at GCHQ. The agencies also had to amend their witness statements several times after it became obvious that their original contents, claiming they and the Foreign Secretary obeyed the law in full, were simply not true

[0] https://www.theregister.com/2018/07/23/investigatory_powers_...

jknoepfler• 4 years ago

We have the technology to require cryptographic proof of authorization from a requlatory agency, we just need to apply it.

e12e• 4 years ago

Considering that the security services are made up of people trained to work illegally and in secret - this seems not only plausible, but probable.

Based on what we've seen from room 641a, through Binney and later, Snowden - along with various national "scandals" - it seems security services will commit crimes and conspiracies, undetected for years - and when revealed suffer no meaningful concequences.

timwaagh3• 4 years ago

Although I do share the concerns it's impossible to know what this would do in practice. For the most part I think our Government (ie the Dutch one) is run by people with integrity. I doubt they'd want to cause scandal by overloading regulators to do nasty stuff. Although I must say I don't agree with this change either.

IkmoIkmo• 4 years ago

Not sure about that. If you’re competing with an adversary in the cybersecurity space, it’s likely that you’ll go quite far to win. It’s a matter of national security after all, plus it is strictly legal soon to start your activities and slow down the ex-post checks and balances, do you really expect these hackers to self-regulate based on some kind of personal value system, and resist any challenge to these values from colleagues, managers or indeed your adversaries?

Unlikely, plus there have been plenty of reasons to think otherwise. Just look at how the ministries are treating WOB/FOIA requests, frustrating the process, breaking every regulatory deadline and very willing to pay the silly fines for always being way late with taxpayer money. It’s a joke.

Besides, we have the toeslagenschandaal showing how civil servants are completely willing to screw over tens of thousands of civilians, driving people to divorces, bankruptcies, suicides, kids to foster homes etc. We NEED checks and balances, desperately so, also in the Netherlands. God knows what happens when we don’t. NL is relatively good, but it’s all relative, at the end of the day it’s a bunch of humans that will fuck up without good governance.

Aeolun2• 4 years ago

breaking every regulatory deadline and very willing to pay the silly fines for always being way late with taxpayer money
civil servants are completely willing to screw over tens of thousands of civilians

I think this is due to general laziness and low compensation more than anything else. Being a civil servant in the Netherlands isn’t exactly a highly respected position.

Tijdreiziger2• 4 years ago

I try not to comment on political matters on HN, but -- have you missed the plethora of scandals, not least of which the benefits scandal (toeslagenaffaire)?

I'll remind you that the very same PM who was responsible for that scandal is still in office, and that his very cabinet tried to get rid of one of the politicians who unearthed the scandal (Omtzigt).

Or how about SyRI, the system used for detecting tax fraud, which was ruled by the judiciary to be in breach of the European Convention on Human Rights?

https://eenvandaag.avrotros.nl/item/weer-is-de-vvd-de-partij...

timwaagh3• 4 years ago

The benefits scandal was caused by some overzealousness on the part of the tax authorities in response to the Bulgar fraud. Not really a case of lack of integrity just people trying to do their job and making a mistake. mistakes like that will continue to happen, the government should have been more clear about that.

The pm did not enter the offensive lines of code into the system and I do not know to which extent, if any, he is to blame for any of it.

There will always be some tension between fraud detection and personal rights. The fact that a court rules against a system is proof that regulatory oversight is very much alive.

vintermann2• 4 years ago

That last line made me laugh, but it's funny because it's true. It's down to the "sit where you're sitting" effect.

Noam Chomsky famously told Andrew Marr during an interview that he was sure Marr was sincere and believed everything he was saying, but if he'd believed anything else, he wouldn't sit where he was sitting.

It follows from that true observation that the only time such appointed watchdogs (whether oversight board members or news personalities) are actually doing something, is when they quit, or at least threaten to quit.

DaiPlusPlus• 4 years ago

I googled for "\"sit where you're sitting\" noam" and there's just 1 result: this very HN post link. Do you have a source for that Chomsky quote?

r0uv3n• 4 years ago

I believe this [1] should be the interview, found it via leaving out the quotes and using "Chomsky" instead of "Noam".

[1] https://youtu.be/lLcpcytUnWU?t=170

noduerme• 4 years ago

I love Dutch understatement.

t_mann2• 4 years ago

Impressive person overall. I guess that's the kind of free mindset that also made him a succesful uni dropout and entrepreneur.

rocqua5• 4 years ago

What surprises me is that I as a dutch citizen working in cyber security, have heard nothing about these new laws. Maybe I've been neglecting the right sources, but this change feels (up to now) very under the radar and uncontested. I hope this will put some more emphasis on this new law.

edit: Having looked into this a bit more, two things stand out: - The law is temporary - The justification is being able to counter nation states with an offensive cyber programme.

belter2• 4 years ago

"The Netherlands, a surveillance state?" - https://www.ictrecht.nl/en/blog/the-netherlands-a-surveillan...

https://wetgevingskalender.overheid.nl/regeling/WGK012972

"The Dutch government wants to continue to spy on activists’ social media" - https://racismandtechnology.center/2022/05/11/the-dutch-gove...

https://www.bitsoffreedom.nl/2022/03/31/wij-lieten-ons-horen...

"...The government service NCTV creates fake accounts, follows people online and shares analyzes with the police or municipalities..." - https://www.amnesty.nl/forms/pet-nctv

danuker3• 4 years ago

The law is temporary

In 1971: "I have directed Secretary Connally to suspend temporarily the convertibility of the dollar into gold or other reserve assets"

Still goes on today, 51 years later.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon_shock

klabb3• 4 years ago

“Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program” – Milton Friedman

tgv4• 4 years ago

The Netherlands still has a court that can overrule the government, and actually has told it drop to the temporary covid/lock-down laws, because they should be repaced by permanent laws, supported by both chambers or parliament. If the government wouldn't do that, these laws would be voided.

Sjonny• 4 years ago

The law is temporary

I'm not so sure about this. In the article he states:

Once it became clear the intended law would likely pass parliament

and in the dutch version it sounds even worse to me:

Na het verschijnen van het advies van de Raad van State is mij duidelijk geworden dat de verruiming van de bevoegdheden en de verschuiving van het toezicht niet meer ongedaan zullen worden gemaakt.

I can't really tell for sure if he thinks this law is here to stay, but me being a pessimist when it comes down to government, I think there is nothing temporary about this.

rocqua5• 4 years ago

The actual law is called "tijdelijke wet ...".

That doesn't mean the sentiment change behind the law isn't permanent, and it might (but I don't believe so) be a temporary law that is extended indefinitely. But the law, as written and intended is temporary. I think that should factor into the discussion (as should the fact that sometimes people call a thing temporary whilst intending for it to be permanent).

tgv4• 4 years ago

Has been reported in NRC.

LatteLazy• 4 years ago

You cannot regulate these "services". Anyone who pretends that they are is just adding believability to the lie that they're safe or compatible with democracy.

tremmel2• 4 years ago

ㅤ

Sebguer• 4 years ago

I'm okay with threats to my privacy being held up by a little red tape, tbh.

tremmel2• 4 years ago

ㅤ

bigDinosaur• 4 years ago

There's no evidence any of this makes us safer. It does increase the powers of intelligence agencies. They are already agile enough (what does that even mean?) and will never push back against increasing their powers. More powerful intelligence agencies are dual use: both more powerful* against real threats, but also more powerful against citizens that challenge them in any way.

*note: power may be far in excess of threats faced.

BMc2020• 4 years ago

There's a line from the movie The Godfather where one of the bosses is talking about selling narcotics:

"For years I used to pay my people extra, so they wouldn't do that sort of thing. But they come to me and say, 'For three or four thousand dollars, we can make fifty thousand.' And that they can't turn down."

So all the intelligence agencies have to start doing what the NSA is already doing, or they'll get left behind. And what DHS is doing and Facebook is doing and Amazon is doing...

I'm worried this timeline is the Radiant Doors one.

spixy• 4 years ago

What do you mean? What is NSA already doing?

f1refly• 4 years ago

Spying on every living being without repercussion?

oliwarner• 4 years ago

If an agency overloads […] its ex ante regulator, they simply won’t get permission to do things.

The point the author makes about agencies deliberately overloading the authorisation framework is fair but it cuts both ways. The authorisation becomes a bottleneck.

I don't have the answer but what's worse? Missing threat intel because one of three people couldn't review your warrant, or over-collecting?

Bert clearly phrases this all like a regulator, as if agencies should be stopped, and I guess they've seen enough bad warrants to know what's needed, but I don't see the appreciation for the cost of overregulation.

leto_ii3• 4 years ago

I don't have the answer but what's worse? Missing threat intel because one of three people couldn't review your warrant, or over-collecting?

My money's on over collecting being way worse. I strongly suspect that the genuine benefits of unsupervised deep state activities are greatly blown out of proportion.

formerly_proven• 4 years ago

The pragmatic (and widely applied) solution here is simply the regulator rubberstamping stuff, then you can optimize the system further by stripping out the checks on the applying side as well.

fatuna• 4 years ago

In the Dutch version (not sure about the English one), he mentions that there's always a fast-track if needed.

Futhermore he says, agencies are incentivices to not overload 'permission' regulators. For 'forgiveness' regulators they have either no such incentive, or worse they might burry those regulators in work so they can't do their work properly.

I don't think he means to say agencies shoud be stopped, more as they need to be kept in line.

pessimizer4• 4 years ago

Missing threat intel because one of three people couldn't review your warrant, or over-collecting?

Over-collecting, obviously. If you prioritize not ever missing a threat, there's can be no limit to your expansion of collecting. Because you're always going to miss things. The warnings could be a guy getting angry on a messageboard, and the next morning taking a different bus than usual. Or someone buying a particular progression of books on Amazon, then showing an interest in travel. Or somebody spending an inordinate amount of time chatting rather than playing in some MMO. Or an angry email between father and son.

If you prioritize never missing anything, there's no reason not to constantly collect and run everything through an algorithm.

leto_ii3• 4 years ago

I find it interesting that the Dutch push to change the intelligence law coincides with a similar one currently taking place in my home country of Romania.

I wonder if these are actually part of a more coordinated attempt to tacitly make the (broadly speaking) West more authoritarian and tightly controlled.

layer8• 4 years ago

Never attribute to malice…

beebeepka2• 4 years ago

Ha, that's what the spooks always say but it's pure malice all the way down.

People in control didn't end up there due their stupidity.

croes• 4 years ago

The malicious use the stupid. So it's kind of both.

dunslandsboo• 4 years ago

Where there's smoke...

danuker3• 4 years ago

Maybe their logic is: in order to beat Russia you must become Russia

(which I strongly disagree with).

atemerev2• 4 years ago

Yeah, since the attacking force should be at least three times as large as the defending force, we must become three times as bad as Russia.

(Please don't).

jessaustin• 4 years ago

They may be ill-advised, but I do admire the sort of nation where these changes to the law are required in the first place.

TimJRobinson• 4 years ago

I would assume it's just about increasing efficiency of "catching the bad guys". AI and dragnets are much easier to catch people with than manual processing, and as with any other company you want to use the most efficient tools possible and rarely consider the consequences.

evrydayhustling• 4 years ago

This is a really elegant point.

Doing upfront authorization of powers is relatively efficient, and is also pleasingly self regulating. If an agency overloads or confuses its ex ante regulator, they simply won’t get permission to do things. This provides a strong incentive for clear and concise requests to the regulator.

It is very easy for regulators, even well-meaning, to focus on what they require of an individual transaction. But we live in a world where automation and dynamic workforces make it possible to break every expectation about how a system will be used.

dekken_2• 4 years ago

Those that would impose unaccountable automated systems think themselves your master.

permo-w• 4 years ago

just to play devil’s advocate, I would imagine it could and will be argued that this system is broken by being too much at the mercy of the competence of the regulator. if national police need to tap someone’s phone now or lives may be lost, and the regulator drags their feet/is understaffed/has an inefficient workflow, that is an issue

personally, I support the ‘ex ante’ approach, but - especially for the all-too-common kind of free-market ideologues that despise government regulation and have no trust in the competence of public organisation whatsoever - shoot first, ask questions later is hard to argue against

upsidesinclude• 4 years ago

It's just that this almost never happens.

It's always the excuse for why unlimited surveillance should be granted to the state, but we know from 20 years since the "patriot" act passed that it doesn't ever help.

Of course it has been abused verifiably many times & countless times that can't be verified.

tene• 4 years ago

I understand that you're not personally advocating for this position, but I'm glad you brought it up, because I really resent this kind of "Here's an imaginable scenario where this would have some negative consequence" argument.

Yes, if the regulators stop doing their job well, and there's a sudden extreme emergency requiring some kind of action that regulators have not already approved for use in emergencies, then there will be some costs, and sometimes those costs can be measured in lives.

This is true, but all it says is "there is some nonzero chance of society paying some nonzero cost". These costs are what we are paying in order to have a well-regulated intelligence service. The bet is that the expected risk from an effectively-unregulated intelligence service has worse costs for society than one with effective regulation.

In order for "think about the children" to be a meaningful argument, you need to actually establish that the nightmare scenario is meaningfully more likely than overreach and abuse of power that causes similar or worse costs for society.

Has this kind of "We could save the children if only we could get regulator approval to tap this phone line! Unfortunately, the regulator is taking a nap, so we're forced to let the children die." scenario actually been happening? If so, is there any kind of much-more-specific permissions that could be granted by the regulators to address the actual emergencies that have been coming up?

I kind of get "You can't trade off a life!" for some kinds of arguments, but we're talking about national security issues, and failures of corruption and overreach also involve risking lives.

"We need to just drop all safeguards and trust our valiant heroes" only works if the people who are subject to regulations actually are pretty reliably valiant heroes, or there are other significant incentive and oversight mechanisms to rely on. I don't have personal experience with people who work in national intelligence and security, but I haven't ever heard anyone willing to say that people in this line of work are consistently virtuous and corruption-resistant. There are good individuals, certainly, but there really are also both selfish individuals, and well-intentioned-but-misinformed individuals who can do a lot of damage.

mxuribe• 4 years ago

I have to say that i thoroughly enjoy this blog post author's writing style! I mean, the last line of his post here: "...On a final note, if anyone is looking for a government regulator with a proven track record of resigning when things go wrong, know that I’m available" - is just wonderfully cute! He's made himself into a sort of warrant/regulatory canary! lol :-)

eastbound• 4 years ago

On a final note, if anyone is looking for a government regulator with a proven track record of resigning when things go wrong, know that I’m available.

It sends shivers in my back that no government in the world will hire this canary.

graderjs• 4 years ago

On a final note, if anyone is looking for a government regulator with a proven track record of resigning when things go wrong, know that I’m available.

Hehehe... Classic Dutch humor

atemerev2• 4 years ago

Some other governments might indeed be interested in that sort of... experience.

On my resignation as regulator of the Dutch intelligence and security services

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