Dutch Government: Number of Internet Taps Has Quintupled In One Year 49
vikingpower writes "A Dutch newspaper has a digital version of the letter Mr. Opstelten, Secretary of Justice and Security, sent to Dutch Parliament (PDF in Dutch), in which he quietly admits to 56,825 phone taps (a 3% rise in one year) and to 16,676 internet taps in 2012, a 400% rise, or a fivefold increase, in one year. An older report already exposed the Netherlands as one of the biggest wiretappers in the western world. Slate also knew, back in 2006, that Europeans actually love wiretapping and internet tapping. In the Netherlands, a country with a population of only 16 million, the practice has risen to the level of a staggering 1 in 1,000 phones being tapped."
1 in 1000? (Score:4, Insightful)
I wonder if they took the 22,000 wire tap orders and an estimated 22 million phones and came up with that figure. That may not be accurate. Wire tap orders expire. There could be 12 wire tap orders to keep a 12 month watch on one phone. Multiple agencies may want information from the same phone; therefore multiple wire tap orders.