BNR.co.uk, 1 May 2015: 'Privacy protection in good hands with magistrate judge'

“By putting the final decision on the requisitioning of data data data in the hands of the examining magistrate, you improve the balancing act between privacy versus fighting crime and terror. This is what PvdA MP Astrid Oosenbrug tells BNR. "As a result, you no longer make every Dutch citizen a suspect."

According to public prosecutor Jeroen van Berkel and the Amsterdam criminal investigation department, the abolition of the obligation to store telephone and internet data is hampering the liquidation investigation. So say prosecutor Jeroen van Berkel and the Amsterdam criminal investigation department in de Volkskrant. The minister is now working on a law in which the supervisory judge must first give permission for data to be requested from providers.

Oosenburg acknowledges the importance of security, but according to her, privacy in particular has been insufficiently safeguarded so far. "Serious criminals should not be allowed to walk around with impunity, but in addition you have to ensure that privacy is better safeguarded. In itself, there is nothing wrong with old-fashioned manual work, so there is enough staff available to carry out investigations."

Oosenbrug does not foresee that data will ever be able to solve everything. "It will never be the decisive evidence. You need data in addition to detection, and you can use that combination, but you cannot make it all depend on a huge dragnet of data. By letting the magistrate judge decide on proportionality and enforceability, it does have to be a serious crime with a certain time limit, I think eight years."

According to Privacy First director Vincent Böhre, the interests of the public prosecutor outweigh the privacy of millions of Dutch citizens altogether. "Of course, in certain cases it will become slightly more difficult to solve a crime, but to store all telecommunications data of the entire population for this purpose, we think is ten bridges too far."

Source: http://www.bnr.nl/nieuws/politiek/913058-1505/proportionaliteit-in-goede-handen-bij-rechter-commissaris, 1 May 2015.