AIVD finds supervisor too strict

The AIVD and MIVD are not happy with the working method of the TIB review committee. This must test the powers of the intelligence services against the law, but would often ask too much and be too strict.

That is what anonymous sources within the services say to de Volkskrant. The AIVD denounces the way in which the TIB, the Assessment Committee Deployment of Powers, looks at the service’s wiretapping requests. The TIB would ask too detailed questions when assessing applications. The TIB would also ask too much about technical details about tap requests. TIB chairman Mariëtte Moussault tells de Volkskrant that there are indeed ‘discussion points’ between the regulator and the services. These mainly concern large bulk hacks, in which the AIVD and MIVD can request or eavesdrop on data from a large group of users on a large scale. According to the AIVD, such bulk hacks are sometimes necessary, but Moussault says that the TIB then ‘wants to know what happens with that information’.

The services also find it bad that the TIB carries out assessments after the minister has given permission. According to Moussault, this is logical, because the TIB has more time to study a request than the minister. In addition, the intelligence services say that the TIB sometimes comes too close to the services. This applies, for example, to the way in which the AIVD conducts data analyzes by looking for connections in data sets. According to Moussault, the services think that the TIB is ‘fishing for information’ and ‘curious about the data files’.

The TIB was created together with the new Intelligence and Security Services Act. The review committee was set up to supervise the AIVD and MIVD. The TIB must examine requests from the services for proportionality. Earlier this year, about five percent of the requests turned out to be illegal. This included a large bulk tap at a company. The intelligence services wanted to penetrate there to get the data of millions of people.