House votes for nomination Ronald Prins as expert member of the Wiv . assessment committee

With the exception of the Party for the Animals, the House of Representatives voted on Tuesday for the nomination of the former director of Fox-IT, Ronald Prins, as an expert member of the review committee of the new Wiv, or the ‘sleep law’.

A letter was voted on from the standing committee for the Interior, in which it nominated the members of the review committee, or TIB, and the members of the complaints handling department of the CTIVD last Friday. These are necessary due to the entry into force of the new Wiv 2017, which is also known as the ‘Sleep Act’ or the tapping act. In it, the committee named Ronald Prins as the first candidate for an ‘expert member’ of the review committee, which must check the use of powers by the intelligence services.

The House has approved the nomination and, in accordance with the procedure of Article 99 of the new law, a number of ministers still have to make a choice from the nominated persons. The TIB should consist of three people, two of whom come from the judiciary. In the nomination, judges Moussault and Mooy were nominated for this purpose, who work respectively at the Court of Appeal in The Hague and the Court of Appeal in Den Bosch.

In second place for expert member is professor Bart Jacobs. The standing committee writes in its letter that great importance is attached to the order of nomination and that, according to the law, three candidates should have been proposed. Furthermore, the committee writes: “Supposed to be faced with the difficult task of making a nomination here too, the BC has decided after careful consideration that concrete practical expertise must be available at the start of the TIB and that this does not affect the fact that in the long term ( also) should provide expertise of a more reflective nature.”

Civil rights organization Bits of Freedom is critical of the nomination and writes that the nomination committee ‘could have ensured more trust through a better process’. Ronald Prins announced at the end of last year that he was leaving Fox-IT and has shown himself in the past as a supporter of the new Wiv. In the past he was briefly employed by the AIVD. A referendum on the new law will be held on March 21.