Investigation services tapped slightly fewer Xs4all connections in 2014

In 2014, Xs4all received a total of seventeen requests from the police and investigative services to tap an internet connection. This is a slight decrease compared to 2013. There was also a decrease in telephony.

17 claims concerned tapping of internet connections from Xs4all customers, while 25 tapping requests were received for internet telephony. The figures can be found in Xs4all’s 2014 transparency report. The number of claims for internet and telephony in 2013 were 20 and 40 respectively.

Xs4all did not have to tap e-mails to and from customers and also did not have to hand over a forensic copy of the hard disk, home directory or web server, unlike last year. In 72 cases, however, historical customer data such as name, address, telephone number and IP address were requested and 22 claims concerned traffic data. With regard to the latter, the police and investigative services do not want substantive data, but data about, for example, who is calling or e-mailing whom, for how long and when.

In all cases, this concerns claims from the National Police, the Fiscal Intelligence and Investigation Service and the Social Intelligence and Investigation Service. Xs4all may not disclose the AIVD’s claims. In addition, the services can retrieve customer data that is less than one day old from the Central Information Point for Telecommunications Research. Xs4all does not know how often that happens.