Dutch security services ordered to delete five valuable datasets

Dutch intelligence services AIVD and MIVD must destroy five large datasets they consider valuable for national security because they broke the rules in storing them. The complaints handling department of regulator CTIVD ordered the datasets destroyed in a ruling published on Wednesday following a complaint by civil rights organization Bits of Freedom, NRC reports.

The CTIVD strongly advised the intelligence services to destroy the datasets in September 2020, saying that the services had stored the data about likely millions of citizens for too long. But the AIVD and MIVD resisted vehemently. They argued that the datasets were valuable to their investigations and important for national security and should therefore be kept indefinitely.

Kajsa Ollongren, then Minister of Home Affairs and responsible for the AIVD, ignored the CTIVD advice. "We also consider the destruction of these sets irresponsible in view of their operational importance," Ollongren said in a letter to parliament in September 2020. She made a new arrangement in which the AIVD and MIVD could keep the data as long as they deemed necessary, provided they reassessed whether the datasets were still relevant each year.

But with the involved five datasets, the intelligence services broke the rules for keeping them even with the new arrangement, Addie Stehouwer of the CTIVD's complaints handling department said to NRC. The MIVD only reassessed the relevance of the data sets after Bits of Freedom submitted a complaint last year. And the AIVD and MIVD failed to limit the number of employees who could access the datasets as they should have.

Stehouwer also does not see the datasets’ “operational importance.” According to her, the intelligence services could not justify why they had to keep the datasets for so long. Because the complaints handling department has enforcement powers, the AIVD and MIVD now have to destroy the datasets within two weeks.

According to Bits of Freedom, the CTIVD ruling shows that the regulations fail to limit the intelligence services. “They collect more data than they can handle and keep the data longer than allowed.” The ruling also shows that supervision of the AIVD and MIVD is not functioning properly, the civil rights organization said. “It makes good and effective supervision dependent on organizations like ours. That has to change.”

The Ministry of Home Affairs and Kingdom Relations will likely respond in a letter to parliament on Wednesday.