Cops looked up climate protester's personal data hundreds of times: Ombudsman critical
The National Ombudsman is highly critical of the police looking up a climate protester’s personal details hundreds of times, including data about his family, and then repeatedly refusing to handle the protester’s complaints about this. “The police seemed more focused on dismissing the complaint than on finding a solution or learning from the situation,” the ombudsman said, Trouw reports.
The police requested personal data about the climate protester a total of 350 times on 107 different days. In most cases, this also included information about his family. Such data requests from the Personal Records Database (BRP) are only permitted if necessary for carrying out police duties.
The protester, who was a spokesperson for various climate groups in recent years, discovered the hundreds of police inquiries when he requested his BRP overview. Data shared with the police included his and his parents' addresses, dates of birth, citizen registration numbers, as well as whether he has children.
He filed complaints to find out why the police looked him up so many times, but the police refused the handle the complaint. The National Ombudsman repeatedly asked the police to process the protester’s complaint, but the police still refused.
The police say that the personal data is automatically retrieved from the BRP and is therefore not the responsibility of a specific police officer. According to the law, a complaint must concern a specific action by a police officer. The police also said it would place a “disproportionate burden on police resources” to investigate why every one of those data requests was made.
The National Ombudsman is not satisfied with this explanation. The ombudsman points out that individual police officers entered the protester’s name into the police systems to retrieve his data. Therefore, the complaint does concern specific actions by officers. And the police did not explain why processing the complaint would place a disproportionate burden on the police capacity.
According to the National Ombudsman, the current design of the police systems may not meet the legal requirements. The ombudsman will bring this to the attention of the Dutch Data Protection Authority.
Previous research by Trouw, Investico, and De Groene Amsterdammer revealed that the police are requesting protesters’ personal data on a large scale, even before they have been convicted of anything. The police are required to keep track of why this data is requested, but this oversight doesn’t exist, the investigative journalists discovered.
Experts are very critical of this practice, saying that the police mining protesters’ data can make protesters feel like they’re being followed and that can compromise their right to demonstrate.
The police complaint procedure is also intended to maintain public trust. The involved protester told Trouw that his experience with the police had the opposite effect.
The police told the newspaper that they regret that the protester has lost trust in the police, and they will reflect internally on the National Ombudsman’s report.
