EncroChat messages reveal at least ten cases of ‘bent coppers’ leaking info

DutchNews, September 17, 2020 

The investigation into millions of messages between criminals via encrypted service provider EncroChat has also yielded proof of police corruption and a special team has been tasked with the prosecution of the officers involved, police havesaid. 

Officials have not yet said how many police officers are involved and at what level, but at least two have been arrested following the EncroChat operation. 

Sources cited by the Telegraaf  say 10 serious cases involving the leak of information to criminals are currently being investigated. The search also yielded information about a network of lawyers, real estate brokers and notaries whose services helped criminals launder money, they said. 

Police did confirm information had been leaked to criminals but would not say more for operational reasons.  The sheer volume of messages – over 20 million – that have to be followed up must be dealt with meticulously to avoid false claims of corruption, police said. 

However, the first signs are serious enough to warrant a special team, police chief Henk van Essen said. ‘We have started a number of prosecutions and more will follow. The information on drug deals and money laundering as well as the corruption in the force have been given the highest priority.’ 

Van Essen said that there have always been ‘bent coppers’ but the fact that their number is increasing is worrying. 

‘A policeman can become corrupt through blackmail but can also simply be bought,’ Van Essen said. ‘Information is a goldmine for criminals. It can be anything from information on current investigations and people to addresses and cars. They are always on the lookout for people with access to this type of information, not only in the force but in companies as well.’ 

Software to flag up suspicious search behaviour by officers will be introduced next year, Van Essen said. ‘But we don’t want to check each and every email or app. We want a system built on trust but we must be realistic. There is corruption and we want to stamp it out. And an operation like EncroChat shows that no one is beyond the reach of the law.’

Realted Article

Dutch detectives unravel 3.6 million encrypted emailssent by criminals

Wrongful arrest based on face recognition system, complaint says

Yahoo – AFP, Rob Lever, June 24, 2020

Amid rising concerns over facial recognition technology used by law enforcement,
a black man in Detroit alleges he was wrongfully arrested on the basis of a flawed
algorithm (AFP Photo/SAUL LOEB)

Washington (AFP) - A flawed facial recognition algorithm led to the wrongful arrest of an African-American man in Detroit, according to a complaint filed Wednesday in a case highlighting concerns over the technology which critics say reinforces racial bias.

The American Civil Liberties Union, representing Robert Williams, said Wednesday it was the first known case of an unlawful arrest based on face recognition technology, which according to critics is often inaccurate in distinguishing faces of black people.

"Though Robert Williams may be the first known case, he is likely not the first person who was wrongfully arrested and interrogated based off a bogus face recognition hit," the ACLU said on Twitter.

"There are likely many people who just don't know that it was flawed technology that made them a target."

Williams wrote in the Washington Post that he was arrested in January outside his home and held for 30 hours, later learning he was wrongly identified based on surveillance footage from a robbery at a watch store.

"I never thought I'd have to explain to my daughters why daddy got arrested," Williams wrote. "How does one explain to two little girls that a computer got it wrong, but the police listened to it anyway?"

The news comes amid rising tensions over police misconduct following the deaths of several African Americans at the hands of law enforcement, and concerns that some technologies such as facial recognition may exacerbate discrimination.

Various studies show facial recognition systems used in the United States may be wildly inaccurate in attempting to identify blacks.

Joy Buolamwini, founder of the Algorithmic Justice League, an activist group, said the Williams case highlights how artificial intelligence technology can be abused to reinforce discrimination.

"This example cannot be reduced to a case of one bad algorithm," she said. "Instead what we are seeing is just a glimpse of how systemic racism can be encoded and reflected in AI systems."

Amid the recent unrest, some firms including IBM, Amazon and Microsoft said they would not be selling facial recognition technology to police departments until regulations are passed to ensure against misuse. But many other systems are widely used.

Seeking apology

In a formal complaint to the police department, ACLU attorney Phil Mayor asked for a dismissal of the charges, an expungement of the arrest record, and a public apology to Williams.

The lawyer said Williams has not waived his right to pursue further action in court.

The ACLU also said the police should stop using facial recognition technology as an investigatory tool, and that any photos of Williams should be removed from the agency's database.

Williams wrote of the harrowing experience of being handcuffed in front of his family and spending the night "on the floor of a filthy, overcrowded cell."

"As any other person would be, I was angry that this was happening to me," he said. "As any other black man would be, I had to consider what could happen if I asked too many questions or displayed my anger openly -- even though I knew I had done nothing wrong."

In a related move Wednesday, Boston's city council voted to ban the use of face recognition technology by law enforcement.

"This is a crucial victory for our privacy rights and for people like Robert Williams, who have been arrested for crimes they didn't commit because of a technology law enforcement shouldn't be using," said Carol Rose, executive director of the ACLU of Massachusetts.

Probe after 117,000 job seekers’ CVs are skimmed from UWV website

DutchNews, May 6, 2019

An investigation has been ordered after 100,000 CVs have been illegally downloaded from the website of the employees’ insurance agency UWV. 

Social affairs minister Wouter Koolmees said the 117,000 resumes had been accessed over a period of two weeks from the website werk.nl using the account of a UWV staff member. The employee in question claimed to have been unaware of the activity. 

The national cybersecurity centre NCSC and the privacy watchdog Autoriteit Persoonsgevevens have been informed and the incident has been reported to the police. All those involved have been contacted by the UWV to warn them to watch out for phishing scams and other online fraud. 

IT experts said the episode highlighted weak security at the UWV, which uses the werk.nl website to share the CVs of jobseekers with employers. Jobseekers have the option of uploading ‘open’ CVs, which are freely available, or ‘closed’, meaning they are available on request.

‘Every company that has an account with werk.nl can see job seekers’ details,’ René Veldwijk told Trouw. ‘All that’s happened now is that somebody spent two weeks trawling al those details with a computer programme. It could be criminals, but it could also be a company that wants to use the data to connect job seekers with employees.’ 

He added: ‘The fact that it took two weeks for the UWV to notice that so many CVs were being downloaded shows they’re not looking out for it properly. It was all done through one account. If the perpetrators had been a bit more professional in their approach and used several accounts, the UWV probably still wouldn’t have noticed anything.’

Police bodycam experiments a success, 2,000 mini cameras on order

DutchNews, April 24, 2019

Photo: Politie.nl

The use of bodycams has led to less aggression against the police and more officers are to be equipped with the mini cameras while patrolling the streets, Dutch police said on Wednesday. 

Experiments using the cameras at 30 different locations have shown their use to be ‘valuable’ in reducing aggression and in collecting evidence, police said. Some 2,000 bodycams will now be ordered for beat officers, the statement said. 

Some 700 police officers in Amsterdam were equipped with the cameras during the experiment and bodycam patrol teams in particular were less likely to face threats and intimidation than those without, the researchers said. 

‘Looking at serious threats, for instance, the percentage of victims among officers in the treatment group dropped from 74% to 57%,’ the report said. 

However, there was no effect on behaviour in situations using people who had been drinking or using drugs. 

The cameras were used by traffic police, security details, dog teams and at major events.

‘In society at large, we are used to filming everything we experience and sharing the images with others,’ said spokesman Theo van der Plas. ‘The use of sensors and image technology is becoming increasingly important in police work.’

What’sApp? Dutch to ban cyclists from holding their mobile phones

DutchNews, September 25, 2018 

Photo: Depositphotos.com

The Netherlands is to ban all but the hands-free use of mobile phones on bikes from next year, the AD said on Tuesday. 

Transport minister Cora van Nieuwenhuizen published draft legislation on Tuesday which will make it an offence ‘to hold a mobile electronic devices while driving all vehicles [so including bikes],’ the paper quoted the minister as saying. 

The paper says the words ‘mobile electronic device’ rather than mobile phone have been deliberately chosen to take developments in the future into account. 

Drivers are already banned from using their mobile phones without a hands-free connection in cars and lorries, with a maximum fine of €230. 

‘This decision sets a clear and consistent standard,’ the minister said. ‘If you are in charge of a vehicle in traffic, no matter what sort of mode of transport, you should not be holding mobile electronic equipment,’ Van Nieuwenhuizen said. 

The aim is to introduce the new legislation, which was first mooted in December, on July 1, 2019. 

One in three 12 to 21-year-olds cycle and use their phones at the same time and phones are said to have played a role in 20% of bike accidents involving the under-25s, the transport ministry said last year.

Norwegian police find canoe belonging to missing Dutch cyber security expert

DutchNews, September 13, 2018

Police in Norway say they have found a collapsible canoe which belongs to missing Dutch cyber security expert Arjen Kamphuis. 

The canoe was found a day after several other items owned by Kamphuis turned up on the coast, east of Bodo where he was staying when he disappeared. He is known to have bought a canoe to use in the Norwegian fjords. 

Norwegian television station TV2 also claims that a fisherman found Kamphuis’ identity papers close to where the canoe was found. Police have declined to comment on the other findings. 

Kamphuis was last seen in Bodo on August 20 and should have returned to the Netherlands on August 22. On September 6 a witness told police he had spotted the missing man in Denmark. 

Police also say that Kamphuis’ mobile telephone had been turned on on August 30 in the vicinity of Vikeså, about 50k from Stavanger in Norway. The device remained active for 20 minutes after which a German sim card was put in it. 

The hunt for Kamphuis, 47, has been conducted by a police team known as Kripos, who specialise in organised crime and disappearances, Norwegian police said in a press release. According to Dutch media he is an expert in cyber security who advises governments, journalists and human rights experts. He is also an associate of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.

US Supreme Court says warrant needed to get cell phone location data

Yahoo – AFP, Chris Lefkow, June 22, 2018

The US Supreme Court ruled that police need a warrant before obtaining cell phone tower
location data about a suspect from telecom companies (AFP Photo/JUSTIN SULLIVAN)

Washington (AFP) - In a landmark digital privacy case, the US Supreme Court ruled Friday that police need a warrant before obtaining cell phone location data about a suspect from telecom companies.

In a 5-4 decision, the nation's highest court said such data is protected under the Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution, which guards against unreasonable search and seizure.

The case revolved about police acquisition of mobile phone location information about a robbery suspect, Timothy Carpenter, without a warrant.

Data from Carpenter's cell phone -- 12,898 location points over a period of 127 days -- was used to show the device was in the vicinity when several robberies took place, and the suspect was convicted.

Carpenter's attorneys and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) argued that the seizure of his cell phone location data records was unconstitutional.

The Supreme Court reversed a lower court's ruling which said police did not need a warrant to obtain such data.

Chief Justice John Roberts sided with the four liberal justices on the court in the decision.

"We decline to grant the state unrestricted access to a wireless carrier's data base of physical location information," the court said in its opinion.

"The government's position fails to contend with the seismic shifts in digital technology that made possible the tracking of not only Carpenter's location but also everyone else's, not for a short period but for years and years," it said.

"Prior to the digital age, law enforcement might have pursued a suspect for a brief stretch," the court said.

"(But) when the government tracks the location of a cell phone it achieves near perfect surveillance, as if it had attached an ankle monitor to the phone's user," it said.

"Whoever the suspect turns out to be, he has effectively been tailed every moment of every day," it said. "Only the few without cell phones could escape this tireless and absolute surveillance."

'Groundbreaking victory'

Nathan Freed Wessler, an attorney with the ACLU who argued the case before the court in November, called the ruling a "groundbreaking victory for Americans' privacy rights in the digital age."

"Today's decision rightly recognizes the need to protect the highly sensitive location data from our cell phones," Wessler said.

"But it also provides a path forward for safeguarding other sensitive digital information in future cases -- from our emails, smart home appliances, and technology that is yet to be invented."

Democratic Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon described the ruling as a "BIG win for privacy."

"I've argued for years that the sheer volume of information about every single American that's collected by our phones and computers requires a fundamental rethinking of the idea that giving your information to a company means the government can get it too," Wyden said.

In its opinion, the court left open the possibility of warrantless collection of data in what it described as "urgent" situations such as "bomb threats, active shootings and child abductions."

Almost 2,000 people fell for the Microsoft helpdesk con last year

DutchNews, January 17, 2018

Photo: Depositphotos.com

Last year almost 2,000 people, mainly over-50s, were conned out of money by criminals claiming to work for the Microsoft helpdesk, police said in a new report. 

In total, they were conned out of €7m, police say, with two victims losing €38,000 and €98,000 respectively. In 2016, there were 1,100 cases of Microsoft helpdesk crime. 

The victims are phoned by someone, often with a heavy accent, claiming to work for Microsoft and alerting them to a problem with their computer. This could be a virus, an expired licence or an update. 

The victim is then asked to download a programme which allows the con artist to take over the computer to fix the programme. The victim is then asked to pay using untraceable methods. In some cases the conmen and women have been able to access their victims’ bank accounts, police said. 

Police say people should hang up immediately when phoned by someone claiming to be from Microsoft. The company itself says it never contacts people who have not requested help.

Rotterdam launches app to tackle sexual harassment in public

DutchNews, December 18, 2017

Photo: Ifeelstock via Depositphotos.com

Rotterdam has launched an app allowing victims of sexual harassment to report incidents anonymously. 

The app is designed for incidents that do not require an emergency response, but includes an option to dial 112 if the situation escalates. 

Rotterdam has included anti-harassment clauses in its latest APV regulations, which will apply from January 1. After April 1 wardens will be able to issue fines of up to €4,100 to anyone caught behaving in an intimidating manner in public. 

‘Eighty-four per cent of women experience sexual harassment,’ said Joost Eerdmans, Rotterdam’s alderman responsible for security. ‘That doesn’t mean staring or cat-calling, but serious intimidation that makes women feel so uncomfortable that they avoid certain locations.’ 

Undercover agents will patrol areas where harassment is frequently reported to try to catch abusers in the act, Eerdmans told NOS. ‘All people have to do is give their location and a comment if they wish. That will be communicated to our enforcement team and if there are more incidents in the same place, we will take action.’

Three strikes and you’re out: justice ministry gets tough on webshops

DutchNews, October 30, 2017

The Dutch justice ministry is planning to give more powers to banks and payment systems to block webshops which rip off customers, the AD said on Monday. 

Once three police complaints have been made about an online retailer, banks and payment processing companies will be alerted so they can halt payments to the webshop, the newspaper said. 

The new approach will allow the payment processors to block suspect webshop payments without a formal police investigation. So far, 12 payment processors, including Ideal, have signed up for the alerts. 

Some 50% of online purchases in the Netherlands are made by Ideal and some 45,000 webshops offer its services as a payment option. 

Webshopping lobby group Thuiswinkel.org said it welcomed the news. ‘We have called for a plan to tackle suspect webshops for some time,’ spokesman Wijnand Jongen told the paper. 

‘Until now, no-one would make the link if police reports were made in Limburg, Groningen and Zeeland.’ However, officials must be sure that webshops are not being targeted unfairly or are victims of a hate campaign, he said. 

Dutch online auction site Marktplaats.nl said at the weekend it is launching a new service for customers who are worried that they are being ripped off. For 2% of the purchase price, Marktplaats will keep payments made via Ideal until customers confirm that the delivery has been made. 

Road safety body urges minister to up fines for using smartphone while driving

DutchNews, August 2, 2017

Is this as dangerous as drunk driving? Photo: Depositphotos.com 

Road safety group Veilig Verkeer Nederland has written to acting justice minister Stef Blok urging him to increase the punishment for using a smartphone while driving. 

The minister said at the end of last month he is working on new legislation to increase the penalties for people involved in serious traffic offences which includes changes to the official definition of ‘reckless behaviour’. 

Although drunk driving and speeding can be considered reckless behaviour, higher courts rarely accept them as such when handing out punishments. 

VVN said on Wednesday that it considers drunk driving, driving at very high speeds and using smartphones to be a form of reckless driving. Fines for drunk driving currently begin at €300 while using a smartphone will lead to a fine of €230. 

Research by national statistics office CBS earlier this year showed that one in 10 motorists sends smartphone messages while driving without having a hands-free set. 

Around 600 fatal or serious incidents a year in the Netherlands are linked to people making calls or using social media behind the wheel. 

The VVN is currently working with phone firm KPN on developing a smartphone app which will stop phones being used by cyclists. 

Dutch police launch a data base for stolen emails

DutchNews, July 28, 2017

Dutch police have set up a data base to allow people to check if their email address has been hacked using information gleaned by cybercrime investigators. 

The data base contains 60,000 email addresses which have turned up in in the hands of hackers and botnets during police investigations. People who think their email may have been hacked simply send their email address to the police who will notify them and offer help if it has been taken over. 

The police stress that the data base is far from complete and recommend people who are worried to check other sites such as haveibeenpwnd.com as well. 

Dutch police take control of dark web market, monitor thousands of deals

DutchNews, July 20, 2017

Dutch police said on Thursday they have shut down and dismantled one of the biggest ‘illegal market places on the internet today’ after keeping it running for a month and recording thousands of transactions. 

Hansa Market was the most popular dark market on the ‘anonymous’ part of the internet, or dark net, police said in a statement. 

The international investigation was carried out together with Europol, the FBI and the authorities in Germany and Lithuania. This week a Dutch seller was arrested in Krimpen aan den Ijssel and his accounts, with some €2m in bitcoins were seized. 

Police say the winding up of Hansa Market is the final step in an undercover operation which began when Dutch police seized control of the illegal market place on June 20 after two of the site’s administrator were arrested in Germany. 

The website was hosted on servers in Lithuania. Once the administrators were arrested, the servers and infrastructure were sequestered and transferred to Dutch servers, allowing the police and public prosecution department to monitor all trades. 

Drugs

Most of the trades were involved drugs, police said. On average, 1,000 orders per day were placed in response to almost 40,000 advertisement sand more than 50,000 transactions have been monitored since the authorities took control of the website. 

Some 10,000 foreign addresses of Hansa Market buyers were passed on to Europol and more than 500 Dutch delivery addresses were reported to couriers and postal services so they could halt deliveries, police said. 

Dark net markets enable large-scale trading in chiefly illegal goods, such as drugs, weapons, child pornography, and ransom software. Well-known examples include Silk Road (taken down by the FBI in 2013) and Alpha Bay (reportedly shut down earlier this month). 

The police said that the number of transactions processed through Hansa Market rose from 1,000 to 8,000 after Alpha Bay was dismantled. No weapons or child pornography were sold on Hansa Market.

The shutdown of two dark web marketplaces announced by US Deputy Attorney 

General Rod Rosenstein (C), Attorney General Jeff Sessions (R) and other law 

enforcement officials came three weeks after AlphaBay stopped functioning 

with no explanation (AFP Photo/CHIP SOMODEVILLA)

Related Articles:

US, European police say 'dark web' markets shut down

Details emerge of the German administrators of Hansa Market on the darknet - New

Police step up social media presence following successful pilot in Twente

DutchNews, July 13, 2017

Photo: Depositphotos.com

Dutch police are stepping up their efforts to monitor social media use following the success of a pilot scheme in Twente. 

The police force wants all divisions to have a strategy in place for investigating social media within three years, theTelegraaf reports. 

In Twente 20 officers have been delegated to operate the area’s social media channels on a rota basis. The trial scheme has already had tangible results, such as successfully intervening on Instagram last week to stop a teenage girl taking her own life. 

‘We want to make contact with society. That’s what people expect of us,’ Ron de Milde, who is in charge of the new media strategy, told the Telegraaf.

Nearly 2,000 people fall for ‘Microsoft helpdesk’ scam in 18 months, police say

DutchNews, June 22, 2017

Intelligence agencies are bracing themselves for Brexit hacks. 

Last year 1,100 people filed a police report after being conned out of money by phone callers claiming to work for Microsoft, and 800 have done so already this year, broadcaster NOS said on Thursday. 

Victims are phoned by an English-speaking man or woman, often with a heavy accent, who claim to work for the software giant’s help desk. They then proceed to explain that the victim’s computer has problems. 

In some cases victims are asked to install software which allows the conman or woman to take over their computer. In others they are asked for bank details so that they can empty bank accounts. 

Victims have lost hundreds of thousands of euros to the scammers, police say, and one man lost some €70,000. 

Most victims are over the age of 50. ‘This could be because the scammers use fixed phone lines and older people are more likely than youngsters to have them,’ spokesman Rob van Bree told the broadcaster. 

The police say they think several groups are involved in the different versions of the scam. 

Teenagers Hack Into Tiket.com, Steal Over $300,000 Worth of Airline Tickets

Jakarta Globe, Iman Rahman Cahyadi and Farouk Arnaz, April 05, 2017

A group of teenagers and one 27-year-old hacked into Tiket.com — one of the
 largest online travel agents in Indonesia — and siphoned Rp 4.1 billion ($308,000)
 worth of airline tickets from the website, the National Police said in Jakarta on
Tuesday (04/04). (BeritaSatu Photo).

Jakarta. A group of teenagers and one 27-year-old hacked into Tiket.com — one of the largest online travel agents in Indonesia — and siphoned Rp 4.1 billion ($308,000) worth of airline tickets from the website, the National Police said in Jakarta on Tuesday (04/04).

The alleged perpetrators were identified only by their initials. SH, who is 19-years-old and identified by the police as the mastermind of the crime, admitted that he made around Rp 600 million in proceeds from the act.

His partner, MKU, also 19-years-old, admitted to making Rp 600 million. Two other alleged perpetrators have also been identified: AI, 19 and NTM, 27.

SH admitted to using the loot to buy expensive motorcycles.

"I bought a Ducati motorcycle [...]. None of the money was used for investment [purposes]," SH said at the National Police headquarters on Tuesday.

The police said they may face up to 12 years in prison under Indonesia's Law on Electronic Information and Transactions (ITE) revised in 2013.

Global Network, the company behind Tiket.com, reported the case to the police in November when it suspected someone hacked into Tiket.com and stole tickets allotted for the budget airline Citilink Indonesia.

Airlines usually set aside a ticket quota for each travel agent, and are usually paid for the tickets in advance. In this case, the teenagers hacked into the website and accessed Citilink's ticket pool.

"The perpetrators had illegal access to Citilink Indonesia's server, using an account owned by Global Network from Oct. 11 to 27, 2016," Brig. Gen. Fadil Imran, the director of cyber crime at National Police's Criminal Investigation Unit (Bareskrim) said on Tuesday.

The perpetrators then sold the stolen tickets on Facebook, Fadil added.

MKU, AI and NTM were arrested on March, 28 in Balikpapan, East Kalimantan. The police nabbed SH in Ciputat, Banten two days later.

The case shed light on security issues on Indonesia's booming online services industry.

"He [SH] is quite sophisticated and the website was also not that hard to hack," Adj. Comr. Idam Wasiadi of the cyber crime unit at Bareskrim said last week.

Idam said SH, who only finished middle school, taught himself using materials available online to hack into various websites.

He honed his skill by hacking into 4,237 foreign and local websites and defacing their homepage. Among his victims are the National Police's website and app-based ride-hailing service Go-Jek, Idam added.

Citilink Indonesia, a low-cost subsidiary of Garuda Indonesia, said that the integrity of its ticket security and customer's information was not compromised by the hackers and the breach was only limited to the online agent, Tiket.com, Ageng W. Leksono, corporate communication manager of Citilink told news outlet detik.com.

Dutch detectives unravel 3.6 million encrypted emails sent by criminals

DutchNews, March 9, 2017

Photo: Depositphotos.com

Dutch detectives have gained access to 3.6 million encrypted emails sent by criminal gangs which will be used in dozens of prosecutions, the public prosecution department said on Thursday. 

The information in the mails will provide evidence for criminal cases, including murder, armed robbery, drugs, money laundering and other forms of organised crime, the department said in a statement. 

The messages were found on servers in Canada belonging to a Dutch company called Ennetcom. Last year, the public prosecution department won the right to have the Ennetcom servers copied and the seven terabytes of information sent to the Netherlands for investigation. 

Ennetcom was the ‘biggest provider of encrypted communications in the Netherlands’, the department said. The company also has sales points in South America and other countries in western Europe. 

The owner of Ennetcom was arrested last April when the network was shut down as part of the investigation. He has since been released from jail but is facing prosecution.

Dutch police start using facial recognition techniques, database has 800,000 photos

DutchNews, December 16, 2016

Dutch police have started using facial recognition technology to identify suspects, broadcaster NOS said on Friday. 

The technology will be used to identify people whose photograph is included in the police database of 800,000 faces, the broadcaster said. 

The database is made up of photographs of people who have been jailed for at least a year or who are suspected of committing a crime carrying a sentence of at least a year. 

The photos of people who are innocent are supposed to be removed from the system but it is unclear how quickly that happens, NOS said. 

The system will be used to compare photographs of suspects taken by security cameras and bodycams with the database. 

Refugees

A second database, containing the photographs of refugees, people scheduled for deportation and people who have requested visas can only be accessed with the permission of the public prosecution department, NOS said.

‘This means it includes photographs of innocent people,’ said Daphne van der Kroft of internet privacy group Bits of Freedom. 

Information law professor Nico van Eijk told the broadcaster he is concerned about ‘feature creep’ – measures introduced for one purpose which are then used for another.

For example, cameras to recognise car number plates were introduced in an effort to spot suspects. But now talks are underway to keep the number plate information for four weeks, he said. 

Legal eagles recruited to take down drones after successful police trial

DutchNews, September 12, 2016

Photo: politie.nl 

The Netherlands has become the first country to recruit police eagles to take out drones in mid-flight following a successful trial. 

Police began training the birds of prey in January, despite concerns from some animal welfare experts that the exercise could damage their claws. A spokesman told NRC there had been no injuries so far but protective gear could be introduced.

‘A common or garden drone has no impact on the claws of a bird of prey, but very large drones with powerful motors could cause lacerations,’ he said. ‘We are currently looking at protective measures such as a sort of clawed shoe for the birds’ feet.’ 

‘A lot of drones have perished [during the exercise],’ he added. 

The move is in response to concerns about the growing risk of drones being flown in unauthorised airspace, such as close to an airport, or interfering with other aircraft such as rescue helicopters. 

The birds which were trained in the trial are owned by a private company, but police will now recruit their own flying squad for active service.

‘Police have purchased four month-old American sea eagle chicks. From next summer they will go out hunting drones,’ the spokesman said.

Related Article:

Eagles v drones: Dutch police to take on rogue aircraft with flying squad

#NEWSGRAPHIC Eagle vs drone: Dutch police reveal new elite flying squad @AFP https://t.co/g9ZaYt2xdm pic.twitter.com/b2l3vDnyhV

— AFP news agency (@AFP) September 13, 2016