The supervisors of intelligence services AIVD and MIVD are vehemently opposed to the announced amendment of the intelligence law. The role of the supervisors will be limited in this amendment.Last Friday, the cabinet announced to amend the Intelligence and Security Services Act (Wiv). This in response to a critical report by an evaluation committee.
However, Chairman Mariëtte Moussault of the Toetsingscommissie Inzet Bevoegdheden (TIB) and Chairman Nico van Eijk of the Commissie van Toezicht op de Inlichtingen- en Veiligheidsdiensten (CTIVD) fear an "erosion" of their powers. CTIVD and TIB warn that the changes will cause them to lose their monitoring function, to the detriment of privacy.
Moussault has indicated she will resign her position if these changes go through. "The moment I can't do a normal test of proportionality I become a stamping machine. I'm not going to do that," she commented to NRC last weekend. CTIVD chairman Van Eijk points out that the new measures will put the Netherlands in the European rearguard. "It is up to the legislature to determine whether the Netherlands belongs at the top or only meets the minimum European standards."
In collecting bulk data, the TIB constantly weighs which data is selected, discarded or shared with other countries. In 2020, the CTIVD concluded that the data of millions of people was kept for too long. That violated the security law.
