wiretap stuff in Holland

[David Farber <farber () central cis upenn edu>]

dutch.wiretap   2-mar-94        17:40


> From the Dutch newspaper 'De Volkskrant' of 2 march 1994 (translated):


Directed tapping of mobile (cellular) phones


After four years police will finally soon be able to tap selectively
onto car phones.  After many years of scrimmage between the PTT
(Post+Telephone+Telegraphy) and the ministry (of justice) about who should
pay for the capability the ministry finally decided last year to
cough up the required millions, and by the end of this month a
maximum of 180 numbers can be tapped.  Tapping was already possible
with scanners, but that raised the problem that the tapper would
then collect all conversations, rather than a single selected one.


The police has already made critical comments about the limited
count of numbers that can be monitored.  On top of that the policy
has already lost some of its entusiasm because encryption equipment
has by now penetrated deeply into the criminal circuit, and by
the time an encrypted message has been decrypted .....  Rumor has
it that legislation is being prepared that would limit the sale
of such equipment.  *** That will surely mean that bona fide users
will no longer have access to it;  the criminal circuit has never
had much problem with that ***
====================
The comment between *** was almost certainly inserted by the
dedicated volunteer who typed in the text for distribution via
the internet.  But I discarded his mail header and name ....


Maarten van Swaay
Dept. of Computing & Information Sciences, Nichols Hall
Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS 66506   (913) 532-6350
Internet:  maarten () cis ksu edu
BITNET:    vanswaay@ksuvm