Tuesday 21 January 2003

Dutch tapping room not kosher

According to anonymous sources within the Dutch intelligence community, all tapping equipment of the Dutch intelligence services and half the tapping equipment of the national police force, is insecure and is leaking information to Israel. How difficult is it to make a back-door in the Dutch Transport of Intercepted IP Traffic system?

The discussion focusses on the tapping installations for telephony and internet delivered to the government in the last few years by the Israeli company Verint.

This company was called Comverse-Infosys until half a year ago, but was quickly renamed when the FBI started several investigations against it and arrested some of its employees in the US on suspicion of espionage. (See pulled FoxNews stories, Politech, Cryptome or Google).

People within the Dutch government got worried too. Especially because they had been warned as early as 1998 about the possible back-doors in the tapping equipment. The ex-ministers of interior ("Binnenlandse Zaken"), Peper and de Vries, could not comment. The minister of Justice at the time, Korthals Altes, was asked to report to parliament in december 2001, where he stated that the security measures meet the required level and that an investigation would be started if this, after all, was not the case. No investigation followed.

Full story...