Online Privacy

Privacy-wise these are turbulent times. Partly because of the pressure by Privacy First, a positive change is ongoing since last year. Privacy is higher up on the Dutch political agenda. Dutch media more often and more extensively report on privacy matters. This enhances privacy awareness among the Dutch population. It also reinforces our democratic constitutional State. Examples of positive developments are the abandonment of the electronic toll system (no ‘espionage units’ in cars), voluntary instead of compulsory ‘smart energy meters’, voluntary instead of compulsory body-scans at airports, abandonment of the storage of fingerprints under the Dutch Passport Act and the introduction of Privacy Impact Assessments for new legislation that invades the privacy of citizens. All of these developments go hand in hand with Privacy First’s motto: ‘‘your choice in a free society’’. Meanwhile, privacy restricting forces from the old days still have their say. Bad habits die hard. In recent months this became particularly obvious through developments towards a private restart of the Dutch Electronic Health Record (Elektronisch Patiëntendossier, EPD). Earlier this year the Senate had rightly binned the EPD. Apparently some policy makers and commercial parties are having none of this. With similar stubbornness others are currently trying to press through their old plans for Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) and camera surveillance along the Dutch border. These plans were already on the drawing board years ago, in a time in which privacy increasingly seemed to become a taboo. A time in which the American Bush administration was able to burden the entire European Union with biometric passports and associated databases. That time is over, but the heritage of that era still exerts its influence to this day...

In the meantime privacy is back where it once was. Privacy is the ‘‘new green.’’ In that respect advocates of the national EPD and ANPR are behaving like a bunch of old environmental polluters. They’re like rusty old factories from the 70s being teletransported to the year 2011, without them realizing it. The Dutch House of Representatives seemed to have a good sense for this when last week it unanimously accepted a motion about something that Privacy First has been emphasizing since its foundation: ‘‘Privacy by Design’’. In other words, incorporating privacy from scratch in a technical sense, at the micro level, through Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PET). In the view of Privacy First, however, the principle of ‘‘Privacy by Design’’ also applies to the meso- and macro-levels. That is to say, in an organizational and legislative sense. After all, this is the way you get to a privacy-friendly design as well as a privacy-friendly reality of a sustainable information society as a whole. Well, you can pursue your own line of thoughts here. As a source of inspiration Privacy First is pleased to provide the entire text of the parliamentary motion:

The House of Representatives,

on the advice of the deliberation,

considering that in ICT projects of the government there is too little attention for the protection of privacy and too little attention for the prevention of abuse of these systems;

considering that the privacy of citizens is not to be invaded any more than is strictly necessary and that insecure systems can put privacy in danger;

considering that systems that can easily be hacked seriously affect the reputation of government;

considering that modifying systems to safeguard privacy and enhancing security afterward, is usually more expensive and more often leads to a lower level of protection compared to when privacy and security are prerequisites from the outset of the project;  

requests the government to apply privacy by design and security by design in the development of all new ICT projects in order for new ICT systems to be more secure and better prepared against abuse and only to contain privacy-sensitive information when strictly necessary,

and proceeds to the order of the day.

On Tuesday 24 May 2011, the Dutch Senate accepted an important motion in which a number of privacy guarantees in new legislation are being confirmed and reinforced. The motion was accepted by an overwhelming majority (Dutch liberal party VVD was the only party to vote against). The previous week the motion was filed (during the Parliamentary debate about digital data processing) by senator Hans Franken (of the Christian-democratic party CDA) and even the Minister of the Interior and Kingdom Relations Piet Hein Donner (CDA) and the State Secretary for Security and Justice Fred Teeven (VVD) had remarked that ‘‘there are a lot of things in there that we can live with just fine’’. Even though formally the motion is not legally binding, part of its contents are and a great deal of political importance is accrued to it. The entire motion reads as follows: 

MOTION BY MEMBER OF THE SENATE FRANKEN AND OTHERS

Proposed 17 May 2011

The House of Representatives,

on the advice of the deliberation,

considering that the fundamental right to the protection of privacy is of great importance in our democratic constitutional State,

considering that there are tendencies to increase and reinforce possible limitations to this fundamental right in new legislation,

considering also that in the event of making new legislation, particular attention should be paid to the question whether or not limitations to the fundamental right to the protection of privacy are justified,

considering that in order to answer this question, it must subsequently be measured up against treaty obligations on the basis of the following criteria:

requests the government to take the above mentioned criteria into consideration in the deliberation and decision-making process of developing legislative proposals in which there are limitations to the fundamental right to protection of privacy, and to report about this in the explanatory memorandum of the legislative proposal concerned,

and proceeds to the order of the day.

Signed by:

Franken (CDA)

Tan (PvdA)

Strik (GroenLinks)

Holdijk (SGP)

Slagter-Roukema (SP)

Staal (D66)

This week an important policy debate took place in the Dutch Senate with the Minister of the Interior and Kingdom Relations Piet Hein Donner (of the Christian-democratic party CDA) and the State Secretary for Security and Justice Fred Teeven (of the liberal party VVD) about ‘the role of the government in digital data processing’. In the week following up to the debate Privacy First had expressed its views to the Senate. We are pleased to see that many of our views have been accepted (and even literally copied by some parties) throughout the Senate and that even government members Donner and Teeven proved not to be insensitive to them. This goes for both classic rights and principles that need to be reconfirmed as well as some new starting points:

- the right to express, prior and fully informed consent of citizens in the use of their personal data, both by the government and corporations;

- strict purpose limitation and necessity when using personal data;

- the right of citizens to access, correction and deletion of their personal data;

- privacy, freedom of choice, transparency and effectiveness as leading principles in the drafting of new legislation;

- the importance of evaluation and sunset clauses in (new) legislation;

- public cost-benefit analyses;

- public disclosure of departmental feasibility studies, pilot projects and research reports;

- introduction of privacy impact assessments (PIAs) and privacy by design;

- support of the legislative process by means of expert meetings and external advice.

However, the statement by minister Donner that destroying the fingerprints which are stored by Dutch municipalities would still take months is a great disappointment. The same goes for the fact that there is still no ‘fingerprint-free’ ID card; this too could have been implemented a long time ago. Recently Privacy First urged the minister to execute this process as quickly as possible (be it through modifying relevant legislation or through technical modifications).

A draft report of the Parliamentary debate can be found HERE. Our own audio recordings of the debate can be downloaded HERE. A great number of interesting passages from the debate (both by Members of Parliament as well as members of the government) can be found HERE (in Dutch).

In February 2011, the Dutch Senate adopted a revised, more privacy-friendly legislative proposal on the introduction of 'smart energy meters'. But does this really enhance the protection of citizens' privacy? Dr. Jaap-Henk Hoepman of the Radboud University Nijmegen puts this in doubt and advocates for opt-in instead of opt-out: 
[translated by Privacy First from the original article in Dutch]

‘‘In the legislative act, the following things have changed: smart meters are no longer compulsory and refusing a smart meter is no longer an economic crime. Monitoring energy consumption continuously is no longer allowed. This is only allowed when making an invoice, in the event of relocation or where technical management is due. When moving to a house where a smart meter is already installed, you can request to have the meter turned off ‘administratively’. The distribution network operator is obliged to accept this request. Basically an administratively disabled meter behaves like a traditional, ‘dumb’ meter. This sounds hopeful.  

However, the extent to which ‘administratively turned off’ in practice truly does mean ‘turned off’ still depends on further requirements that will be imposed on smart meters. Of course there’s a big difference between a meter that never passes on information and a meter that does so every once in a while even though the information is then being ignored by the distribution network operator. Administratively turned off could also mean that the operator promises not to make a request for information to the meter. But what if someone else does this instead? And what if operators are required by law enforcement agencies to make a request for information to the meter after all? Would the meter simply respond to it? A ‘dumb’ meter would never do such a thing...

In my view a greater objection is the opt-out character of the law. A consumer is allowed to request for the smart meter to be disabled. It would have been better to make that into an opt-in rule. When a smart meter is delivered and whenever a relocation takes place the meter is automatically turned off. Consumers can then request for the smart meter to be administratively turned on.  

Citizens are not in a position to choose not to use systems such as smart meters, an electronic toll system or the Electronic Health Record which have been introduced by the government. Therefore a great deal of responsibility to protect citizens against abuse lies with the government. The default state should therefore be a good protection of privacy. And opt-in should be the norm. Be smart: choose for opt-in!’’  

Dutch source: Jaap-Henk Hoepman's blog, 'Opt-in, da's pas slim', http://blog.xot.nl/2011/04/11/opt-in-das-pas-slim/, 11 April 2011.

With the exception of Great-Britain, of all countries in the European Union the Netherlands is worse off in terms of privacy. This emerges from a large-scale survey by the British organisation Privacy International. In the Netherlands there is endemic surveillance in no less than 10 areas, among which are the biometric passport/ID-card, the exchange of personal data, the storage of communication data, medical and financial information, telephone and internet tapping and border controls. Furthermore, with regard to privacy, in the Netherlands there are no effective constitutional safeguards, insufficient judicial supervision and a lack of political leadership. You can read the entire survey HERE.

The findings of Privacy International confirm that a radical change of direction is needed in the Netherlands in the area of privacy: from worst practice to best practice, moving from the position of a ‘privacy third world country’ towards that of a ‘privacy leading nation’. The Netherlands has the knowledge and the means to make this step. Privacy First is eager to contribute its mite in this well-needed ‘privacy U-turn’.

Below is an extensive photo impression of the day of our Passport Trial at the Palace of Justice in The Hague. These pictures were taken by press photographer Guus Schoonewille of Fastfoto and can be used freely under the following title: "Privacy First Foundation, 29 November 2010, Trial against the new Passport Act. Photo: Guus Schoonewille". Click on the picture of your choice to see a larger version which you can download using your right mouse button.