The National Coordinator for Counterterrorism and Security (NCTV) in the Netherlands has collected and disseminated privacy-sensitive information about civilians for many years, contrary to the law. Employees with fake social media accounts are also secretly following hundreds of political campaign leaders, religious leaders, and left and right activists. This has emerged from research by Dutch news organization NRC, based on conversations with dozens of stakeholders and internal documents.
The NCTV was founded in 2004 to coordinate the exchange of information between government agencies and also analyzes national security including various forms of activism and religious fundamentalism. But nowhere is it clear how far the coordinator may go in collecting information about persons and organizations.
NRC found that some people, such as a preacher from Almere, have been the subject of a ‘weekly report’ from the NCTV several times over a short period of time. Weekly messages are sent to municipalities, police, intelligence services in the Netherlands, as well as to foreign security services.
Read the full story at NRC (in Dutch)
