We now have Thorne Sitzmer, who is a policy advisor for Bits of Freedom, which you could say is kind of the Dutch equivalent of the Electronic Frontier Foundation or short EFF. Some of you may know him because a while ago he tracked his own metadata for a week and sent him over to the police, which was posted on netspolitik.org, which will probably be known by most German visitors, and apparently translated in lots and lots of languages. So, give him a warm round of applause and let's see what he has to say. Thank you very much for the introduction. Dear all, thank you so much for attending this talk. I'm very happy to be here and happy to talk to you about the relationship between technology and legislation. But before I can do that, I think it's pretty important that we get to know each other a little bit more, right? You're the audience. Hi, audience. I'm Thorne Sitzmer. This is me. And for those of you who don't know what Bits of Freedom is, I work there as a policy analyst, let me elaborate just a little bit more for you about Bits of Freedom so you understand where I'm coming from. Bits of Freedom is a Dutch Institute of the Rights Organization based in the Netherlands. We are focusing on privacy and freedom of communications. And each day we try to improve the rights of the citizens, the digital rights of the citizens, which is not always easy to promote that rights. So we often end up not defending or not promoting but defending these rights. And we feel that it is worth fighting because as a society we cannot afford to lose these rights. And in order to defend the rights of the society, you have to defend the rights of the citizen. And sometimes certain measures imposed by the government can impose a threat to these rights, sometimes on a very large scale, for example when mass surveillance occurs, or sometimes they can have giant negative consequences, intended or unintended. For example when encryption is being backdoored or if zero days are being stockpiled and or used. That is where we step in and we try to prevent these rights from happening or try to steer them in a more appropriate way. And I've been working for Bits of Freedom for the last four years and those years have been quite amazing, quite astonishing. And I've done a lot of research in these years and I've also done a lot of lobbying because lobbying is, well, it's a core part of what I do. And these years have been absolutely amazing, as I said. A lot of good stuff has happened. Let's start with the good stuff, right? It always helps. So we have net neutrality. In the Netherlands we have net neutrality in Europe, hooray. We can roam, which is also awesome because I'm going to France next week and I can just Netflix all my way to Toulouse. The Dutch also have a very strong position on encryption. We are very happy with that. Our government has given money to improve open SSL. Quite awesome and also very important. We live in a country where you can actually voice serious opposition if you disagree with the government. I mean, besides all the stuff that we hate, we just have to appreciate that. But sometimes the times have also been quite troubling in a way. We have seen the fall, the rise, and again the fall of data retention. And now data retention is somewhere on its knees trying to re-indicate itself. So let's see where we will come up again. We have had the introduction of NPR, the Automatic Number Plate Recognition Act which allows for the collection of number plates on a very large scale. There is an increasing amount of oversight and surveillance in the public sphere via cameras but also via body cams. So my colleague, Rayo, he will talk about this tomorrow. And we have seen the proposal and the introduction of a new bill for the secret services which not only allows for hacking via innocent third parties but also allows for dragnet surveillance. We have seen the proposal for the Dutch police to allow them to hack into electronic devices with the use of known and unknown vulnerabilities. The parliament has approved this bill and the Senate, the Dutch Senate will vote on this in September. We have seen countless bills allowing for tying databases together. We have seen countless bills for breaching purpose limitations so that data once gathered for a specific purpose can also be used for other purposes. We have seen the police trying to keep the stealth SMS a secret for both the citizens, duchess and lawyers alike. We have seen countless, countless, countless of black and foyer requests. The Dutch government is currently revising our criminal code which, amongst other powers, will also allow them for scanning social media and this is something that they have been doing for quite a while by the way. So we have seen thousands and thousands and thousands of pages of explanations of bills and dozens of ever shifting justifications for new measures and new proposals. We have seen, well, I could go on for another 40 minutes of all the things I have seen but I think we have seen enough. I think it is time to see what we have learned and now we are getting to the actual presentation because I guess we have seen a few trends. To start with the obvious, yes. The government is trying to regulate the use of technology and trying to use technology as a means for enforcement but there are a few other things that all these bills and proposals and incidents have in common. In this talk I will try to address a few of these issues and in order to make this slightly interesting for you I will only talk about the trends that we feel that haven't had enough attention in the last few years. So that means that I will not talk about fairly well known issues. I will address them now and then we can just leave them behind. If you hear any trends in the next few seconds, that's okay but I'm not going to address them. First of all, legislation for powers are lagging behind on technological developments. This almost always happened and is a pain for the government and for us. The digitization of our society is an international phenomenon. That means that as nation states have national interests and national powers there are a lot of issues surrounding the territoriality of powers. Another one, the flawed reasoning of governments. If a country allows for a new power, for example the Netherlands that means that Germany wants to have the power as well. But if Germany decides to abolish the power of course that does not mean that the Dutch want to abolish the power as well. Of course not. The idea that technology solves each and every solution is also a trend. The issues surrounding public and private partnerships are a large problem. The attempt to regulate technology without actually understanding technology is something that we also see on a daily basis. And the suggestion that just because private parties can have access to data that should mean that law enforcement agencies should also have the same opportunities. This is also known as the yes but everybody is already putting all of their stuff on Facebook so we could also just get access to that data argument. I have seen that dozens of times in the last year including the still current minister of the interior in the Netherlands, Ronald Plastek. Yes, so I'm now going to talk about the trends that we feel that have been neglected. And I will also provide some answers for you or some solutions I think that at least some grinding roads to possible solutions. It might just be that I will be able to surprise you. Well, let's find out. So I think there are five issues and five themes. And these issues are the following. First of all about the justifications of laws. But we can argument. The second of all the power itself. The power itself and the proposal often neglects the context. Third, third trend. The proposal mispresent to truth in a way that the agency that is used, that the power is used for is not the only one who can use the power. The fourth argument, the interference that the power imposes. Or as we say, tech in techno law is not neutral at all. And the last one, the safeguard that comes with the powers. It might just be that there are no additional safeguards left. Let's start with the first issue. But we can argument. So we see a deeply embedded feeling with politicians that all that is technology impossible should in fact be done. So if a new technology is developed or is being embraced by the public, it should be used by law enforcement even though it was frowned upon decades earlier. Or if it is frowned upon if other nation states are doing it. Let me give you an example. Until a few years ago, unless you lived in a brutally totalitarian regime, it wasn't possible to really have a form of mass surveillance. The technology to do it on the cheap wasn't available. Or the technology wasn't available at all. But these constraints have been lifted. With the use of technology that intermediates most of what we do, watching, reading, traveling, communicating. And how we do that, intermediaries are near monopolies. It has never been as easy as now to fulfill most of our community with a relatively small budget. Another example. Let's take a look at the aerial surveillance. So the Dutch police has been using helicopters for quite a while, right? There are a few of them and they are just flying alongside the Dutch coast and just flying from one city to another and just being able to surveil. But these helicopters are there quite expensive in many ways. It takes a ground crew of a few people to keep the helicopters flying, obviously. At any time, at least one-fifth of the fleet is in maintenance. Replacing a helicopter is obviously quite costly. If a helicopter crashes it will have a high impact. When in the air, very important, the helicopter can be seen and heard and viewed by criminals or just by people. By citizens, it takes three people to operate such a helicopter. Flying is costly. In other ways, there are many limitations to using helicopters and to surveil via helicopters. All of that is obviously different with drones. So we say, what is the greatest difference between a helicopter and a drone? Well, yes, you might say obviously the one is manned and the other is unmanned. Yes, I get that. But the main difference for us is that the function of a drone and a helicopter could be the same. But the limitation that the human imposes on using a helicopter do not apply for using the drone. It's easier. It's cheaper. You can use a lot of more drones. The drones could surveil us, but we cannot surveil the drone instead of when a helicopter flies over. And we absolutely haven't seen a proper discussion on what that means for our society. Another example. The Dutch police was never allowed to use a location tracker on a person. If you were a suspect and they thought, well, we need to follow the suspect, they were allowed to place a beacon under your bike, for example. They do that quite a lot in Netherlands, actually. It's quite funny. So if you ever look under your saddle, well, you could find a location tracker. If you're a suspect, obviously. But it wasn't allowed to place that location tracker on a person. And why was that? Well, because the Dutch government felt that it was very important that the police wouldn't get that close to a suspect. One reason, obviously, was because it posed a risk for the law enforcement officer to get that close to a suspect, but also because they feel that the suspect should still have some privacy.  It comes really close to the body, really close to the actual person. However, now the Dutch police wants to hack into computers. And obviously, that changes a lot of things. Because, for example, you can access the device remotely. The suspect won't know it. Well, at least that's the idea. So it's technological possible to do it in a way that the suspect won't notice it. So that means, we thought, that means that the stance that the government had, like, we're opposing the placement of a tracker on a person for a reason, right? We're not doing it because we feel it costs a lot of money, but we're doing it because we actually feel that we shouldn't come that close to a person. We think that's a fairly good point of view. I mean, I won't start applauding right now, but we were quite happy with that. However, however, so this has been the point for at least, I think, for 10 or 20 years or so. Now, the Dutch police wants to hack. I've read a memorandum, and what do I see? And I will quote, The prohibition to place a location tracker on a person should not be interpreted as strict as it was in the past due to the technological developments. Basically, the technology allows us to do it. So we need to do it, so we can do it. And just forget all the former principles that we had. I think that is very, very, very bad. So we have seen the trend that the development of technology can be a major, if not the sole justification for new legislation, for new powers. But how can we do something about the greed for that possibilities? We have three solutions for this. One solution, I will just explain the solution first. Create an infringement tax. Yes. Second, create a level playing field. And the third solution is limit the infringement we allow as a society. Let's start with the infringement tax, because I like that one the best. But you can judge for yourself, obviously. I'm very neutral in this stuff. All right. So technological boundaries to prevent very important powers from existence to prevent very intrusive powers from existence have disappeared, as we mentioned. The use of these powers, very cheap. So how can we make surveillance, well, expensive again? We would like to propose an infringement tax. The more intrusive a power is, the higher the imposed costs. And the money that is being earned, because obviously you can earn money, is then being used, for example, to improve oversight on law enforcement agencies, to go to social projects to prevent crime in the first place from being happening, or to improve the defense's position. Another one is, again, earning money from surveillance, but then using the money in another way. Another way of looking at the digitization of our society and of law enforcement is that the police wants to use the vulnerabilities of our systems. Not just technological weaknesses, but also other weaknesses. In the law, in our moral behavior, in the way we interact with each other. And that means that the police or law enforcement agencies need to invest in offensive capacity building. So what if we would create an obligation that every euro is spent on to gain more offensive capability? Another euro goes to defensive capacity building. For example, if the police wants to hack, fine. Every euro they spend on buying something from hacking team or from gamma or from any other company, another euro is to go to auditing software, improving encryption protocols, money to implement new security measures, money to raise awareness and education, so that the government truly actually creates a level playing field regarding offensive and defensive capabilities. And the third solution, limit the infringement that we allow as a society. This is a moral one and therefore, by definition, very difficult. I'll have to admit that. But if we look at the case law from the European courts in the last few years, we can see that the courts actually say, all right, if you look at the right to privacy, for example, we actually have the core essence of the right to privacy. And the core essence cannot be infringed. If you do that, you will lose immediately at the court. But we are not really sure what these essences really are because the court only says, all right, this measure touches upon the core essence of privacy. But what is the core essence of privacy? I haven't seen a proper definition yet. We dare the government to actually define these essences. We dare the government to acknowledge these essences and stop infringing them because otherwise, and I can promise that, we will be having the same discussions at the same courts, at the same conferences, at Shah, wherever and ever, over and over and over again. And actually, I'm quite tired of that. So, dear government, if you're watching, please define, acknowledge and stop infringing on the essence of our human rights. Second issue is about the context. The context of investigatory powers. So, what is this about? Proposals often neglect the context. In a lot of proposals, the proposed power is actually seen as a new power. It's necessary and it's a new individual measure. But, just as I'm part of the society and as I'm part of the human race, this proposed power is obviously also just a new star in the milky ways of powers. And these proposals more often than not neglect the context. And every time that a new power, and every time that a new time that the context is neglected, this constitutes, and sometimes there is a slowly, a gradual loss of our freedom. To give you an example, the NPR bill allows for tracking number plates. Now, in and of itself, you might argue that the tracking of these kind of number plates does not constitute that big of an infringement. Alright, but if you look beyond the proposal, the NPR collection forms yet another means of surveillance. You can add it to the long list in ways to reconstruct or predict someone's behavioural pattern. Another tool besides the use of the MG catcher, the stealth, SMS, data retention, CCTV, the movements of ships, our public transport card, the use of credit cards, etc. So how can we take a look at this gradual loss of freedom? We have, again, three solutions, because three is always a good thing to have. One, limit the amount of powers that you give to law enforcement agencies. Second of all, use the mosaic theory. Limit the infringement per case. And I will explain this now to you. Alright, so first of all, we now live in a world where there is almost never, ever, the removal of a power. So we have a lot of new powers every year or every year or so. There's a new power proposed for law enforcement agencies, for example. But we almost never see that they say, alright, so we actually don't need that power anymore. You can just put it away. So only an increasing amount of power. And if they need a tool that is absolutely necessary, then I would say, fine. Fine, sure. But what if you would say, alright, the current status quo is that you are capable of performing actual research. You are capable of tracking down suspects. Alright, sometimes it costs a bit of money. Sometimes it costs a bit of effort. But you can do your work. And alright, here comes new technology. You want to have a new power, fine. But it also means that in order to keep the status quo, that you have to remove another power. Because otherwise, it will just be an increasing amount of power. And apparently, something doesn't work anymore, because otherwise you wouldn't necessarily need another power. So basically, the way I thought about it this afternoon, this will be described as Maori condoing our law enforcement agencies. So whenever you get something new, you remove something else. And the second example, about the mosaic theory. So in the United States, if you go to a court, the judge looks at the specific power, but it also looks at the combinations of the powers that have been used in an investigation. We call this, as I said, the mosaic theory. That means that you don't just look, for example, at the specific power, for example, wiretapping, but you look at the combination of all these powers. And because obviously, if you combine wiretapping with a house search, and if you combine it again with, I don't know, hacking into a device, it constitutes a whole of infringement, which is obviously pretty big. While wiretapping itself might be, well, it's also an infringement, but it's not as big as a combination of these three. And we would like to extend this mosaic theory, because this mosaic theory is, at least in the United States, only used in the context of a specific case. And we say, okay, let's just expand it. We would like to obligate the government to perform mosaic research every time that a new power is proposed. So don't just look at the individual case, don't look at the individual use of the power, but look at the power itself in a general way, and combine it with all the other powers. So just say, show the public in which ways the new power puts an extra limit on our societal freedom, including the total limits on our societal freedom. And three, and now we're going to use some numbers, so I think I'm very happy. We could also take a look at individual investigations, so not in a general way, but in a specific way. So we could say, all right, you want to have a new power, fine, but limit the use in specific cases. Because a certain case obviously might be necessary to investigate a crime, and there might also be a combination of powers needed to solve a crime. But as I mentioned earlier, if you look at the mosaic theory, a combination of several powers could also mean a very, very, very large infringement. And to prevent that from happening, well, we could say, we could oppose a maximum of allowed infringement per cases. So for example, let's use a system of points, right? So what if you would say, all right, we think that, for example, selling drugs is a crime, and selling drugs can get you 80 points of infringement. So you have 80 infringement points. And what if you then would say, all right, wiretapping constitutes 20 points of infringement. The house search constitutes 50 points of infringement. The surveillance, 30 points of infringement. And then law enforcement could just use any tool they would like, providing obviously they follow the rules and ask the judge for approval, but to a specific amount of points. Which would, in this example, for example, means the police want to grab the criminal, they could use surveillance and house search, but that's 80 points, so they aren't able to wiretap. They could do wiretapping in a house search, but they're not surveillance. They could do wiretapping and surveillance, but not a house search. Now, why is this? This limits the amount of total infringement on a person, based on what we feel that the amount of infringement per case is actually okay in our society. The third issue, who uses the power? So it's about the procedure rights. More often than not, the proposal focuses on one user of the power. So for example, let's take NPR again. So the debate and the memorandum, and also, well, the public debate revolved mainly around the safeguards for the police. It was all about the police wants to use these cameras. They're here for the police. The police is going to do this with this and that with it. But it's just not the police. There are other services who will be using the NPR cameras as well. And we haven't been talking about that. For example, under the new bill for the Secret Services, the Secret Services could get real-time access to this database. We haven't been talking about that. We haven't been talking about that with the NPR bill. We haven't been talking about that with the new bill for the Secret Services. But it is something that should have been addressed. So the use of this power or of the access to the data by other enforcement agencies or foreign services or foreign agencies have also been neglected. So while one could have the impression that it is only the police who gets access to this data, obviously this is misrepresenting the truth. And we think that that is very, very, very problematic because the reality is completely different. Another example. It's what we know in the Netherlands as the U-bocht or the U-turn. That is when data is being gathered by one agency and is being exchanged to another agency and later on back exchanged to the first agency. Again, based on NPR, the stored data of the number plates can be stored for four weeks. But if the data is being shared with the IRS, for example, the IRS can store the data for seven years. And what we know from research done by the correspondent is that it is a large media platform. Is that the police actually getting the... Is that a confident that they actually could get the data from the IRS back to the police? Which means that obviously in theory you would think, all right, the police needs to wipe the data after four weeks, but in reality the data goes to the IRS and after that the police can just get the data back. That does not make sense, right? Or at least if it does make sense for the police then we should have a debate on that. There should be some clarity. And the clarity wasn't there when we actually had the debate. And we think that is very problematic because when the police is allowed to get our more data, these kind of things are almost never taken into account. Now, how can we solve this? Actually, this one is fairly simple. And I like simple problems or difficult problems and simple solutions. So the problem is that politicians and maybe even policymakers and also the citizens don't have the full picture about when and which agencies are actually allowed to use data or to use the power. So let's fix it by demanding a binding overview who is allowed to use the data. So make sure that in each memorandum by a bill or that comes with the bill that there can be a coherent view of which agency is allowed to have and to gain access to the data. And make a binding. And this effect, well, there are three good things about this. One, it creates a necessary debate about which agencies should actually have access to data or should use the power. Second one, it creates clarity for agencies, politicians and the citizens. And three, it also creates a deliberate constraint of access to data. And in an era where increasingly more data is being gated and increasingly more data is being used, I think it's pretty good, pretty important to at least have a debate on the constraints of access to data also by law enforcement agencies. Fourth issue, we are three down, two to go. It's regarding the interference. So we say the proposal is technology neutral, right? At least in the Dutch government, I don't know about other countries, but I think in the last three years we have seen dozens of politicians who said we need to have laws that are technology neutral. It's like a mantra. I think sometimes in our parliament there's like a secret hymn, and the secret hymn is technology neutral is good. And I think that they say that like just 20 times before the debate starts. And the problem is that this technology obviously is not neutral. The violation that the power imposes actually comes from the violation of the technology that is used. And it matters which technology you use when you want to use a power. Let me give you an example of this. For example, the police wants to know the location of a suspect, right? You can do it in several ways. You can, for example, hack a phone and activate a GPS. You can use a stealth SMS. You can use an IMZ catcher. You can just follow him around with a van. You can do a lot of stuff to surveil a person and get its location. Obviously, the power to use an IMZ catcher or to use a stealth SMS is the same under the Dutch law. But the infringement is totally different. If you use an IMZ catcher, you're infringed with a lot of more people than just a suspect. IMZ catcher, well, you only touch upon the rights of the suspect. With an IMZ catcher, you can also get content, not via the stealth SMS. I mean, it matters which technology you use to exert a power. These things are obviously not taken into account, sadly. And this creates a few problems. Actually, in fact, it's very hard for us to determine the actual infringement that the new powers propose. If you just look at the power, because you also need to look at the technology that is being used. Let me give you an example. If you look at the new surveillance bill in the Netherlands, it's for the secret services. If you look at the bill, if you look at the actual text, you could say, all right, this sounds like mass surveillance. But the fact whether it's actually mass surveillance in practice also depends on the technology that is being used, the way the filtering works, whether the systems of the secret services are actually smart or dumb enough to analyze the data. So the technology matters. And at the same time, the technology will improve. The technology will become better. And the problem is that the safeguards will remain the same. So the power will remain the same and the safeguards will remain the same. So we assert an internal law. I mean, everybody needs to have internal laws and we also have one. And we say, where safeguards remain the same, but technology changes, the infringement changes just as rapidly. And I will give you an example which illustrates this. In the Netherlands, there was a debate on the use of the wiretap and they said, all right, we are going to wiretap. Politicians said, no, no, no, no, no. How often do you think you're going to use it? And the government said, well, two, three times a year, maximum. Well, we are now 40 years later and putting on a wiretap is one of the first things that the police does in the criminal investigation. And obviously, the amount of information that you get while using a wiretap has vastly increased over the last 20 years. For example, everybody is walking around with his mobile phone and contacting everywhere. That just wasn't possible 15 or 20 years ago because people, even if they had a phone, it was just fixed at one location. And obviously law enforcement could say, all right, but everybody is using encryption. And, well, the results are decreasing. They are still way more increased than when the current safeguards were put in the bill because the safeguards are older than, well, 15 years. So the technology has changed. The infringement has changed. They have all grown. But safeguards haven't grown. Well, we think that's a problem. Another example, until a few years ago, searching my phone wouldn't have been that interesting for anyone. I think I could have stored up to 20 text messages on my phone. You could maybe have seen some really weird photos with my VGA camera. And I think that the most telling aspect would have been the high score of Snake 2 on my phone, which was, I can say, quite impressive. But this clearly has changed a lot. Someone could be searching my house as we speak, hopefully not, but wouldn't find as much information as one would get with just a few minutes of manual search of my phone. Anyway, my phone is my digital home. The things that we used to share or store in my house, the things that I used to share in my house are now on my phone. My email, my photos, letters, all the chat apps. However, the safeguards for the search of this device haven't changed, but the infringement has. So we can see that the infringement is actually still based on the technology that was there when the power was introduced and the technology is still improving. So what can we do about that to make sure that there's still a current perspective of the technology and the safeguards? Well, we have three solutions for that. One, connect the safeguard to the actual infringed wire. Put limitation on the capabilities of the technology. And three, create institutional feedback loops. One, safeguard to the infringed wire. We need to connect the safeguard to the infringed wire and not to the power. So that means that technology which is used has to be taken into account specifically. So each and every technology should be connected to appropriate and specific safeguards. That means that there should be different safeguards for the use of a stealth SMS or an IMZ catcher, even though they are both used to track someone's location. It also means that there should be different safeguards if technology changes. If an increasing amount of personal data is stored on a device, the infringement also increases. Even if the technology to search the device hasn't changed. Secondly, put limitation on the capabilities of technology. At the moment in the Netherlands, if the police wants to use a new device, it needs to be compliant to procedural rules. That's okay. For example, it needs to lock its activities. It's fairly straightforward. But we could also impose additional constraints on the testing protocol. We could say we allow for certain infringement right now, but not for additional infringement. So for example, what if you use a directional microphone for example? It has a reach of, for example, 60 meters right now. Let's say that tomorrow or next week, someone invents a microphone which could reach for 100 meters. That means that the law enforcement agencies could gather a lot of more data, which would also be more infringing. If you would say, all right, you could use a directional microphone for 60 meters, that would mean that they won't be able to use a directional microphone of 80 meters. Another example. If the police wants to surveil using cameras, ABR cameras or just cameras on the street, a camera of 5 megapixels is okay because that is what we all agreed upon. But if tomorrow a 10 megapixel camera is invented, they're not allowed to use that because it changes the amount of infringement. And lastly, create institutional feedback loops. So we need to make sure, and I think this is also an addition to the other points because obviously if this new camera is being introduced, obviously law enforcement at some point want to use it, but we just don't want them to use it just because they can. They actually need to say, all right, we need this new camera. Yes, it creates more harm and we need to have a debate on that. How can we get that debate? Well, we need to have each and every year a debate on the use of technology and the use of powers. Currently we don't have sunset glasses in that lens, or at least we don't use them that regularly. And there are often stipulations that regulations need to be evaluated, like every 3 years or every 5 years, but well, it happens but it doesn't happen on time. So we say sunset glasses as soon as possible. First of all, the sunset glasses will mean that there is a sound debate every 3 years on a new power, but it also means that the government is actually forced to perform adequate evaluations and therefore facilitate a good sound debate. Fifth, a final issue. Now we're getting a bit dark. The last one is on the safeguards. We feel or there might just be no additional safeguards left and I will explain this. So at the moment, whenever a new power is proposed, the reasoning is that the infringement will be mediated by adding appropriate safeguards to the measure. So for example, a wiretap, a suspect is okay because there are safeguards to prevent, for example, too much infringement on our suspect or to make sure that the police actually bound to certain rules and to make sure that the police is behaving accordingly to the rules and not put our democratic society in peril. But obviously, using a power to infringe someone does not take the infringement away. The best of safeguards won't take the infringement away. To say differently, if you stab someone in the kidney but you do it in front of a hospital so that the medics can save the person, you have still stabbed him. You can say yes, but I have had safeguards installed.  The person has two kidneys and I used a clean knife. You still stabbed someone. The infringement has still taken place. So safeguards are important, but they won't take the infringement away. Additionally, in our system in the Netherlands we have a fixed amount of safeguards. In the Netherlands, and I'm simplifying this a little bit, we have three steps. First of all, if you want to use a power, if it's just a little bit infringing, then the police officer can do it by himself. If it's a little bit more than he needs to have the approval of the public prosecutor and if it's really infringing, then you need the judge to consent. So the more infringing the power, the heavier the safeguard. Obviously, this makes a lot of sense. But these safeguards have been around for ages. So wiretapping 15 years ago got the heaviest safeguard, consent of a judge. It still has the consent of a judge. But we have established earlier that the infringement of wiretapping has actually increased, but the safeguards have remained the same. So it makes sense to have additional safeguards. But there is currently no extra additional independent step in our legal system. And what if we want to introduce powers that are more infringing than wiretaps? There aren't additional layers. So this is a very difficult one, I guess, at least for us, for me. But we have come up with three solutions. One, we have to accept that there is a maximum amount of infringement that can be imposed. Second of all, use bureaucracy. And three, the third one is, well, create an extra layer. So let me explain this shortly to you. So one could be that we just have to accept that there is a maximum amount of infringement. And one not is allowed to go above this infringement. That would mean that at a certain point, the amount of harm that the law enforcement agencies can do just simply needs to end. I mean, this is a hard one, obviously, because technology will evolve and there is always some eagerness and possibly also some, well, there are enough justifications for this. But if the police will introduce new powers, we can be quite sure of that. But then we need to think, if this power actually uses for more infringement than we currently allow for other powers, if there is no extra remedy for this, then we just have to say no. Because if we aren't even allowed or aren't even able to mediate the current infringements, how can we then allow for new powers to impose even more infringement? Second of all, the second one, we should love bureaucracy. We should all love bureaucracy for law enforcement agencies. This is a joke, of course, albeit with some truth to it. In a way, creating more hassle before someone can use a power actually limits the amount of time set that power is being used. It's really hard to get approval. If it's really hard to get approval, so creating more hassle before a power can be used, we'll put a constraint on the use of that power. Final one. We could create a layer of additional safeguards based on weather and how data is being stored. Storing data at a third party creates an additional threshold. So does distributed storage compared to central storage. We could create extra safeguards based on the fact whether the processing or gathering of data is automated or not. All small ideas. So to sum it up, we have taken a short look at the issues that we felt that have been neglected for the last five years, or for the last four years. These were the yes but we can argument, the fact that the proposal neglects the context, the fact that the proposal often mispresent the truth, that tech in techno law is not neutral and that there are no additional safeguards left. I've explained these issues to you and I have tried to provide you with some possible solutions for the issues at hand. We can see that the former technological and logistical barriers are disappearing. So I guess we will just have to find new barriers to make sure that powers aren't used that easily. I have no principal problem with the government using powers to investigate targets. Absolutely not. But when it happens too easily and too often with too much infringement and too broadly and lacking safeguards, we as a society will find ourselves at risk and I know that a lot of these safeguards actually aim to protect the target or the suspect, the individual, but essentially we feel, I feel that safeguarding a suspect is safeguarding our society. Making sure that the police has clear rules as paramount for our trust in the police in the democratic society where we live in and technology is awesome, technology is so awesome and its developments can be very exciting indeed but we need to make sure that while it might be inevitable and to some extent very desirable that law enforcement agencies can actually use these techniques as well it has to be at the level they need and not at the level they want because I love to eat. I really, I do. I'm hungry right now.  So let's make sure that law enforcement agencies stay slim and slender and not give in to their impulse for tech and obesity test. It would cost our society dearly if we wouldn't. This concludes my talk. Thank you very much for your attention. Okay, thank you very much for your talk. We now have plenty of time left for Q&A. So if you have any questions please line up at the mics. So you've described the situation in the Netherlands and all of the safeguards that should be should be installed for new infringements and new technologies, etc. Do you see similar international developments that take the same approach? Oh, thank you for your question. Yes, absolutely. So obviously I'm speaking on behalf of Bits of Freedom I wear dutch as a revised organisation and thus mainly focused on the dutch situation and also an expert on the dutch situation and obviously on the situation in Germany or in other countries. But I guess I can see that the issues that we mentioned I think they're internationally, they're globally. It goes for every country. I think that every country struggles with the same issues. I mean, we're not that different from Germany or France or the United States. We have the same issues and we need to solve the same problems. So I think it's important to at least start in Europe with improving these issues. You talked about the issues behind replacing helicopters with drones. Is that something we've actually seen happen in practice or is that a sort of theoretical argument? What do you mean? You had a bit where you said helicopters have all these disadvantages like they have to be staffed and have maintenance and drones would be a lot easier. Are we seeing practical situations where police is sending regular drones over places to develop? We know that there are a lot of plans to replace helicopters with drones and we know that there's regulation for drones. After the talk I could point you to all the answers that the minister has given on the use of drones by law enforcement agencies. We do know that they have these drones so we know that this is happening. This is not theoretical. Any further questions? This doesn't appear to be the case. So please thank our speaker again.


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