Nominees Expert Award

The Chief of the National Police Force

Predictive policing: “Act visibly innocent and predictable.” The national police force wants to predict when you will screw up. She is investing in predictive policing: the use of (big) data to predict criminal behavior and, when possible, intervene before a crime is committed. Although in the 2002-film Minority Report predictive policing doesn’t become fully operational until 2054, the Dutch police force has been experimenting with it for years. Minority Report was envisioned by the writers as a prime example of the total loss of privacy. However, that doesn’t keep the police from using it as a source of inspiration. The police: “In that movie they make use of algorithms. So do we. So predictive policing is really not that bad an idea.” Placing this method at the core of their practice, the police targets ‘unusual behavior’ instead of ‘criminal behavior’. If you spend too much time in a bathroom stall at Schiphol, or run through the arrivals hall, security is notified. Either you walk in line or you fall victim to police scrutiny. “If a citizen deviates from the norm he becomes suspect and an ‘at-risk citizen’,” according to criminologist Shuilenburg of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. To be able to make predictions, the police needs a lot of data. Data collection becomes an end in itself. The system the police uses to predict home burglaries, for instance, is already being fed with information that maybe, one day, will be of help: “at least then it will already be in the system.” How far the police takes its data collection practices? A leaked document showed that the police is already working on a nationwide sensor network to “predict events in the nearby future” and be able to “operate pro-actively”. The police of the future keeps tabs on every citizen, everywhere, all of the time. They’ve already started. “If this continues,” says columnist Jonathan van ‘t Reve, “you’ll have to become increasingly geared towards acting visibly innocent and predictable. Maybe you want to take a different route to work one day? Better you didn’t, it will cause too much of a commotion.”

Van der Valk hotel in Hengelo, the Netherlands

“Apparently the hotel regards all its customers as potential johns and criminals.” The Twente Bureau of Tourism finds being a good host an essential part of offering tourists a pleasant experience. It is surprising then that a number of hotels in Twente, among them the Van der Valk hotel on the A1, systematically share their guest lists with the police. Those spending a night at a hotel should be allowed to expect a certain amount of discretion. The fact that by law hotels are obligated to ask their guests for their ID and keep a registration of them, is one thing. But that a hotel would systematically and voluntarily hand over that registration to the police is unthinkable. After all, the police already has the power to ask a hotel for information about its guests in the context of a concrete investigation. That should be enough. Sleep tight, the police says. Innocent guests have nothing to worry about. But is that true? Whereas one police spokesperson has been quoted saying that they only use the guests’ information “if a particular investigation calls for it”, another spokesperson said the police in Hengelo and Enschede “perform random checks” on the lists. The police also isn’t sure how long it keeps the lists. The guess is “a few months”, which it finds “not long”.  But really, there’s no need to worry, especially now the hotel chain has said it no longer shares information about its guests with the police… something the police, by the way, denies. Journalist Bart de Koning about hotels that systematically share their guest lists with the police: “Apparently the hotel regards all its customers as potential johns and criminals.”

Minister of the Interior Ronald Plasterk and the Intelligence and Security Services Act

“[The bill] presents a clear and present danger to the privacy of Dutch citizens and to the security of our nation as a whole.” It was a turbulent summer for tech companies, telecom- and internet providers, the Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations, and the defenders of citizens’ digital rights. Why? The proposal for a new Intelligence and Security Services Act was presented for internet consultation to the public. Above all, the expansion of the secret services’ powers stands out in the new bill. Minister Plasterk feels that “a balance has been struck between the importance of national security and the people’s right to a private domain.” The experts fail to agree. They heckle the increased freedom of movement the security services is granted. Jaya Baloo, Chief Information Security Officer of KPN, for instance, says about the bill: “It presents a clear and present danger to the privacy of Dutch citizens and to the security of our nation as a whole.” Journalist Bart de Koning on Plasterk’s plans: “[With this bill] he basically says to the Dutch secret services it’s OK to do what the NSA does. And that in a post-Snowden era.” The NSA’s motto might be “Collect it all, analyse it all, know it all”, apparently the Minister’s is “Copy it all”, as he’s asking for similar powers. And that while in the United States the debate is leaning towards reducing the power of the secret services. Like the public, the experts are not pleased with the Minister’s unwillingness to listen to the huge amount of criticism that has been voiced, nor with his persistence on charging forward with his plans. The bill is not the only thing the experts are worried about. They are furthermore irritated by the, in their eyes unwarranted, nondisclosure of tap statistics and the unlawful tapping of lawyers. By not taking the safeguards in the current act seriously and pushing forward with the new bill despite wide societal outrage, Plasterk has has landed himself a nomination.

Nominees Audience Award

Achmea – the insurer that chose big data over solidarity

Although Achmea’s plans to become the Netherlands’ digital insurance company are still in their infancy, they are already subject to a lot of criticism. The former cooperation, it turns out, intends to earn money with the data of its customers. Through parternships with for instance Google Nest and TomTom, Achmea wants to gather detailed information from your living room and car. Despite director of Market Strategy Albert Spijkman reassuring us that the customer “can decide if he does or does not want to share the information with us”, in practice this is not how it will work. After all, basing premiums on whether a customer does or does not share this information, means you’re applying price pressure. That makes it very difficult for customers to refrain from participating. The public voices its concerns about how Achmea plans to use the data. Not only will it become very easy for Achmea to influence your behavior, but will the insurer in the future perhaps reject damage claims based on your personal data? Furthermore, the chances that your data will stay within the confines of Achmea are slim. It was Spijkman himself who stated: “It is much more interesting for us to share the data.” But with whom? And under what conditions? Finally, as other companies follow in Achmea’s footsteps, and privacy becomes a pricey affair, people fear for a situation in which only the more affluent citizens can afford privacy. Following the announcement of Achmea’s plans, it is no wonder that the Financieele Dagblad, the financial newspaper that ran the story in the first place, the very same day called for a wide debate on privacy and big data: “Privacy deserves a wide debate, with clear conclusions about the borders that may never be crossed and the conditions under which certain data collection is acceptable.”

Microsoft – One new operating system later… and Microsoft no longer lags behind when it comes to privacy violations

It becomes clear from the nominations that the public is not happy about the privacy settings for Microsoft’s new operating system Windows 10. A whole lot of data are collected about you and your usage. From typed and spoken text to the content of your address book, the websites you visit and your location. In addition, Microsoft links your profile to an advertising identifier that is also accessible to adbrokers, websites and browsers, as well as to software and app builders. To make matters worse, it is not at all clear what personal information this unique identifier contains. The public feels that these options ought to be dormant until the user requests them her/himself: ‘opt-in’ instead of ‘opt-out’. However, not only is it difficult to switch these privacy-violating settings off, control over certain settings is limited to users of Microsoft Enterprise, the package for large companies. That means there is some data collection that regular users cannot opt out of even if they tried. Users who are reluctant to upgrade to Windows 10 because of privacy- or other concerns, are out of luck: not only has the upgrade been muffled away in a recommended update, part of it has preemptively been carried out for you. Finally, the nominations speak critically of one of the standard settings for family accounts which, without asking, provides parents with an overview of the websites their children visit, how much time they spend behind the computer and which programs they use most.

Ronald Plasterk – – the minister who’s working on a state snooping law, but refuses to listen

This year Ronald Plasterk failed to make a good impression with his proposal for a new Intelligence and Security Services Act. First of all, the public is worried about the power the proposal awards the secret services to, on a massive scale, snoop on our communication. The nominations repeatedly refer to the proposal as the “snooping act” or the “data trawling act”. But Plasterk also owes his nomination to the fact that the foundation of the necessity of the act is considered far below the mark. What research is the proposal based on? The nominations also point out the undirected nature of the proposal. The Minister of the Interior considers all citizens suspect and in doing so undermines the constitutional state. It is also seen as a threat that Plasterk plans to move the core of the supervision of the secret services to parliament. Furthermore, the public is taken aback by how the Minister has dealt with the huge amount of critical reactions to the proposal. A large and diverse group of citizens, journalists, lawyers, human rights organizations and companies have spoken out vehemently against the proposal. Although the Minister says that perhaps “here and there a few things will change”, he is clear about one thing: “we have to move on“. The public speaks undevided when it says Plasterk has the responsibility to take the criticism to heart. After all, isn’t that what a consultation is for? Finally, people are disappointed in Plasterk for how he has chosen to interpret his role as minister. How did the academic and Minister of Education, Culture and Science turn into a worthy successor of ‘Big Brother Opstelten’ (the previous Dutch Minister of Justice and Safety who won four awards in three consecutive years and is therefore recordholder)?