The Dutch Government Keeps Its Eyes - And Its Spies - On The Media
December 2, 2007 by Michael van der Galiën
Please click here to read my latest article for Pajamas Media: “The Dutch Government Keeps Its Eyes - and its spies - On The Media.”
In what has caused quite a stir in this tiny country, reports have surfaced in the last couple of weeks that the Dutch intelligence service (the AIVD – the Dutch equivalent to the CIA) has, for years, spied on newspapers and news networks.
One of the ‘victims’ of the AIVD’s enthusiasm is Frénk van der Linden, a journalist for the Nieuwe Revu. At the time when the AIVD kept an eye on him, he was writing for De Tijd. When he found out about it Van der Linden was – unsurprisingly – “quite pissed off.”
Why, people wondered, would the AIVD spy on journalists? Not just spying on them, though, they even infiltrated newspaper and news networks. Why? What’s the reason behind it?
The excuse they give? The war on terrorism, since 9/11 everything has changed. There are only two problems:
- they started spying on journalists at least two years before 9/11
- the Social Ministry admitted that it spied on newspapers because it wanted to know whether and if so when they would publish articles criticizing the government
