National Signals Intelligence Organization

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NSO ground station within It Grutte Ear near Burum (2012)

The Nationale Signals Intelligence Organization ( NSO ), also shortened to Nationale Sigint Organization , was a Dutch organization for the surveillance of radio and satellite communication on behalf of the secret services AIVD and MIVD . For this purpose, the NSO had a ground station for satellite reception in Burum and a radio monitoring station in Eibergen . The NSO was founded in 2003 and started operating in 2007. On June 15, 2014, it merged to form the new Joint Sigint Cyber ​​Unit (JSCU).

founding

The organization was set up as a result of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 . This event prompted the Dutch government to develop an action plan to combat terrorism. So was u. a. decided to expand and concentrate the interception capacities for satellite communications. The number of receiving systems ("bowls") of the MIVD was expanded considerably, so the service was able to intercept and evaluate a significantly higher volume of communication data. The cooperation and the exchange of the knowledge gained here with friendly intelligence services worldwide was another area of ​​responsibility. Since the intercepted information was of particular interest to the AIVD, it was decided in 2003 to found a new organization: the National Sigint Organization (NSO), where Sigint stands for "Signal Intelligence", i. H. Obtaining information from electronic communication. The establishment of the NSO took place step by step and was officially completed with the commissioning of the new listening station in Eibergen on May 26, 2007. The NSO was thus originally built from the MIVD's connection information department. However, the NSO should become an independent service in order to work more efficiently and effectively. Since the defense minister himself cannot set up a new secret service, the NSO was temporarily placed with the MIVD until the 2002 law on the intelligence and security service (“Wet op de inlichtingen- en veiligheidsdiensten”) was changed.

tasks

The three main tasks of the NSO were:

  • Interception of data from wireless telecommunications
  • Further development of eavesdropping techniques
  • Maintenance and provision of Sigint departments, both personnel and equipment, on request

The NSO thus provided technical support to the AIVD and the MIVD so that they could exercise their special powers in relation to intercepting non-wired telecommunications.

On the basis of Article 26 of the Law on Secret Services and Security Services (of 2002), both services have the authority to receive and record "non-wired telecommunications originating from or destined for other countries". No permission from the minister concerned is required for this. According to Article 27, this data can be searched by name, telephone number and keywords. However, this requires the permission of the minister concerned, which is limited to three months. The permission to monitor also applies to non-wired communications where the sender and receiver are located in the Netherlands.

The NSO's eavesdropping specialists were supposed to collect information from abroad, especially about traditional military activities and terrorist activities, such as those of the al-Qaida networks. The eavesdropping functions can also be used in connection with the preparation and implementation of crisis management operations.

Scandal 2013

Graphic from the NSA's Boundless Informant program with 1.8 million metadata collected by the Netherlands and shared with the NSA

In 2013 it was announced that by the end of 2012 the NSO had collected 1.8 million metadata "related to counter-terrorism and military operations abroad" for the MIVD and shared it with the United States . The figure of 1.8 million emerged in October 2013 as part of the Edward Snowden revelations from a diagram that the media originally reported in connection with the surveillance of Dutch telephone calls by the US secret service NSA . Interior Minister Ronald Plasterk made false statements on October 30, 2013 about the originators of the data collection. So he kept quiet about the fact that it was his own secret services that recorded this amount of data, stored it and passed it on to the USA. In February 2014, he had to backtrack publicly and then face a vote of no confidence , which he barely survived.

organization

From a logistical point of view, the NSO was part of the MIVD, but was administered by the joint Commissie Gezagsmatige Aansturing (CGA), which was composed of the board of the MIVD and the top of the AIVD. In 2007, 120 people worked for the NSO.

The information received from the monitoring stations was initially analyzed by the Strategischverbindingsinlichtingen Centrum (SVIC) founded in 1996 , which was located on the premises of the Marine Establishment Amsterdam in Kattenburg until 2005 . After that, the center was moved to the headquarters of the MIVD in the Frederik barracks in The Hague .

For processing intercepted data, MIVD has its own specialist knowledge in the areas of linguistics, cryptography, signal research, content analysis and technical support. However, the data were also made available to the AIVD in a more or less raw form.

Listening stations

In order to intercept the wireless communication, the NSO had two monitoring stations: Burum in West Friesland to intercept satellite traffic and Eibergen in the province of Gelderland to intercept high-frequency radio traffic. A third radio monitoring station has been in Eemnes ( province of Utrecht ) since 1968 . The NSO also had staff and equipment at locations abroad.

Burum ground station

The listening station for satellite communication is (currently) in Burum in Friesland and was put into operation on September 6, 2005. This station was the successor to the former ground station in nearby Zoutkamp , where two satellite dishes had been standing since the late 1970s to listen to Intelsat's commercial satellites . Following objections from local residents, the Ministry of Defense decided not to expand this satellite ground station and it was decommissioned on January 1, 2008.

A new location was found on the site of the 1973 It Grutte Ear satellite broadcasting station, northwest of Burum. In 2005, construction began on a new and larger NSO ground station (official name: Satelliet Grondstation Burum, abbreviated: SGS NSO) with two large 18-meter satellite dishes, nine smaller dishes with a diameter of 11 meters, four so-called "waffle irons" with one Diameter of four meters and the associated buildings. Seven systems intercept communication via Intelsat satellites and eight communicate via Inmarsat satellites. The new ground station was gradually put into operation from the end of 2006.

Eibergen ground station

A second NSO monitoring station was located at the Kamp Holterhoek military base near Eibergen in Achterhoek , where Liaison Battalion 898 has been monitoring telecommunications in the former Eastern Bloc since 1967 . In 1998 this battalion merged with the Liaison Group 1 of Koninklijke Luchtmacht Alphen and part of the Marine Inlichtingendienst (the technical information processing center) from Eemnes to form the new Operationeelverbindings-Inlichtingen Centrum (OVIC), which was founded in Eibergen. In 1997, the Ministry of Defense wanted to place three 95-meter-high masts and three further, 75-meter-high masts on the site of Kamp Holterhoek, between which antenna wires were stretched in a dome shape. In 2003, four circular areas with a total of 12 rod antennas 15 meters in height seemed to be sufficient to make things easier for the residents. Since 2007, the NSO has intercepted high-frequency radio traffic, which, for example, can be used to monitor communications from military regimes around the world. According to reports, dozens of specialists work in the Verwervingscentrum (evaluation center) Eibergen (VC Eibergen), who mainly deal with the interpretation of the intercepted information.

Eemnes triangulation system

To the east of the village of Eemnes is the Royal Navy radio receiving station . This was administered by the Navy Secret Service (MARID) and later by the Military Intelligence Service (MID) and the Militaire Inlichtingen- en Veiligheidsdienst (MIVD). The station has been managed by the NSO since 2006 and by the JSCU since 2014. Behind the site there is a circular antenna field consisting of twelve masts. This is used for the purposes of automated triangulation (see also radio direction finding ).

resolution

On June 15, 2014, the NSO was merged into the new Joint Sigint Cyber ​​Unit (JSCU). The establishment of the new organization has been prepared since 2012 by a joint team from AIVD and MIVD under the name Project Symbolon . The JSCU aims to fend off so-called cyberspace attacks and, as before, to eavesdrop on radio and satellite traffic. This also includes close cooperation with the wiretapping services of foreign allies.

In principle, the surveillance only allowed the interception of non-wired communications, since at the time this law was drafted, all international traffic was carried out simultaneously via wireless connections. Today most connections are underground and submarine cables, but these are much more difficult to access. In 2011, the Dutch Government's Control Committee for the Intelligence and Security Services (CTIVD) issued a recommendation in which it advised, among other things, that the services should be given broader powers to intercept telecommunications over cables. The corresponding law from 2002 is "a bit out of date". The Second Chamber of the States General , the lower house of Parliament, then requested an evaluation. With this mandate, the independent Dessens Commission was founded in February 2013, named after a senior director of the Dutch Ministry of Justice, Dr. CWM Dessens, which presented its report on December 2nd of the same year. The commission recommended that untargeted tapping and recording of wired telecommunications be allowed in future.

Even before the investigation by the Dessens Commission was published, it was announced in November 2013 that the Ministry of Defense had already ordered devices worth 17 million euros from the Israeli company NICE Systems in order to receive large amounts of wired telephone and Internet traffic and to process. Under the name Project Argo II are supposed to. From 2014, these devices will be used to "exploit information from communication channels for secret services," said Interior Minister Plasterk.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b AIVD / MIVD: Project Symbolon , blog entry on Defensie weblog from April 25, 2013
  2. ↑ Annual report Militaire Inlichtingen- en Veiligheidsdienst from 2007 PDF 4.25 MB, p. 50
  3. ↑ Legal texts of December 1, 1998 (i.e. old version), here Art. 25 and 26
  4. ↑ Rijksoverheid.nl: Letter to Parliament on the question of the collection of telephone metadata , dated February 4, 2014, PDF 180 kB
  5. ^ Government announcements on the no-confidence vote against Ronald Plasterk
  6. ↑ Electrospaces.net: Dutch government tried to hide the truth about metadata collection , on Electrospaces.net (blog) from February 17, 2014 (English).
  7. ↑ Convenant MIVD-AIVD inzake de interceptie van niet-kabelgebonden telecommunicatie , MIVD-AIVD pact on the interception of non-wired telecommunications by the National Sigint Organization (Art. 3), source: Public Relations of the Dutch Government: Overheid.nl
  8. ↑ a b 'Eibergen' luistert mee met de Taliban , De Stentor on June 28, 2007
  9. ↑ Annual report Militaire Inlichtingen- en Veiligheidsdienst 2012 , PDF 2.84 MB, p. 16
  10. ↑ Convenant MIVD-AIVD inzake de interceptie van niet-kabelgebonden telecommunicatie , Art. 7
  11. ↑ Kabinet: verplaatsing grondstation Burum noodzaak voor optimal 5G networks , notification from the Dutch government (Rijksoverheid) of December 24, 2018
  12. ↑ It Greate Ear in Burum , Noorderbreedte, No. 6, of November 30, 2006
  13. ↑ verbingsbataljon en hair voorgangers (liaison battalion and its predecessors) ( Memento of May 21, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
  14. ↑ Kamp Holterhoek: meer dan een militair complex (I) , PDF 5.22 MB, pp. 25–26.
  15. ↑ a b Project Symbolon completed: the Dutch Joint SIGINT Cyber ​​Unit (JSCU) is born , September 24, 2013
  16. ↑ Regering onderzoekt internettap voor veiligheidsdiensten , December 29, 2011
  17. ↑ Ontstaan ​​van de Wet op de inlichtingen- en veiligheidsdiensten 2017. In: Referendumcommissie. Retrieved June 25, 2020 (Dutch).
  18. ↑ Commissie-Dessens biedt evaluatierapport Wiv 2002 aan. In: AIVD . December 2, 2013, accessed November 4, 2017 (Dutch).
  19. ↑ Nederland ordered een nog verboden spionagesysteem , article in de Volkskrant from November 9, 2013.