Utility Box Exposed As Spy Cabinet In the Netherlands 179
First time accepted submitter thejezus writes "A spy cabinet has been exposed on a public road in The Hague, the Netherlands (Google translate here). The cabinet was disguised as telecom-cabinet and was detected by the maintenance crew of Ziggo (a triple-play provider) because it was not listed as a property of the company. Upon opening, it was revealed the cabinet contained a camera and UMTS equipment. Later that day, the cabinet disappeared. 1984 much?"
I could be wrong but.... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Weird (Score:5, Informative)
Who would be spying on the Netherlands? Someone after the secret to wooden shoes, perhaps?
This "Schilderswijk" where the cabinet was discovered is a notorious low-income suburb. It's more likely to be native intelligence spying on locals in fear of extremists.
pictures of inside (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Lazy Intelligence? (Score:5, Informative)
The Hague is the seat of the Dutch intelligence services...
More importantly, The Hague is the location of the International Court of Justice [wikipedia.org], the judicial arm of the United Nations, as well as a number of other international courts [wikipedia.org]. Definitely a city of international importance.
Re:triple-play provider? (Score:2, Informative)
television + internet + telephone
police observation, not espionage (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I could be wrong but.... (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, there must be some similitude to justify the comparison, obviously.
In 1984 the surveillance wasn't hidden, it was overt. And this is actually important, because the main concept in the novel wasn't the surveillance, but the state of mind of the Party members*, which both enabled and was enabled by the conscience of full and complete surveillance, among other things.
People who compare this to Orwell's work either didn't read it or completely missed the point.
* The society in 1984 didn't actually have full surveillance; in fact, only 15% of society were spied on. Winston is just part of those 15%.
Re:Lazy Intelligence? (Score:5, Informative)
But pretty much irrelevant to this story. The neighbourhood in which they found the cabinet is far removed from where the international institutions are and from where the internationals live. As mentioned by previous posts, the Schilderswijk is a low income area with a large immigrant population. The purpose of the cabinet is most likely to help a police investigation into anything between organised crime or jihad recruitment, and on Dutch websites some have already pointed out that exposing this method effectively renders it useless in the future, but police have been doing it for at least ten years. This kind of surveillance was most likely done with the permission of a public prosecutor, unless it was the intelligence services in which case another law applies.
Re:I could be wrong but.... (Score:5, Informative)
no, we did not have populace on "internet" in 1980s, nor did we have automated systems for listening to all comm for key words. we did not have a "forever war" in place.
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Re:police observation, not espionage (Score:4, Informative)
Mystery solved (Score:5, Informative)