According to the public prosecutor Lodewijk van Zwieten was the ‘hacking’ of botnetslachtoffers by the Dutch police certainly allowed. Last year, the police a warning on the computers of botnetslachtoffers.
The national police AGENCY put at the dismantling of the Bredolab botnet, a warning on the computers of infected botnetleden. That communication was via the botnet itself is spread out; the question is whether that an unwanted intrusion of one’s computer.
Student information law Charlie King suggested recently in her master’s thesis that the action was in conflict with the privacy rules. In the thesis it is concluded that there is nowhere in the law a provision which ensures that the police gives permission to hack. Van Zwieten, the Public Prosecutor deals with the combating of cybercrime, admits that the computer of the administrator of the botnet by the police has been hacked, hence in conflict with the law would have been. The cybercrimebestrijder also found that 300,000 of bots from the botnet communication.
Van Zwieten will the actions not ‘hacking’, and states that these are legal. He is not, therefore, agree with King. “I believe that there is a strong legal basis for it was,” said van Zwieten at a symposium of government ict-security guard Govcert in Amsterdam. This is remarkable, since Van Zwieten earlier indicated that the police more powers would have to get in order to break into systems from cyber criminals in foreign countries.
Van Zwieten said in the past that the Public Prosecutor’s office against the limitations of national borders’ in the face, because it does not have privileges to outside Dutch territory to operate. That did it, however, with the placing of warnings; it is almost certain that foreign ip addresses were. Van Swieten says, however, that the police are not checking, because the checking of the location of ip addresses, however, an unwanted privacy violation would be.
“It depends probably on what your definition of hacking is”, defended Van Zwieten. “Perhaps it was indeed hacked, but the botnetslachtoffers were at that time already hacked.” He relies on article 2 of the law on Police, which states that the police’s job is to be the “rule of law to maintain’. In the same section also says that “in accordance with the applicable rules of law’ should be done.