vigilant TV

A lengthy article accuses Israeli company Comverse Infosys, suppliers of communications interception systems, of gaining access to Dutch police wiretaps during equipment maintenance. The accusations are based on a Fox News story from December last year that accused Comverse of leaking FBI wiretaps. [ed: the original Fox reports were subsequently removed; I’ve mirrored several copies of the story here, including what appears to be a video copy]

On august 24 the project leader of the National Interception Organisation (“Landelijk Interceptie Orgaan”, LIO) J.Steeg announced that he plans to check the tapping rooms for backdoors. However, when the equipmenent was bought from the Israelis, it was agreed that no one except Comverse personel was authorized to touch the systems, according to the insider of the AIVD (formerly BVD), the Dutch intelligence organisation that spoke to the EO radioprogram De Ochtenden⁴. Source code would never be available to anyone.

[...]

The insiders at the AIVD and the tapping room were interviewed by the radio program of the EO¹¹. According to them, the Dutch government and Comverse have a gentlemen’s agreement that the Dutch government would get the Comverse systems for a very reduced price and in exchange the Israelis would get full access to all tapped information. The systems still ended up being more expensive than rejected competitors’ quotes. The Comverse maintanance contract alone apparently costs more then the installation itself, according to the anonymous sources. Since the leaks seem to be disguised as maintenance, one could say that the Dutch government is actually paying the cost of foreign intelligence against the Dutch state.

Israeli Comverse employees apparently show up in the tapping rooms on a very regular basis for maintanance, since no Dutch are allowed to touch the equipment. The radio program further stated that the maintanance is done using their own Hebrew keyboards and language. They leave the tapping rooms with filled MO-discs and no-one from the Dutch government has any idea what the Comverse people are doing. To make things yet worse, Comverse can dial-in to the tapping room equipment at all times.

– C’T, Dutch tapping room not kosher.