The phones of the Dutch Prime Minister

(Updated: November 7, 2014)

With last year's news of NSA eavesdropping on the mobile phone of German chancellor Angela Merkel in mind, Dutch online media assumed it was big news that the Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte has a phone that cannot be intercepted.

As was the case with chancellor Merkel, most people do not seem aware of the fact that political leaders usually have two kind of phones: an ordinary one that is easy to intercept and a secure one, that is very difficult to tap.

That prime minister Rutte has a secure phone was said by the director for Cyber Security in a radio-interview last week. Afterwards this was seen a slip of the tongue, because the government has the policy to never say anything about the security methods they use.

But from pictures and other sources we can still get a fairly good idea of which phones, both secure and non-secure, are used by the Dutch prime minister. As we will show here, he currently has three landline and two mobile phones at his disposal, only one being a highly secure one.

Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte working at his desk, May 29, 2012
At his right hand are three desktop phones and in front of him an iPhone 4
(photo: Prime Minister @ Flickr - Click for the full picture)

Since 1982, the office of the Dutch prime minister is on the second floor of a small tower that is part of the parliament buildings and which dates back to the 14th century. In Dutch this office is called Het Torentje.

From the left to the right we see the following telephones on the desk of the prime minister:

1. Ericsson DBC212 (black)
2. Sectra Tiger XS Office (silver)
3. Unidentified office phone (gray)

First we will discuss the two phones without encryption capability and then the secure phone:


1. The Ericsson DBC212

This is a common office telephone which has been part of the internal private branch exchange (PBX) network of the Department of General Affairs for over a decade. Other pictures from rooms in the same building also show the same and similar models of this telephone series, which was made by Ericsson, a Swedish company that manufactured many home and office phones used in The Netherlands. The prime minister can use this phone for every phone call he wants to make that doesn't require encryption.


3. The gray office phone

The make and type of this phone couldn't be identified yet, but it seems to be a common office telephone too. However, this phone is most likely connected to the Emergency Communications Provision (Dutch: NoodCommunicatieVoorziening or NCV).

This is an IP-based network which is completely separated from the public telephone network. Communications over this network are not encrypted, but the switches are in secure locations and connect redundantly.

The purpose of the NCV-network is to enable communications between government agencies and emergency services when during a disaster or a crisis situation (parts of) the regular communication networks collapse. This network replaced the former National Emergency Network (Nationaal Noodnet) as of January 1, 2012 (see below).

Close-up of the phones on the desk of the prime minister in 2013
(picture: Google Street View - Click for the full picture)

 

2. The Sectra Tiger XS Office

The silver-colored telephone which sits in between the two other ones is a Tiger XS Office (XO). This device is capable of highly secured phone calls and can therefore be used by the prime minister for conversations about things that are classified up to the level of Secret.

The Tiger XS Office is manufactured since 2005 by the communications division of the Swedish company Sectra AB, which was founded in 1978 by some cryptology researchers from Linköping University. Sectra, which is an acronym of Secure Transmission, also has a division in the Netherlands: Sectra Communications BV.

Tiger is the brand name for their high-end secure voice products, but with everyone assuming that this refers to the exotic animal, it's also Swedish for "keep silent" (see for example: En Svensk Tiger).


Tiger XS

Although the Tiger XS Office looks like a futuristic desktop phone, it actually consists of a small encryption device which is docked into a desktop cradle with a keypad and handset. The encryption device, the Tiger XS, was originally developed for securing mobile phone communications and has special protections against tampering and so-called TEMPEST attacks.

The Sectra Tiger XS docked into the office unit
(Photo: Sectra - Click to enlarge)

The desktop unit has no encryption capabilities, but with the Tiger XS inserted, it can encrypt landline phone calls and fax transmissions, so it turns into a secure desktop telephone. The Tiger XS enables secure communications on GSM, UMTS, ISDN and the Iridium, Inmarsat and Thuraya satellite networks. When inserted into the office unit, it also works on the standard Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN).


Workings

On its own, the Tiger XS device can be used to secure certain types of cell phones. For this, the Tiger XS is connected in between a headset (consisting of an earpiece and a microphone) and a mobile phone, to which it connects via Bluetooth. A secure connection is set up by putting a personal SIM-sized access card into the Tiger XS, entering a PIN code and selecting the person to connect to from the phonebook.

What is said into the microphone of the headset is encrypted by the Tiger XS and then this encrypted voice data go to an ordinary mobile phone through the Bluetooth connection. The phone then sends it over the cell phone network to the receiving end, where another Tiger XS decrypts the data and makes it audible again.

The Tiger XS with personal
access card and headset

Mobility

At first sight it seems to be a very flexible solution: connecting a separate encryption device to common cell phones. But in reality the Tiger XS can only connect to older mobile phones which suppport the original Circuit Switched Data (CSD) channel and a Bluetooth version that is fully tested and compatible with the way the Tiger XS has to use it. Because of this, the Tiger XS is rarely used for mobile phones anymore, but mostly in combination with the desktop unit.

To restore the intended mobility, Sectra introduced the Tiger 7401 as a replacement for the Tiger XS. The Tiger 7401 is a custom made mobile telephone with TEMPEST verified design that is capable of encrypting phone calls by itself. In 2014, this new device was ordered to replace the Tiger XS for high-level officials of the Dutch Ministery of Defense.


Encryption

The encryption algorithms used by the Sectra Tiger XS are secret, so we don't know whether public standard algorithms like AES and ECDH are used, or ones that are especially designed for the Dutch government, or a combination thereof. The algorithms and the encryption keys are created by the National Communications Security Bureau (Dutch: Nationaal Bureau voor Verbindingsbeveiliging or NBV), which is part of the General Intelligence and Security Service AIVD.

This bureau has approved the Tiger XS for communications up to and including the level Secret (in Dutch marked as Stg. Geheim) in 2007. In the Netherlands, there's no phone that is approved for communications at the level Top Secret (Stg. Zeer Geheim), so these matters cannot be discussed over phones that use public networks. This is different from the US, where there are secure telephones approved for Top Secret and even above.

Encrypted communications are only possible if both parties have the same key: the sender to encrypt the message and the receiver to decrypt it. This means that all people to which the prime minister needs a secure line, also have to have a Tiger XS. That's why we can see this device also on the desk of for example the Dutch foreign minister:

The desk of the Dutch foreign minister in 2013. Between the computer
and a Cisco 7965 IP phone we see the Sectra Tiger XS Office.
(photo: Ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken - Click for the full picture)

Management

Besides encrypting phone calls and text messages, the Tiger XS also provides user authentication, so one can be sure to talk to the right person. For the actual implementation of these features there are centrally managed user groups.

This remote management, which includes supplying up-to-date phonebooks and encryption keys for the Tiger XS devices is provided by Fox-IT, a Dutch cybersecurity company founded in 1999. Since Dutch state secrets are involved, it is considered essential that this remote management is in the hands of a trusted Dutch partner.

The partnership between Fox-IT for the management and Sectra as the supplier of the hardware was established in 2007 by the VECOM (Veilige Communicatie or Secure Communications) contract. Under this contract all Dutch cabinet members and high-level officials of their departments are provided with secure phones.


Usage

The Tiger XS has also been installed at all government departments in order to provide secure fax transmissions, for example to distribute the necessary documents for the weekly Council of Ministers meeting. Dutch embassies and military units deployed overseas probably also use the Tiger XS for securing satellite communications. For this, Sectra also made a manpack communications set which uses the Tiger XS.

The fact that the Tiger XS uses highly sensitive technology and secret encryption methods, also means that it is not possible to use this device to make secure phone calls to for example foreign heads of state. That's the reason why, as we can see in the picture below, prime minister Rutte used his standard non-secure phone when he was called by US president Obama in 2010:

Prime minister Mark Rutte talks with president Obama
In front of him is probably his Blackberry
(photo: RVD, November 2, 2010)

The mobile phones of prime minister Rutte

Besides the three landline telephones, current prime minister Mark Rutte also uses an iPhone 4 and a Blackberry. He is seen with these devices on several photos and Rutte also confirmed that he uses a Blackberry when he publicly admitted that it accidently fell into a toilet in January 2011.

The iPhone is probably his private phone, because the Blackberry is the device used by Rutte's own Department of General Affairs, as well as by other departments, including those of Foreign Affairs and Social Affairs. Blackberrys are preferred by many companies and governments because they provide standard end-to-end encryption for chat and e-mail messages through the Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES).

Prime minister Rutte showing his iPhone during
a school visit in Heerhugowaard, September 3, 2014

Blackberrys do not encrypt voice, but the Dutch computer security company Compumatica has developed a solution called CompuMobile, which consists of a MicroSD card that can be inserted into a Blackberry and then encrypts phone calls and text messages by using the AES 256 and ECDH algorithms. CompuMobile has been approved for communications at the lowest Dutch classification level (Departementaal Vertrouwelijk) in 2012, but whether government departments actually use it, is not known.

Without this security measure, phone calls from both the iPhone and the Blackberry of prime minister Rutte can rather easily be intercepted by foreign intelligence agencies, just like NSA apparently did with the non-secure cell phone of his German counterpart.

> See also: How secure is the Merkel-Phone?

The prime minister's phones in 2006

The telephones that are currently installed in the office of prime minister Mark Rutte can be compared with those from his predecessor, prime minister Jan Peter Balkenende. From his office we have this picture, which gives a great view on the communication devices on his desk:

Former prime minister Jan Peter Balkenende (left) being interviewed
by Willem Breedveld (right) in his Torentje office, May 2006.
(photo: Werry Crone/Trouw - Click for the full picture)

In this picture we see from the left to the right the following three phones, all of them provided by KPN, the former state owned landline operator of the Netherlands:

1. Ericsson DBC212 (black)
2. Siemens Vox 415 (gray)
3. Ericsson Vox 120 (white)

1. The Ericsson DBC212

This is the same telephone which is still in use today, as we could see in the pictures above. It's a common office telephone made by the Swedish company Ericsson and which is part of the internal private branch exchange (PBX) network of the Department of General Affairs.


2. The Siemens Vox 415

The dark gray Vox 415 was an ordinary telephone from a series that was manufactured by Siemens for both home and office use. For private customers this model was sold by KPN under the name Bari 10.

This phone has no security features whatsoever, but as it is in the same place where later the Sectra Tiger XS Office sits, it seems very likely the Vox 415 was also used for secure communications.

For that, it was probably connected to a separate encryption device, maybe one that was compatible with the PNVX, the secure phone which was manufactured by Philips and used by the Dutch government since the late 1980s.


3. The Ericsson Vox 120

The Vox 120 was the business version of a telephone developed by Ericsson around 1986 and that was sold for home use under the name Twintoon. Attached to the back is a separate speaker unit so a third person can listen in to a conversation.

In the bottom left corner the phone has a black label with its extension number for the National Emergency Network (Dutch: Nationaal Noodnet or NN). This was a separate network which enabled government agencies to communicate with emergency services when the public telephone network collapsed.

The National Emergency Network was established in 1991 and was operated by KPN. It had some 5500 connections for 2500 end users, like the departments of the national government, city halls, hospitals, and local police and firefighter headquarters. As of January 2012, it was replaced by the IP-based Emergency Communications Provision NCV (see above).

> See also: Dutch queen Beatrix' phone

Links and sources
- Background article in Dutch: De wereld van staatsgeheim geheim (2007)
- Academic paper about Secure Text Communication for the Tiger XS (pdf) (2006)
- The first version: Tiger XS Mobile security terminal (2005)

Some SIGINT and COMSEC during the Nuclear Security Summit

(UPDATED: May 17, 2014)

On March 24 and 25, the third Nuclear Security Summit (NSS) is held in The Hague, the seat of the government of the Netherlands. As 58 world leaders will be present, including US president Obama, the summit takes place under severe security measures.

Here we will take a look at some noticable things on the Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) and Communications Security (COMSEC) front, especially regarding the American president. When some new details or pictures come up, they will be added.



US presidential motorcade

On the morning of Monday, March 24, president Obama flew in aboard Air Force One, accompanied by all the famous vehicles like the helicopters which become Marine One when he is aboard, and the cars of the presidential motorcade. As can be seen in this video, there are actually 4 identical and heavily armored presidential limousines, so two motorcades with each two identical limousines can be formed - so no one knows which one is carrying the president.

One of the last cars in the motorcade is the WHCA Roadrunner which is recognizable by a small satellite dome and a number of VHF whip antennas on a roof platform. Also known as the Mobile Command and Control Vehicle (MC2V), it serves as the communications hub for the motorcade by beaming up encrypted duplex radio and streaming video to a military satellite, which in turn beams that data back down to a ground entry point and through to the switchboard of the White House Communication Agency (WHCA).

The WHCA Roadrunner arriving in Noordwijk, where Obama is staying
(still from a video by VOLMedia)

The WHCA Roadrunner on its way from Noordwijk to The Hague
with the satellite dome and 5 VHF antennas on its roof
(photo: madebymaus posted at NUfoto.nl)

US communications aircraft

Also present is an aircraft most people don't know of and will rarely see. But it was noticed by air traffic spotters: a small US Army Beechcraft RC-12P Huron with tail number 92-13123 entered Dutch airspace around the same time as Air Force One.

A Beechcraft RC-12P surveillance and communications aircraft
(photo: Wikimedia Commons)

The Beechcraft C-12 Huron is a small twin-turboprop aircraft, which is used for many years by the US Army under its Guardrail/Common Sensor System program. In many different versions, the Beechcraft planes are widely used in war zones like Afghanistan, mainly for collecting Signals Intelligence. For that purpose they have highly specialized equipment on board, like for example DRT devices, which can be used to intercept and monitor short range radio and cell phone communications.

When following the president, the Beechcraft is probably also used as an additional communications hub between for example the presidential motorcade and the White House Communication Agency (WHCA) as this aircraft can also serve as a relay for satellite communications. The mission equipment of the RC-12P version includes datalink capability, and has fibre optic cabling and smaller and lighter wing pods.



The Doomsday Plane

Another interesting plane that followed Air Force One is a Boeing E-4B that serves as National Airborne Operations Center (NAOC). It's also known as the "Doomsday Plane" because during the Cold War there was always one of these aircraft in the air to provide a survivable platform in the event of a nuclear attack. Its original codename was "Nightwatch", derived from the famous Rembrandt painting that Obama saw during his visit to Amsterdam.

On March 24, plane spotters noticed an E-4B with tail number 75-0125 following Air Force One when entering European airspace. When the US president travels outside North America, the E-4B lands on an airport within several hundred miles of the president's destination, to be readily available in the event of an emergency that renders Air Force One unusable. It's not yet known where the E-4B landed during the Nuclear Security Summit.

A Boeing E-4B National Airborne Operations Center plane
(photo: Sergio Perez Aguado)

World leaders' telephones

For secure phone calls, president Obama can use his highly secured BlackBerry, which connects to a secure base station that follows him where ever he goes. In the picture below we can see he also brought his BlackBerry to the opening session of the Nuclear Security Summit on March 24:

Obama and his BlackBerry at the opening session of the Nuclear Security Summit
(photo: Yves Herman/Pool/European Pressphoto Agency)

The WHCA also installs secure wireline phones at every place the president stays. Nowadays that includes a vIPer 'Universal Secure Phone' which can connect through analog, digital or VoIP networks, and a Cisco IP phone that connects to the highly secured Executive Voice over Secure IP-network through dedicated and encrypted satellite links.

Other world leaders will also have brought their own equipment for secure communications with their capitals, including landline and mobile telephones that are able to perform end-to-end encryption of the calls.

For example, German chancellor Angela Merkel can use her secured BlackBerry 10 smartphone or a landline secured by the Elcrodat 6-2 encryption device. The French president François Hollande has a Teorem secure cell phone and can also place secure calls through a wireline DCS 500 telephone set.

The British prime minister David Cameron can place secure calls by using a Brent 2 secure telephone. Apparently he also uses one or two mobile phones, but from the picture below it's difficult to recognize their make and type. It's also not clear whether they have any encryption capability.

British Prime Minister David Cameron attends the
opening session of the Nuclear Security Summit
(photo: Reuters/Sean Gallup/Pool)

Russian spy ships?

There was some speculation about two Russian crab fishing trawlers lying in the harbour of Scheveningen, which is a small port next to The Hague. People noticed that these ships had so many antennas, and thought they could be Russian spy ships, trying to intercept communications from the world leaders attending the Nuclear Security Summit.

Two Russian trawlers in Scheveningen
(photo: Ferry Mingelen)

However, it stated out that both ships, from Petropavlovsk-Kamtsjatski in the far eastern part of Russia, came in three weeks ago having problems with their engines. This was solved rather quickly, but then problems with some neccessary certificates appeared, and both ships had to stay until that issue has been cleared.

Regarding the antennas, some people say that they are quite ordinary HF and VHF antennas, which were used by ships before maritime satellite communication was introduced.

During the Cold War, the Soviet Union had a large fleet of fishing trawlers that conducted covert signals intelligence gathering. Nowadays, known Russian spy ships are often much larger military vessels, which don't have to go into the territorial waters of a country they want to monitor, but can operate safely from international waters. An example is the Viktor Leonov SSV-175 from the Vishnya class in the picture below, but a ship like this one has not been seen near the Netherlands.

The Russian spy ship Viktor Leonov SSV-175
(photo: Stringer/Reuters)

Update:
About two months later, the Dutch Military Intelligence and Security Service (MIVD) said that after the pictures of the two Russian trawlers were posted on Twitter, they took a closer look at them and had to conclude these ships were too far away from the Summit location to impose a eavesdropping threat.

Links and Sources
- 618 photo's of Obama in Noordwijk
- Photo's of the NSS 2014 at Flickr
- Photo gallery of Obama's trip to Europe and Saudi Arabia
- Russian spy ships? Scheveningse haven door Russen geannexeerd
- More about The Beast and its Escorts
- WashingtonPost.com: Secret Service agents on Obama detail sent home from Netherlands after night of drinking
- DailyMail.co.uk: Revealed: INSIDE the President's $223m 'DOOMSDAY PLANE' that protects him against nuclear war, asteroids and terror attacks

Dutch government tried to hide the truth about metadata collection

(Updated: March 8, 2014)

On February 4, the Dutch government admitted that it was not NSA that collected 1,8 million metadata from phone calls of Dutch citizens, but actually their own military intelligence service MIVD. They gathered those data from foreign communications and subsequently shared them with partner agencies like NSA.

Just like everyone else, the Dutch interior minister was mislead by how Glenn Greenwald erroneously interpreted the data shown in screenshots from the NSA tool BOUNDLESSINFORMANT. This let him misinform the Dutch public and parliament too, and only after being faced with a lawsuit, he finally disclosed the truth. Here's the full story.


How it started

The first charts from the BOUNDLESSINFORMANT tool were published by the German magazine Der Spiegel on July 29, 2013. Next to a bigger chart about Germany was a smaller one about the Netherlands, but this was completely overseen by Dutch media.

Only after the French paper Le Monde came with a big story about alleged NSA eavesdropping on French citizens on October 20, 2013, the Dutch IT website Tweakers.net published on October 21 about the screenshot that was in Der Spiegel several months before:

The report by Tweakers.net was correct in explaining that the chart only shows metadata, but the headline initially read "NSA intercepted 1.8 million phonecalls in the Netherlands". It was the first time a news medium correctly presented the BOUNDLESSINFORMANT chart as showing metadata instead of content.

But as the initial headline had immediatly been copied by other media, many people, including politicians, got the idea that NSA was actually eavesdropping on a vast number of Dutch phone calls. After discussing this on Twitter, Tweakers corrected the title by adding "metadata" and "per month".

> See also: BOUNDLESSINFORMANT only shows metadata



A talkative minister

On the night of October 22, the Dutch interior minister Ronald Plasterk was asked about these revelations in the late night talk show Pauw & Witteman. He gave a clear explanation about what metadata are used for, and guessed that with around 60.000 phone calls per day between the Netherlands and the United States, this would make 1,8 million calls per month - apperently assuming that numbers of metadata equals phone calls.

He said that he wasn't yet certain whether it was actually NSA that collected those metadata from Dutch phonecalls, but that a European group of experts was established to clarify this with the Americans. The minister said that it would not be acceptable if NSA was monitoring Dutch citizens without asking permission from the Dutch government before doing so.

According to a statement by the interior minister during the parliamentary debate on February 11, 2014, it was only by now that AIVD and MIVD started communicating with NSA about the exact origins of these particular data. It would last 4 weeks to get this clear - rather quick, according to the minister.

(286e minuut)

Before this bilateral investigation was initiated, it seems that the Dutch government was relying on the work of a multinational group of experts on behalf of 27 European countries. This ad hoc EU-US Working Group was established in July 2013 to examine the NSA spying programs. Their final report (pdf) was published on November 27.

Besides this group of experts, the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs of the European Parliament also started an inquiry in September 2013, presented preliminary conclusions on December 18 and a final report (pdf) on February 21.

Dutch interior minister Ronald Plasterk in the talk show Pauw & Witteman
(October 22, 2013 - in Dutch)

Almost one week later, on October 28, the Spanish paper El Mundo also published a screenshot from BOUNDLESSINFORMANT. The article, written by Glenn Greenwald and a Spanish journalist, once again said the chart proved that NSA had spied on 60 million phonecalls from Spain in one month.

This was the standard interpretation that Greenwald gave to BOUNDLESSINFORMANT charts for Germany, France, Spain, Norway, Afghanistan and Italy. He used them to demonstrate the claim made by Edward Snowden, that NSA is eavesdropping on innocent people everywhere in the world.

By framing the public debate in this way, most people, including politicians, assumed these claims were true, and therefore it was for example the Dutch interior minister, responsible for the civilian intelligence and security service AIVD, who was asked for explanation. Only people familiar with Dutch intelligence knew that SIGINT collection is actually done by the NSO, which is part of the military intelligence agency MIVD.



NSA strikes back

On October 29, NSA director Keith Alexander testified before a hearing of the House intelligence committee. He forcefully denied that NSA was collecting millions of phone calls from European countries by saying "Those screenshots that show or at least lead people to believe that we, NSA, or the US, collected that information is false".

Instead, data shown in charts from the Snowden document were collected not just by the NSA itself, but were also "provided to NSA by foreign partners," Alexander said. "This is not information that we collected on European citizens. It represents information that we and our NATO allies have collected in defense of our countries and in support of military operations". The next day, this statement was also sent to European partner agencies, including AIVD.

The same day, the Wall Street Journal reported that according to US officials, the metadata records for France and Spain were not collected by the NSA, but by French and Spanish intelligence services. The metadata were gathered outside their borders, like in war zones, and then shared with NSA.

Then, interior minister Plasterk was invited to appear in the Dutch television news magazine Nieuwsuur on October 30. According to a reconstruction by the newspaper NRC Handelsblad, he was advised by Defense minister Hennis-Plasschaert not to go, because her department, responsible for Dutch SIGINT collection through the MIVD, was irritated by Plasterk's willingness to talk about this issue.

Before going to Nieuwsuur, Plasterk had a meeting with Marc Kuipers, the deputy director of his own AIVD and asked him about the metadata. He was told that there was no hard evidence that the statement of NSA was correct, and Kuipers reportedly denied that the 1,8 million metadata were collected by Dutch agencies. As their research started just a week before, AIVD apparently wasn't sure yet about the exact origins of these data (it took the German BND only a week to find out that they collected the 'German' metadata *)

During the Nieuwsuur broadcast, minister Plasterk showed the letter (pdf) with the statement from general Alexander, but completely misinterpreted it as being a confirmation that the number of 1,8 million metadata were actually collected by NSA - something that was not acceptable for him. He also strongly denied that the 1,8 million were collected by Dutch agencies and subsequently shared with NSA.

Dutch interior minister Ronald Plasterk in the television
magazine Nieuwsuur, October 30, 2013

A few weeks later, NRC Handelsblad announced that they would soon start disclosing Snowden documents related to the Netherlands. NSA watchers expected that one of the first disclosures would be the complete BOUNDLESSINFORMANT screenshot, including the bottom part showing the technical specifications. But that didn't happen. NRC published two articles, on November 23 and November 30, but both contained more background information than spectacular new revelations about the Netherlands.

Most surprising was that the BOUNDLESSINFORMANT screenshot wasn't published. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that this weblog explained on November 23, that Greenwald's interpretation of these charts was not correct, which became clear after comparing two screenshots published by Greenwald in a Norwegian paper in the days before.

A few days later, on November 27, I published my research revealing that the DRTBox technique used to collect the metadata shown in the charts about France, Spain, Italy, Norway and Afghanistan is mainly used for short-range radio and cell phone interception during military operations.



Not NSA, but MIVD

These analysis not only support the official statement by NSA, but also confirm what the intelligence agencies from Germany and Norway had said earlier: that the metadata shown in the charts were collected by them as part of military operations abroad, and not by NSA (exactly the same was said by the Danish military intelligence service, anticipating on a chart about Denmark that never came).

After an investigation of exactly 4 weeks, experts from AIVD and MIVD, who compared actual data collected by the SIGINT unit NSO with data in the systems of their counterparts from NSA, concluded that there was a "perfect match". This was shared with defense minister Hennis and interior minister Plasterk on November 22. Prime minister Mark Rutte was informed during a regular meeting on December 10.

After it became clear that the metadata were not collected by NSA, but by the Dutch agency MIVD, the whole issue automatically became something that was not in the interest of the state to disclose (although not a formal state secret). The interior and the defense minister argued about whether to inform parliament and the public, like in Germany and Norway, but ultimately decided not to do so, following the standard practice to Never Say Anything about the modus operandi of the intelligence and security services.

This is a rather strange argumentation, as "collecting and sharing (meta)data" doesn't reveal any specific methods or operations. Both practices are regularly mentioned in the public reports of MIVD and the oversight committee CTIVD. But as almost no one reads these, the parliament and the people still thought it was NSA that monitored their phone calls.

Presently, it's still not clear whether or not the government informed the parliamentary intelligence oversight committee (CIVD or Commissie Stiekem), because ministers and members aren't even allowed to mention which topics were discussed during the committee meetings.

UPDATE:
According to NRC Handelsblad, defense minister Hennis informed the parliamentary oversight committee on December 12, by saying that the telephony data were collected by Dutch services and shared with NSA. Because she didn't link this to minister Plasterk's statement from October 30, apparently none of the members of the committee was aware of the political impact...

The headquarters of the AIVD in Zoetermeer
(photo: ANP)

Citizens against the State

But then there was a lawsuit on behalf of a coalition of citizens and organizations against the Dutch state, as represented by the interior minister. It aims at stopping Dutch intelligence agencies acquiring data from NSA that might be obtained illegally if Dutch and European law would apply. Furthermore, the coalition demands that the state informs the citizens whose illegally obtained data have been used.

Faced with the possibility of a court ruling that acquiring foreign intelligence might be illegal, which would de facto end the intelligence sharing relationships with foreign countries, the Dutch government was forced to reply. So on February 4, 2014, the state advocate came with a response (pdf), which contains two interesting points:

- The demands are mainly based upon press reports speaking of intercepted phone calls, which is incorrect, because in fact it's not about content, but about metadata. These are collected by the state, lawfully acquired in the context of international cooperation and subsequently passed on to other countries. (par. 6.2)

- Dutch intelligence services are using data derived from undirected interception of cablebound communications by foreign agencies. This method is (still) prohibited in the Netherlands, but legal in the US, and therefore the state sees this as lawful acquisitions. (par. 2.17 - revealing that this is apparently one of the things that the Dutch get in return for the metadata they share)

Misleading the parliament

Now that the state advocate had disclosed the true nature of the 1,8 million, the interior and the defense minister also had to inform the parliament and the public. This was done by a short official statement saying:

"The graph in question points out circa 1.8 million records of metadata that have been collected by the National Sigint Organization (NSO) in the context of counter-terrorism and military operations abroad. It is therefore expressly data collected in the context of statutory duties. The data are legitimately shared with the United States in the light of international cooperation on the issues mentioned above."

This was exact the opposite of what interior minister Plasterk had said during the Nieuwsuur broadcast on October 30 and subsequently to parliament. He was accused of lying or at least witholding crucial information and now had to fear for his position.

On Saturday, February 8, the newspaper NRC Handelsblad published out of the blue the long-awaited complete BOUNDLESSINFORMANT screenshot regarding the Netherlands, including the bottom part which was seen now for the first time since the initial publication by Der Spiegel in August 2013:

The BOUNDLESSINFORMANT screenshot for the Netherlands
(picture by NRC Handelsblad - click to enlarge)

> See for all details about this chart: BOUNDLESSINFORMANT: metadata collection by Dutch MIVD instead of NSA


On February 11, there was a parliamentary debate about the whole issue. Interior minister Plasterk sincerely apologized for his misleading statements on October 30, saying that he just wanted to make sure to the public that it was not his own AIVD that eavesdropped on Dutch citizens.

This statement was hardly convincing, and many parliament members were not satisfied with the fact that he didn't correct his statement after he was informed about the truth on November 22. Both the interior and the defense minister continuously replied that it was not in the interest of the state to provide any more information.

Given this overstretched secrecy, it almost seemed a slip of the tongue when minister Plasterk explained that because "under different programs, different types of metadata are shared" it was not so easy to attribute the 1,8 million to collection by MIVD.

After a debate of almost 8 hours, most opposition parties voted against the interior minister, but that wasn't enough to force a resignation. However, the whole affair weakened his position, he can't afford new mistakes anymore.



Conclusion

With claims made by Edward Snowden that NSA is monitoring innocent civilians all over the world being spread by media for months, it's understandable that the BOUNDLESSINFORMANT charts were seen as evidence for American spying on European countries. Glenn Greenwald presented them in that way to major European newspapers and supported his interpretation by a FAQ document saying that this tool shows "How many records (and what type) are collected against a particular country".

But now that it has become clear this interpretation was false, it also reveals that Greenwald apparently relied solely on these few documents, and was unaware of what the charts really show. I think we have to assume that Snowden also had no idea about their factual context, let alone any experience with the program - if he had, it would be even worse.

The whole story about BOUNDLESSINFORMANT not only backfired upon Snowden and Greenwald, but also upon several European governments, for example the Spanish and the French ones, who fiercly protested against the alleged US spying on their countries, and of course the Dutch one, where interior minister Plasterk was almost forced to resign because of the misinterpretation of the BOUNDLESSINFORMANT chart.



Links and Sources
- Le Monde/BugBrother: La NSA n’espionne pas tant la France que ça
- DeCorrespondent.nl: Cees Wiebes over de internationale gevolgen van Plasterkgate
- Jan Dirk Snel: De Tweede Kamer heeft zelf boter op het hoofd – Over de zogenaamde affaire-Plasterk
- NetKwesties.nl: Onjuiste geheimhouding regering over AIVD/MIVD
- Cyberwar.nl: Broken oversight & the 1.8M PSTN records collected by the Dutch National Sigint Organization
- DutchNews.nl: The Netherlands, not USA, gathered info from 1.8 million phone calls
- NRC.nl: NSA hielp Nederland met onderzoek naar herkomst 1,8 miljoen
- Defensie.nl: MIVD: Interceptie van telecommunicatie
- VoiceOfRussia.com: Denmark admits to tapping phones in conflict zones abroad

BOUNDLESSINFORMANT: metadata collection by Dutch MIVD instead of NSA

(Updated: March 15, 2014)

Today, the Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad finally published the complete BOUNDLESSINFORMANT screenshot that shows data related to the Netherlands.

This came after a surprising revelation by the Dutch government that the 1,8 million metadata shown in that screenshot were not from Dutch citizens and intercepted by NSA, but actually from a legitimate collection against foreign targets by the Dutch military intelligence agency MIVD which was passed on to the Americans.

Here, I will analyse the chart and compare it with similar charts about various other countries that were published earlier. More about the background, which caused some severe political problems for the Dutch interior minister, can be read here!

The BOUNDLESSINFORMANT screenshot for the Netherlands
(picture by NRC Handelsblad - click to enlarge)

The first thing that catches the eye is that the screenshot is shown here on paper, together with another sheet with an orange bar bearing a classification marking and a cardboard folder. The sheets look like as if they became wet and also show some white paint brush-like stains (all previous screenshots were published as digital files).

Probably these effects were photoshopped by the paper to make it look extra special. For example, the classification marking on the second sheet seems fake, as it reads: TOPSECRET//S//NOFORN, where in reality Top Secret are two separate words and the compartment for this kind of information is not S, but SI for Special Intelligence.

That said, we now take a look at the information in the screenshot itself. In the upper part there's the bar chart which was already published back in August 2013 by Der Spiegel. The green bars show that only DNR (Dialed Number Recognition, which is telephony) metadata were collected. In the lower part, which was published for the first time today, there are three sections with some details about this collection:

- Signal Profile - Most Volume - Top 5 Techs -

Signal Profile

This section has a pie chart which can show various types of communication. In this case, all metadata were collected from PSTN, which stands for Public Switched Telephone Network. This is the traditional telephone infrastructure, consisting of telephone lines, (undersea) fiber optic cables, microwave transmission links, cellular networks, and communications satellites, all interconnected by switching centers.

In this case, MIVD collected the metadata from PSTN traffic using their satellite station near Burum, which is operated by the signals intelligence unit NSO. This station is conveniently situated next to a big commercial ground station operated by Stratos Global, which provides access to Inmarsat, and Castor, providing access to Intelsat, Eutelsat, Gazprom, RSCC, SES (Astra), Telesat, and Arabsat satellites.

Whereas nowadays almost all intercontinental communications pass undersea fiber optic cables, some less-developed countries like Afghanistan, Sudan, Somalia, Cuba and North-Korea, and remote regions in Russia, China and Africa apparently still use Intelsat satellite links for their international telecommunications. A number of these countries are also linked to Intersputnik satellites.

An example given by the NRC newspaper is that of calls made by Somali people from call shops in a Dutch city like Rotterdam to the Somali capital Mogadishu. If these calls travel through satellite links, the MIVD is able to collect their metadata. The agency only gathers communications that are related to terrorism and those that are necessary to support international military operations.

The Burum teleport, with the NSO intercept station (left) and the
ground station operated by Stratos Global and Castor (right)
(photo: Castor - click to enlarge)

According to a reply from the Dutch government, the 1,8 million metadata were collected by the MIVD from phonecalls, including some sms and fax messages, that "originated and/or terminated" in foreign countries. After all communication data with a Dutch phone number were filtered out, the remaining data were "shared with partner agencies".

This means, these data weren't just shared with NSA on a bilateral basis, but also in multinational military intelligence sharing groups like the 9-Eyes and the 14-Eyes, which is actually called SIGINT Seniors Europe. Both groups consist of the Five Eyes plus a number of 3rd Party nations.

In response to parliamentary questions, the Dutch government seemed to suggest that the 1,8 million metadata equals 1,8 million "unique moments/types of communication". This contrary to earlier and widespread assumptions that 1 phone call creates multiple metadata records.


Most Volume

In the screenshot we can see that the metadata records were collected through a facility designated by the SIGAD US-985Y.

According to NRC, Dutch government sources say that this SIGAD does not designate a single facility, but rather "metadata collected by MIVD that are shared with NSA".

This means that these data could be derived from multiple collection platforms and not just from the satellite intercept station near Burum, although the Dutch government said that in this case the 1,8 million metadata were collected through satellite interception. Besides Burum, the Dutch SIGINT unit NSO also has a high-frequency radio intercept station near Eibergen and some mobile signals intelligence units which can be deployed during foreign operations.

US-985Y is from the same range as US-985D, which is the SIGAD in the screenshot about the collection of metadata related to France, and also near the range of US-987 SIGADs which are used for collection by Spanish, Norwegian, German and Italian agencies. Interestingly, it was Der Spiegel noticing already in August 2013, that SIGADs like the US-987 series were among those assigned by NSA to the SIGINT activities of 3rd Party partner agencies.

If the Dutch interpretation is correct, we have to assume that also the SIGADs for other countries do not designate a particular physical interception facility, but rather a foreign agency as the single source of shared data, with divisions not according to collection facilities, but according to data types like metadata, content, phone and internet. This makes some sense, as it's not up to NSA to assign designations to individual foreign collection platforms.

The headquarters of the Dutch military intelligence agency MIVD,
which is located in the Frederikkazerne in The Hague
(photo: GPD)

Top 5 Techs

This section of the screenshot mentions the technical systems or programs used to collect or process the data. Here, only a single system was used, called CERF CALL.

Sources contacted by NRC say this stands for "Contact Event Record Call", which refers in a more technical way to (telephony) metadata. "Contact" and "event" are terms which are also seen in other NSA documents related to metadata, so that seems to make sense.

It was strange that there was no word for the letter F, but some research revealed that the F most likely stands for Format. In several job vacancies CERF can be seen as listed among a number of other NSA data formats like CSDF and ASDF. We can assume now that CERF = Contact Event Record Format.

The same tech was also in the BOUNDLESSINFORMANT screenshot about Germany, where CERF CALL MOSES1 was the fourth biggest one. Maybe CERF is used for collected metadata in general and CALL specifies that for telephony metadata (although in NSA-speak, telephony is always designated as DNR). An additional codeword like MOSES1 could then be used to further specify these data sets.

Seeing CERF in the Dutch chart came somewhat as a surprise, because in almost all screenshots that followed the German one (France, Spain, Italy, Norway and a chart about Afghanistan) we saw DRTBOX, which is a technique used for handling metadata derived from mobile communication systems (PCS).

DRTBOX refers to surveillance devices made by DRT, which are used to locally intercept radio and cell phone communications, and are widely used in war zones like Afghanistan. This also provides a very strong indication that the metadata for those other countries were collected during or in support of military operations abroad.

The satellite intercept station of MIVD near Burum
(photo: ANP)

We should also be aware of the possibility that the BOUNDLESSINFORMANT screenshot doesn't show everything that the Dutch agency MIVD shares with NSA, as in this one there are only telephony metadata. This is the lesson that was learned from the screenshot about Afghanistan, which was published by Glenn Greenwald in a Norwegian paper last November.
That chart also shows just telephony metadata from one single source, but communications from Afghanistan are of course intercepted by numerous collection facilities. This means that such a document bearing the name of a particular country doesn't necessarily contains everything what's collected from or by that nation.
This problem arises from the fact that these screenshots are published without their original context, so we don't know which selections in the BOUNDLESSINFORMANT interface were made prior to resulting in the output we see in these charts. Unfortunately, Glenn Greenwald isn't able or willing to answer these kind of questions.


> More background of this story: Dutch government tried to hide the truth about metadata collection


UPDATE

On March 5, 2014, the Dutch paper NRC Handelsblad came with a follow-up story, which provided more context to the Dutch collection of metadata.

It says the Netherlands has been sharing intercepted telecommunications with the US since 2006. This partnership accelerated after the Dutch started their ISAF mission in the Afghan province of Uruzgan in 2006 and it continued after this mission ended in 2011. According to NRC there is still a steady flow of millions of telephony metadata from MIVD to NSA.

The paper presents the following example: When in August 2012 the Dutch navy ship HMS Rotterdam was the flagship for the NATO anti-piracy operation OCEAN SHIELD, this vessel was also intercepting the communications of Somali pirates. This was made possible because NSA had provided the covert Dutch SIGINT team on the ship with a special interception system.

NSA's access to the pirates’ communication had collapsed after the latter switched to land-based communications, which couldn't be intercepted by the Americans. Therefore the metadata provided by the Dutch were very welcome. A combination of the interception of Somali pirate communications from aboard the Dutch ship and through the Dutch satellite intercept station in Burum lead to successful mapping of pirate networks:

Note that the grey text in the bottom right corner says that this slide originally was classified as TOP SECRET//SI//NOFORN, but apperently later this was lowered to SECRET//SI//REL TO USA, NLD, probably to share it with the Dutch.

The diagram from the slide is also shown in a larger version. Some connections and icons have Dutch labels, so this seems to be generated by a software tool used by the Dutch MIVD. Probably it's Sentinel Visualizer or Analyst's Notebook or a similar software program, but it also resembles the SYNAPSE data model used by NSA.

Links and Sources
- DeCorrespondent.nl: Op dit grasveldje in de Achterhoek luistert Nederland de Taliban af
- NRC.nl: The secret role of the Dutch in the American war on terror
- NetKwesties.nl: Onjuiste geheimhouding regering over AIVD/MIVD
- Cyberwar.nl: Broken oversight & the 1.8M PSTN records collected by the Dutch National Sigint Organization
- DutchNews.nl: The Netherlands, not USA, gathered info from 1.8 million phone calls
- NRC.nl: NSA hielp Nederland met onderzoek naar herkomst 1,8 miljoen
- Defensie.nl: MIVD: Interceptie van telecommunicatie

Dutch queen Beatrix' phone

The day before yesterday, queen Beatrix of the Netherlands announced that she will abdicate on April 30, when she will have been on the throne for exactly 33 years. Her efficient, professional and even perfectionist style is also reflected by the telephones which are in her office in the palace of Huis ten Bosch: a simple modern white phone from the Unifoon series:

Queen Beatrix in her office at her last meeting with prime minister Mark Rutte
Notice the white Unifoon against the wall and the prime minister having two mobile phones
while the queen only has paper and pencils in front of her (April 22, 2013).
(Photo: Minister-president @ Flickr)

Allthough the Netherlands is a very liberal society, the government and the royal family are still less open. Opposite to the United States, where we can get almost day-to-day pictures of the president and the White House, pictures of queen Beatrix and her surroundings are quite rare.

The Dutch queen Beatrix in her office at the Huis ten Bosch palace in 1987
On the right side of her desk we see a white Unifoon telephone
(Photo: Thuring/RVD)

Queen Beatrix in the same office and with the same phone more recently

The Unifoon was one of the standard telephones sold by the Dutch national telephone administration PTT during the eighties, and therefore could be found in many homes during the last two decades of the 20th century. The phone, which also appeared in the 1979 James Bond-movie Moonraker, was available in white, ivory, beige and red. There were also some modified versions, for example for usage with a small private branch exchange (PBX).

The phone at the queen's desk is also connected to an internal network for the palace. Besides that, her Unifoon has no other functions, like for example programmable memory buttons. This fits her style too, as it's known that queen Beatrix isn't very fond of modern technology, apparently she didn't even had a mobile phone for many years. It fits also with the predominantly ceremonial role of the queen of the Netherlands, working at a certain distance of the actual government.

The Unifoon telephone, as advertised in a 1987 brochure
from the Dutch national telephone administration PTT
(the 149,- guilders would now be 67,- euro)

The Unifoon was developed and initially made by the Nederlandse Standard Electric Maatschappij (NSEM), a company providing telephone equipment to the Dutch national telephone administration. The roots of this company go back to the Bell Telephone Manufacturing Company (BTMC), which started to make telephone equipment for the Dutch and Belgian markets at a plant in Antwerp in 1882.

By the end of the 19th century nationalistic policies favoured local manufacturers, and so there came a plant of BTMC in The Hague, for providing equipment to the Gemeentelijke Telefoondienst Den Haag and the Rijkstelefoon. This plant became independent in 1940 and was named Nederlandse Standard Electric Maatschappij (NSEM), manufacturing telephone sets and exchanges from 1948 to 1983.

In 1984 or 1985 this company was taken over by ITT and renamed ITT Nederland NV. After the merger of the telecommunications divisions of ITT and CGE, the name was changed to Alcatel Nederland BV.


Besides her office at the palace of Huis ten Bosch, which is the place where she lives, queen Beatrix also has an office at the palace of Noordeinde, which is in the city center of The Hague. Pictures of the interior of this palace are very rare, but from a 2008 book about the palace, we have one great picture of her spacious office room:

The office of queen Beatrix at the palace of Noordeinde

Unfortunately we can't recognize what kind of phone is on the desk, but it seems to be different from the Unifoon which is at the palace of Huis ten Bosch.


Queen Beatrix will be succeeded by her eldest son Willem-Alexander, who will be installed as king of the Netherlands on April 30. In the years to come we will see what will be the telephone equipment of his choice.

Update:
According to for example this picture, we now know that Willem-Alexander bought and used an iPhone for several years. Also, after he was installed as the new king on April 30, 2013, he sent an SMS-message to the major of Amsterdam, thanking him for all his efforts.

Links
- MaximumPC.com: Unredacted WikiLeaks Cables Include Dutch Queen's Residential Phone Number (2011)