nettime: Report on Amsterdam, part 1

["Eveline Lubbers" <evel@xs4all.nl>]

Beat the Dutch!
Report on Amsterdam, part 1.

                                                Amsterdam, May 20, 1996
Dear Nettimers,

Guess you haven't heard a lot about Netactivism in the
Netherlands, so I'm going to tell you some tales from the
Lowlands: The Breaking of the State Publishers' monopoly, How to
fight the Church of Scientology on Internet, The Raid on Ravage.
And of course there is the Launch of McSpotlight. 
Whoever hears about the Dutch practises and the British
experience, will hopefully get inspired - it certainly made me
think about the meaning of Netactivism.


The Breaking of the State Publishers' monopoly.

First, let me tell you about a recent coup on Internet.
It takes some dwelling upon the Dutch situation, but once you get to
grips with it, you'll love the story!

Let me introduce the players to you. First there is the agency
I work for, called bureau Jansen & Janssen, which stands for
Thomson & Thomsonn, the two stumbling detictives featured in the
Tintin comics. Jansen & Janssen is a spin off from the strong
squatter movement of Amsterdam in the eighties. 

Activists had to deal with the police and secret services a lot,
and the bureau started collecting stragegies and contra-
expertise. Jansen & Janssen started in 1985 and soon grew into
an archive on police tactics with particular interest in
analysing how the force deals with critical powers that be. We
published our research on how the secret service tried to
infiltrate the activist movement, and on how they blackmailed
asylumseekers to work for them. 

Jansen & Janssen kept up with the changes of times and in 1994
revealed how private detectives collect information about lobby
groups and sell it to the multinationals involved. Other areas
which we have been interested in for many years are the change
in police tactics in fighting organized crime, the influence of
foreign agencies on seizing drugs traffic and the shift towards
more intelligence gathering, by the police. But on this subject,
we were too early. (Or haunted by our radical roots, which we
never cut off and never will.) People took us serious, but to a
certain extent. With some stories, we just did not get access to
the media.

This was the situation up until some two years ago when a public
prosecuter in Amsterdam found out that a special squad team, the
Interregional Research Team (IRT), was de facto exploiting a drug
trafficking line. The police worked with an informant who was allowed
to grow into someone really important in order to infiltrate a big
gang. The police looked the other way when containers full of soft
drugs arrived from abroad. In the end, the police were involved in
organizing import and export of all kind of drugs, including Ecstacy
(XTC) and cocaine. The public prosecuter ordered this very special
criminal investigation method to stop. Immediately. If only he had
known what he had started on that day in December 1993....Fights
between departments, between commissionairies, between cities, between
the police and the Public Prosecutor. Officials refused to talk to
each other, policemen involved claimed their lives were in danger -
and that of their informants' were too.

The first official investigation into this didn't really
elucidate what was going on, not only because a certain part of
the final report remained secret. Nevertheless the crisis was
taken seriously, the Minister of Internal Affairs and the
Minister of Justice both resigned. Because further investigation
seemed necessairy, an official parliamentairy inquiry commission
was set up: the Van Traa commission.
This is our second player. The Van Traa commission (named after
their chairman) was staffed with specialists from universities
and the field. They interviewed a lot of people involved, and the
public part of the hearings were broadcase live on television in
October 1995.

People were shocked to hear about what was going on, and how
little the higher reaches had known about it. It seemed as though
nobody would take responsibility for what had happened. The police had
been told to fight organized crime, and to go out and get some big
guys - and that's what they had been doing. The use of undogmatic
investigation methods was not really illegal. They reasoned that
because they were not mentioned in the law, the methods were not
forbidden.

The results of the Commission Van Traa were published in 13
volumes (more than 5000 pages) and sold together in a box, for
695,- guilders. A cd-rom with the same information (accessed
using an impressive search engine and hyperlinked keywords and
notes) was available for another f 650,- As the paper-version had no
index whatsoever, people where in fact forced to buy the package deal
for over 1000,- guilders. The publishers were the SDU - the former
State Publishing House who were recently privatised. They are the
third player in our game.

The price of the report caused much controversy as these
documents are in fact Hansards of Parliament, which should be
freely available to the public. After a plea on the opinion page
of our most serious daily paper, NRC Handelsblad (bit like the
Times), to put the Van Traa report on Internet, we decided it was time
to act. We took the challenge and within a week, the job was done.
Some Perl-specialists hacked the cd-rom and managed to free the
stripped texts from the processed version. The only thing we lost were
the hyperlinks and the notes (a bloody shame!). But this was the only
way to do it if we were to avoid legal problems. The Hansards of
Parliament are free of copyright - the Law makes an exception for the
sake of democracy. The SDU has claims on the edition work they do, but
not on the texts as such. We saw the hole and jumped right in to it!
The stripped texts were turned into html-pages, divided into neat
paragraphs made accessible by a search engine, and that was that. 

'Monopoly of the SDU broken, Van Traa report on Internet.' We
made headlines on the frontpage of the same, very serious
newspaper. The managing director of the SDU admitted he had to
congratulate us with the job. The Secretairy of State for Home
Affairs wrote a letter to the paper which indicated he should
have wanted to do the same, but that he was too late. He stressed the
importance of accessibility of government information, and anounced a
pilot project of using teletext on the local cable - because the
masses don't have computers- for this (imagine, 5000 pages, each
divided up in 4 quarters, to be handled with remote control).

The postings in the guestbook on the Jansen & Janssen homepage
were overwelmingly enthousiastic. In fact, they ade us feel a bit shy
and humble. 'Fantastic', 'Just Great!', 'This is what Internet was
meant for' 'Historical Action' 'Long live disclosure' 'Well Done'
'Internet Optima Forma' 'Important Contribution to Democracy' Who
would have thought buro Jansen & Janssen would be praised for helping
Dutch Society!?! The funny side was that, within a week, we had gone
completely mainstream - accepted by Parliament and known in every far
out corner of the country. It was a strange experience. Sure the
timing was right. We interfered in a discussion we had only heard of
vaguely, but we happened to pull the right string at the right time.
The monopoly of the SDU was a thorn in the flesh of many people at all
kind of levels. This tiny push was just the thing needed. Two weeks
after the launch of our Van Traa homepage, the SDU announced they
would put all Hansards of Parliament on line, starting the first of
May. For free. (but as a GIF-picture, without search possiblities..)

But the story does not end there. One month later, the
Rijksrecherche, (a kind of Internal Affairs - the police of the
police) finished their research into the affairs of the criminal
investigation department where the two drugdealing officers
worked. Internal Affairs Reports usually are secret. But because
the results where handed out to the Parliament, the status
changed. Politicians were under great pressure to disclose this
report, and within a week they had to give in. But 'made public'
didn't mean open to everybody yet. The report - 500 pages of
completely shocking details - was availables to members of
Parliament; but not more then two copies for each party.
Journalists had it, but wanted to wring out every last drop
before giving it away.

Putting it on the Net was far more work this time. It had to be
scanned in by hand over the weekend, and corrected with
WordPerfect. As we didn't have a very intelligent version of a
scan-program, there were a lot of mistakes, I can asure you!
But we did it, and it was a success.

And, because we are trying to grow up, we decided we had to try
and make some money out of this big joke. Last week our Van Traa
cd-rom saw the light of day. A complete copy of our Van Traa-
site, the Internal Affairs report, and a selection of other works of
buro Jansen & Janssen. All this for the price of only f 49,50
(including taxes and postage). 

The sale of the cd-rom raises another question: will Netvertising
work, or not? The cd-rom is only available by order, and in some
selective bookshops. Will we go bankrupt, or do we get rich in the
end? It goes without saying that buro Jansen & Janssen is a no-budget
initiative, surviving on too little payment for jobs and small
subsidies, doing most of the work for free and for the good case.

I really liked doing these things, even though it involved a lot
of crap work, short nights and unexpected problems. It was so
inspiring and yet so simple. This action was at the same time a
natural continuation of Jansen & Janssen work, and an entirely
new development. We have always loved disclosing secret reports
on criminal investigation, but had never used Internet for this
purpose before. 

The action involved methods typical for the (Dutch) activist
movement we come from - like breaking in and publishing. But
nowadays hacking a cd-rom and putting it on your homepage is
easy! Once you have the right people together at the right time,
you take yourself seriously and it's done in no time.
And it felt so good to break to monopoly of a -privatised- state
organ, and to use Internet to make information public that is
supposed to be public anyway. By just doing something, making a
statement that didn't need any further introduction or
explanation.

Our site meant a big step forward in talks between authorities
on different levels and on organizing access for the public by
means of electronic media. And it was an event welcomed by MP's
to get the average couch potato more involved in politics.
Our secret agenda was really to deepen the discussion on
investigation methods. If more people had access to details about the
affairs of modern policing, this would eventually lead to a debate on
more essential points. But this hope was in vain, I'm afraid. Then
again, it's hard to rate our influence on the discussion.

This is what Internet was meant for, people said, and I couldn't
agree more. In thinking about the meaning of this action, I guess the
value of it is in adding a dimension. The breaking of this information
monopoly could not have been done -at least not so easily, or not
without problems with the law- without Internet. On the other hand,
the action added something to the ideas of the use of Internet and so
was very inspiring. If the use of Internet adds a certain value to a
discussion or supplies a special dimension to a campaign, then
something really beautiful is happening. Sorry if I seem to get
carried away a bit, but I think this is very important in developing
ideas about political activism on the Net.


To be continued
Read about McSpotlight in: 
Report on Amsterdam part II





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