The national referendum on the new Dutch Intelligence and Secret Services Act, also called the Sleepwet, is scheduled to be held on 21 March, 2018. To express her organization’s concerns about it, Nine de Vries, project officer for Amnesty International’s Security and Human Rights Program in The Netherlands, spoke at Bitcoin Wednesday on 7 February 2018.
During her talk, Nine represented Amnesty International’s position on mass surveillance and what changes could be made to improve the law. She also discussed how Sleepwet interferes with the right to privacy, and in what ways the law can be amended so that it doesn’t undermine human rights.
She explains
We have similar concerns as Bits of Freedom. Amnesty calls for a vote against the law in the upcoming referendum. We also want to make sure that afterwards, the government in Parliament can make improvements to the law. We are not against any law that regulates the powers of intelligence and security expert. We just want a law that provides better protection to human rights.
