ISP sues Dutch gov for snooping costs

Who pays: industry or investigators?

By John Oates • Get more from this author

Posted in Security, 8th March 2005 09:36 GMT

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An Internet Service Provider is suing the Dutch government to recover the costs of making its network accessible to law enforcement.

Under Dutch law ISPs are entitled to claim for the administrative cost of each individual wiretap, but not for the cost of equipment which makes such snooping possible.

XS4ALL is claiming €500,000 - the amount it says it has spent since 2001 to ensure its network is accessible to police.

Apart from getting back the money invested in its network XS4ALL wants to set a precedent to establish who pays for law enforcement - government or industry. It warns that the European Council of Justice and Home Affairs is debating measures to make telecom providers store all traffice data for between one and three years. Again the expense of providing such storage will be met by industry

According to XS4all, providers in other European countries including Austria, Italy, Finland, France and the UK are already fully reimbursed for the expense of installing wiretaps.

More details available on the ISP's website here.®