The security of important information at the National Coordinator for Counterterrorism and Security (NCTV) and at the police was “not in order”. That is the conclusion from one research of the National Audit Service, which was set up after NCTV and police employees were arrested last year on suspicion of leaking state secrets.
The researchers reported the first conclusions and recommendations on Friday, including that the NCTV and the police must be better prepared for abuse by employees with access to special information.
In October 2023, a 64-year-old NCTV employee was arrested when, according to the Public Prosecution Service (OM), he wanted to travel to Morocco with a large amount of data. He had hundreds of documents from the AIVD intelligence service and the military intelligence service MIVD with him on hard drives and USB sticks. It contained several dozen state secrets.
A 35-year-old police officer, previously employed by the NCTV, was also arrested. It is suspected that the pair leaked information to Moroccan intelligence services. The Public Prosecution Service suspects them of releasing state secret information. The lawsuits against the suspects are still ongoing.
Minister David van Weel (Justice and Security, VVD) says that the NCTV and the police immediately after the arrests improvements have been made in information security. “Information security is never finished and measures must therefore be constantly tested and tightened. We are already working hard on this,” Van Weel writes.
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