Samenvatting

Publicly available information on the Internet about people or criminal acts can be relevant to criminal investigations. This article analyses to what extent Dutch criminal procedure law allows open source intelligence for law-enforcement purposes. When more than ‘minor’ privacy interferences arise, an explicit investigatory power in the criminal procedure code is required. Minor infringements are allowed under the general task description in the Police Act 1993. It is unclear however when ‘substantial’ privacy infringements arise. On the basis of ECHR jurisprudence on foreseeability and the Dutch criteria for ‘systematic observation’, the authors conclude that Internet data-gathering will often require an explicit investigatory power and can only be used for criminal investigation with an order from the public prosecutor, but not, except for small-scale and ad hoc searches, for general police practice purposes. Because the Internet is much different in its nature from a decade ago and the investigatory powers are not in all respects easily applicable to Internet surveillance, the authors argue that the Dutch legislator must take action and make clear under which conditions information on the Internet can be gathered by law enforcement.