US tech firms share Dutch regulator officials’ names with senate

Companies such as Microsoft and Meta have shared the names of civil servants and academics working on European tech regulation with a senate committee investigating “tech censorship” or “jawboning”, news magazine Vrij Nederland reported on Friday.

The cabinet has described the news as “extremely worrying”, given that the named officials could now face travel bans or even sanctions, Vrij Nederland said.

“If you want to discuss policy, then you do it with us, not over the backs of civil servants,” digital economy minister Willemijn Aerdts told the magazine. “That has happened and we will now talk to our contacts, including those in the US.”

The cabinet has also raised the issue with the US ambassador to the Netherlands. “We told him how extremely undesirable we think this is,” Aerdts said. “He heard what we are saying and will pass it on.”

Junior economic affairs minister Eric van der Burg said the news is “more than worrying” and that he still needs to assess what documents were shared with the US and if they were publicly available.

However, stopping working with Microsoft and other US tech companies is not an option in the short term, he told the magazine.

Vrij Nederland said the names include people working for the competition authority ACM and the privacy watchdog AP. Researcher Claes de Vreese, who investigates disinformation, is also on the list.

Van der Burg is currently grappling with the issue of Solvinity, a Dutch cloud service provider which is widely used by government departments including the Digid identity system, and which is on the verge of being sold to a US company.

Under the US Cloud Act, American companies are required to hand over all information they store to the government if requested to do so, even if it is stored abroad.

The Dutch tax office is also currently switching to Microsoft systems, despite MPs’ concerns.

Research by public broadcaster NOS earlier this year found that 67% of some 16,500 websites used by government bodies, hospitals, schools and other essential organisations are linked to at least one American cloud service.