The Dutch civilian and military security services are still breaking the new laws on electronic surveillance, the CTIVD watchdog said on Tuesday.

The new legislation, nicknamed the dragnet or Big Brother law, was introduced a year ago and gives the AIVD and MIVD security services much wider powers to place telephone and internet taps and to hack into computer systems.

In particular the MIVD military security service is still failing to meet the requirements on privacy, partly down to IT problems, the CTIVD said. Nevertheless, advances have been made since the CTIVD’s first report, which was highly critical of both services, the agency said.

‘Most of the high risk items identified in the first report have been reduced to low or average risk since December 2018,’ the watchdog said. ‘The AIVD and MIVD are not there yet, and still have a lot to do in the coming period.’