Big Brother
Big Brother, the TV show, was invented in the Netherlands. Maybe that should have been telling us something about this country. Fiction turns reality over there at the moment, at least partly. The Dutch government is collecting “some” data about every person under 18 living in the Netherlands. These data are coming mostly from school doctors who have to fill out a dossier of 30 pages with 1185 (!) different data records about every child and teenager. They don’t only save the name, address, phone number, religion, tax and ID numbers and income of the parents and such things but also details about the sexual activity of the kid, the size of the genitals and the look of the pubes, the penis respectively the labia and even the scrotum!
Seriously… WTF is going on there!? I couldn’t find English articles about this and the only German source (written by a Dutch ‘tho) says they say they need the data to identify and find abused children later. I’d be thankful if some of our Dutch readers could tell us more about this, there must have been a public discussion about this at least.
about 8 months ago
Well i don’t know were you get this information but i’ve never heard of it. There is a schooldoctor, of course, but that’s only for length, weight, and that kind of stuff. No such thing as look of pubes, size of genitals and all that stuff. I’m 16 now, so i should have that test alreay, and i don’t. So i don’t think your source is right.
about 8 months ago
The PDF version of the dossier (linked in the article) was published by http://www.nrc.nl/
I read about it at Telepolis, a German news site (http://www.heise.de/tp/blogs/5/141779)
about 8 months ago
Have you ever noticed Josh, that every time you call attention to some very negative thing about Holland to a Dutchman you get a lecture about how they have never heard of that and how they are protected under the law and all that nonsense?
I remember having heard all these same things when the Brongersma Stiftung was first stoned or firebombed, and then later invaded by the police.
The Dutch are particularly sensitive to any German calling attention to these matters. They get very sanctimonious over their own behaviour alway ready to justify it as reasonable and necessary.
And what ever happened to Bernard and his art? Can someone other than a Dutchman give us an update?
about 8 months ago
Since I’m in chilly ol’ Canada, I don’t know about Dutch laws, but don’t they have some sort of code of rights there that protects minors from having data like that collected and stored? What’s the government even need that data for?
“Oh, there appears to have been a rape and murder. The witness says the suspect has a small-ish penis with a birthmark on the right testicle. Let’s look this up in the database…oh! Found him!”
This is disturbing.
(Btw Josh I responded to your email about the milkblog with the data you requested, but my internet was messing up, let me know if you didn’t receive it and I’ll send it again)
about 8 months ago
The number of cases including sexual abuse and/or domestic violence are significantly higher in the Netherlands then they are in the surrounding countries. For years there have been phone numbers available to notify the proper help-channels; there have been television campains to educate the general public in recognizing these forms of abuse, and much, much more, but it never helped.
Evicted child-molesters still find their way (back) into functions like ’swim-teacher/group-, activity leader/scout-groups and even as therapists in institutes for abused children. Evidence for extensive paedophile networks are found, but none was ever dismantled.
It seems the Dutch don’t like to hang the dirty laundry out in this respect and protect the offenders which can mostly be found in family- and friends circles.
I didn’t know about this plan until you mentioned it. I can not remember reading about it or seeing about it on TV. This was withheld from the general public. (Unfortunately, this is no longer an exception in the Netherlands. I think the general public is scared and has no idea what the politicians are up to.)
about 8 months ago
Hm but two different Dutch commentators said there WAS a public discussion about this, so I thought some of our readers must have heard about that too. The document is from 2007 so this might have been a few years ago.
about 8 months ago
“Evidence for extensive paedophile networks are found, but none was ever dismantled.”
“I think the general public is scared and has no idea what the politicians are up to.”
THIS ALL SOUNDS SOOOOOOOO AMERICAN!!! Hallelujah!
about 8 months ago
Wow, this is actually quite disturbing. Was this debated openly in the Dutch parliament? There is more and more of this kind of thing happening in the UK too…where we already have more cctv cameras per head of population than any other country. Hmmm…big brother is certainly coming nearer.
about 8 months ago
Yeah, they even want a DNA database for all children in the UK.
about 8 months ago
That would be going far too far.
I know it would be “in the interests of protecting the children,” but you just know they’d end up using it to their advantage when it becomes expedient – for, say, when the youth themselves are being investigated for a crime. Suddenly it becomes not about protecting the children to prosecuting them.
about 8 months ago
I think that is a good idea actually, something as harmless as a DNA swab of every child will be able to solve countless crimes in 10-20 years and get bad people off the street faster.
about 8 months ago
I concur. No genetic information is saved and so privacy hoots should shut the hell up. As DNA analysis becomes cheaper (and continue will be cheaper in the future), it would serve as a really good mechanism to prevent crime. Please don’t have an ethical debate about what crime is.
about 8 months ago
the only answer to fascism is a bomb for every road, a sniper for every roof.
about 8 months ago
@Jake
@Andrew
Bless you my boys. Bless you! Heil Mary full of grapes and LSD!
about 8 months ago
I’m not Dutch myself, but I’m a Dutch speaker, so I took a look at the file. Apparently, it’s called a ‘basic data set youth care’. It’s created at birth, and details physical and behavioral traits about, well, pretty much anything (which makes ‘basic’ data set a nice euphemism). They’re maintained throughout your youth by anyone treating or counselling you professionally.
Don’t know about the Netherlands, but when I was a kid in Belgium, you also had medical school supervision, which was scheduled once every two years, if I recall correctly. Your physical condition was checked very thoroughly, which indeed included a doctor feeling up your testicles to determine whether their size was normal. The Dutch may have something similar, or they may do something less ‘pro-active’, like only noting stuff when the child actually has a problem to be dealt with.
All in all, pretty disturbing stuff, especially when all that data gets thrown into a huge database…
about 8 months ago
Seconded, eskeland. At my primary in Charlottenburg we students where sent to the clinic annually for inclusive physicals and dental examination. It was no different than any other medical exam. In that time, I was myself referred to a neurologist (unusually high nerve concentration). These where legitimate medical records :-).
That was slightly before the age of mass paranoia. Though there may be a serious problem, such intimate details might better remain in a medical database inaccesable without consent – one’s own if one is alive, concious and under fourteen, registered guardian if one is below that age. Please note that “fourteen” is an arbitrary biological age. In future, a tribunal of phychologists might better determine maturity (if they cannot confer before analysis, then we may dilute
Your faithful servant,
Giles.
about 8 months ago
This is the most absurd thing ive ever read here.
Ive never heard about this and never heard about this being passed by government. Like most of us we’ve been to the (school) doctors or what not and they have never noted these things down. The main reason you are going there is to prematurely find problems in your growth.
Has anyone bothered to read what the document linked in the article says. To any Dutch resident its obvious this document is for the Child Protection Services. This is when a child has been removed from the parents for whatever the reason may be.
There have been incidents and fuck ups by people. Like letting a convicted child molester go back to the place where he previous lived.
@lepoof: Can you show me the studies/numbers that support your arguments that “abuse and/or domestic violence are significantly higher in the Netherlands.”?
about 8 months ago
Detailed sexual exams by school doctors should be mandatory for the development of the children, but a database poses serious privacy issues, and not just for the sexual data collected.
You don’t need it for child protection, and for stats, an anonymous database would serve the same purpose in a much safer way.
Stats are really an interesting way to track if the kids are having sex younger, the gaycentage, etc., but it is not really worth it if it’s done by one country only, it should be at least a European initiative for comparison purpose. Not sure what the EU and WHO have about this.
If the document is 2 years old and there is nothing in the news or at school about it, it’s probably bogus or abandoned.
about 8 months ago
Why is any “sexual examination” needed? What the hell is one of them anyway?
Who cares when kids start having sex? How can you identify a gay kid from a straight kid by examining his cock and balls?
I don’t see any reason this information needs be created in the first place, never mind kept in a nationwide (and especially not european wide) database.
about 8 months ago
Just answering your first sentence: You are obviously one of these healthy kids. Believe me, it IS needed.
about 8 months ago
Where is the download link for that pdf?
about 8 months ago
http://blog.fefe.de/?ts=b4ad6c44 und http://blog.fefe.de/?ts=b4aa344b
ohne Worte
about 8 months ago
Here in Sweden, every boy of the age 7-9ish has his balls inspected by a doctor. In school. With a queue and all. :D
about 8 months ago
GEEEZ? Is the Netherlands hiring? I wanna be a genitalia inspector! To steal a slogan, “Enquiring minds want to know!”
AS I’ve said before, democracies, including ‘crowned’ republics, get the governments they deserve. I sincerely doubt this program originated with the Dutch monarchy, so, if you don’t like what’s happening, vote the bastards out.
about 8 months ago
” They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty or safety ”
Benjamin Franklin.
Anybody who thinks the state can be trusted to not abuse or lose this data is stunningly naive.
No potential crime can justify this intrusion into people’s privacy.
Our civil liberties are what made our democracies worth living in, why are some people so eager to run back into Stalin’s arms ?
Amusingly the 2 commentators that are in favour of a DNA data base are from “the land of the free”.
Can you not see that the Orwellian war on terror has corrupted your very souls ?
about 8 months ago
Interesting that in the UK they don’t teach national flags and your confusing America (The land of the free) with Australia, the holiday resort you sent all your criminals too because your nation decided that stealing bread was a deportable offense.
DNA data of everyone is a great idea and the only people that should be afraid is people that suspect in the future they may murder, steal or rape…
Recording what people download is an invasion into privacy, collecting peoples DNA to save countless lives is not.
about 8 months ago
Stop trolling Jake xD
about 8 months ago
Whoops !
How foolish do I feel now ??
Put the basic error down to old age, bad eye sight, rage at the psuedo fascist implications of your comment , a basic fondness of sarcasm and a need to comply with a dead line elsewhere.
I love Australia and it is high on my list of countries to emigrate to. But the last time I was there it seemed you were starting to combine the worst bits of the European nanny state with the fascist supra-state of the yanks.
The only people who should be afraid are those that don’t fit in to the system.
Do you really think that you can trust your government with a data base that basically means everybody is guily until proven innocent, because I know that we in the Motherland do not trust our state with this. Do you know how easy it is to use DNA to frame somebody ?
Your “reasoning” is naive in the extreme and reminds me of the plot of Minority Report and look what happened there.
Better to be sent on holiday for nicking a loaf than to be strangled to death for nicking a horse.
about 8 months ago
http://www.nrc.nl/redactie/doc/bds.pdf here’s the link to the PDF. I was kinda worried when I read the pdf, it’s got a surprising amount of data, most of it pretty in depht, so I wouldn’t actually call it basic. I too had mandatory examinatin every few years, the last was when I was 15 or so, and indeed the testicles were examined as well I believe it’s to see if you’ve got 2 or if they developed correctly.
about 8 months ago
Yeah, but it’s one thing to check them (perfectly fine) and to save these data forever! Especially since they obviously collect data which are absolutely not their business.
about 8 months ago
While it *can* indeed look like this is a big scary invasion of privacy, it isn’t.
Records and databases like this are absolutely vital – really a stronger word is needed – for the adequate provision of medical care. People really would not believe how many conditions can be identified at their earliest point purely by comparison with ‘normal’ measurements. The problem is that there is such a scarcity of these data that in most cases people are not diagnosed or identified as being at risk until diseases are well advanced.
The Dutch deserve massive credit for this.
about 8 months ago
Agree, but individual records and a database are 2 different things.
My concern is mainly that a database used for stats or comparison has no need for personal information such as name and address, so no massive credits until they revise their copy to be more protective of privacy. I don’t know the situation for Netherlands, but in many countries there are privacy protection laws or just cultural background that do not allow this kind of initiative, even (especially?) from the government.
about 8 months ago
They should take pictures or videos. After all, a picture is worth 1185 data records.
And they should make them all publicly available – in order to prevent crime, of course.
about 8 months ago
Dr. Zufolek you are absolutely correct! Make all these pictures and videos public and also give us the phone numbers and addresses of the really pretty ones! Also where they hang out so we can protect them when we see them.
It has been proved in countless numbers of studies that no one molests ugly kids!
about 8 months ago
Thats why, we Dutch, want to emigrate to Belgium … but there are problems: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIa_vmyjYpE
about 8 months ago
Dutch are governed by left wingers, who let in thousands of criminal illegal people and Christian Democrats who want more laws to watch the flock.
Thats why Geert Wilders (yes, the “Fitna” blond one)rightwing is huge now, and will be in the 2011 elections here.
h well, in Europe it`s the same in Germany, France, you name it. In ten, fifteen yrs we will pay big time for not protesting enough against our freedom on lots of issues, and those laws are here to stay!.
-Joe Average zaps away and drinks another beer from the fridge and shrugs his shoulders as ever.-
.”koenski-beterweter.blogspot.com”
about 8 months ago
All this was reported in the best viewed shockblog in Holland, “www.geenstijl.nl”, so it`ll be there in the archives.
about 8 months ago
Only thing I heard about this thing was quite a while ago. Some religious nut in one of the christian parties suggested this and as far as I know it was later found to go to far and they never actually did this. I never heard much after that though, so who knows they might’ve quietly started doing this anyway
about 8 months ago
well…the Digital Child dossier will be implemented at the end of 2009…it will replace the paper form of the already excisting dossier….every child from 0-19 years old will have one….there was some hilarity because the christian minster wanted to record the lenght ,form,colour and even the absense of pubic hair…and the rightwing politicians wanted to stop the “pubic hair police”….but the didn’t succeed apparently because it’s comming…i don’t think the general public is awre oif it and its possible implications….or realy doesn’t care i think….
eric
about 8 months ago
This is going definitly too far. The State needs to know its limits into the people privacy.
Never I have been imposed such an exam! Can’t these minors refuse to take the test?
about 8 months ago
I’m with eric… I discussed this with someone else who’s aware, indeed it were only a few members of the parliament who were against this, so it is/will be implemented regardless of public opinion.
about 8 months ago
I don’t know if this is true or not, but I do know that in child pornography/abuse investigations identifying the children in photos/videos can be difficult/impossible for the police. So they are in a very frustrating situation of having evidence of abuse, but no idea who is involved. I wonder if this (if it is happening) might actually be more to do with this than medical care? It sounds unworkable though so I still don’t think I can see the need for these data.
about 8 months ago
I, for one, am constantly alert to the more extreme “Big Brother” tactics that may eventually cause certain individuals personal inconvenience or real harm. For example, I never registered for the draft, even though I was of draft age in a time when the draft was not in force. I also have not registered to vote as a member of a specific party, therefore, I cannot be called up for jury duty, among other things. Anyone who believes that a governmental agency can collect data for the “protection” of any class of individuals without eventually using that data for purposes other than those stated is an idiot! Information, once collected, is NEVER deleted and is ALWAYS available for use and misuse by the authorities. Here in the US, I await the day when even the three credit reporting agencies are finally publicly acknowledged to be wholly owned agencies of the government. Even without such public notice, no-one doubts that such information is readily available to NSA and the Homeland Security forces (the US version of the Nazi’s).
I second Josh’s request, implied in his original post and repeated several times in comments, for someone to translate the 30 page document found at http://www.nrc.nl/redactie/doc/bds.pdf .
I’d really like to know what one of the foremost proponents of freedom, the Dutch, are up to with this extensive questionnaire. If I attempt to translate it, based solely on the similarities between Dutch words and English words, I’m going to be terribly wrong. Surely someone, either a Dutch schoolkid or a university professor in any country who teaches the language, can be readily found to translate this document and solve the initial questions detailed herein: Is the Dutch government collecting information about its citizens that far exceeds its legitimate need for implementing public health initiatives??????
None of us can really say anything until we know who is collecting information, from whom, and for what reasons.