The Hague: Two Dutch ministers faced a grilling in Parliament Tuesday after revealing the country`s intelligence services grabbed metadata from some 1.8 million intercepted telephone calls.
Interior Minister Ronald Plasterk and Defence Minister Jeanine Hennis are fending off calls for their resignations after revealing last week that the Dutch secret services intercepted the data -- an act previously attributed to the US National Security Agency (NSA).
German weekly Der Spiegel first revealed the intercepts last year and in October Labour-backed Plasterk denied on public television that local intelligence services were involved.
However in a letter to parliament a week ago, Plasterk and Hennis wrote that "closer investigation and analysis" of Spiegel`s article "showed around 1.8 million records of metadata were captured by the National Sigint Organisation (NSO) in the context of the fight against terrorism."
It said the information was "legally collected and had to do with Dutch military operations abroad."
The calls, intercepted by satellite, were measured in time, duration and amount but conversations were not tapped, the ministers said.
"The information was shared with the United States in light of cooperation of the above-mentioned subject," added the letter, co-signed by Plasterk and Hennis, a minister from Premier Mark Rutte`s liberal People`s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD).
Opposition parties reacted with outrage to the ministers` disclosure and it was now "up to (the ruling) Liberal and Labour (parties) to decide whether to let them go," the centrist Volkskrant newspaper said on Tuesday.
Politicians are particularly annoyed by an admission by both Plasterk and Hennis that they had known since November 22 that the intercepts were made by the Dutch and not the NSA.
Both ministers defended their silence "in the interest of the state" but said they recently reviewed that position after a group called "Citizens against Plasterk" took them to court.
The complaint specifically related to metadata collected by foreign intelligence services, used by the Netherlands.
