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‘De tijd van grote stappen maken met quick wins is voorbij’

Big data. Blockchain. Buzzwoorden waar veel bedrijven mee koketteren. Technologie- en innovatie-expert Danny Mekić twijfelt aan de integriteit van deze borstklopperij en spreekt zelfs van ‘small data’. ‘De komende jaren gaan we het onderscheid zien tussen organisaties die technologieën en...

Wi-Fi en Bluetooth tracking? Nee

Stel je voor dat je ’s morgens naar je werk fietst en dat er iemand achter je aan rijdt die continu noteert welke afslag je neemt en bij welke winkels je wat langzamer fietst om even naar binnen te kijken. Je mag dat op z’n minst heel vreemd vinden. Als deze persoon vervolgens ook nog eens door j...

Smart City: Hemel of Hel?

Stel je een wereld voor zonder criminaliteit en zonder files. Een wereld waarin treinen altijd op tijd rijden en waarin armoede alleen nog maar bestaat in de geschiedenis. Er is geen lawaai, nooit afval op straat en je komt nooit meer thuis met hondenpoep onder je schoen. Welkom in de Smart...

Smart City: Heaven or Hell?

Imagine a world without crime or traffic jams. A world where all the trains run on time, and where poverty only exists in the history books. No noise, no litter on the streets, and you’ll never step in dog poo again. Welcome to the Smart City, the city where all our problems have been...

"Facebook brengt Pavlov-techniek naar nieuw level"

Het beledigen van een buitenlands staatshoofd mag binnenkort in Nederland. Maar niet op Facebook. Erdogan-cartoons van Ruben L. Oppenheimer zijn niet welkom op het online platform, en ook een Erdogan-hekeldicht van journalist Annabel Nanninga werd naar de digitale prullenbak verwezen....

“Facebook is taking the Pavlov approach to a whole new level”

Insulting a foreign head of state will soon no longer be an offence in the Netherlands. But on Facebook, it still is. Erdogan cartoons by Ruben L. Oppenheimer aren’t welcome on the online platform, and a satirical poem about Erdogan written by journalist Annabel Nanninga was sent to the...

Geniet, maar serveer met mate

De warmere Nederlandse dagen staan weer op het punt aan te breken. Piet Paulusma verschijnt iedere dag weer opgewekter op de televisie en een schitterend kleurenspel aan bloemen is te aanschouwen in het Vondelpark. Voor veel studenten dé tijd van het jaar om zo tussen de tentamens door de terrasjes te bevolken en te genieten van het mooie weer.

Ik vind het heerlijk om rond te kijken als ik op straat loop of bijvoorbeeld op een terrasje zit. Niet alleen aan de tafeltjes om mij heen zijn m’n mede-studenten in bosjes te vinden, maar misschien vooral ook in de bediening en keukens van de bruisende horecagelegenheden die onze mooie stad rijk is. Maar is dat wel nuttig? Er bestaat een grote krapte op de arbeidsmarkt en vacatures zijn op iedere hoek van de straat te vinden, vooral in het bedrijfsleven. Kun je als student de kennis en ervaring die je tijdens je studie hebt opgedaan niet op een andere, betere manier besteden dan bij het serveren van een ijskoud biertje of warme latte macchiato het geval is? En daar ook nog eens een mooi zakcentje mee verdienen en je studie een stuk leuker maken.

Op een zekere manier is het wonderbaarlijk te noemen dat de horeca nog steeds valt en staat bij de aanwas van universitaire studenten, in allerlei soorten en maten. In geen enkele sector zijn zo veel studenten actief en zijn – naar verhouding – de arbeidsvoorwaarden zokarig te noemen. Geen vaste contracten, lage lonen, soms zelfs erbarmelijke omstandigheden (12 uur lang werken, het liefst tot drie uur ‘s nachts, met slechts 10 minuten pauze), niet doorbetaald krijgen bij ziekte en weinig uitdaging. Dat klinkt niet erg rooskleurig, en dat terwijl het zo anders kan zijn!

Het bedrijfsleven wacht met smart op studenten. Informatici worden tijdens hun studie gevraagd een arbeidscontract te tekenen met daarop groot de letters NA HET TEKENEN BEN JE VAN ONS, in ruil waarvoor de student maar liefst twee sleutels van lease-auto’s in zijn handen krijgt gedrukt. Die auto’s staan volgetankt geparkeerd voor de faculteit, klaar om hun nieuwe baasje naar zijn part-time baan te vervoeren.

Juristen, economen en bedrijfswetenschappers worden lekker gemaakt met reisjes naar Hong Kong, New York, Dubai en zo verder. Inclusief drank. Zolang ze maar willen luisteren naar de promotiepraatjes die de recruiters ieder kantoor maar al te graag over zichzelf (en de kantoren) houden. En hun CV achter willen laten waar de kantoren maar al te graag uit putten, ook (of misschien zelfs júist) tijdens de studietijd. En het gerucht gaat dat als je geen rijbewijs hebt, je die er met het grootste gemak bij kunt onderhandelen.

Een veelgehoord smoesje bij mede-studenten is dat ze zich niet voor kunnen stellen dat het bedrijfsleven behoefte aan ze heeft. We zijn pas studenten, Danny! Mijn vervolgvraag luidt dan: Waarom kun je je dat niet voorstellen? Vaak blijft het stil. Een logisch antwoord op mijn vraag zou kunnen zijn dat de bedrijven veel beter personeel kunnen vinden, maar dat is niet waar. En hoewel een ander logisch (en wèl kloppend) antwoord zou kunnen zijn dat bedrijven het liefst voltijd-personeel in dienst nemen, is de werkelijkheid zo dat bedrijven al lang blij zijn dát ze gekwalificeerd personeel voor een bepaalde functie hebben kunnen vinden. Liever parttime iemand die er iets vanaf weet, dan iemand die er fulltime geen kaas van heeft gegeten.

Studenten zijn voor bedrijven juist prima medewerkers te noemen. Behalve dat ze minder veeleisend zijn als het gaat om arbeidstijden en het loon, zijn ze vaak nog jong, energiek en leergierig. Ook worden studenten gevoed met de laatste wetenschappelijke inzichten in contrast met oudere werknemers die vaak tientallen jaren geleden zijn opgeleid en minder actuele kennis met zich meedragen.

Dus ook al ben je nog maar een student, toch zijn de arbeidsvoorwaarden vaak uitstekend te noemen: (na een proeftijd) een vast contract, doorbetaald krijgen bij ziekte, goede CV-building en niet te vergeten een hoger loon. Daar komt bij dat je later op de arbeidsmarkt een stuk meer waard bent als je tijdens je studie praktijkervaring hebt opgedaan en in de praktijk vaak goede ideeën opdoet voor bijvoorbeeld een bachelorscriptie.

Daarom luidt mijn advies voor iedere student: geniet van de zon, van al die mooie terrasjes, maar serveer met mate!

Dit opiniestuk schreef ik op verzoek van Folia

What is the company of the future like?

How do young startups manage to take over the world at a dazzling pace while trusted, established companies are going bankrupt? What developments would an entrepreneur or director need to keep track of in order to act at the right moment and seize the opportunities? How radically do you have to change to still be relevant to the market? Very radically, says Danny Mekić, an entrepreneur, innovation expert and guest lecturer at the Nyenrode Masterclass Business Development. “To be truly innovative, you have to completely reinvent your organisation and the industry you operate in. Starting from scratch. Because just growing by 2% every year by doing just slightly less badly than the competition, like the business world used to do, doesn’t cut it any more now.” 

A new foundation “We live in interesting times. If you look at the world from a distance, you have to conclude that the foundation of our society, laid after the industrial revolution, is due for replacement. Everything we’ve built, invented and created before, it all has to go back to the drawing board. With the enormous power of modern day technology and our connected society, hardly anything meets our expectations any more, while the traditional approach to working is now needlessly expensive and limiting. A new society is forming. But established organisations still take their own history, products, services, business models and corporate culture as their starting point, rather than that new society. They try to become 2% better, or less bad, while the startup across the street is starting from scratch. The established organisations shouldn’t try to innovate from their established situation; they need to have the guts to start all over again, and ask themselves: ‘who are we, what do we represent, where do we contribute added value to society, and what would be the optimal way to do that in today’s world?’.”

The power of the masses “Changes in the economy, in industries and in organisations used to concern only a limited number of people; scholars, directors, politicians, et cetera. Now, this new foundation has created a new power, the power of the masses. Using smartphones and online platforms, people easily connect to each other. It’s those platforms that are making the old structures and systems obsolete. There are young startups that take advantage of this, and they don’t need buildings or big investments any more. They take small concepts and develop them very rapidly using technology on a very large scale. The established companies haven’t found a good response to that yet.”

Hierarchy inhibits innovation “The hierarchical organisation model, invented by the military, has a way of blocking innovation. In that traditional model, nobody really feels responsible for making a change. The director passes the buck to the innovation manager, who complains that he’s not in charge of budgeting and that his people won’t listen to him. The other staff complains about not being given enough time and freedom. Innovative ideas have to be stamped into a business case before anyone takes them seriously. And the worst part is that most of the organisation thinks: ‘no need to worry about innovation, we have an innovation manager’, and goes back to their daily routines. At the end of the week, everyone is frustrated and zero innovation has taken place.”

Crises can speed up innovation “I’ve looked into the 25 most successful banks in the world. They’re spending only half a percent of their entire IT budget on innovation. Imagine you want to replace a building, and you spend only half a percent of the upkeep budget on that replacement — you can be sure of one thing: that’s not going to work. But the necessity of innovation often becomes visible during a crisis. The ash cloud that hung over Europe a few years ago caused an overload in the traditional communication channels of the Dutch airline company KLM, forcing them to start answering questions via social media. That’s how KLM’s webcare was born. And when Dutch telecommunications company KPN was under attack from hackers a while ago, they put together a super team and let it take care of the problem with an unlimited budget. This turned out to be a successful approach; the team had one clearly defined goal, no financial constraints, and full authorisation from the management. Microsoft is also working on a comeback now, having been passed left and right by Apple during the past years.”

Young staff members as a driving creative force “It’s interesting to note that the average age of the staff at Facebook is 27, whereas the average employee in the Netherlands is 43 years old. I don’t mean to start a debate about age, but it’s striking that the foundations of the establishment are being shaken by a younger generation, which generally doesn’t have any personal obligations yet like home ownership, a family to support or a mortgage to pay off. Young technology startups from the USA seem to be appearing out of nowhere and exponentially growing into big companies that make billions. 

So how come those twentysomethings, or even thirtysomethings for that matter, are nowhere to be found at the management level in our AEX companies? How come the youngest staff members still have to start all the way at the bottom of the ladder? The older managers, who still rely on the old models and infrastructure, are paid higher wages and get to call the shots to boot. You’d think doing it the other way around would be better: recruiting young employees and giving them the tools to make innovation possible within the organisation. By giving the most talented people ownership of a part of the product or service, you’ll generate creativity and pride within the team as well as a willingness to work overtime.”

Danny Mekić is a guest lecturer during Nyenrode Business University’s Business Development series. This article was published in Dutch on Nyenrode’s website.

Why the popularity of ad blockers is the advertising industry's own fault

Ten years ago, I moved out of my parents’ house. The first thing I bought was a NO/NO sticker, which people in the Netherlands can put on their letterboxes to indicate they’re not interested in junk mail. I put it on mine with a happy smile. Isn’t that wonderful, I thought,...

Danny Mekić: ‘Teach children a love for learning’

“After our industrialisation and our globalisation, we’ve now ended up in a new kind of society, in which the new powers and the new economy mainly depend on new technology. Which, moreover, keeps changing constantly and rapidly.”

“What this means for education remains to be seen. Any attempt to get on board with it is soon made obsolete by newer developments again. That makes it hard to tell what kinds of jobs we should be preparing the current generation of students for.”

Back to basics

“That’s why it’s very important to go back to the essence of all education: a younger person, open to the future, being helped along by someone more knowledgeable and experienced. That’s not going to be different. The way in which that interaction happens may change, though.”

“While right now, education is still often just about teaching certain facts and skills in a sort of assembly line system – you learn something, you take a test, you pass it, you move on to the next course, or you fail it and do the same course again – it seems a better idea to teach students how to learn, and most of all: to teach them to love learning new things, so they’ll know how to get on top of new things in a constantly changing world. And ideally that should be done partly with the latest technology and partly without it: it’s essential to know, experience and understand both worlds.”

Personal Leadership

“Since the range of educational options keeps expanding, it’s also important for children to learn how to make decisions. Developing personal leadership hardly gets any attention yet at all, even though it’s going to be all about that later: you’re an individual who has to get by on your own.”

To a lot of children, school is currently mostly a place to learn what you aren’t any good at.

“That also requires new constructions within education itself. For example, why do universities still all have the same faculties they had a hundred years ago? The doctors of the future might be people who studied medicine and know a lot about technology, but they might as well be engineers who know a lot about the human body. That’s where we’re going.”

A love for learning

“The current system doesn’t benefit our brains either. We’re teaching students the wrong things at the wrong moment. Young adults go to bed late and like to sleep in, but they’re expected to go to classes early in the morning. A lot of them don’t. Why don’t we arrange that differently?”

“And young children are basically open to anything, so primary school is the ideal place to foster a love for learning. But to a lot of children, school is currently mostly a place to learn what you aren’t any good at. And it’s a place where you’ll be judged for your scores and your ability to conform. That’s a very quick way to snuff out natural curiosity.”

“Basic skills are essential, of course, but I think school should be a place where 90% of the time, you get to do what you enjoy. It should be a system that appreciates gaining experience, going through processes, and – most of all – daring to try new things and do something else, rather than standardised results. I think that would be the future.”

Interview by Deirdre Enthoven.

Don't (just) teach children computer programming

What is the purpose of education? To prepare children for an independent life in the world of tomorrow. But what are educational decision makers to do when the world evolves so rapidly that even the most esteemed scientists and visionaries can only shrug when asked what the future will be like?

Computer programming, that’s the buzzword of the day. Every child supposedly has to learn how to program. Steve Jobs and other engaging entrepreneurs have – inadvertently – captivated our outlook on education: all we need is an iPad and programming classes and there you go, we’re all modern again. But what problem does that really solve?

Admittedly, there is a big programmer shortage. But a programmer has to be able to do more than just programming, and there is a great demand for all sorts of other IT skills as well. Studies by LinkedIn have shown that it’s actually not programming, but statistical analysis and data mining that vacancies currently show the greatest demand for. And if we look at the news, we see that the major issues today are not programming but security, threatened by so many crackers, and privacy, infringed upon by eavesdropping governments.

And will that world of tomorrow still even need all those programmers? We now have intelligent software that is itself able to program, without any human involvement. What are all those programmers going to do when that time comes? Just teaching children programming is not going to be enough.

As for those tablets: how come Steve Jobs didn’t raise his children with them? Where is the scientific evidence that a tablet does a better job preparing children for the world of the future than a book, a pen and paper do?

There’s a number of things we can be sure about. 1: The educational system is changing slowly in a world that’s changing and becoming more complex rapidly. 2: The educational system has always been slow to adapt, but it still got us to where we are now. 3: Technology will play a major role in the world we are preparing pupils for, and it should get a prominent place in their education. But are programming courses and playing games on a tablet all day going to be the solution?

Future generations will need to reinvent themselves ever more often and quicker in that rapidly changing world, more so than any generation before them. What we need is self-learning kids, knowledgeable about the real world, the physical world – which is where the challenges and problems of the future will inevitably continue to come from – and with a healthy dose of curiosity about and experience with technology, all kinds of technology. 

We need more innovative teachers who are allowed to be innovative, who understand new technologies, who are given the kind of budget they need to integrate that technology into their classes, and who are also paid to share their innovations with other teachers.

Teaching methods shouldn’t be changed once every so many years any more, but constantly, continuously. 

And we shouldn’t have either an interactive whiteboard or an old-fashioned blackboard in the classroom; we should have both. Half of the school should be analogue — relying on books, and no phones or computers allowed — and the other half of the school week should be spent on the digital world. With the latest 3D printing technology, tablets, drones, et cetera. 

We shouldn’t have just programming courses on tablets, but real education: two days a week for playing outside, two days a week spent on old-fashioned studying – just analogue theory – and one day a week spent working with the latest technology. We don’t need programmers who can’t do a thing, what we need is autodidactic talents who can recognise real problems and find solutions for them, whether those are digital or analogue.

I wrote this column following a request from Radio 1, De Nieuws BV. The Dutch version was read aloud on the radio.

Dutch Film industry sues the State; Copyright is outdated

It was banned a year ago, but Dutch people still continue to illegally download films and TV series like nothing happened. Serves the industry right, say internet and film experts. Absolute nonsense, say film producers.

The two camps have become diametrically opposed now that Dutch film industry copyrights organisation Sekam is holding the State responsible for losses over the past ten years. “It’s been calculated that illegal downloading deprives the film industry of 78 million Euros every year,” says Bas Le Poole, a lawyer of Sekam. “We want that money back. The authorities have been turning a blind eye for far too long.”

But this copyright that the film lobbyists like to throw around is an outdated concept, says internet expert Danny Mekić. “It’s a construct from a time when painters, poets and musicians weren’t paid for their work at all. In the modern age, it completely misses the mark.”

He thinks it’s incomprehensible that film producers don’t make their products available to the public much faster and in more ways. “The range of available films and series on platforms like Netflix is terribly limited. And paid video on demand services like Pathé Thuis have more drawbacks than advantages too. I once tried to legally rent The Matrix; that turned out to be more expensive than actually buying it on DVD in a webshop, including shipping. That means something is very wrong.”

Little wonder that consumers are drawn towards free alternatives like Popcorn Time, agrees film expert Jochem Geerdink, who is also a member of the jury for the Dutch Film Critics’ Award. “The music industry solved that problem perfectly with innovations like Spotify, which nearly every artist and song immediately appears on. Hardly anybody still downloads music illegally. Why don’t we have something like that for films too? The film industry missed the boat.”

Geerdink thinks it’s time for film producers and distributors to get together and belatedly create something like that now. “I’m sure the Dutch would be prepared to pay for a film subscription if the range on offer were more complete.”

Those arguments infuriate San Fu Maltha, film producer and founder of the recently bankrupted distribution company A-Film. “We are being robbed. For years now the government has been not only tolerating but even instigating and encouraging this. I can’t force a company like Netflix to include more films. Consumers who commit a crime need to be punished. And if the State refuses to compensate the industry for it, I’m going to sue them for a hefty sum myself.”

Sekam lawyer Le Poole doesn’t want to take it that far. He’d rather just work on raising consumer awareness and taking on illegal suppliers for now.

Tim Kuik from copyrights protection organisation Brein understands why consumers complain about the limited range of legally available films. “It would be ideal if films became available to us at the same time as they do in America. We need to give consumers what they want, in the way that they want it.”

Notes on the Dutch Public Transport Chipcard

ON THE DEVELOPMENT: “The Dutch OV-chipkaart (public transport chip card) was developed in a time when mobile phones couldn’t do much yet. It was something new back then, having a separate information carrier (the card itself) and application (the payment system). But nowadays, touching a card to a card reader isn’t necessary any more, now that we have our smartphones. So the current data carrier has essentially become superfluous. And the application was pretty badly made to begin with, mainly looking after the interests of the transportation companies and not those of the users.”

ON SYSTEMS ABROAD: “I’ve seen many different systems abroad, but having to buy credit in advance is a very uncommon thing in the world. Moreover, other countries’ systems prove that the OV-chipkaart and a modern bank card can do the same thing. So why not adapt the current system?”

ON PRIVACY: “I don’t think new payment methods like payment by smartphone or with a bank card would violate travellers’ privacy more than the current system does. Here’s a comparison: if you use the Pathé app now to buy a cinema ticket with your bank card, they’ll know you went to see a film. But they won’t know when, in what cinema, and what film you’ve been to. Moreover, banks are subject to much stricter privacy regulations than OV-chipkaart companies are. A bank wouldn’t know a thing about your journey itself; at most it would know you’ve withdrawn a certain amount of money at a certain time and location. And if you really want to be anonymous, you can always pay with cash or buy a prepaid credit card. Those exist! It would probably also possible to build a lot of privacy into a system where you’d pay with your phone. Even the payment itself could be reasonably anonymous that way, using bitcoins for example.”

DRAWBACKS: “The disadvantage of a smartphone is that it can run out of battery power at a bad time. And then you’ll be standing there in front of a ticket barrier that won’t let you through. It would probably also be the most expensive adaptation, as systems go. For bank card payments, there’s the hope that the current OV-chipkaart readers could just be upgraded. Then again, there have been so many big egos involved in the development of the OV-chipkaart, and there have been enormous investments into it. That makes me wonder if they’ll be willing to decommission the current system within the next few years.”

Danny Mekić is “most successful young entrepreneur” of the Netherlands and an expert on future technology

Thumbs up for a ‘dislike’ button on Facebook?

On a Facebook post saying someone’s cat died, clicking the ‘like’ button doesn’t seem appropriate. But soon now, users will be able to show their sympathies without having to write a comment.

Facebook users have been asking for an “I don’t like this” button for years, but until recently, the platform never wanted to indulge them, being concerned that bullies might abuse such a button. However, founder Mark Zuckerberg has changed his mind. “It’s important to give people more options that just ‘like’. Not every moment is a good moment,” he noted earlier this week during a Q&A session.

Internet expert Danny Mekić believes Facebook has more reasons to introduce a ‘dislike’ button. “The challenge that social media face is no longer to win over as many users as possible, but to get those users to spend more time on their platform. Introducing a button for posts about bad news enables Facebook to connect with a different kind of post, and a different kind of people. It’ll no longer be only for happy stories. Furthermore, introducing the ‘dislike’ button would give Facebook even more insight into what the users find interesting to read about. You can’t ‘like’ a photo of a drowned refugee child on the beach, but Facebook still wants to know if that’s a photo that gets a lot of attention.”

Mekić points out that the Dutch social media platform Hyves had a ‘respect’ button even before Facebook came up with their ‘like’ button. “It was a clever choice, because the word ‘respect’ can go both ways. You can use it for both positive and negative things. You can express ‘respect’ when someone writes they’ve had a baby, but also when someone writes that they’re in hospital after a road accident.”

The internet expert is curious about the graphical design of Facebook’s new ‘dislike’ button. “Facebook doesn’t want its users to abuse a button like that. It shouldn’t become a harassing button, it should be neutral.” Mekić himself would have looked for ways to make the existing ‘like’ button more neutral instead. “It’s already possible to indicate your feelings in a post you make. The ‘like’ button could automatically turn into a ‘dislike’ button when you indicate you’re sad because you’ve lost your cat. Another option could be to let the poster decide whether their post should have a ‘like’ or a ‘dislike’ button on it.”

For the time being, it’s anyone’s guess whether Facebook will opt for a new button or adapt its old one. “Facebook is an innovative company, so I’m sure they’ll come up with an innovative solution”, says Mekić. In case that’s a solution the users don’t like, at least they’ll be able to let everyone know.

Facebook's dislike button is also about money

“Today is a special day,” said Facebook tycoon Mark Zuckerberg during the latest Q&A session with his users. Facebook users have been asking for a dislike button for years; today, he could finally announce there’s going to be one. Or something like it, anyway. It remains unclear what this new button is going to look like, but they’ll soon begin testing it. Not every moment is a good moment, after all, Zuckerberg says. “If you are sharing something that is sad, it may not feel comfortable to ‘like’ that post.” But is this button a good idea?

It’s mainly an idea that would benefit Facebook itself, says internet expert Danny Mekić. It’s not at all that Zuckerberg cares all that much about what his users want. “They barely feel accountable to their users. Facebook is a remote island in Sillicon Valley. You can’t even reach them by phone. Have you ever seen a group of protesters in sleeping bags in front of their building?”



Non-happy news is okay too This option will let Facebook make itself relevant again, says Mekić. We’ve been conditioned for years to post just fun things to our timelines — graduations, holidays, newborn babies. “If we had bad news, like if a pet died, we’d think: this isn’t really interesting enough to post about. That’s not going to get any likes.” But to all those users who walked out because of the constant happy talk, Facebook now sends the message that non-happy news is okay too. That should lead to more active users and therefore more posts. And that means more data for the advertisers.

Mekić won’t make any predictions about what the new button will look like. But it’s definitely not just going to be a thumbs-down next to the thumbs-up, he says. “That would make it a kind of bullying button, a rejection. Nobody likes to be rejected, least of all by your friends. So then people wouldn’t dare to post their news, and they’d stay away from Facebook. That’s not what the company wants.”

The Dutch government will soon know more about you than your partner does

What were you doing last Tuesday one year ago at 8 PM? Who do you fancy? And does your current partner know? How many times have you told a lie during the past year? How many times have you had sex, and do you remember where, when and with whom? Those are just a handful of questions that you probably don’t and minister Ronald Plasterk will know the answer to in the future. And in many cases he’ll also be able to find out whether you vote for him and what private secrets you’re hiding from the world. Going against the founding principles of the constitutional democracy, the Dutch government wants to place all of its citizens under constant digital surveillance. Without any meaningful constraints, and not a judge who gets a say in anything.

If you’ve been following the mass surveillance debate, odds are your jaw is already on the floor by now. You’ll also have learned to cover up your webcam with a sticker to protect yourself from being watched by Obama’s colleagues. You’re not the only one being secretly spied on for supposed anti-terrorism reasons, either; if we can take Edward Snowden’s word for it, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the European Commission and the Belgian state company Belgacom are also considered ‘targets’. As much as 1.6% of all worldwide internet traffic is being wiretapped by the American NSA in this way. And they’re obviously targets that haven’t got a thing to do with terrorism.

But our minister Plasterk thinks the Americans’ transgressions aren’t going far enough yet. He proposes a new Law on the Intelligence and Security Services — also referred to as the Tapsterk Law — which decrees that not just the data traffic of internet-using suspects, but all data traffic that passes through the Netherlands will be fair game for our General and Military Intelligence and Security Services to wiretap and search at the press of a button. It’s a move that criminalises all 17 million Dutch citizens as well as many tens of millions of foreigners in one go and makes the Netherlands an unattractive option for companies that want to host their data and websites on Dutch soil.

This ‘Tapsterk law’ puts our lives at risk, too. Imagine the Intelligence and Security Services being hacked, leaving our privacy up for grabs. A month ago, two men committed suicide after their membership of the adultery website Ashley Madison became public knowledge. That’s the sort of thing we need to think about. Ironically enough, it was Snowden, boarding a place with a disc full of state secrets at age 29, who demonstrated that threats from outside the system aren’t even the only threats to worry about. Nobody, not even the secret services, can be trusted with access to that much private information.

We have every reason to harbour a healthy suspicion towards the intelligence services. Even more so because Plasterk keeps the understaffed watchdog CTIVD — with just three members and six investigators — out of the game by not giving them the authorisation they need to put a stop to pernicious practices, and because he leaves no room for evaluation by an independent judge, which means his proposal goes much further still than the American practices do. Even though, thanks to the CTIVD’s reports, we know that the secret services think nothing of breaking the law left and right.

It’s absolutely unthinkable for a constitutional democracy to put all its citizens under constant surveillance, to keep the only watchdog powerless, and to completely disregard due legal process. It’s none of the government’s business where its citizens are, what they’re doing or what they’re thinking. But shouldn’t we do anything we can do to stop terrorism? No. That argument doesn’t hold any water. The major terrorist attacks of the past decade have generally been committed by people who were already known to the security services, which are already authorised to digitally and physically keep tabs on known suspects without limitations. It wasn’t a lack of information but in fact a surplus of too much (irrelevant) information that got in the way of preventing these attacks. These new authorisations that the ‘Tapsterk law’ wants to instate are unnecesary, undesirable, dangerous, unconstitutional, and liable to be counterproductive by flooding the security services with an information overload.

Dear minister, please don’t abandon the values of the constitutional democracy. Let independent judges have their place, assign more (independent) staff and investigators to the CTIVD, give them decisive authority, and assign more staff to the intelligence services too. That will benefit society more than overloading the security services with irrelevant information by eliminating the constitutional right to privacy and respect for one’s personal life.

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