They have no right to invade the privacy of the citizen to dictate what political views they may hold. This is way beyond the pale.
Dutch police have been visiting the homes of people critical of asylum centres on Twitter, urging them to delete posts.
It was thus on a Monday, in the town of Sliedrecht, that Mark Jongeneel (28) got a very disturbing phone call. His mother was on the line, worried that two policemen were looking for him, but would not say why. As Jongeneel told the Dutch daily NRC Handelsblad, the police came to his office and told him: “You tweet too much. We have orders to ask you to watch your tone. Your tweets may seem seditious.”
In Sliedrecht there had been a citizen meeting about a refugee center in the region. At the end, Jongeneel had posted a few tweets. One said: “The College of #Sliedrecht comes with a proposal to take 250 refugees over the next two years. What a bad idea! “Earlier he had also tweeted:” Should we let this happen?! ”
In recent months, police have visited the homes of many more people that criticised the plans for asylum centres. In October 2015, in Leeuwarden about twenty opponents of the programs received police visits at home. It happened in Enschede, and in some places in the Brabant, where, according to the Dutch media, people who had been critical of the arrival of refugees and ran a page on social media on the topic were told to stop.
A spokesman for the national police acknowledged to Handelsblad that there are ten intelligence units of “digital detectives” monitoring in real time Facebook pages and Twitter accounts and looking for posts that go “too far”.
Citizens have even complained that it starts sounding as if the Netherlands were on the way to become “a police state.”
More here. H/T: @sjunnedotcom