Whistleblower is the perpetrator
The Province of North Holland uses the internet to exchange information internally. One of its own ICT employees discovered a security leak. He found out that the password used by the Province’s staff was very easy: welcome01. This made it very easy for outsiders to gain access to prohibited, sensitive and confidential government information.
The zealous ICT employee showed up the leak by breaking into the system himself, anonymously. He then used this security breach as an example to convince his employer of the problem. The employer did not appreciate this approach. To the ICT employee’s surprise, he was reported to the police for computer hacking. He was told that the confidence his employer needed to have in him had been severely damaged. He was then suspended pending investigation.
The best-known whistleblower in the Netherlands is former EU civil servant Paul van Buitenen. He made costly abuses public. His employer was not pleased and dismissed him. This caused widespread indignation, but the Netherlands was unable to get legislation introduced to protect whistleblowers from dismissal.
There are few examples in the Dutch legal system of cases where sub-district courts refused to rescind an employment contract with a whistleblower. Under the law, the only issues that the sub-district court is required to assess are whether the employment relationship has been permanently damaged by the whistleblowing and whether it is necessary to restore order within the company. Our society values whistleblowers. Our legal system holds them in considerably lower regard.
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Some success stories of
Mr. Suzanne van Dijsseldonk
Chain collision
My client is a German car rental company. On a cold December night there had been a collision of four motor vehicles on the A1. Among these motor vehicles there was one which was rented out by the client to a Russian, although it was steered by a Dutchman. The first car suddenly had to brake
Educational smack
Knock and run has been around for centuries. Even you have probably done it in the past. Of course, it was not always fun for the victim, but it doesn’t really harm anyone. A couple of years ago, a client of mine discovered that there are also less innocent forms of knock and run. His
