This isn't that strange. The police (more public than secret service) and national cyber crime team (also public) are very open in hiring IT and especially inf

This isn't that strange. The police (more public than secret service) and national cyber crime team (also public) are very open in hiring IT and especially infosec talent from the industry, universities and at conferences. They even commercially sponsor IT related news outlets and communities and organise hacker challenges to recruit talent in that space. By far the biggest part of what those teams do isn't secret and fits within the law. The "problem" is that Dutch law is very liberal on wire tapping, decryption etc as long as there is a reasonable suspicion and/or court order. Actually not far behind the rubber stamping in the US, but without the limitation that they can't target our own citizens (so: much worse than the US for locals, but similar for foreigners) Obviously the military and domestic secret service hire the same people and have even wider abilities within the law and quite a wide grey area. Most of the public doesn't care enough to make it a political topic, so nobody stops them.