Officials in the Dutch Ministry of Social Affairs accessed the Geassocieerde Pers Diensten's (GPD) online editorial system in mid-2006, an act GPD calls espionage, and published the story on Saturday.

GPD is the top news agency for many of the provincial newspapers in the Netherlands. The ministry has acknowledged the unauthorised access, Poynter Online reported Monday.

According to GPD, the ministry accessed Web pages intended for newspapers subscribing to the news service, meaning the ministry read unpublished stories and agendas, but could not alter the stories. GPD was tipped off and became suspicious when the ministry asked questions about an interview with its minister, Jan Piet Hein Donner, that had not been published yet, according to Poynter.

The news agency found that the ministry logged in almost daily, and it fears other ministries may have done the same. And while the GPD calls this a severe infringement of press freedom, U.K. news site The Register called the incidents “a storm in a tea cup,” as “the account was used by just one person at (the ministry's) communications department, a former GPD journalist who apparently still had access to the database,” Poynter reported.

However, “there appears to be much more to the story. According to Dutch media, both spokespersons of the minister and the vice-minister have been entering GDP's system hundreds times. These spokespeople were former GDP journalists who, when their passwords were disabled, obtained the password of another system user,” according to the Poynter article.