a campaign to obtain sufficient support declarations for a referendum was initiated by a group of students at the university of amsterdam concerned about the sweeping surveillance powers granted to the general intelligence and security service (aivd) under the law. on 1 november 2017, the electoral council ("kiesraad") announced that a sufficient number of signatures had been collected to trigger an advisory referendum on the tapping law, with 384,126 valid signatures, over 92 percent of those collected, well above the 300,000 required for a referendum.