Slashdot Mirror
Buggy Bugging Backfires On German Police
Alethes writes "The BBC is reporting that German police have been caught bugging cellphones at the expense of criminal suspects who found a unknown and inaccessible voicemail number listed on their bills that was being used to record calls. Telecommunications authorities said that nearly 20,000 lines were currently being tapped."
How in the hell do you manage to do this? I can understand if it was done by a hacker or novice phone tapper. These guys are supposed to be pros. I guess you could say that their cover is blown. Funny Germans.
[n8.r0n] http://petesweb.spymac.net/
Hacking most voicemail boxes is so simple because of the simple password.
Not to mention war-dialing the number trying all possible passwords from a land line.
The police ARE trying to listen in on private phone calls, in the hopes of finding something there. Would you say police seaching private homes was OK simply because they're only looking for criminals? Not if you believe in any form of privacy.
"Al-Qaeda cells coordinating international terrorism is an everyday occurence in many German cities" -- you have direct knowledge of this? I haven't seen it reported anywhere. Maybe we suspect it is "an everyday occurrence" but suspicion without evidence is nothing, and acting on that to monitor 20,000 numbers would be harassment. Police doing "everything they can" would logically include what besides phone taps? Fighting terrorism is a worthy cause, but trashing everything we believe in to do it is not.
Give blame where blame is due, but nothing is gained by mindlessly rounding up the usual suspects. Al Queda is evil, and so is an authoritarian police state.
Err No.
A software glitch displayed information that was supposed to be private. I want to see posts on where the responsibility lies for 'software glitches'. Not "My privacy was invaded illegally". So far I can only see that there were 20k taps total, dozens in Germany. Home, Work, Cell. 3 per person. That gives you approx 6 thousand people total, say 'Telecommunications authorities".
But that's not the issue, I don't care about the legality of the taps, I want to know what the company has to give up because of their 'glitch'.
"I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
Sure let the f-ing govt take away all our liberties, under the "I have nothing to hide" moniker. Well, you DO have something to hide, YOUR PRIVACY. They can sieze property w/o cause, tap your phone, spy on you, hell even get your library habits WITHOUT CAUSE. I'm sorry to say, but idiots like you who want security over freedom don't seem to understand that without freedom, who cares about security?
Now that the dumbass republicans control both houses, i'm sure we'll lose more of our rights, multinational corporations will gain a bigger foothold in world domination, and you will be arrested for "looking" at a cop wrong.
DONT SAY I DIDNT TELL YOU
(see that small camera in your bathroom?)
And those awful communist Bad Guys are gone and the Good Guys won. Everything's all better now.
Well, the german translation for "tank" would be "tank" (Nein!) or "Panzer", the exact translation for that long word would be "trench destruction armored force vehicle".
In the Bundeswehr something like "Schützengrabenvernichtungspanzerkraftwagen" would probably become something like "SGVPKW".
I can safely assure you that _noone_ ever uses such words in Germany. They are understandable, but they would be incredibly bad style. In fact, every normal german text could probably translated word-by-word (except for the word order) and would be accepted as a perfectly ordinary text by native english speakers; the same goes for english->german translations.
Besides, which is easier, following 20,000 different suspects around everywhere with portable recievers (assuming all the encryption and channer switching and stuff isn't a problem), or having all tapped phone calls automatically sent to the police station, similar to what they already do with tapped landlines?
Ummm how hypocritical is that?
Why should they have rights?
Everyone should have rights.
Why should people who want to destroy us, and take away our livihood, and remove our liberties have any right?
What the hell is wrong with you. You're like every other idiot in this country that thinks "Well G Dubbaya is taking away rights of certain people so that I can keep mine and live a happy life." It reminds me of something I read a while ago -
In Germany they came first for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and still I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up.
If you change communists to terrorists, jews to muslims, trade unionists to hackers, you basically have the situation of today.