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Buggy Bugging Backfires On German Police

Posted by timothy on from the wer-spricht dept.

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."

14 of 270 comments (clear)

  1. The news here is by Chris_Stankowitz · · Score: 4, Interesting

    that they got caught. German laws allow for this, Sloppy work on the part of either the telecom company or the police (or both). If its one thing American Inteligence ( homebound anyway) is good at is keeping the public unaware of these types of things. Is that a good thing? Thats an agrument for another post.

  2. Headline by EyesWideOpen · · Score: 2, Interesting

    This headline is almost good enough to be a contender in the Favorite Past Slashdot Headline.... poll!
    Buggy bugging, ha!

    --

    As with the sun's light
    My mom was magnificent
    Unquestionable
  3. Re:Damn Krauts. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    what exactly is a mud-person?

  4. Big Bro by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Not surprising. I saw a program that said before the wall came down East Germany had something like 80 - 85% of the population under surveillance.

  5. I'm not sure what's worse.... by innosent · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The software errors/stupidity that let the alleged criminals find out they were being tapped, or the fact that we don't have those errors here in the US. Not that I do anything wrong, but I'd still prefer not to be monitored by the government. This reminds me of a /. article a while back about the US taking bids for a central repository of personal information. It may sound like a great idea to the politicians, but after a while they're going to need money, and guess what?... Then everyone's personal information is up for sale. Telcos have been doing this for a while, even my university (UCF) does this, and I get a few dozen porn/marketing spams a day, just because they have my email address in their records. And you thought spam was a problem now....

    --
    --That's the point of being root, you can do anything you want, even if it's stupid.
    1. Re:I'm not sure what's worse.... by Nicolai+Haehnle · · Score: 2, Interesting

      This is something I've been thinking about lately. May sound weird by some, but it should be possible to find out whether you've been bugged (pardon the pun) by the police. Obviously, they won't tell you as long as the investigations are still going, but it would be _very_ interesting to know afterwards.

      A good friend of my mother had been in regular contact with some RAF terrorists back in the '60s or '70s - AFAIK neither my mother nor said friend were actually involved in anything though. If I were in a situation like this I'd be curious to know how much the police has got in their archive about me.
      Anyway, I don't think many people on Slashdot know details about German law, so I guess I'll have to find out myself whether this is possible...

  6. Related News from Finland by jukal · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Two senior security staff at Finnish telco Sonera have been remanded in custody, charged with breaching customer privacy by allegedly riffling through private telephone records in an attempt to identify an internal mole

    Read the rest here. Now, I consider this worse - you can expect policy to breach privacy - but you are not supposed to expect that from a major telco....or...actually...are you?

  7. There is no limit to what we should do! by reverendG · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The German police believe that over 20,000 people need to have active wiretaps on their phones?

    German authorities can only use wiretapping in serious cases such as murder, money laundering, kidnapping or treason.

    I think that when there are this many people who are being monitored, there's a problem. Just take a moment and think about the number of people it takes to monitor and administrate that level of surveillance!

    --

    Why should I argue rationally with someone being irrational? I'll just mock them instead.
  8. Re:It's worth it by jpm165 · · Score: 2, Interesting
    "Terrorists are much like hackers and there will always be an exploit. I would rather die in an act of terrorism so that the civil liberties of my friends and family and countrymen were protected, rather than give them up for a little extra security. Any true American would agree. "Give me liberty or give me death." "

    I agree. I would rather have you die in an act of terrorism than to give up my civil liberties...

  9. Worth Pointing Out by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting
    This article from 1998 indicated that Germany has had suspected criminals under surveillance for quite some time. So this shouldn't come as much of a surprise. In fact, it was said that several nations in the EU had similar policies in that article. If that is true, then this isn't a good time to be a civil libertarian. Big Brother is watching quite a few of us.

    Now here's something to think about: These German police who conducted this were up so sloppy that the bugging information showed up on phone bills. So: how many governments are doing this the right way (i.e. without the public's knowledge?)

  10. Librarians should follow this lead by RevDobbs · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Perhaps this can be employed by your local librarian as well:

    "Oh, that's a not a late fee, that's the 'records retrieval' charge... Gee, I'm sorry, that should have been billed to the FBI, let me take that off of your account. Now, do you still want me to fetch that Civil Engineering book on demolition explosives?"

  11. Billable wiretaps in New York by Animats · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Something like this happened in the US about a decade ago, in New York, and it's one of the reasons the FBI pushed CALEA through.

    The New York office of the FBI was wiretapping various Mafia types (with some success; they eventually broke the New York Mafia). The taps were done by New York Telephone, and were implemented by ordering a remote extension from the circuit to be tapped to an FBI office. This was a billable service, and it wasn't cheap; the total costs of all those circuits were a strain on the FBI budget.

    One month, the FBI didn't pay the bill for one of their "extensions". The billing software then started billing the other party on the line, the person being wiretapped. Big embarassment.

    This was part of the motivation behind CALEA. Not only did it hurt the investigation, but it embarassed the FBI. (The FBI is very thin-skinned. "Don't embarass the Bureau" started with Hoover and lives on.)

    All this is in one of the books about how the FBI took down the New York Mafia, but I don't have the cite.

  12. Re:inaccessable? Can you say war-dialing? by tomhudson · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Not just their conversations, bot others as well.

    That's what happened up here. Guys were punching into the cops' voicemail, hearing them talk to their informants, making dates with their mistresses, giving their wives excuses for being late so they could keep their "date" with their mistress, etc.

    Very embarassing

  13. Sounds like the film 'Brazil' by WolfWithoutAClause · · Score: 3, Interesting
    In the film Brazil, after your arrest you have to pay for your own interrogations, your stay in prison and so forth; they send you a bill afterwards for the Governmental services you 'used'; or if you don't survive the interogation, they present the bill to your next of kin.

    Sounds to me like the Germans just sent the bill a bit early; they should have sent it after the investigation was complete.

    1984 came late it seems...

    --

    -WolfWithoutAClause

    "Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"