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Cellphone Forensic Software Open Sourced

Posted by michael on from the copying-jason-bourne dept.

Niek writes "The Netherlands Forensic Institute (part of the Dutch Ministry of Justice) has open sourced one of their high-profile software frameworks, TULP2G. With this BSD licensed framework, one can extract and decode all data from GSM SIM cards, e.g. called phone numbers and received SMS messages. This was previously only possible with commercial software. Dutch press release, Powerpoint presentation. Earlier this year, the Dutch government GPLed their online election software."

2 of 23 comments (clear)

  1. Re:I think I speak for all of us when I ask... by Umbral+Blot · · Score: 2, Insightful

    in all seriousness this does seem like a wonderfule thing, but does anyone know why their government is so supportive of open-source? My guess would be that their government has less pressure/influence from coperations, and thus does not share a corperation's closed-source paranoia like ours (America) does.

    --

    Philosophy.
  2. Re:Before you think of packing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Well, as a fellow dutchman (I guess, because of the details, grandparent is a dutch person), I would like to point out a another opinion:
    Pim Fortuyn was not leading in the polls. Three parties, the conservative-liberal VVD, the social-democrat PvdA, and the christian-democrat CDA were always bigger than the Pim Fortuyn party, in all polls.
    Secondly, Theo van Gogh was highly controversial with many Dutch people before his highly hate-inspiring statements about the islam. He was wishing people dead (not a big deal before he was killed), he was was complaining about the Jewish lobby, and many more things. He was a person living for controversy. The Dutch government, in reaction in part to the murder of Theo van Gogh, has way overreacted, and is making statements about laws, which would make Theo van Gogh's statements illegal.
    The press in the Netherlands has also overreacted, creating a national problem, for which muslims and non-muslims have to account for any of their behaviour. Couple this with the minister of justice making statements about tracking down people with wrong thoughts, and you get a scenario which looks eerily like one a certain writer wrote about a certain year.