Swiss to Use Spyware to Listen to VoIP

An anonymous reader writes "Heise Security is reporting that the Swiss Department of the Environment, Transport, Energy and Communications is entertaining the idea of utilizing the 'Superintendant Trojan', a spyware program designed to allow eavesdropping on VoIP conversations. According to ERA IT Solutions, the creator of the software, it will only be distributed to investigation agencies in the hopes of keeping it out of the hands of malicious hackers since firewalls apparently 'do not present a problem' for the software."

Comments

Ok, let's analyze this a bit, shall we?

[Weaselmancer]

Two things stand out right away. Point one:

the 'Superintendant Trojan', a spyware program designed to allow eavesdropping on VoIP conversations

Ok, so it's spyware. It sneaks onto a system and installs itself. Gotcha. That moves us to point two:

it will only be distributed to investigation agencies in the hopes of keeping it out of the hands of malicious hackers

Ok. Got it. So to sum up, what they're saying is that they don't want anyone to get it, but they need to install it on a target's system in order for it to work. And a target would be someone the law was interested in who was computer literate. Like, say....hackers, for instance.

I love things that are broken by design.