German Police May Not Break Into a Suspect's PC

hweimer writes to tell us that a ruling in Germany's Supreme Court has made it illegal for the police to secretly hack into a suspect's computer. While some hailed this as a victory for civil rights, Germany's Interior Minister Wolfgang Schauble is expected to push for changes in the legal framework to allow police hacking.

Comments

Now why would someone want to do that?

[Anonymous Coward]

Putting aside the privacy concerns that I'm sure will be expressed by fellow Slashdotters, I truly don't see the point of the police hacking into a suspects' PC, at least from a forensic perspective. Sure, they might be able to find 'interesting' evidence by doing so, but at the same time, they risk compromising their whole investigation. If they successfully exploited a vulnerability to gain access to the suspects' PC, then what guarantees them (and eventually the judge) that someone else didn't do the same before them and that whatever illegal content/activity was found on the computer was not put their/committed by another hacker?

It seems that they are providing the suspect with plausible deniability for any illegal activity that took place. If I were the police trying to prosecute someone for some digital crime, I would be praying from the bottom of my heart that the computer used to commit the crime was secured according to best practices and free of any malware.