Germany Plans To Email Trojans

speardane sends us word of a proposal in the German legislature to make it legal for that government to email spyware to terror suspects. The action comes in response to a court denying prosecutors' requests to break into suspects' computers over the Internet. The German chancellor supports the measure despite considerable outcry from political opponents and rights groups.

Comments

Also in other European countries

[tonk]

Papers that leaked from the German Federal Ministry of the Interior state that legal regulation allowing so called remote forensic searches exist
- explicitly in Romania, Cypria, Latvia, Spain, and Switzerland,
- implicitly in Slovenia,
and that a similar approach to establish explicit allowance for remote forensic searches is ongoing in Sweden. At least readers in Sweden should contact their members of parliament and do some lobbyism. The current political discussion in Germany only got that public attention beacause some people started what they call nerd lobbyism.

The German papers are available at http://netzpolitik.org/2007/bundesinnenministerium -beantwortet-fragen-zur-online-durchsuchung/

It is also noteworthy that an also leaked draft of a new law regarding German federal criminal police (c.f. CCC press release at http://www.ccc.de/updates/2007/bkaterror) lists several other new or extended competencies.

Criticism claims that Germany is on it's way to reinstate a secret police, with the last German incarnations being http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasi and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gestapo.

There is still a chance...

[zeromorph]

...that the Trojan won't actually be realized. (BBC):

Justice Minister Brigitte Zypries, of the Social Democrats (SPD), has voiced concern about the spyware plans, saying they might infringe privacy laws,...

But that depends on a lot of factors. Germany's biggest hacker organization the Chao Computer Club and others are very effectively campaigning against this plans.

In recent news (only german, sorry) the federal police states that it won't be a trojan but what they call "remote forensic software" which they intend to install on the terrorists' computer manually. More like a software version of a bug (in the covert listening device sense).

Re:How is this different?

[Rudolf]

How is this different from being allowed to tap someone's phone or plant a bug? As long as warrants are involved [...]

With a warrant you have court approval. This is being done because the court did not grant approval.

From the summary:
The action comes in response to a court denying prosecutors' requests to break into suspects' computers over the Internet.

Re:I expect its already being done

[techno-vampire]

Non-Americans have little rights in an American Court of law.

Actually, that's not true. The Bill of Rights applies to all persons living in the USA, even undocumented aliens. They have the same right to a fair and impartial trial, the same right to confront their accuser, the same right to counsel and so on. Not just in theory, but in practice, too. (Except for impartial trials, because that's not always easy to enforce, and partiality can't always be proven. But the courts do try to be as fair as they can.)

Actually, the artillery DOES pay for damage

[crovira]

caused by an errant shell.

Well in peace time anyway.

I had a sister who lived in Lawton OK for a long time and a few random shells made way from the artillery range from time to time.

That's why they fire duds. The damage is limited to a small diameter.