Germany Seeks Expansion of Computer Spying

gooman writes "The LA Times reports on a proposal to secretly scan suspects' hard drives which is causing unease in a nation with a history of official surveillance. Along with several other European countries, Germany is seeking authority to plant secret Trojan viruses into the computers of suspects that could scan files, photos, diagrams and voice recordings, record every keystroke typed and possibly even turn on webcams and microphones in an attempt to gain knowledge of attacks before they happen."

Comments

Re:When will Europe learn?

[NorQue]

My point is, concealing the facts generally implies that there is some fear of the popular reaction.

Remember the reaction on warrantless wiretapping in the USA? Well, me neither, as there was no noteworthy public reaction. At least here in Germany there are public protests against these laws. Latest one got 15000 attendants. And you see the picture of the politician behind the "Bundestrojaner", Wolfgang Schäuble, together with the signature "STASI 2.0" in a lot of places nowadays. http://erklaerung.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/

Re:Schizophrenic Germany

[Anonymous Coward]

This whole idea is mainly pushed by the interior minister Wolfgang Schäuble, who probably has about as much clue about computers as your Ted "series-of-tubes" Stevens.
Linux? Never heard of it.
Don't expect that those proposals even remotely make sense. If somebody where to tell them it won't work, they would answer "then make it work".

Besides, that guy is really paranoid, perhaps because he was shot years ago. He's definitely on the "or the terrorists win" train.

Re:Please

[zeromorph]

They will come through you house door, not your firewall and install it manually. (At least that's what the police says, the politicians maunder about attachments and the like.) But, whether it will be platform independent and thus run on your FreeBSD Desktop is an unanswered question.

When you strip off all that crackhead talk of the politicians, the police wants a mean to bug your computer just like your phone. It is technically feasible and not crazy. But as far as I am concerned it's politically wrong.

(btw there was a talk about this topic at the CCC's hacker camp this summer.)

Re:Europe beating USA in the big brother arms race

[zeromorph]

That's why the campaign against this trojan and the telecommunications data retention law is called Stasi 2.0

(The man on the logo is the Minister of the Interior Schäuble.)

Re:Europe beating USA in the big brother arms race

[Opportunist]

For those not familiar with the terms of the former German Democratic Republic, the "Stasi" was the "Ministerium für Staatssicherheit" (department for interior security). Comparable with the Gestapo of earlier German times.

Ummm....the FBI have been doing this since 1999

[Joce640k]

Europe is at least eight years behind the USA on this one. The FBI been installing spyware in people's machines since at least 1999 and a judge ruled it was Ok to do so in 2001.

See: http://www.wired.com/politics/security/news/2002/01/49455

(Or google for something like "scarfo keylogger")

Re:Europe beating USA in the big brother arms race

[Runagate Rampant]

I wonder how our friends in the US would react if Bush was forced out of office, some other Republican with significantly different views was appointed to replace him without a vote,

If Bush quit office today, Cheney would take over as president, with out any further voting, for the remainder of the presidential term. So how is this different from Blair's deputy, Brown, taking over when public pressure forces Blair to resign?

Austria

[Kaeluka]

They are planning the same thing in Austria. What is happening to us?