Skype Encryption Stumps German Police

TallGuyRacer writes "German police are unable to decipher the encryption used in the internet telephone software Skype to monitor calls by suspected criminals and terrorists, Germany's top police officer, Joerg Ziercke, said. "The encryption with Skype telephone software ... creates grave difficulties for us... We can't decipher it. That's why we're talking about source telecommunication surveillance — that is, getting to the source before encryption or after it's been decrypted.""

Comments

It's all about building trust..

[OlivierB]

Oh noes, the police can't decipher Skype! We're all gonna die!
Yeah right.
If you are paying attention, Skype is incorporated in Luxembourg, which is part of the EU, just like Germany (they actually share borders).
Do you think the EU would allow for some European company to provide tools to "terrorists" without having eavesdropping ability?

Now for the real story; German Police is putting on a little show so people actually trust *more* the closed-source Skype software.

If the German Police had no way of eavesdropping they would either (a) Shut up about it or (b) Actually say they have supercomputers that can decipher anything (even if this is not true). (a) or (b) would create enough FUD for "terrorists" to actually distrust Skype as a communication medium.

This is all spin doctor speak, and I would never trust Skype for sensitivie material communications. The Zfone project http://zfoneproject.com/ is a much more secure system.

Re:Skype unbreakable?

[oliverthered]

As a good example,
The US managed to get the UK to agree to deport anyone they asked for in case they were terrorists.

The first people the chose to ask to be deported were a bunch of bankers that had done some dodgy dealings, hardly terrorists.

And what's worse/better is that the US didn't hold up to it's part of the bargain and sign up to a similar agreement.

Re:Skype unbreakable?

[bhima]

I've thought about this idea that the Bundestrojaner would make snooping cheaper and easier. I think it would have another effect: About 15 minutes after they let the first one out into the wild some teenager in Slovenia would publish a CLI app that would detect and disable it or alternately hijack the app to share the contents of the drive on whatever P2P app Slovenian teenagers are into this week. Then everyone who *really* had a reason to make sure they were not infected would have this app and only the average Joe would be out there sharing his hard drive contents with the world.