German Govt. Skype Interception Trojans Revealed

James Hardine writes "Wikileaks has released documents from the German police revealing Skype interception technology. The leaks are currently creating a storm in the German press. The first document is a communication by the Ministry of Justice to the prosecutors office, about the cost splitting for Skype interception. The second document presents the offer made by Digitask, the German company secretly developing Skype interception, and holds information on pricing and license model, high-level technology descriptions and other detail. The document is of global importance because Skype is used by tens or hundreds of millions of people daily to communicate voice calls and Skype (owned by Ebay, Inc) promotes these calls as being encrypted and secure. The technology includes interception boxes, key forwarding trojans and anonymous proxies to hide police communications."

Comments

Every country does that

[Anonymous Coward]

Please take note that every damn country in the world wants to be in control of what can happen in its territory. In the old times, when communications weren't so widespread, pervasive and fast, having a police force that patrolled the territory, a military one to protect its borders, and a secret service for those dirty jobs a government doesn't want to be associated with was enough; now it isn't anymore. Many things can be effectively done online (move money, transfer sensitive intelligence, trigger bombs, recruitment, etc), therefore the physical presence of the cop, secret agent, soldier has been replaced by the same people aided by technical tools to put them in par with the environment they're dealing with.
It's a natural development of the way every country acts in order to keep that control. Thinking that some countries don't use these methods, even those whose politicians swear they'll never use wiretapping, would be foolish.