Deutsche Telekom Secretly Tracked Phone Calls

Dekortage writes "German telephone giant Deutsche Telekom has admitted to secretly tracking the phone calls between board members and journalists, in an effort to identify media leaks about internal affairs. As noted by the German Journalists' Association, 'This company has special access to the records of its customers.... That means it has a special obligation to be trustworthy.' DT denies having eavesdropped; it merely tracked the calls dialed."

Comments

Re:The Solution

[Mark Trade]

Actually, if you know that you are subject of surveillance, you have a whole arsenal of methods to evade from it. It you aren't, and that's the sneaky little problem with it, you are an open book.

Oh, and they did not only monitor outgoing calls in the company HQ. They tracked all phone calls they were servicing in the whole country and then ran searches against business and private phone numbers of known journalists and employees. So not even at home you were secure.

Re:double-edged

[Timosch]

Plus even under new laws, they only have to store the data, but may not access it without the permission of a judge, and only in cases of danger to life or the constitution (as to an injunction by the Federal Constitutional Court, the trial about the constitutionality of this law is still pending...)

Re:Summary incorrect

[Tom]

I don't think Germany even has laws that are adequate for crimes of this scale. After all, data is knowledge, knowledge is power, power is abusable. More data means more knowledge means more abuse. It is time for lawmakers to react. Knowing beats thinking. :-)

Germany has several laws against this, in fact. At least three were very obviously breached, and criminal proceeds are very likely to be initiated very soon.

Source: I work at a german telecommunications company (not T-Com). Due to my position I had to sign extensive paperwork about all the laws I have to know and follow when I started working there.