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Bavarian Police Can Legally Place Trojans On PCs
An anonymous reader writes "The Bavarian Parliament passed a law that allows Bavarian police to place 'Remote Forensic Software' (Google translation) on a suspect's computer as well as on the computers of a suspect's contacts. They may break into houses in secret to install the RFS if a remote installation is not possible; and while they are there a (physical) search is permitted too. The RFS may be used to read, delete, and alter data." The translation says that RFSs may be used in cases of an "urgent threat to the existence or the security of the Federation or a country or physical, life or liberty of a person... Even where there is a reasonable assumptions on concrete preparatory acts for such serious offenses."
In my ignorance, I asked myself "where the hell is Bavaria?". So I wiki'd it. Turns out, it's in Germany.
The more you know...
GAAH! MY PRINTER IS ON FIRE!!! PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!
I know this is slashdot and jumping at anything so we can scream 1984!!! POLICE STATE!!11!!! gets you modded informative or insightful, but this slashdot article is just crap.
The "Bundestrojaner" will only be used as a last resort and in defense to terrorism, as you can read here in an article posted today, denying the Bavarian request to use it for other crimes not directly related to terrorism.
Poor google translation:
http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.heise.de%2Fnewsticker%2FBundesrat-will-heimliche-Online-Durchsuchungen-auf-Terrorabwehr-beschraenken--%2Fmeldung%2F110466&hl=en&ie=UTF8&sl=de&tl=en
Ah, screw it. 1984!!! ORWELLIAN STATE!! BURN THE WITCHES!
Hitler started his run in a beer house in Bavaria. What goes around, comes around.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
The original post has few problems
1. the link does not work - I suppose it was meant to be this:
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/Bundesrat-will-heimliche-Online-Durchsuchungen-auf-Terrorabwehr-beschraenken--/meldung/110466
2. this article says that Bavaria did NOT managed to extend existing proposal on searching, eavesdropping etc, existing proposal is maybe not that nice but it was apparently less harmful politically than the Bavaria's extension.
Besides similar laws (lows?) already exist although not really in such drastic form. OTOH secret services do what it wants anyway - Germans violated its own and other countries' law to get account data of tax criminals. I believe there are countries where even suspicion that evidence was produced illegally or on information received illegally would nullify the whole proceeding. In Germany it apparently is not that important how you get your data as long as you can prosecute whoever you want. I guess each country has its quirks when it comes to powers that the state has.
tripwire is a host based intrusion detection program. It checks md5 sums for file alterations.
Bill Clinton had Carnivor and Magic lantern for this sort of thing long before Bush was even in the White House, around 1995.
The Federal government has been violating due process and the US Constitution since FDR was in office.
Don't try and pretend that Bush was the first to do this sort of thing with the Patriot Act, all he did was use it to amend the Constitution.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
I assumed that the system was devised to prevent overloading - most commercial exchanges have some kind of limit on how many phones they can support. In the UK it's called "ringer equivalence number" and if you exceed it they don't guarantee that your phones will work. In practice it's the ringers that fail first.
Every bloody emperor has his hand up history's skirt [Peter Hammill/VdGG]
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/Bayerischer-Landtag-setzt-den-Bayerntrojaner-frei--/meldung/110426
It's from yesterday. The story you link to is today's and is talking about the Bundesregierung as opposed to the Staatsregierung Bayern. Roughly speaking, it's the equivalent of Federal and State government in the US.
The article says that the law has no chance of survival - it's pretty clearly in violation of the German constitution, and most Germans take their constitution *very* seriously.
My take is that it's a typical "bargaining play": aim for the moon, and if you fall on the clouds, well, it's still better than the hilltop position that you really wanted. Compare the tactic with the *IAA's lobbying. They ask for outrageous new laws, everyone gets upset and writes to their reps, the law eventually gets watered down, and everyone goes home happy, failing to notice that the *IAA have achieved yet another step along the way to their goal of total control.
Every bloody emperor has his hand up history's skirt [Peter Hammill/VdGG]
What puzzles me is why this would be something the Bavarian Parliment would do. I would think this would be done at the national level; US laws that enable wiretaps are all at the Federal level.
They tried to. It came as far as the constitutional court in Germany, and failed miserably. The law now returns, slightly changed.
You have to know that in Germany, each "Land" (~County) has its own law. If there's a matter on which both a county's law and federal law exist, the federal law supercedes county law. The federal law on computer trojans failed before the constitutional court. It's been slightly changed and they're going to give it another try on the federal level the next few weeks. Meanwhile, Bavaria layed out its own law regarding trojan infection of suspects' computers. It will probably also fail before court as soon as somebody bothers to sue (and a lot will, believe me), but until that happens, it's there and it's valid.
I suspect it's all some show-off attempt for big guys in politics, along the lines of "look, we were the first to arm our police with the necessary tools against terrorism", paired with a boxcar load of right-wing attitude...
Although this law will get smashed soon, it pretty much shows there the wind blows from in Germany. Or Europe, for that matter. Or the world...
Sorry, most of what you said or suspected is wrong. The system is actually a very clever design which prevents interruption of data/fax calls by the phone and in fact also eavesdropping from another phone inside the house.
The "multi-way phone sockets" are usually of the NFN-Type. Here F means "Fernsprecher" (Phone) while N means "Nicht-Fernsprecher" (Non-Phone). The socket is designed so that the line goes first to the left N socket , then to the right N socket and finally to the F socket. The phone will always be the last in chain. A non-phone device (fax, modem) plugged into one of the N sockets is supposed to have two electronic switches inside which will chain-through the line to the next socket when the device does not use the line. So if you are not sending a fax or surfing the net, you will be able to use the phone normally. However when the fax/modem takes over, the phone will be cut off. This clever trick prevents you from interfering with the transmission by picking up the phone.
As you are not supposed to plug two phones into one box, this also prevents eavesdropping. Overload prevention is not the reason. There were and are devices available which either are put before the NFN-box and allow to wire another NFN-box or contain a F or NFN socket themselves. Both will allow to wire a second phone and of course you could use more than one of these devices. These device however contain a automatic switch will will cut-off the other phone when one is in use. But they will all ring.