Bavarian Police Seeking Skype Trojan Informant

Andreaskem writes "Bavarian police searched the home of the spokesman for the German Pirate Party (Piratenpartei Deutschland) looking for an informant who leaked information about a government Trojan used to eavesdrop on Skype conversations. (The link is a Google translation of the German original.) There is a high probability that the Trojan is used illegally. A criminal law specialist said, 'The Bavarian authorities worked on the Trojan without a legitimate basis and now try to silence critics.' The informant need not worry since 'every information that could be used to identify him' is protected against unauthorized access by strong encryption. The Trojan is supposedly capable of eavesdropping on Skype conversations and obtaining technical details of the Skype client being used. It is deployed by e-mail or in place by the police. A Pirate Party spokesman said, 'Some of our officials seem to want to install the Big Brother state without the knowledge of the public.'"

Comments

Re: Bad german history

[Lonewolf666]

Comments from a German:

German history has in the past worked as a deterrent against giving the police and secret services too much power. But after 9/11 and with the generation that has lived under the Nazi regime gradually dying off, those lessons seem in danger of being forgotten.

The USA, however, have the "disadvantage" that they never had a dictatorship that was universally regarded as completely evil in hindsight. As a consequence, you guys over there have never learned these things the hard way and are (on average) way too trusting towards your government.
[Flamebait]
With stuff like arbitrarily detaining people ("illegal combatants" who are denied a fair trial) and torture of prisoners I think you are closer to a Fourth Reich than Germany.

Re:Bavarian police invading privacy!?!

[dontmakemethink]

A gun is a tool. Guns are not evil. They can be used to do evil things, so they are outlawed because it makes it easier to do evil things.

Yeah yeah yeah... "Guns don't kill people, people kill people..." It's ignorance and intolerance that kills people, and access to guns perpetuates it. As long as it is in such abundance, guns should not be available to those that practice it.

You can say the same about knives. They make it easier to kill people as well.

Or pencils. Or cars. They're all just tools. That make it easier to kill people or do bad things.

Buying a box of pencils doesn't require a willingness to do harm to someone. Chances are those who buy AK47's have plans to use them for something other than a prop in a school play. You must not have seen Bowling For Columbine, where a kid that was shot by another kid confronted Walmart for selling the shooter the ammunition. Try telling their parents that enlightened comparison with pencils.

He is raising the point, that someone intending to break the law in an act such as a mugging, they wouldn't care if they were breaking another law at the same time.

But how many muggings with guns would not have happened without the guns? You can't say that every one of them would have happened with knives instead. You can hold up 10 people at once with a gun. Try that with a knife. Access to guns enables crimes, which creates situations where the criminals would rather injure or kill victims or police officers rather than face a substantial jail sentence. Most gun-toting muggers would shoot a cop just to hide the fact that they had the gun.

If knives/guns are outlawed, you can't use a knife/gun to defend yourself from someone attempting to mug you using a knife/gun.

Get insurance, get secure plastic means of payment, give them your damned wallet, call the police. It's not worth the risk over such a relatively minor inconvenience. Credit cards can be canceled, ID can be gotten online in most cases, and cash is hardly worth carrying around anymore. Carrying weapons is no guarantee of protection, and it's a huge legal liability. If you carry a licensed handgun, fire it at a mugger for example, wing him, then the bullet carries on through a wall into a baby's crib, you might as well have stood over the crib and opened fire. Intent follows the bullet. Shooting at anything in a residential area under any circumstances is only for trained law enforcement. That's their entire purpose, so you don't have to. Buying insurance generates funds to research criminal activity and make communities safer.