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

Bavarian police invading privacy!?!

[gnick]

Who would have thought that even a country like Germany could deteriorate into a police state?

I kid, I kid... I'm in the US...

Re:Bavarian police invading privacy!?!

[Red Flayer]

Heh. Maybe this is what it'll take to make the general public (especially the baby boomers whose parents fought in WWII, or made other sacrifices) aware of how bad the rights deterioration in the US is.

When the Germans do it, it's scary (to a lot of people). When the US does it, is it not also scary?

Re:Bavarian police invading privacy!?!

[Daimanta]

`Then bare hands.

Hello, I am Leopold II and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

Re:Bavarian police invading privacy!?!

[plague3106]

The statement is true. Only people that choose to obey the law to begin with will obey a law banning knives. Those that choose to break the law won't mind breaking another one as they mug you with their illegal knife.

This leads to the unexpected result of handgun murders going up after handguns are banned. The "bad guys" know YOU won't have a gun, because they are illegal, and the police can't protect them...

Re:Bavarian police invading privacy!?!

[Atlantis-Rising]

I'm not sure it means that, either.

The value of the public in their ability to protect themselves (especially when weighed against the ability of police to protect society, which is not the same thing as the ability to protect individuals, and the rate of crime) is not necessarily worth permitting people to utilize specific methods or tools.

For example, if we decided that it was very practical for people to protect their lives by equipping themselves with thermonuclear destruct devices activated by the lack of a heartbeat (which would probably solve all murders that weren't started out as suicide missions), the advantage, i.e., the protection of individual lives, would have to be strictly weighed against the risk to society in general.

Laws that prevent people from 'protecting themselves' serve the same purpose as any other law; they weigh the advantage to individuals against the advantage to society. That is the fallacy of the 'the police will not protect you' saw- the police were never intended to protect you. Their purpose is to protect society, and your life, in the grand scheme of society, is not very valuable. If you happen to lose it because the law prevented you from protecting yourself, that's really just tough luck.

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.

Re:Actung!

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Look! I 'drew' ASCII Hitler! It's OK, though, the Bavarian Gendarmerie already pre-Godwinned the topic!

(\:7=[

Could be worse...

[Deadstick]

...Most governments screw you without one.

rj

Bavarian Police Seeking Skype Trojan Informant

[commodoresloat]

Likes outdoor activities, pets, and long moonlit walks on the beach. Mild uniform fetish. Possible LTR. Call me soon - let's drink beer and eat Souvlakia on Walpurgisnacht!

Disconcerting convergence of technologies...

[Lumenary7204]

The trends I've been noticing lately are very disconcerting.

Think about what you get when the following technologies converge:

-- IP Traceback
-- VOIP Interception
-- Keylogging
-- Deep Packet Analysis
-- Automatic Vehicle License Plate Identification
-- Public/Metro Transit Card Tracking

Everyone now has the potential to become their own "Poor Man's NSA." Even local governments, or relatively poor and/or developing countries.

Of course, if a private citizen used these tools to protect their *own* interests, they could be charged with all sorts of crimes, like illegal wiretapping, computer intrusion and abuse, etc...

Re:Disconcerting convergence of technologies...

[HungryHobo]

I can remember a debate I had a while back about the potential of some cheap wifi tech hooked up to a small webcam and worn on your person when going to protests or other events where you expect there to be a high chance of the police breaking the law. So that it could stream everything you see directly to a secure online store.
This would have great potential for making sure police who abuse their power get in trouble or are at least publicly shown to be abusing their power.
My friends rebuttal was that they'd simply introduce a law banning private citizens from using such devices at protests and call it a measure against pedophiles (to stop them filming the little kids walking around in the streets! You never know what they'd be thinking about if they had video of your children walking on a public street!!!).
As long as people will accept anything in the name of fighting terrorists or paedophiles then civil liberties are fucked.

It happens in the UK too.

[Anonymous Coward]

Posting Anonymously to protect my job,

I have been working for a few months on software designed to extract skype calls from streams of captured packets. The software is highly distributed, and while I can't know the exact use, I'm guessing it will be installed near every network interconnect point. Interestingly, it has nowehere near the performance required to record every skype call on the internet, so it will probably only be used for certain targets.

The good news is that the project is failing badly due to funding issues and poor management, and probably won't be deployed for years yet.

Note that this IS with the help of skype engineers - we haven't reverse engineered the encryption.

Re:It happens in the UK too.

[erlehmann]

Posting Anonymously to protect my job, [...]
I have been working for a few months on software designed to extract skype calls [...]

Fuck you !

Sincerely, a concerned citizen

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: Bad german history

[Daimanta]

The so called "disadvantage" isn't a real disadvantage. Why? People forget, generations go past. Old people die, young people are born. World War II will be a lesson as long as people who have lived during that era can tell something about it. That may be possible now but in about 30 years almost all people who went through that period will have died. Then, nobody can tell us about the horrors of WWII, the brutalities, the bombing raids, the razzias.

World War II will become like World War I, a forgotten war. As a joke I always use "Wilhelm II" as my avatar on every forum I am a member of. Nobody knows who "the guy with the weird moustache" is. Nobody is offended because it happened before any of us lived. The shockeffect is gone. 40 million people DIED in that war and I bet not even 1% can tell you who fought who.

It's a tragedy.
And the tragedy will return, but as a farce.

Nobody is safe from failings, people thinking that they are immune to making mistakes are wrong. You WILL support the wrong guy and he will take away your freedoms. You WILL cheer for the soldiers sent into a useless and bloody war. And the lessons will be learned by you and forgotten by your children.

I feel sorry for humanity.