Court Slams Door On Sale of Spyware

coondoggie writes "The Federal Trade Commission yesterday had a US District Court issue a temporary restraining order halting the sale of RemoteSpy keylogger spyware. According to the FTC's complaint, RemoteSpy spyware was sold to clients who would then secretly monitor unsuspecting consumers' computers. The defendants provided RemoteSpy clients with detailed instructions explaining how to disguise the spyware as an innocuous file, such as a photo, attached to an email."

Comments

Re:but why?

[moteyalpha]

Well I am seeing a paradox here because the NSA designs and creates tools like this and makes manuals to explain how to use it. Now they can say they are using it for a legal purpose, however if the mere fact of having something that could be used in a sneaky way is illegal then they would be guilty of possessing a criminal artifact. If creating the stuff is illegal, whoever contracts with a government agency to produce this stuff is criminal by this strict an interpretation. It seems to imply that a citizen can commit a crime and a bureaucrat cannot.

Re:but why?

[Surreal Puppet]

You mean like the catch-all German "hacker program" law, that has had the entire security industry up in arms? The one where you could in theory get arrested for possessing a copy of NMap?
www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/08/new_german_hack.html

Re:This is good.

[BountyX]

Credit card numbers are sold for 15$ a pop on irc. Social security numbers can run from 2-10 bucks. Now imagine stealing a backup tape with 15 million records...