German State Confesses To, Downplays Government Spyware

First time accepted submitter clickforfreepizza writes with this news on the German 'state trojan' analyzed by the CCC: '[The] Bavarian Interior Minister [confirmed] that state officials had indeed used the software, but argued that the use had been conducted legally. [...] [A] lawyer said his client had had the software in question installed on his computer during a customs check. That software, which could be legally used for monitoring telecommunications, had been altered to allow it to grab screen shots.' The H's sister site heise.de reports this case involves nothing like terrorism, but legal substances which 'may become' illegal when exported. (German original) The Bavarian press release (German original) also says the code analyzed by the CCC might be an earlier test version."

Comments

I'm so disappointed in you Germany

[elrous0]

I just can't believe that *Germans* would engage in such heavy-handed government repression.

Re:I'm so disappointed in you Germany

[dkleinsc]

Heaven: Where the chefs are French, the police British, the carmakers German, and the lovers Italian, all organized by the Swiss.

Hell: Where the chefs are British, the police German, the carmakers French, the lovers Swiss, all organized by the Italians.

Re:I'm so disappointed in you Germany

[daem0n1x]

Hell: Where the chefs are British, the police German, the carmakers French, the lovers Swiss, all organized by the Italians.

And the accountants are Greek.

Re:I'm so disappointed in you Germany

[GameboyRMH]

I heard another one like this:

Heaven is a British home, a Chinese chef, an American salary and a Japanese wife.

Hell is a Japanese home, a British chef, a Chinese salary and an American wife.

Re:I'm so disappointed in you Germany

[Jawnn]

Yes, change it to any Islamic regime and the liberals will have a field day telling you how unfunny it is.

I just can't believe that *Iranians* would engage in such heavy-handed government repression.

I just can't believe that *Pakistanis* would engage in such heavy-handed government repression.

Really? On what do you base this remarkable assertion? Oh..., right; the blathering of right-wing talking heads. If you'd bother to pull your head out of your ass, and look around, you'd find that most of the people you've labeled "liberal", will be soundly against human rights violations such as the one described in TFA.

One simple question.

[Robert Zenz]

And I have still this one simple question: How are the infecting the systems and is it cross-platform?

Re:One simple question.

[jeti]

The lawyer of one person who had this spyware on his laptop claims that it was installed by customs officers at the Munich airport. Apparently there have also been cases where the police secretly broke into the apartment of a suspect (and claims the break in was covered by a simple search warrant).

The version analyzed by the CCC only works on Windows (32 bit). It is unclear whether additional versions exist.

Re:One simple question.

[moonbender]

Someone else mentioned installing it at the border -- yet another reason for completely wiping the system before and after a border check. There are two known cases where this happened. In another case, they broke into someone's home and installed the software on two computers. None of these cases involved terrorism, or child abuse, for that matter.

Source (German, obviously): http://taz.de/Staatstrojaner-gegen-Drogendealer/!79701/

Re:".. has been altered ..."

[Millennium]

There are some government powers for which safeguards against abuse simply are not sufficient. The power itself must be taken away, because the eventual abuse cannot be worth any beneficial uses it might have.

Re:".. has been altered ..."

[Dunbal]

But think of all the children! etc

Digitask

[think_nix]

Vaguely referenced in the original heise.de article the company responsible for programming the trojan is "digitask". They charged neighboring Bavarian state Baden-Württemberg 1,2 million Euros for some components of the software in 2007. From the Spiegel article below also looks like digitask was being commissioned to implement a complete digital "Big Brother" system from certain states. So looks like more German states than just Bavaria are implicated in this.

source german: http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/netzpolitik/0,1518,791112,00.html

Also another English article from spiegel :http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,790944,00.html

Re:Digitask

[QuietLagoon]

More info (in English) on Digitask from Deutsche Welle news

Re:Digitask

[jeti]

And DigiTask is owned by Deloitte. And Otto Schily, former minister of the interior, is one of the chairmen of Deloitte.

they were after skype/ssl.in 2007..

[L4z4ru5]

http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Skype_and_SSL_Interception_letters_-_Bavaria_-_Digitaskwikili wikileaks has something on digitask...

Some background info

[angel'o'sphere]

The issue is ore complex.

First of all the german supreme court denied "the police" the right to have such a program in the extend it is used now. Important functionallity, like uploading and installing additional additional components was not allowed. Also a "search warrant" was required to install it.

In the given cases it seems the police just did what they pleased.
On top of that the "Police Trojan" is a true backdoor. It allows loading of arbitrary code via the internet. It allows remote control and screenshots, so you easy can remote control type a compromising email, screen shot it and thus forge evidence.
And on TOP OF THAT they included (forbidden by the supreme court) the option to activate cameras and microphones without the notice of the owner.
By that they are able to record innocent by standers, or take naked photos of people in the living room etc.
The outcry is so big that one of the most conservative german news papers (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, FAZ) printed the dissasembled code in the "feature pages" (feuilleton) with comments added by the Hackers from Chaos Computer Club.

Several German states admit to use of the software

[QuietLagoon]

Several German states admit to use of controversial spy software

Several additional German states have admitted to deploying spyware in order to investigate serious criminal offenses, according to regional media sources. The interior ministers of the states of Baden-Württemberg, Brandenburg, Schleswig-Holstein and Lower Saxony said that regional police had used the software within the parameters of the law. In Lower Saxony, the software has been in use for two years, according to the public broadcaster NDR. Authorities in Brandenburg, meanwhile, told the daily Berliner Morgenpost that they are currently using the spyware in a single, on-going investigation. Baden-Württemberg has also used such software to investigate "individual cases," according to the Badische Zeitung. The interior ministry in the western state North Rhine-Westphalia also admitted that police had used the software in two instances, both of which had been approved by a judge. The news agency dpa reported that both cases had involved serious drug crimes....

See the article (in English) for the full text.

Good stuff happening over here in that dept.

[Qbertino]

This whole German 'Federal Trojan' thing is blowing up in the faces of the conservative right, just as we speak. Just like with the Websperren and IP storaging thing. Wonderfull sight to look at. I'm currently sitting back, watching the fray unravel before me and enjoying my popcorn.

The supreme court will cancel this crapshot (once again) These guys have been doing overtime ever since Schäuble was Minister for Internal Affairs.

The press is having a field day, opposition in parliament will be anal-probing the responible, Schäuble, Von der Leyen and Co. will be backpedaling yet again and the pirate party will get pushed from an allready impressive 8% all the way beyond 10% in the polls nationwide. Well done. The Chaos Computer Club saved the day once again (kudos and thank go out to them) and the professional required-by-law privacy protection experts are all over this like a cheap suit.
Gotta love it.
Nothing beats a 50ies+ old-school roughneck polititian screwing around with them internets and accompaning laws and falling flat on his face a year or two later.
Wonderfull, just wonderfull.

My 2 cents.