More Details On the German Government's Use of Malware

Reader HnT writes with an update on the German government's malware, recently dissected by the CCC: "The German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung reports details on cases where the government malware was used so far — all of them actually unlawful and in violation of its initial intention to only be used against serious crime and threats of terrorism."

Comments

Ah, but when you have a new toy

[ackthpt]

So tempting to take the lid off, play around with it, see what else it can do.

Meringuoid's Law proven once again.

[Tackhead]

"Whenever a controversial law is proposed, and its supporters, when confronted with an egregious abuse it would permit, use a phrase along the lines of 'Perhaps in theory, but the law would never be applied in that way' - they're *lying*. They intend to use the law that way as early and as often as possible."

- meringuoid, Nov 24, 2005.

Re:Meringuoid's Law proven once again.

[HTH NE1]

More concisely stated as mission creep.

A Gestapo by any other name...

[vaene]

Ve haf vays of making your computer talk!

Re:Germans are trusting people

[causality]

But they also have, or at least had, a police that could be trusted.

There is no such thing. Good, honest police won't stay that way if you become complacent. Far less power than what they have is enough to bring out the worst in people. Then there's the way that police tend to cover for each other, making otherwise honest cops part of the problem when they look the other way at their collegues' abuses of authority. It is sometimes called the "blue wall of silence". The citizens have a duty to call attention to all abuses and demand that they be remedied. No one else is going to do that. No one else has a stronger interest in seeing that this is done.

Have you ever heard of an employer that never audits the quality of employees' work in some way? Do they ever say "well you've always been a good employee so we'll stop caring about the work you do now"? The stakes are much, much higher when you are dealing with a branch of government which has a legal monopoly on the use of force.

I'm tired of all the glorification of cops and their jobs and authority backed by force, in general. There's nothing glamorous or admirable about it. The only reason we even have governments and police is because it's slightly better than not having them. They are both necessary evils.