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Expenditure Report Reveals Germany Monitors Skype, Google Mail, Facebook Chat
hypnosec writes "The German Government has gone a bit too far trying to be transparent, inadvertently revealing that German police monitor Skype, Google Mail, MSN Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, and Facebook chat when necessary. The revelations, spotted by the annalist blog, come from a report of expenses incurred by the Federal Ministry of the Interior following a parliamentary inquiry. The report contains lots of tables and as many would find those boring, some highlights: On page 34 and page 37 of the report line item 486 and 265 respectively, represent decoding software for Google Mail, MSN Hotmail, Yahoo Mail for prevention and investigation."
Isn't it good that the government is transparent?
lack of transparency: complain about lack of transparency
transparency: complain about what you see
I'd much rather be able to see that my government is doing something I'd like to know more about, than to know that they're hiding something from me that's potentially of interest to me.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
I personally would like to know and hold my government responsible for things like this. In theory one might argue that given a sutable warrant it might be perfectly reasonable to monitor someone. The German people have a right to know what their government is doing IMHO.
I guess the culture in Europe vs. the U.S. is probably quite different... But no matter what the reasons transparency is almost always better than the opposite.
.: Max Romantschuk
which seems to have had the details back in 2008. I wasn't aware of something that intercepts skype, but based on the wikileaks article it appears that it works by installing malware on the target's computer.
I'd actually prefer they not tell me when/where they monitor, but what they monitor. See, there are very bad people in the world who want to kill me and destroy my country. Doesn't matter which country. I want my government to have the ability to monitor them. I want to know the magnitude of the monitoring, so that I know the government is still part of "me and my country" instead of the evil people. However, I don't want the evil people to know when and where they are being monitored.
This is not a direct proof of snooping, just that the German government has the ability to do so. That doesn't necessarily mean that it abuses that power in warrantless monitoring.
you know who else was... wait. You said "Germany" right?
I'm not. Any modern government (law enforcement or intelligence agencies) would or at least should have this capability. The real question is, do they use it without warrants, use it in an indiscriminant fashion, etc. If they were going after a legitimate suspect, they should have the capability to do so.
I thought it all was. I get redirected when I try to use non-SSL.
A smart man-in-the-middle would yank that redirection, and 99% of the users wouldn't notice them missing s after http. Or if the s is there, they would not notice that they are on gooogle.de rather than google.de...
As long as the users rely on redirections for their safety, rather than entering the full URL (including the https part) themselves, they are fair game for men in the middle.
And all this without even installing a Bundestrojaner on the victim's computer...
A smarter man-in-the-middle would have their own CA in your trust store, so you still get your fancy SSL supposedly pointing to the same site, only singed by TheMan instead.
"Best" of both words - you still get an encrypted session to keep out the non-TheMan snoopers, and TheMan gets to watch you.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Whereas a missing redirection to https would be blamed on a glitch in google's servers, or on the phase of the moon...
Just whithness what happened to this infamous Dutch CA, which got hacked, and suddenly had loads of bogus certifcate bearing its signature in circulation...
Smart spooks only risk revealing their power over their national CA when absolutely needed, and use more discrete ways against the small fry.
It's not just verisign, certificates from any CA can/are being used with the likes of this device.
sysadmins and parents of newborns get the same amount of sleep.
I'm not sure what you mean. Don't kid yourself. Germany isn't the only one monitoring the communications of its citizens. In reality, it would be easier to come up with a list of countries that do NOT monitor. On that very, very short list you should not be surprised when you note the absence of the first world nations, nor that it is comprised almost entirely of third-world nations. The fact that Germany actually openly admits it is a feather in their cap. Everyone does it, Germany just has the decency to be forthright about it.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
See, there are very bad people in the world who want to kill me and destroy my country. Doesn't matter which country.
Wrong. Brazil is one of the largest economies in the world, and a regional power in South America, with influence over all our neighboring countries. But we don't have enemies. Why? Because we mostly keep to ourselves. Our relationship with other countries is one of selling and purchasing, not one of throwing military might around. Truth be told, a few times some more ideologically motivated governments of ours indeed started moving into that direction, but the next one usually defused the situation by reverting the idiot policy, thus bringing back international goodwill. So, although we do have lots of internal social issues, at least one we don't have is the entirely optional one of terrorism, which we avoid by the quite simple expedient of not pissing people off.
What doesn't mean avoiding legitimate wars when they present themselves. The trick here is to not start them. Keeping to oneself does wonders in that regards too. The other country has a dictator you despise? Don't mess there, it isn't your problem. It has a dictator you like who's going to be overthrown? Don't mess there, it isn't your problem. There are troops marching into your borders. Oh, now you go and mess there.
How hard can that be?
Conservatism: (n.) love of the existing evils. Liberalism: (n.) desire to substitute new evils for the existing ones.
Wrong. Brazil is one of the largest economies in the world, and a regional power in South America, with influence over all our neighboring countries. But we don't have enemies. Why? Because we mostly keep to ourselves. Our relationship with other countries is one of selling and purchasing, not one of throwing military might around.
That can get difficult -- what do you do when one of your trading partner countries refuses to trade with you, because you refuse to be unfriendly to a country they don't like?
(The potential is there for Brazil regarding the Falkland Isles.)
Countries or governments do not monitor. These are people who monitor other people.
No these are people acting as representatives of the government, which is in itself a representative of the people of that country.
I've seen this ultra-individualistic lpseudo-libertarian crap before on slashdot before. So, for example, that's not a US soldier shootinga member of al Qaeda, they're just two guys having a mano a mano fight with no need for The Government to be involved or even exist. It's stupid.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it