Germany wants to sic spyware on terror suspects
In the name of nabbing terrorists, the German government is floating a plan that would permit authorities to plant spyware on suspects' hard drives through e-mail messages appearing to stem from official sources, according to various news reports out of Berlin this week.
The proposal, which has not yet been made public but was leaked in part to some German news outlets, is reportedly the brainchild of Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble. He's pushing for its inclusion in a broader security law under consideration by Chancellor Angela Merkel's coalition government. The spyware provision is a response to a federal court decision earlier this year that frowned upon secret remote searches of computers, according to a recent report by the Associated Press.
But left-wing party members and civil liberties advocates are railing against the idea as a potential invasion of citizens' privacy, according to AP and Agence-France Presse reports. One Left Party Parliament member told AFP she also feared the policy would make citizens fearful to open e-mails from government sources.
Advocates of the plan, for their part, have tried to assuage fears about abuse of the technique. They have told reporters they would use the so-called "Trojan horse" spyware in a targeted way and would do so only with court approval.
Police use of spyware, as readers of CNET News.com should know, is hardly a new idea. Recent cases in the United States have revealed agents with the FBI and the DEA have installed spyware--in both cases, with a court's permission--as part of investigations.
It was not clear how the German software would operate, although the news reports indicate the goal is to snoop on a suspect's hard drive data and Internet activity. An FBI tool called CIPAV, for example, can immediately report back to the government a computer's Internet Protocol address, Ethernet MAC address, "other variables, and certain registry-type information." Then, for the next 60 days, it will record Internet Protocol addresses visited but not the contents of the communications.
The widespread availability of spyware-detection software could arguably make it more difficult for any government to hide such a scheme from a tech-savvy suspect. In a recent CNET News.com survey of 13 leading anti-malware vendors, not one acknowledged cooperating unofficially with government agencies--at least U.S. ones--to mask the presence of police spyware. Some, however, indicated they may keep quiet if ordered by a court to do so.
The parties from left to the right in Germany are; The Left Party (the former Democratic Socialists), the Social-Democrats, the Greens, the Free Democrats, the Christian-Democrats (and the CSU in Bavaria).
problem is the opposition (in an elected government position)
leaking the info and potentially compromising national security.
The situaiton in Germany is similar to the brohaha over the US
filtering internet content. I have absolutely no problems with
filtering keywords through a internet pipeline. This is a mass
search. If something subsequently turns up with a specific
computer, then a subpeona would be warranted.
I'm sure those same people would feel differently if their loved ones were killed by those the German government is seeking to identify and stop.
Charles R. Whealton
Charles Whealton @ pleasedontspam.com
Different groups at different times, is all.
Until now, I've yet to have been moved to comment on story. I've
one word to comment on the German gov't's spyware hopes:
RISIBLE.
That scheme is as goofy as the one the federal gov't goons in
Washington,DC used to drag the world into another stupid
war...and, frankly, the sales job on maintiaining a "troop surge"
you'll barely be able to escape in this Sunday's NY Times, next
weeks Wall Street Journal editorial page, tonight's Newshour and
Brooks and Kristol's pandering Sunday talk show pandering.
Honestly, what "terror" suspect would be as dumb as the US
money-laundering mafioso whose residence was FBI "sneaked n
peeked", his computer infected w/spyware to beat the
encryption algorithms he'd installed, to not keep a simple
firewall log active to recoerd to which addresses, and when, his
system linked. Yesh, we've got some pretty unsophisticated
criminals here in the US but, really folks, what "terrorist" really's
goin got be that freakin' stupid? Gov't-installed spyware--even
if certain anti-spyware firms have agreed to exclude such gov't
designed and installed applications from their reports- a truly
dumb-ass idea.
So, dear Germans, please go right ahead! I'm sure the US-gov't
isn't far behind...which may explain why it's still hoping its
upcoming two-week sell job on it's electorate to support the
"surge" til April '08 will work.
Right.
- Nixon and J. Edgar Celebrating
- by Stating August 31, 2007 9:12 PM PDT
- Nixon and J. Edgar are celebrating in hell at the thought of remote, armchair spying. Oh, Spiro says "Hi" by the way.
- Like this Reply to this comment
-
(11 Comments)