back to article Parliamentary report details German police snoop-spend

Blogger Anna Roth has accused German police of monitoring Skype, Facebook chat and Google Mail, following an examination of expenditures by the country’s Ministry of Home Affairs. In the wake of last year’s notorious discovery that police were using a Trojan to spy on criminal suspects – legal in limited cases, but according …

COMMENTS

This topic is closed for new posts.
  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The German psyche is impregnated with the urge to snoop.

    A country where is is the norm for bin police to go through your rubbish, where 'anzeigen' is ingrained, in that if you cut your grass on late in the evening, put washing out on a Sunday, have a small barbecue on you balcony at the wrong time, allow you dog to bark after nine at night (true) there will always be someone who reports you the the authorities.

    It's worse in the old East Germany where most over 40's have Stazi ingrained in them, but in the old West Germany old habits die hard.

    1. Abhorsen

      No worse than the UK, where the same will happen.

      Or, for that matter, any of the countries I've lived in.

      And before anyone bothers downvoting me, I'm not defending Germany's policies, I'm damning the policies of the lot of them.

      Unfortunately, people are nosy and judgmental as a whole.

    2. John Smith 19 Gold badge
      Joke

      "A country where is is the norm for bin police to go through your rubbish, where 'anzeigen' is ingrained, in that if you cut your grass on late in the evening, put washing out on a Sunday, have a small barbecue on you balcony at the wrong time, allow you dog to bark after nine at night (true) there will always be someone who reports you the the authorities."

      This is the abuse of petty authority.

      Now which is the department responsible for the abuse of *major* authority?

  2. moonface

    Sounds like a good win for the German authorities.

  3. yossarianuk
    Linux

    A Solution to all this monitoring exists.....

    http://tinfoilhat.shmoo.com/

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Standards, we need standards!

    and very helpfully the GLIIF (Global Lawful Interception Industry Forum) openly hosts the „Bundestrojaner“ full technical specifications (100's of dull pdf pages) at www.gliif.org/LI_standards/TR_TKUE_English_V4_0.pdf and the German version at www.gliif.org/LI_standards/TR_TKUE%20Ausgabe%204.0%2020-04-2003.pdf

    The "Technical Directive: Requirements for implementing statutory telecommunications interception measures (TR TKÜ)" and "Technische Richtlinie zur Beschreibung der Anforderungen an die Umsetzung gesetzlicher Maßnahmen zur Überwachung der Telekommunikation (TR TKÜ)" version 4 of 2003 are not identified as copyright, are not identified as sensitive or restricted documents.

    GLIIF's mission "is to promote the worldwide awareness, responsible development, and marketplace growth for Lawful Interception (LI) products and services" hence hosting the standards, which means you only need to look in the one place for all your interception infrastructural needs.

This topic is closed for new posts.

Other stories you might like