German government approves plod-spyware law

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beyond even the cold-war levels of paranoia and state snooping all round.

Anyone who still believes that the "War on Terror" is anything other than a convenient excuse for the governments of once 'free' states to engage in a stranglehold over an increasingly empowered (I hate having to use that word) and globally aware populace is living in cloud cuckoo land.

This decade will be remembered in future histories as the beginning of the second Dark Ages.

<Insert preferred deity> help us all.

Sieg Heil!!!

All these new powers and "anti-terror" laws seem very reminescent of the state of affairs druing the "Rise of the Third Reich".

It supposedly was fortold of the coming of a "Fourth Reich", and maybe we are going to be priveledged enough to see it happen.

I don't know what scares me more, the far right with the Neo-Nazis/BNP/Republican/New Labour or the far left with the Green Party/Green Peace/IFAW.

The age-old question...

Quis custodiet ipsos custodies?

@Scott

"Welcome to the new free world Germany where the only privacy you have is locked in your toilet."

Don't talk rubbish!

Oh, and please remember to wash your hands properly next time...

(Paris, because she doesn't keep anything private)

Tux ...

Caus, I bet all the Trojans are written for windows :-)

What happens?

What if someone were to forward that trojan containing email across germany's border to their lawyer/family/friend etc?

What if someone who gets sent this trojan has their email hacked and the trojan is maliciously spread worldwide?

This sounds like a VERY slippery slope indeed. Will this bring on WWIII. Maybe. I can't see the Russian and Chinese (or insert any countries) military being particularly impressed when they discover that their systems have been infected/monitered by the Germans.

I don't think its worth the risk Herr Fritz.

@ Paul Buxton

Of course you cannot. If you were allowed to do what the state is in the name of $convenient_propaganda, and the state would not successively allocate more rights for itself while reducing yours, how would it still be totalitarian?

Legal Trojans?

Will the anti-virus vendors be allowed to recognise these or not? Just as there is a market within germany for import games (e.g. the ones that haven't been censored) I can see a new market for imported anti-virus products!

Has this thread been Godwined yet?

Regardless: "Government cyberspying, the legislators point out, would only be conducted in a handful of exceptional cases."

Yuuuuhhhhh-huh.

Raving Nutters now looking to Rant in CyberSpace .... Did you ever hear anything so Preposterous

And this is just too Fascist for words of mine, so read about the fanatics' antics here ...... http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174940/william_astore_militarizing_your_cyberspace

we had gestapo, we had stasi

now we have schäuble. the big BUTs about this are:

it's only one step closer to their goal: total control over the ordinary mob

they will never ever catch a terrorist this way, they are not that dumb. they just need to boot from a usb stick, use an external hard drive, find an unencrypted wlan somewhere else and give heinrich müller*... sorry, i mean schäuble the finger.

*heinrich müller aka gestapo-müller was the gestapo-boss

... skull because the SS had that on their caps

@Has this thread been Godwined yet?

The sun on the meadow is summery warm,

The stag in the forest runs free.

But gather together says Wolfgang Schäuble,

Your data belongs to me!

Re: Where is the resistance?

There isn't one, and there can never be one. Why? Because of technology, psychology and the techniques of social/cultural engineering and crowd control. Never before in history have the upper class had access to such widespread automated surveillance nor the ability to predict and control the behaviour of large crowds of people. Now they have it.

What this means is that any attempt to set up a resistance will immediately be infiltrated by special ops agents, spies and moles. Further, the resistance will be discredited as a "terrorist organisation" by agents-provocateurs bombing schools and hospitals and claiming the resistance is responsible. The mass media will perpetuate this view in the eyes of the general public, so that anyone claiming to support it will find themselves dobbed in on the "Terrorist Hotline" in short order. And anyone trying to expose the truth will simply be dismissed as a tinfoil-hat-wearing conspiracy nutjob.

Finally, if the unrest becomes sufficient, an astute government could set up a fake "resistance" to rope in all the freedom-loving types who can then be put on watch-lists or made to disappear. Of course, this "resistance" would never really achieve anything, it would just appear so to anyone interested in joining it. Again, anyone trying to expose this for what it is will also be consigned to the tinfoil-hat brigade.

In a world of lies and deceit, powerlust and greed and opportunism, powered by high technology and advanced psychology, such opposition to the established order has become impossible. So don't look for a hero to save the world. Such a one would be lumped in with Osama bin Laden long before you even get to see his white horse. Your only way of fighting back is to refuse to have any children, as I have done. No progeny of mine will ever be slaves to the New World Order. If everyone in the middle and lower classes did this, if we all went on a massive baby-strike, then it would be the kids of the powermongers who would have to become the new slaves.

Abandon hope all ye who enter here.

"would only be conducted in a handful of exceptional cases"

Thin edge of the wedge people!

Thin edge....

Achtung !!

Germans start new World War - who'd have thunk it.

"This sounds like a VERY slippery slope indeed. Will this bring on WWIII. Maybe. I can't see the Russian and Chinese (or insert any countries) military being particularly impressed when they discover that their systems have been infected/monitered by the Germans."

Oh great, Germany starting yet *another* world war. Lovely. And just when I was starting to think they were okay...

Well at least that lets the U.S. off the hook, as we won't be able to blame WWIII on Bush or oil or Iran or something. See, there's a bright side to everything!

But seriously now... Brian, I agree with what you wrote - you make some excellent points.

- Paris coz she looks suspiciously Teutonic

efficacy?

I cant help wonder if this will work.

For the AV vendors this will be like the holy grail of trojans.

I imagine they will be falling over themselves to capture this from the wild and analyse it just to prove how they are the best anti virus vendor in the world and once the signature of it is out there the stasi may as well just send an email telling the subject they are under surveillance and could they please email any incriminating information back to them.

I just hope the stasi also monitor all German emails for keywords, it would be much good sport registering a few German webmail accounts and sending dodgy emails between them ("Gunther have you received the castor beans" "yes Fritz and we are beginning ricin production immediately" etc etc) to see if you can provoke them into sending you the trojan.

Trojans gotta catch them all.

Re: Where is the resistance?

There is heaps of resistance around here, you can be sure of that. More people are starting to get aware of the implications of the new "ant-terror" (yea, like.. whatever) laws and some even react and try to make themselves heard..

Resistance isn't futile ..yet.

The main problem with all those laws in general (although the thought alone of somebody watching my every move, just because I oppose these laws openly and so I might "have something to hide"), but of the unforeseeable consequences they might have!

See, we had at least one mean dictator around here, starting a world war and all, and after the war was over and the new republic was founded, everybody agreed on passing laws which would "forever" prevent this shit happening again. We had really neat seperation of power implemented, some sort of transparency of what government body is doing what, we had defined "custodians for the custodians" and all..

Nowadays with all this "terror threat" scare (meh..) they abolish more and more of those regulations, and that's not a healthy thing for a democracy!

It all might be fine as long as we can trust the government (if only for their incompetency regarding technical issues, like actually developing such a trojan), but it's scary that the government doesn't appear to trust its people anymore!

And who can foresee the future? - What might happen if one day the far left, far right, or some complete whacko as Onkel Wolfgang takes over the government and now has the power to decide who really is one of those dreaded terrorists?

Those smegging laws will hardly ever be taken back. And most bloody politicians don't even understand the implications of what they decide on in parliament.

*sigh*

oh, well: Courage! And some clue for the clueless.. - pretty please?

(Paris, as a hint to "clue, please")

Re: Stasi reborn

"I always wondered what was going to happen to all those highly skilled east-Germans when they joined a West where citizens were trusted. Now I know."

Nope, that assumption is wrong. They were all rendered to the UK as backhaul loads on the US - East Europe secret prison flights. Since then, they have been "helping the authorities" by introducing such stuff to the UK. The 42 days detention malarkey being just a smokescreen to divert attention from whatever else is included in the same bill. [See Spyblog for more details]. Remember that whatever the State wants to do, it will make legal [for examples see US warrantless tapping, Germany in 1930s, Italy in 1930s, Soviet Union for most of its existence, Cambodia during PolPot, etc, etc]

If the Germans want their beloved Stasi back, they will have to join the queue behind all the past British Home Secretaries who have lucrative directorships with firms selling the hardware. They have a commercial interest in keeping the "colleagues" here.

Yes, most of the above is conjecture. If anyone has court standard proof that I got it wrong, would they please publish it here. Derision, including variations on "don't be so stupid" cannot be allowed. This NuLabour government has form on function creep and big statism and cockups. ID Cards anyone? NHS databases? Let alone HMRC CDs and MOD laptops.

What next (no, seriously!)

A current German pioneer monitoring the misuse of data is the Chaos Computer Club, who have sailed close to the legal wind in citizens' interests before. If the new legal framework caused them to become concerned, they might find shelter by contracting for other police work - there are bound to find some safe haven behind an inter-departmental feud.

I don't recall Orwell thinking this scenario through, though no doubt some other Sci-Fi-entist did somewhere.

@Graham Marsden

you were very, so very close. the last sentence is:

all your data are belong to me

Sad part...it probably goes thru the US and the NSA already have it.

Re: Where is the resistance?

Where is the resistance in this country (UK), This has been the policy of Fuerers Blair and Braun to spy on and criminalise the population for the past eleven years yet they still get voted in. It;s two long years until the next General Election. Don't let them get in again or we will be totally oppressed. (One people, One Land, One Leader, Work makes freedom, Forward through Technology. etc, etc).

Old Stereotyping allows for Untold Progress in Virgin Fields.

"If the Germans want their beloved Stasi back, they will have to join the queue behind all the past British Home Secretaries who have lucrative directorships with firms selling the hardware. They have a commercial interest in keeping the "colleagues" here." ..... By Jeff Deacon Posted Friday 6th June 2008 10:50 GMT

Jeff,

Anyone can jump the Queue if they Flash the Correct Credentials and Speak the Lingo. And that then allows Cash to Flow to Oil the Wheels. Although nowadays, who you would need to be Courting for the Latest Future Kit, is the Holy Grail of Search, is it not?

"Sad part...it probably goes thru the US and the NSA already have it." ... By Anonymous Coward Posted Friday 6th June 2008 16:57 GMT

What is Real Sad is that they do nothing of Great value with IT, AC. But they do admit that they have a Lack of Intelligence. And Shucks, y'all, that is reinforced daily whenever they use their Own rather than buying in some other which would work Beta and Better for them.

The very Real danger is that they be left Out in the Cold, following a Foreign Lead, because they could not comprehend the Simplest of Messages sent to them, even directly. The Great Game has Changed Fundamentally and QuITe Radically ... or haven't you noticed?

cc Fort Meade/NSA/any Intelligence Service playing the Great Game.

@AC - re Dieter Kaufmann

Well - many people think Dieter Kaufmann is a time-traveller from the future.

Sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy if he is.

Schäuble is definitely paranoid and belongs into a mental hospital very pronto.