German Government Spyware

[theprestige]

theprestige, your questions are answered in the CCC statement I linked to and even in the part Floyt quoted. Don't really know why I should repeat it for you if it's there in plain sight, especially given your tone. Here's a SPIEGEL article from a few days ago which links to another article describing the rulings of the constitutional court which were violated. You can strike the qualifier, the claims are true. This is developing into quite the scandal.

The problem is, my questions are not answered in the part Floyt quoted. And as far as I can tell from the material provided, the rulings of the court were not violated.

Taking the second point first: The court ruled that the so-called "illegal" functions are in fact legal in some circumstances. Since the functions are in fact legal, it follows that it cannot be illegal to develop software that is able to perform those functions.

Taking the first point second: The software in question does not actually include the so-called "illegal" functions. Instead, it includes the ability to install arbitrary functions at a later time, including the so-called "illegal" functions.

As far as I can tell, the CCC's complaint is that there exists a piece of software, sometimes used by the German government (but not exclusive to the German government), that can load other programs including programs that must meet strict legal requirements for use; and that either the existence of this software, or its installation on a computer system, is illegal in some way (or at least is a very big problem of some kind for the German government).

What I'm trying to figure out is, in what way is the software in question illegal? Did the BusinessWeek article misinterpret the court's ruling somehow?

 

[Childlike Empress]

The software is not illegal, but the usage of it by German state agencies for spying on German citizens is.

Ok, as you asked nicely i've read the BW article now. Kind of confused and missing the point, but even it contains the crux in the first paragraph:

The German government is using spying software that violates the country’s constitutional law because it contains functions beyond the interception of Internet-based communication, a hacker organization said.

Same in Floyt's quote of the CCC press release linked by me:

The analysis concludes, that the trojan's developers never even tried to put in technical safeguards to make sure the malware can exclusively be used for wiretapping internet telephony, as set forth by the constitution court. On the contrary, the design included functionality to clandestinely add more components over the network right from the start, making it a bridge-head to further infiltrate the computer.

The court ruled that the state can use trojan horse software only in certain cases and only to intercept (encrypted) internet telephony, not to take over a citizens computer and do whatever they want. And certainly not, like this piece of incompetent crap does, leave the door open for everybody else. For details see the CCC statement. They were among the experts heard by the constitutional court before it came to the decision, and they know the details better than anybody else. Despite the name, these aren't script kiddies with Guy Fawkes masks.

Now clear?

 

[Darth Rotor]

The software is not illegal, but the usage of it by German state agencies for spying on German citizens is.


The court ruled that the state can use trojan horse software only in certain cases and only to intercept (encrypted) internet telephony, not to take over a citizens computer and do whatever they want. And certainly not, like this piece of incompetent crap does, leave the door open for everybody else. For details see the CCC statement. They were among the experts heard by the constitutional court before it came to the decision, and they know the details better than anybody else. Despite the name, these aren't script kiddies with Guy Fawkes masks.

Now clear?

Thank you for explaining that.

 

[nene]

Now the company that made the bug is claiming that they are not incompetent.