Germany Plans To Email Trojans 166
speardane sends us word of a proposal in the German legislature to make it legal for that government to email spyware to terror suspects. The action comes in response to a court denying prosecutors' requests to break into suspects' computers over the Internet. The German chancellor supports the measure despite considerable outcry from political opponents and rights groups.
Re:Fan-diddly-astic (Score:5, Insightful)
More to the point, would it be illegal to reverse-engineer the spyware and send the guvmint all sorts of interesting information (that it would presume to be the spyware reporting back in?)
After all, Big Brother deserves the very best, right?
Email terror suspects and... (Score:5, Insightful)
If I were a terrorist, or really any kind of nefarious criminal (because you just know there are foolish people salivating about doing the same to any criminal suspects) I would welcome this decision. If was a bad guy and I was worried that 'they' were on to me, receiving this trojan would be proof positive.
And then I would take the opportunity to feed false information back to the people who sent me the trojan. Hooo boy, what a great way to make trouble for people I don't like, better than falsely reporting them to the IRS.
How is this different? (Score:3, Insightful)
If it can be abused, it will be.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Email terror suspects and... (Score:1, Insightful)
Real terrorists are smart and nasty, and often successful (the existence of Ireland and the USA itself being prime examples - terrorist/freedom-fighter forces overthrowing the brits).
That said, the people the USA defines as "terrorists" usually aren't these days.
Re:Email terror suspects and... (Score:4, Insightful)
Nah; it would just mean that you had a computer (presumably one running MS Windows
Note that they want the right to send it to any "terror suspect". The word suspect means anyone at all. If challenged, all they have to say is that they suspect you of something. Or they suspect a relative of yours. Or someone you knew in college 20 years ago. Or someone three houses down the street. Or someone with a name vaguely like yours. Or they learned that an ancestor of yours five generations ago wasn't German.
Such a law is really just a legal excuse to do nasty things to anyone at all, at any time.
The fun thing in this case is that you just know that their software would be isolated, probably within a week, and would soon be available at warez sites everywhere, for anyone's own private use. Someone annoying you? Send them a trojan that would start reporting all your keystrokes to the police.
Re:Too bad Angela Merkel is also computer illitera (Score:2, Insightful)
I guess we need to wait for another generation to get into politics, the one that is currently growing up with computers.
How is that going to help necessarily? The relative number of people who actually understand computers isn't going up. The current crop of high schoolers just uses (or attempts to use....) the things without the least understanding of the technical, societal, or political issues involved. If anything, they're even dumber. They put their whole lives on MySpace and Facebook for the perusal of others.To be sure, there are always new geeks coming along but without a radical shift in our own understanding of how things other than computers work, we aren't going to help matters much either.
I expect its already being done (Score:3, Insightful)
Non-Germans would be expected to have no rights in a German court of law. Non-Americans have little rights in an American Court of law. This means it is legal for one country's law enforcement personnel to spy on non-citzens
The thing is how a German citizen living in Germany would be taken into court in Germany.... Similarly, how would an American Citizen be taken into court in America? If the said individual lives outside of his own country then perhaps its a bit easier...
Nevertheless, our authorities have been spying on everyone for decades.
I think all this really boils down to is what is admissible in a court of law. I doubt it will have any effect on what our spies actually do on a day to day basis.
Re:Fan-diddly-astic (Score:5, Insightful)
There is a huge difference. In the case you're referring to, the man was already convicted of a crime. A result of conviction is often a loss of certain liberties and rights. As a condition of his parole (which can be quite arbitrary on the part of the state) he can continue to use a computer provided it is with the monitoring software running - this is only possible with Windows. It's difficult to make a case that will stand up that the conditions are particularly onerous or truly cruel and unusual.
On the other hand, this article is about a case where a government wants to send spy software to suspected criminals in the homes they can get useful information for a prosecution. I'm not familiar with German law, but if this were the US, it's probably okay for the government to do this. There are similar tactics that have not been thrown out, such as mailing a "you won a prize" envelope to a suspected murderer/rapist - which he then licked, leaving his DNA, and returned - thus giving the probable cause for an arrest and prosecution).
The government can't yet compel someone to give up their DNA and I suspect that a similar logic would be applied to a person's choice of computer software - the government can't compel you to use a certain kind of software just to make it convenient to gather data to be used against you. We are all presumed innocent and they have to have probable cause merely to investigate. To actually compel you to give up rights (requiring you to run specific software) you need to have a conviction... or a law that applies to all of us.
Re:Fan-diddly-astic (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:1A Plan, really! (Score:4, Insightful)
The German government could technically issue a "please do not find" letter. Now, I know a few people with a few AV labs and such a letter would most likely be met (inofficially) immediately with a shady tool on a shady page finding exactly this trojan and nothing else.
But let's just for a moment assume that this won't happen. Instead, KAV gives the German government the finger, citing the "Russia is big, the Czar is far" proverb. Avira would most likely be forced to comply, sitting in Germany, so would probably some other EU-based AV vendors.
They would, though, immediately go to Den Hague and sue for unfair trade disadvantages due to the laws in one member country.
AV writers tend to be a zealous lot. If you think the EFF is hard on GPL violations, you've never seen AV fanatics meet malware proponents.
Not about terrorism, never has been (Score:1, Insightful)