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.
Fan-diddly-astic (Score:5, Interesting)
Will it be illegal to thwart the attack?
Will it become illegal to use an alternative operating system or antivirus software or even just common sense to deflect these payloads?
Honeypot (Score:3, Interesting)
I think it would be pretty cool to get a trojen written by the government, that sends data back to the government and is read by computers in the most secret government areas... imagine what terrorists could do if they find a bug in it?
Next headlines: (Score:3, Interesting)
And I was half hoping it would finally grow out of fashion to be ashamed of this country now that the US was setting the world standard in pulling all this crap. Premature hope, apparently.
Re:Fan-diddly-astic (Score:5, Interesting)
Think of the diplomatic fun we'll all have!
Anti-hacking law? (Score:2, Interesting)
Yes, I know that it can be a stretch to say that no hacking tools means you can't still defeat this trojan, but maybe they could either create a trojan that could only be defeated that way, or just expand the law in later years to make it illegal to use anti-virus software "in a way that interferes with a government investigation" or something. Either way, it could lead to some scary stuff if properly abused. Even if you don't start the cycle of getting sent to prison, a trojan can dig up some nice information about enemies of yours.
"terror suspects" (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Too many holes to fly for long... (Score:2, Interesting)
Will the anti-virus companies go along with such a request?
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They already said they'd refuse.