Court has confirmed coordinated raids of Zwiebelfreunde in Germany were illegal | Hacker News Reader

Court has confirmed coordinated raids of Zwiebelfreunde in Germany were illegal

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A small remainder: German police also confiscated donor lists for anonymity projects like Tails [0]

In that context, I consider it highly unlikely that this data wasn't already shared with all kinds of institutions. Sure, CCC and Zwiebelfreunde can do a bit of legal dance and make German police pretend nothing like that ever happened, but one would be naive to take their word for it.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17483393

I mean, I am really, really glad that at least it's been declared illegal, as the whole thing is just insane (and reeks of the typical authoritarian overreach as is custom in Bavaria), but the fact it happened in the first place is still deeply disconcerting.

They'll probably do it again.

I'm not a German, but Dutch. Doesn't this generate a lot of media attention and precedence? I thought these kind of actions were especially sensitive in Germany?

Are there any consequences to prevent this from happening again? I am unfamiliar w/ German approaches to illegal police activities (even if barely illegal and retroactively determined), but I know in other countries the absence of any consequences allows these things to repeatedly happen.

This won't cause consequences whatsoever. Police and judiciary enjoy effectively impunity in Germany.

Happens all the time. Just to give another recent example: https://www.welt.de/regionales/hamburg/article180254886/Poli...

Effectively there will be no consequences. Technically Zwiebelfreunde could file charges against the judge who signed the orders or the police who executed them, but effectively they will not be prosecuted, let alone convicted. Nearly all illegal police activity in Germany had no real consequences, because there is a „high trust” in them by ruling parties.

Some examples from the last year:

http://www.spiegel.de/panorama/justiz/g20-polizei-soll-recht...

https://www.hessenschau.de/panorama/durchsuchung-des-asta-st...

They're requesting in writing that no analysis was done, because then when they get the equipment back and see that yup, analysis was done, they can then I assume sue for... Something? How's that work in Germany?

Force the police to prove that they deleted the results of the analysis, I assume. And yes, if they'd get to that point, the police would need to produce a watertight audit trail. Depending on how much will there is to actively fight back, possibly in retailiation to discourage further breaches of procudure, they might be able to archive a lot due to the disconnection from national security and the legal standing they have on this. Also, German courts usually order looser pays all. As Attorney fees are capped according to some tables, in relation to the sum being fought over, this usually isn't a problem. You don't get interest back though.

How do you prove that you deleted something?

You can't, unless very specific measures were taken beforehand (which doesn't happen normally). You need to testify under oath that you did and the other side needs to hope that the punishment for lying under oath is worse for you than the consequences for them when it wasn't deleted.

Paper trail of where it could have ended up maybe? And I mostly mean that if the testifying human isn't impartial, he would require physical evidence to corroborate his testimony, despite the oath.

The reason being sufficient examples and even game-theoretic arguments (mind you, these are 'nerds', they can find someone well-versed in game theory if needed) show a lack of (expected) trustworthiness of a non-corroborated testimony of such a human.

Prove means something differently here. You subpoena records and get every damn email, piece of paper, SMS, meeting transcript, etc. related to the computers. You get invoices from contractors who worked on it. You subpoena the people involved and establish exact timelines of what everyone did, and when.

If these records are incomplete, the judge decides against the police with prejudice.

If the records are complete and there isn’t indications they copied the data and performed analysis entirely off the books, then we say that we’ve proven analysis didn’t happen.

>They're requesting in writing that no analysis was done, because then when they get the equipment back and see that yup, analysis was done, they can then I assume sue for... Something?

I'd assume if you're involved in a lawsuit against the police, and they make a factual claim like "we did not analyze items not listed in the warrant", that there's some sort of perjury type charge there.

While the police are allowed to lie to you, that's usually restricted to interrogations ("your partner has already flipped") not lying to the lawyer for the person suing you.

This isn't how it works in the United States at least. The police are allowed to lie to you, your lawyer, the media, anyone they want to, as long as they are not under oath. They may be held civilly liable for lies that cause damages but only after overcoming their qualified immunity. Lieing to the court even when not under oath could lead to a contempt change.

>This isn't how it works in the United States at least. The police are allowed to lie to you, your lawyer, the media, anyone they want to, as long as they are not under oath.

That seems like you're playing semantics.

A contempt charge is a type of criminal charge. My contention is that if a lawyer, during discovery, asks the police a question like "did you analyze the data" and they lie they'd face issues.

So it looks like we're in agreement :)

You are in spirit in agreement, but I don't think he played on words. Just stating (how awful, personal opinion) how it is in the US.

To my knowledge the police in Germany is not allowed to lie to you during interrogations in the sense you put it.

https://dejure.org/gesetze/StPO/136a.html

According to this law, deception is a prohibited interrogation method.

No idea how this is handled in practice and what the loopholes are.

I have a vague memory of a confession in Switzerland being invalidated because of this, but can't find a source at the moment.

Google Translate of the German court text quoted in the blog post:

The challenged search and seizure orders and confiscation orders of the district court of Munich were unlawful. As far as they were still valid, they were therefore to be lifted. Moreover, their illegality was ascertained. The applications for surrender of the confiscated objects were also to be granted in this respect. The measures can no longer be considered covered by the Code of Criminal Procedure. The investigating authorities are right to bring proceedings against the persons responsible for the calls made on the websites cited. However, the assumption made by the investigating authorities that evidence can be found during the search of the data subjects or on the confiscated data carriers is not justified in the known circumstances. There is no sufficient probability of finding relevant data. There is no evidence that those affected, their association onion friends e.V. or the grouping "Riseup Networks" belong only to the environment of unknown offenders. It is also not immediately apparent that they can find information on the perpetrator environment or the perpetrators. The only connection point is the fact that the unknown perpetrators had set up an e-mail account at "Riseup Networks". However, "Riseup Networks" offers (as intended) anonymized Internet services. The account can be set up anonymously (on recommendation). E-mail traffic via the configured account is encrypted. Therefore, there is very little chance of getting information about the perpetrators and acts via "Riseup Networks" and its database. In addition, there is the additional factor that according to the information available so far, those concerned with their association "Zwiebelfreunde e.V." can not be equated with "Riseup Networks". The link exists, as far as can be seen, only in the support of the network by collecting donations

I think the translation from deepl.com is a bit better:

"The challenged search and seizure orders and seizure confirmation orders of the Munich District Court were illegal. If they still existed, they were therefore to be repealed. Moreover, their unlawfulness could be established. The requests for surrender of the confiscated items were also to be granted in this respect. The measures can no longer be regarded as covered by the Code of Criminal Procedure.

The investigating authorities are right to take legal action against those responsible for the calls on the websites cited. However, in the known circumstances, it is not justified for the investigating authorities to assume that evidence for these proceedings can be found during the search of the persons concerned or on the confiscated data carriers. There is insufficient probability of finding relevant data. There is no evidence that those affected, their association Zwiebelfreunde e.V. or the grouping "Riseup Networks" belong even to the environment of the unknown perpetrators. It is also not immediately apparent that they contain information on the perpetrators' environment or perpetrators. The only connection point is the fact that the unknown perpetrators had set up an e-mail account at "Riseup Networks". "However, "Riseup Networks" offers (as intended) anonymized Internet services. The account can be set up anonymously (on recommendation). E-mail traffic via the configured account is encrypted. Therefore, there is very little probability of obtaining information about the perpetrators and crimes via "Riseup Networks" and its database. In addition, according to the information available to date, those affected with their association "Zwiebelfreunde e.V." cannot be equated with "Riseup Networks". The only connection, as far as is evident, is to support the network by collecting donations."

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator

It’s a good thing people are willing to risk this much to make an important point.

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