German government answers questions about contracts to build monitoring software | Hacker News Reader

German government answers questions about contracts to build monitoring software

annalist.noblogs.org

45 pointsLouDog8 comments

Linkbait? Nothing really new here, they 'released' their trojan a while ago, it's been found 'in the wild', the CCC disassembled it. They found MAJOR problems within it, e.g. crypto was a joke. They actually released their own control tool for it [1](GERMAN). Then they found the 'update' capability which basically allowed a loyal servant (or an attacker) to upload and execute whatever they choose to do so.

What drives me mad is ALL OF THIS was paid by federal taxes (not so sure about the 'Billion Euros', but most likely a lot) and all they got was something close to NetBus/SubSeven/Back Orifice (last one developed in 1998!!!). Digitask (a complete joke) is still employed by us and sadly (or maybe luckily) there has been happening not much since then on that front. Politicians keep blaming somebody else and apparently NOBODY outside Digitask has EVER had the chance to analyze the original source code of it (which is in itself a complete hoax). Best of it all, apparently, this entire 'program' has so far not yielded a SINGLE success story.

[1] http://ccc.de/de/updates/2011/staatstrojaner

As noblogs.org is completely no-profit, and anonymous as much as possible, and does not contain ads, linkbait is not an option :)

Of course, this isn't anything new for some audience, but I think that is an indipendent media blog, so the story can still fit its audience.

The post isn't mainly about the trojan but about what else the government admits doing. Yes, it's no secret that Skype, Facebook, Gmail are monitored, but who knew for sure and how much money is spent on that? If you take it for granted that surveillance can happen everywhere all the time: no news. If you're interested in the details: I'd say that wasn't public before.

The 'billion euros' are in the document that's in the post. You can just add the sums mentioned.

Bad title. Should be "In Germany, police has to inform public how and when they monitor online communications."

(Apart from that this is not really news, I could have told you month ago if you asked me ;)

bad title:

- monitoring implies that they are doing it constantly, but they are only allowed to do it for evidence on suspicion

- providers of telecommunication stuff (telephone, email, etc.) have to provide possibilites for the government to get IP addresses, places, logins and more

Regarding Skype, it is important to notice that the German authorities apparently use trojans to intercept Skype conversations. I am surprised that Skype in spite of its HQ in Europe apparently still doesn't offer direct access for authorities.

I'm sure it offers direct access to NSA now that's owned by a US company, though. Also, to the police:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/skype-makes-c...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com