That's really a big deal and just shows how governments treat their own laws and how important an open government is, in which such things can be verified and controlled!
How so? The phone is largely someone else's device and as such not as trusted as your own PC.
Also, phone taps record what you say in one particular case versus PC trojans which could record everything you do or say near the computer, and everything you do on it. Trojans also put your whole computer under the attackers control and makes can make it appear, forensically, that you were doing things. If they download porn, it appears that you downloaded porn. If they send spam, it appears that you sent spam...
If sinister means dangerous, then I think trojans win hands down.
In an ideal world it would be like that, this doesn't mean i can't hope to get as near as possible to "ideal".
Let's say it like that: open government is better then the partially closed down shit we have now, ok?
I'd be more worried if this was a backdoor in a popular program or operating system that was specified by the government and implemented by the original software author rather than more typical malware/trojan more akin to a wiretap. The former would be widespread and affect millions of users, while this appears to be a tool for use by law enforcement to carry out legitimate surveilance in criminal investigations. Presumably every modern government has such capabilities or they are really asleep at the switch.
The main gripe the authors of the paper have is not that this trojan exists - there are indeed German laws that allow for such a trojan - but that it has been so insecurely implemented, and also collects information that cannot be identified as "communication" (which is a requirement for this German law).
Any data received from the command and control server is sent unencrypted and unchecked. Additionally, the trojan contains a "backdoor within a backdoor", which allows any code to be attached to the trojan and executed unchecked!
Moral issues of computer surveillance aside, this trojan is a shocking example of the German government's (if indeed this is a government effort) incompetence regarding the internet.
another gripe was the fact that the "backdoor within a backdoor" functionality (which AFAIK was ruled unlawful by German courts) is the only part of the trojan that tries to hide what it does.
I would challenge the concept of the government carrying out "legitimate surveilance" through this dubious means.
The person surveiled has not been has not convicted of a crime yet the state has taken onto itself to install software that would leave the person open to further hacking by random individuals.
This is akin to the police not simply breaking into the house of a man they suspected of a crime but also them leaving his door a-jar after they left. See the Sony Rootkit.
If they got a warrant first I'd be OK with it - as long as they were competent of course and didn't leave the person vulnerable.
It's no different from getting a warrant for a phone tap, or a copy or your US mail.
(Incidentally they don't need a warrant for a copy of the address on the front, called http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mail_cover - so presumably they don't need a warrant to ask your ISP for a list of IP address, but I'd want a court to confirm that first.)
What in my post lead you to believe I thought that governments don't engage in a variety of dubious surveillance (including surveillance which leaves open back doors to the victims machine)? They certainly do.
The thing is that exposing these acts and fighting all efforts to make such acts legal is still important for limiting how much the state can do.
It's a personal blog and as such he adds his own notion to the text but it has always been worthwhile for me to check the source articles (which are almost always renowned news agencies). You should always read the sources and make up your own mind, but i found his blog to be very good at finding those sources.
Digging down to the source material, the Strong Towns group does address Government Transfer Payments, explaining that all suburbs are subsidized. But they avoid offending anyone by pointing out that the suburbs were financed by the urban areas.
In my experience, suburban dwellers don't like learning that they're parasites.
