

German government answers questions about contracts to build monitoring software - LouDog
http://annalist.noblogs.org/post/2012/10/03/german-police-monitors-skype-googlemail-and-facebook-chat/

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linhat
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>

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_joe
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.

~~~
annalist
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.

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t3kcit
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 ;)

------
buster
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

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chmars
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.

~~~
mtgx
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...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/skype-makes-chats-
and-user-data-more-available-to-police/2012/07/25/gJQAobI39W_story.html)

