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Bavarian Police Can Legally Place Trojans On PCs

Posted by kdawson on Fri Jul 04, 2008 12:34 PM
from the trust-us-we-would-never-abuse-this-power dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The Bavarian Parliament passed a law that allows Bavarian police to place 'Remote Forensic Software' (Google translation) on a suspect's computer as well as on the computers of a suspect's contacts. They may break into houses in secret to install the RFS if a remote installation is not possible; and while they are there a (physical) search is permitted too. The RFS may be used to read, delete, and alter data." The translation says that RFSs may be used in cases of an "urgent threat to the existence or the security of the Federation or a country or physical, life or liberty of a person... Even where there is a reasonable assumptions on concrete preparatory acts for such serious offenses."
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  • Yes, (Score:5, Funny)

    by Daimanta (1140543) on Friday July 04 2008, @12:36PM (#24059711) Journal

    but does the trojan run on linux?

    • Re:Yes, (Score:4, Interesting)

      by brunokummel (664267) on Friday July 04 2008, @12:45PM (#24059789) Journal

      but does the trojan run on linux?

      Funny how the context allows a "does it run on linux" joke get modded up as insightful....

      ...What about the Soviet Russia jokes? Will they get mod as informative?

    • Re:Yes, (Score:4, Insightful)

      by KiloByte (825081) on Friday July 04 2008, @02:37PM (#24060735)

      If they are allowed to break in, they can install a hardware keylogger. Which yes, does run against linux.

      • Re:Yes, (Score:5, Insightful)

        by MacDork (560499) on Friday July 04 2008, @12:51PM (#24059857) Journal
        I think the bigger threat here is that they can break into your house without your knowledge and search it in secret. I guess the Gestapo taught them nothing.
        • Re:Yes, (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 04 2008, @12:57PM (#24059921)

          Yeah, cause it's nothing like the PATRIOT act in the US

        • Re:Yes, (Score:5, Funny)

          by colinrichardday (768814) <colin.day.6@hotmail.com> on Friday July 04 2008, @01:17PM (#24060079)

          Come on, now. I'm pretty sure the Gestapo knew how to break into houses and search them in secret.

          • Re:Yes, (Score:4, Interesting)

            by Hal_Porter (817932) on Friday July 04 2008, @01:48PM (#24060321)

            When I was in Munich I had a phone and a PC. The PC had voicemodem so it could act as a answering machine / fax machine. I got some cables to plug it into the phone socket. And the wierd thing is I could get the phone to work or the PC but not both. It turns out that German phone sockets will only allow one device to be connected. Someone said that this was to "prevent eavesdropping. In Germany this is regarded as important because of our experience of Nazism".

            I said something like "if the Nazis tapped phones they presumably did it at the exchange, not by having some sinister dude in a leather coat, monacle and jackboots sitting in the spare room taking notes". The German guy explaining gave me a very dirty look.

            • Re:Yes, (Score:5, Informative)

              by Pogue Mahone (265053) on Friday July 04 2008, @02:44PM (#24060795) Homepage
              I moved to Germany 10 years ago, and that confused me too. Some of the multi-way phone sockets have a "priority" system - the rightmost (or leftmost - I forget which) gets the line. If you look inside the box it's a simple break-switch. Also the N and F type connectors are very confusing. But if you take the boxes apart and wire everything in parallel it just works as normal.

              I assumed that the system was devised to prevent overloading - most commercial exchanges have some kind of limit on how many phones they can support. In the UK it's called "ringer equivalence number" and if you exceed it they don't guarantee that your phones will work. In practice it's the ringers that fail first.

              • Sorry, you are wrong (Score:5, Informative)

                by kju (327) on Friday July 04 2008, @04:14PM (#24061505)

                Sorry, most of what you said or suspected is wrong. The system is actually a very clever design which prevents interruption of data/fax calls by the phone and in fact also eavesdropping from another phone inside the house.

                The "multi-way phone sockets" are usually of the NFN-Type. Here F means "Fernsprecher" (Phone) while N means "Nicht-Fernsprecher" (Non-Phone). The socket is designed so that the line goes first to the left N socket , then to the right N socket and finally to the F socket. The phone will always be the last in chain. A non-phone device (fax, modem) plugged into one of the N sockets is supposed to have two electronic switches inside which will chain-through the line to the next socket when the device does not use the line. So if you are not sending a fax or surfing the net, you will be able to use the phone normally. However when the fax/modem takes over, the phone will be cut off. This clever trick prevents you from interfering with the transmission by picking up the phone.

                As you are not supposed to plug two phones into one box, this also prevents eavesdropping. Overload prevention is not the reason. There were and are devices available which either are put before the NFN-box and allow to wire another NFN-box or contain a F or NFN socket themselves. Both will allow to wire a second phone and of course you could use more than one of these devices. These device however contain a automatic switch will will cut-off the other phone when one is in use. But they will all ring.

        • Re:Yes, (Score:5, Informative)

          by umghhh (965931) on Friday July 04 2008, @01:38PM (#24060237)

          The original post has few problems

          1. the link does not work - I suppose it was meant to be this:
          http://www.heise.de/newsticker/Bundesrat-will-heimliche-Online-Durchsuchungen-auf-Terrorabwehr-beschraenken--/meldung/110466 [heise.de]

          2. this article says that Bavaria did NOT managed to extend existing proposal on searching, eavesdropping etc, existing proposal is maybe not that nice but it was apparently less harmful politically than the Bavaria's extension.

          Besides similar laws (lows?) already exist although not really in such drastic form. OTOH secret services do what it wants anyway - Germans violated its own and other countries' law to get account data of tax criminals. I believe there are countries where even suspicion that evidence was produced illegally or on information received illegally would nullify the whole proceeding. In Germany it apparently is not that important how you get your data as long as you can prosecute whoever you want. I guess each country has its quirks when it comes to powers that the state has.

          • Re:Yes, (Score:5, Informative)

            by Pogue Mahone (265053) on Friday July 04 2008, @02:57PM (#24060899) Homepage
            Here's the real link:
            http://www.heise.de/newsticker/Bayerischer-Landtag-setzt-den-Bayerntrojaner-frei--/meldung/110426 [heise.de]

            It's from yesterday. The story you link to is today's and is talking about the Bundesregierung as opposed to the Staatsregierung Bayern. Roughly speaking, it's the equivalent of Federal and State government in the US.

            The article says that the law has no chance of survival - it's pretty clearly in violation of the German constitution, and most Germans take their constitution *very* seriously.

            My take is that it's a typical "bargaining play": aim for the moon, and if you fall on the clouds, well, it's still better than the hilltop position that you really wanted. Compare the tactic with the *IAA's lobbying. They ask for outrageous new laws, everyone gets upset and writes to their reps, the law eventually gets watered down, and everyone goes home happy, failing to notice that the *IAA have achieved yet another step along the way to their goal of total control.

            • Re:Yes, (Score:5, Interesting)

              by Zemran (3101) on Saturday July 05 2008, @01:09AM (#24064199) Homepage Journal

              China has quietly been spending as much as the US on their military (without the outgoing expense of 2 theatres of war) for 10 years and has 2,000,000 soldiers in uniform. 10 years ago your view would have been stupid but nowadays it is worrying that people have not noticed how the world has changed. China is already stronger than the US and is growing while the US is in decline. Russia is already back in the frame and growing fast. The US could easily be in 3rd place in 10 years time if people do not wake up soon.

              People talk about the 1990s as if Russia collapsed but it did not. It had 4 times the military that the US had and it could not cope with the cost. It cut right back at a speed which looked like collapse but they kept all the good stuff (titanium hulled subs etc.) and grew from that. They are back in the game and growing fast.

              I was in China 10 years ago (I look forward to going back) and could see no reason why they would want to rise up against anything. The country is so different from the picture painted in our media that it was hard to recognise it. I was in Russia 5 years ago (and hated the place) and saw a people wholeheartedly behind their government.

              If we, in the west, do not pull our heads out of our arses we will end up losing a major conflict soon as we will end up having to fight in Taiwan or North Korea and we could easily be on the losing side if we still think that Chinese missiles are 1950 models when they took our designs 10 years ago and improved on them.

  • Bavaria? (Score:5, Informative)

    by Eudial (590661) on Friday July 04 2008, @12:40PM (#24059729)

    In my ignorance, I asked myself "where the hell is Bavaria?". So I wiki'd it [wikipedia.org]. Turns out, it's in Germany.

    The more you know...

  • Forensic? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gruntled (107194) on Friday July 04 2008, @01:02PM (#24059961)

    Um, "forensic" software is typically designed to *prevent* the alteration of data. Otherwise you can't reliably go into court and prove that you haven't planted the evidence. Last I heard, Germany still embraced the concept of due process...

    Not sure whether this is a crazy law passed by some locals that will be struck down by German courts, a bad write up, or a bad translation...

    • by KingOfBLASH (620432) on Friday July 04 2008, @12:55PM (#24059899) Journal

      I thought that the memories of the Geheime Staatspolizei made sure the germans would never approve of such things...

      Most people who were alive to see World War II Germany have passed on. I think this allows the forgetfullness we see across the world -- and unfortunately is allowing history to repeat itself in the restriction of rights in many countries...

    • by Hatta (162192) on Friday July 04 2008, @01:09PM (#24060011) Journal

      Yeah it's funny when you put it that way, but that's how it usually is. When a government takes an action under the guise of national security, the nation is actually less secure because a stronger government is a greater threat to liberty.