Monday, September 03, 2007

Bundestrojaner given short shrift by Register

See here for the Register's take on the German government's plan to conveniently forget about civic liberties.

From the article,

"Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble is seeking police powers to harness malware in upcoming federal security laws. AP reports that snoopware would be developed by the German government rather than existing commercial software. Using malware to spy on terror suspects would "cover a serious and scandalous hole in our information that has arisen through technical changes in recent years," according to Stefan Kaller, a spokesman for Schaeuble."


The mechanisms proposed are as laughable as the principle is draconian. For example, government departments are supposed to send out deliberately tainted emails to terror suspects. Presumably they already have a mailing list with entries like osama@alqaeda.org. There's probably little danger of terrorists using cryptic email addresses, right?

Anyway, as the Register points out, "Would-be terrorists need only use Ubuntu Linux to avoid the ploy". Darn it, those terrorists are just too clever!

Given this approach, perhaps it's a good thing that the current CDU-SPD coalition have no time to do anything about health, education and unemployment.


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