German hackers discover government spying
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The German Chaos Computer Club has uncovered two recent instances of police using trojan spying programs on the computers of suspects they later arrested. The programs allowed remote users to take over webcams, listen in on internet phone calls and take screenshots every 30 seconds. All that would exceed the laws currently on the books in Germany, which only allow authorities to tap computers for phone calls. Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich said the government would re-examine the software it was using but that internet telephone monitoring would continue. Al Jazeera's Nick Spicer reports from Berlin.
January 21st, 2012 - 13:04
@ShadesofScorpius I hardly think the police would have
the resources and motivation to watch everyone’s activity
just for the sake of it, however what this can create is for
police to tap activists and other type of people, governments
don’t generally like, and wait for the smallest of mistakes from
their part to make a case out of it.
January 21st, 2012 - 13:47
this was good quality children’s clothing made in EU and we cannot undermine china’s monopoly on everything until they suck our economy dry
January 21st, 2012 - 14:33
How can I respect gays? They rave no respect for others. Here in Holland was two websites for gay chat. One of those is going out of busyness. The other website is open for anyone to enter and see naked gay man showing their private parts having sex on camera. Shame on them no respect for children. I think this website should be out of the internet. If you are a hacker or know a hacker. Please inform and help to bring this website down. BULLCHAT.NL I thank you in advance and best regards.
January 21st, 2012 - 15:22
“There is no police state in the making”
I recall that once someone said that no one intends to build a Wall…
January 21st, 2012 - 15:38
Spying !
January 21st, 2012 - 16:12
@CodenamePingu Lets imagine your government goes into China mentality. Or Soviet Union. I already see how good it is >.>
Especially knowing the fact that it always gets worse than this.
January 21st, 2012 - 16:41
Hitler is dead. Long live Hitler.
January 21st, 2012 - 16:53
Can YOU -produce police names, badges, addresses and numbers on line for public information ?
January 21st, 2012 - 16:59
The CCC actually have developeded that Trojan, don’t believe shit like they only discovered it by coincidence. Btw, CCC is infiltrated by Freemasons, they’re definitely working for the gov. Wolf in sheep’s clothing huh
January 21st, 2012 - 17:56
The have American bias lately….
January 21st, 2012 - 18:23
@CodenamePingu It’s not good because they don’t stop wtih just monitoring the ‘criminals’, they will monitor YOU, too. If they loosely define who is criminal and who isn’t they can watch everyone doing anything and you’ll have a big-brother police state. You can say “Well, I haven’t done anything wrong, so this won’t apply to me” but they’ll say “well, we’ll just watch you incase you DO do something”, or they’ll get you on phoney charges. It’s not good at all.
January 21st, 2012 - 18:25
that means that they are watching when I jerk off when I am watching porno, lol…
January 21st, 2012 - 19:14
i love CCC, especially after the movie “23″ they’re much smarter then the mob-mentality driven Anons
January 21st, 2012 - 19:48
This is actually good, why are people thinking this is negative?
January 21st, 2012 - 20:12
I’m guessing that the dude suspected of selling children’s clothing was either thought to be selling stolen clothing or was selling knockoff copies of designer clothing. But it’s just a guess since Al Jazeera’s reporter is not big on clarity. Either way, it is overkill for the German govt. to be spreading trojans onto its citizens’ computers.
January 21st, 2012 - 20:45
@Polydynamix hahaha so you know this stuff… lol
January 21st, 2012 - 21:43
@slantedseven: I am. Transparency is what leads to a safe and secure society. If you’re not willing to give up your own privacy you can’t expect people in the political or corporate world to. And if there’s no transparency there you’re heading for severe corruption and instability. Reason the Nordic countries have been so successful in general is largely due to transparency. But still – I may be able to easily find out the salary of my neighbour but why would I want to?
January 21st, 2012 - 22:01
@0515524847 We all miss the days of back orifice
January 21st, 2012 - 22:36
@Polydynamix
I know what you mean. Well I guess you need to be a hacker to save yourself 
lol not that i am a hacker at all. XD
January 21st, 2012 - 23:13
@0515524847 I understand the words you are saying, what I am telling you is- just because you uncheck a radial box in the settings to “disable a resource” doesn’t mean that the trojan itself is unable to enable it again. We’re not talking about the trojans that we used to send our friends in the 90′s so we could swap their mouse buttons or send ourselves screenshots of their desktops… we’re talking about a whole new monster.
January 21st, 2012 - 23:42
@Polydynamix Well If you know how these things work…you would understand that these things usually have very poor design & are fairly easy to understand & thus avoiding them is also easy. Once you get to know that these waters aren’t as deep as they seem…you will also share my views.
PS: If u disable a resource that trojan uses to do its Job…it cant succeed in its job as it never gets access to the needed resource rendering the attack ineffective.
January 22nd, 2012 - 00:23
@0515524847 I just don’t think a few system tweaks is going to keep the government out of our business. Our operating systems are designed with contingency plans integrated.
January 22nd, 2012 - 00:52
@Polydynamix PS: A trojan uses systems abilities & resources to do its work. Mainly these trojans are designed to steal info or get remote access to your PC. If you had closely read my post, I actually disabled this ability of a system to grant remote access to any one. In other words I showed a way to strip your system of this resource. Therefore rendering the trojan’s attack ineffective. With this no outsider can remotely access your web-cam/mike etc or other system resources.
January 22nd, 2012 - 01:36
@Polydynamix You are right but there is an easy way around….don’t use automatic update & if u absolutely require it then do it manually. I never update windows anyways cus the last time my rig got attacked…it was via windows updater.Trojans only get bypassed if the Anti-virus is manually allowed to leave it alone otherwise… the least bit suspicious .exe files are flagged & blocked. so make sure that a file is 100% trojan free before giving admin rights to it.
January 22nd, 2012 - 02:27
@marksmansnipe The point is that total security is not possible. Govt can not protect you from everything. You must tolerate imperfect security in any case. And you must tolerate imperfect security if you hope to have liberty. You must take some responsibility for your own security, if only by being prudent in your comings and goings. And there is a far greater risk of having your wealth seized by government these days than by anarchists. In the US, govt already seizes 40% of GDP!